Creating warm, nurturing home environments is not easy, especially when confronted with the many challenges of daily life, and it has been widely acknowledged that all families, within or outside a “crisis mode”, need support.

More and more, reports echoing parents’ voices (Cooney, 2020)…

The central aim of this study is to examine what measures have been taken by selected EU member states – two countries (Sweden and Croatia), as well as three regions (Flanders in Belgium, Berlin in Germany and Emilia-Romagna in Italy) – to deal with the COVID-19 crisis during the first year of…

The World Health Organization advises mothers to exclusively breastfeed their newborn babies for at least 6 months. In the Netherlands, a recent assessment of breastfeeding practices showed that 69% of the mothers start breastfeeding after birth. After one week this number declines to 58%, and…

Transitions across the home environment, early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings and compulsory school education (CSE) mark significant changes in the life of children and their families and communities. Positive experiences of transition between educational levels can be a critical…

This handout presents in brief the Persona Dolls methodology and provides a brief and concise overview of how we can create a doll with personality, the main rules for making the dolls, the steps that need to be taken in advance, the main phases of a persona dolls session and some story examples…

A combilation of videos addressed to families and ECD professionals, that aim at explaining the developmental stages of the child and how we can support children's holistic development and autonomy.

Learn more about Ensemble for Early Childhood Education on…

How to Business Model Canvas (BMC) provides guidance on how to deal with both external and internal organisational needs and the ways to best respond to them as an organisation. BMC is designed to increase accessibility and flexiblity to provide childcare inclusively for…

This report outlines how the access to childcare and employment can be enhanced for families living in vulnerable conditions by investing in strong systems, organisations and staff. It highlights what measures can be taken to support families into childcare and employment and to enhance…

Providing accessible childcare can improve chances of vulnerable parents in general and on the labour market. With PACE we want to explore organising occasional and/or flexible childcare. As we are working with vulnerable parents, we have to be aware of their difficult living reality, where they…

TOY to Share, Play to Care is a two-year project (January 2019 – January 2021) that builds on previous work undertaken by International Child Development Initiatives (ICDI), a Netherlands-based non-governmental organization. Specifically, it follows upon the project TOY for Inclusion, 2017-2019…

The EDUCAS project planned to start the Continuous Professional Development Paths (CPD) in the three countries involved (Belgium, Lithuania, Italy) with specific focus groups involving families and staff in the ECEC centers partners of the project. The aim of the focus groups has been:

1…

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has upended families’ lives, with school closures, social distancing, and stay-at-home measures limiting their access to support systems, while adding to health concerns and economic uncertainties. As families face these varied stressors, it is…

This guide supports a wide range of professionals working alongside parents and caregivers in both special and mainstream systems to manage and implement the ongoing transitions that affect how special and mainstream institutions provide services and coordinate actions. This includes those…

The purpose of this report is to demonstrate development and implementation of a common path of professional development for professionals: ECEC core and assisting practitioners in two Slovenian kindergartens involved in the VALUE project.

The aim of the VALUE project was to create a ‘…