Individual Project
The early child stage is regarded as the most significant developmental stage in a person’s life. The turn out of an individual is strongly influenced by the cognitive areas of development which include language, social, physical and emotional domains (American Psychological Association, 2001; Irwin, Siddiqi & Hertzman, 2007). This can explain the reason why individuals adopt certain behaviors. Some of these behaviors may result either to the well-being or detriment of a person. In Early Childhood Development it is proposed that the building blocks are ingrained between the child’s environmental conditions and biological factors which they go through during the initial years of development (Bennett, 2003; Munt, 2003). It is the duty of the ECD intervention to assist these young children plus their families to succeed (Stanley, 2002). This paper will discuss the significance and impacts of intervention strategies on the Early Childhood Development to promote the healthy development and maturity of a child.
Effective early intervention strategies may be performed at family, individual or community stages and can be specifically made to satisfy needs of diverse cultural groups (Munt, 2003). Intervention strategies that may possibly have a constructive impact on families and their children include: parenting skills training; home visiting checks on families with babies and pregnant; family counseling; family relationship education; support services for various families with young children and providing things such as play groups which are some of the methods that help in brain development of a child (Fallon, 2000).
ECD can contribute in helping the vulnerable parents where marginalized and vulnerable families regularly find access to good services is hard. The duty of ECD service providers is to devise ways of connecting with families to help them get easier access to these needs. This means that when approaching these families the professionals should consider the basic needs of these children and their families in an attempt to get the needed support. The service system requires configuration to augment the collective power to react quickly to the requirements of vulnerable families. This means developing stronger bonds between services.
It takes a village to raise a child’ is an African verb used to show the importance of the community’s role in raising young people and children. A large socio-economic structure where a family and child are rooted, influences child development, family functioning and accessibility to resources in the community. When forming collaborations between communities and ECD professionals, the two parties should ensure maximum availability of good programmes and services which are developed on the society existing infrastructure. Investment of the public in the ECD programs is immensely strong and with better benefits to the entire community in many fields for example that of education (Smialek & Katona, 2006). The community can also make use the existing Health Care Systems to makes sure that ECD is addressed in a complete manner because they provide the first mother-child contact system. This form of ECD programmes and community interrelationships assures that the children find themselves in environments which provide psychosocial, psychological and mental benefits to them.
According to Australian Social Inclusion Board (2009), in Australia, the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy took up the subject of early intervention as a component of its advance to increase family and community welfare (Joinking, 2003). In this perspective, the Stronger Families Learning Exchange at the Australian Institute of Family Studies was built up as a way for progress knowledge which outlines how early intervention projects can be taken up for a variety of Australian backgrounds and the advantages that may come out. The reason why Early Children Development is taken up is because their role is to help determine the learning skills, well being and health across the children’s life-course balance (Friedman, 2005). In US there has been creation of numerous major programs which are focused on development of children such as the WIC program for Women Infants and Children. Some of the developing nations have also learnt the issue of ECD programs such as Bolivian ECD program which is also known as the PIDI program (Friedman, 2005).
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