Early Childhood Development
The rights of children at early ages are still seen as linked exclusively with the right to survival. The rights to development and education are often ignored. In addition, access to preschool education for Children with Disabilities is still far from a reality.
Our Early Childhood Development Programme (ECD) aims to ensure holistic rights based support and qualitative and inclusive education services for children at early ages 0-6 years. This is being accomplished by increasingly improving the environments in which they grow up, develop and get educated.
Programme components
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Capacity building
- One the main component is the national training programme for 150 ECD staff institutions including teachers at kindergarten, nurses at Crèches, doctors at Mother Child Care Units and education inspectors at Regional Education Authorities.
This has been done by concentrating on holistic child development, providing inclusive education concepts and practices focusing children with disabilities. In addition, we have trained and equipped them with basic skills to identify children with disabilities, prevention of disabilities through early interventions and methods to create more child-centred services.
These 150 ECD trained staff serve also as local trainers and have delivered their gained knowledge and skills to other practitioners.
Due to improved practices by the trained ECD specialists and practitioners, 23,000 children (who attend crèches, MCCUs and kindergartens) benefit and receive quality services and have been exposed to child friendly education. These children have also improved their life skills and gained more.
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Mother and Child Care Units
- By emphasizing child development and education from birth we have continued to support and work with 6 Mother Child Care Units (MCCU). ECD specialists, parents and community members who visit these centres benefit from their services. Through bimonthly meetings, the ECD specialists provide information to parents, community members on child rearing techniques, inclusion concepts and practices focusing children with disabilities. By encouraging such improvements and qualitative services for children at home and stimulating their development positive changes are being realized.
MCCUs ECD specialists have also put much effort into sensitizing mothers of young children and other family members on how to deal with children with disabilities and use the “Portage” assessment. For this reason the number of participants, particularly mothers, who have taken part in the MCCUs meetings have increased their interest in issues surrounding disability and inclusion in mainstream institutions.
Hundreds of children with disabilities (CwD) have been newly identified by the ECD specialists. A large number of these children have had their impairment defined and the specific needs for development identified. Using portage methodology assessment information and checklists, the ECD specialists, teachers and parents target the skills and behaviours of the child which needs to be addressed.
During the regular MCCUs meetings with mothers it was also noticed, that besides child-rearing practices, there is an increased interest of mothers to discuss issues such as the physical punishment of children by adults and damage to children’s development.
This is a progressive step in terms of a change in mentality since physical punishment continues to be widely perceived as an acceptable form of disciplining children in Albania. At MCCUs meetings mothers have learned from the ECD specialists the alternatives to punishment in response to any difficult behaviours of their children.
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Inclusive Education project ( district level)
- From our project work it has been observed that very few Children with Disabilities (CWD) aged 3-6 years old are considered for admission in pre-school institutions. CWD have very few opportunities to gain skills and develop. They are kept at home and seldom integrated in mainstream education.
To respond to this, Save the Children is working to increase the number of children with disabilities who enrol and progress in kindergartens by developing replicable integration models in three areas (Tirana, Berat, and Librazhd).
Our work consists of developing qualitative inclusive methods for pre-school education focusing in particular on CWD. In partnership with two local NGOs, previously working with us on disability, in depth training sessions on inclusive education and on-the-job training were organized for kindergarten teachers and parents.
Most of the parents use portage methodology thus stimulating their children’s development and are continuously effectively collaborating with the kindergartens teachers. To date, 80 CWD are attending kindergartens and progressing in improving their skills and their potential for learning and personal development. These children are increasingly enjoying a welcoming atmosphere and more than 2,000 of their non-disabled peers are indirectly benefiting from the positive and inclusive environments created in their kindergartens.
Most children are particularly active and engage effectively in activities with their non-disabled peers. Self-help and socialization are the fields of development where almost all children are showing evident progress.
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Our advocacy
- To ensure lasting changes and increase the number of children at early ages that receive and benefit from improved care and inclusive education services, we work hand in hand with state ECD structures and government, communities and practitioners and local NGOs which target the needs of disabled children.
We developed advocacy and awareness activities including meetings and joint priorities and plans with Ministry of Education (MoE), Ministry of Health (MoH) and other international and local agencies. This was a done by organizing conferences, workshops, informative days, field visits. We also provided relevant publications and posters, mainly on child rearing practices, inclusive education. Great resulted have been achieved by these efforts
We influenced and increased interest of the government and society to put a greater priority on the education and development of children at early ages with a focus on CwD. Government and/or local NGOs are committed to carry out and share responsibilities and resources with SCiA. Twelve of our kindergartens will serve as models and were included in the MoES national plans on preschool inclusive education. Furthermore, MoES requested SCiA’s cooperation to replicate SCiA approaches in at least 5 other districts beyond our existing areas of piloting.
Our success in lobbying the government for having an ECD strategy laid a solid foundation for the allocation of funding by GoA to implement such a strategy.
Also, SCiA has an important role in Education for All and other important initiatives, giving opportunities for SCiA to join forces with international donors’ to lobby for an increased budget allocation for ECD.
Our on-going work in developing inclusive education approaches as well as our efforts to link Mother and Child Care Units (MCCUs) and crèches with the kindergartens and work in expanding approaches to reach children with disabilities is becoming more visible and has been increasingly recognized by the state and the society.