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ECCD Info
Early Childhood Counts: Rights From the Start
Early Childhood Care for Development (ECCD) is all that the name implies and more: it comprises all the essential supports a young child needs to survive and thrive in life, as well as the supports a family and community need to promote children’s healthy development. This includes integrating health, nutrition, and intellectual stimulation, providing the opportunities for exploration and active learning, as well as providing the social and emotional care and nurturing a child needs in order to realize her/his human potential and play an active role in their families and later in their communities.
This holistic view of children’s well-being, while by no means new, has been validated and encouraged by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is only recently been understood that the basic need for food, healthcare and protection are not just needs but rights (implying duties and obligations) and that in addition, the rights to affection, interaction, security, stimulation and opportunities for learning have been accepted as being just as fundamental.
Children’s rights are about the obligations of all adults to protect the best interests of children, and to create the conditions under which they can develop and thrive.
Experience Matters
Research suggests that significant and critical brain development and development of intelligence occurs before the age of seven, particularly during the first three years of life. This process is influenced by a child’s nutritional and health status and also by the kind of interaction a child develops with people and objects in the environment. It is highly dependent upon adequate nutrition, stimulation, and optimal care. During these first years, the key brain pathways for lifelong capabilities are established (or not). Once developed, the brain is much harder to modify. Therefore, what happens to a child, and the opportunities provided to a child in the first years are crucial in determining lifelong outcomes.
While there remains ongoing debate about the degree to which early disadvantages or trauma can be reversed later on, including with targeted interventions that aim to ameliorate problems, it is clear that adequate attention to the first months and years (including prenatally) of a child’s life ensures the best possible start in life.
What is a World Fit for Children?
- It is a world where it is understood that development is continuous and that learning begins at birth for every child no matter their circumstances or abilities
- It is a world that recognizes that the best possible start to life depends on the quality of earliest years of life and is the foundation on which future child development rests. Attention to early childhood care and the emotional, pyscho-social, cognitive, spiritual development as well as to the health, survival and primary education needs of children is critical to providing the foundation for lifelong learning, and active and productive participation in society
- It is therefore a world in which those involved in the care, development and education of children are supported in their responsibilities
Beyond Child Survival
It needs to be understood that child development is not synonymous with child health, that survival and development are simultaneous and that development is not something that occurs “after survival.” At the same time that children struggle not to die, they struggle to develop mentally, socially and emotionally. Child Survival is part of ECCD, but it is not the whole picture.
Once a child has survived, the question must be asked: what is the quality of life for that child, and how can that child realize her/his potential?
Our understanding of the two-way interactive relationship between psycho-social well-being and nutritional status and health has increased enormously in recent years. This synergism between different aspects of children’s development means that holistic approaches are vital and need to address both children’s physical and psycho-social well being.
In the absence of a more holistic human development/social justice framework, agencies often over-emphasize the physical status of children, because by its very nature, progress in the areas of children’s psycho-social development is more complex to assess, whereas weight or completion of immunizations schedules are easier to measure. However, there is promising work in the development and use of ECCD indicators being undertaken by various groups including the CG (LINK TO INDICATORS)
ECCD: the foundation for all later learning
In supporting the youngest children, it is especially important to recognize that ECCD programs play a crucial role in establishing basic education for all. Support for young children does not merely refer to establishing preschools or infant classes. It refers to all the activities and interventions that address the needs and rights of young children and help to strengthen the contexts in which they are embedded: the family, the community, and the physical, social, and economic environment.
Emphasis needs to be placed on developing and using approaches, which recognize, respect and build on families’ achievements and the very real constraints they face in supporting their children’s overall development/learning, most of which occurs in and around a child’s home and community in the earliest years, and ensuring their rights. If we believe that learning begins at birth as purported in the Jomtien and Dakar Declarations related to Education For All, it is important to realize that basic education begins then too. What is more BASIC than a solid foundation for all later learning?
This is a very different way of thinking about education, and basic educational strategies than is normally understood when discussing the needs of primary and secondary students. While one outcome of ECCD programs is that they can help children to be more successful in school, the early years are a crucial phase of human development and NOT merely preparation for later years.
While a focus on primary education is undoubtedly important, evidence strongly suggests that eight is too late to start paying attention to children’s learning needs. By the time a child reaches school age, most key wiring, language abilities, physical capabilities and cognitive foundations have been set in place.
It is also important for ECCD to be rooted in education because it is the psycho-social aspects of children’s development, which have the most significance for long-term social change and sustained realization of children’s rights. The psycho-social piece of ECCD is inevitably dealing with the sort of people we want our children to be and the kind of society we work towards—central to all of our work in education as a whole. The great strengths of quality ECCD programs is their emphasis on developing children’s understanding of their world and supporting the confidence, communication skills and flexibility they need to interact effectively with that world—dealing with real life changes, better able to obtain their rights and to be active, contributing members of society.
ECCD as a field has valuable experience to share, including effective strategies for supporting young children in their development, supporting families, and of greatest interest to many primary level educators, helping to make schools more ready for learners and learners more ready for school. Furthermore, early childhood programmes can also benefit women and older siblings by freeing them from constant child care responsibility so they can learn and seek better employment and earnings.
ECCD: a fair start to all children
By providing a “fair start” to all children, it is possible to modify distressing socio-economic and gender-related inequities. The unhealthy conditions and stress associated with poverty are accompanied by inequalities in early development and learning. These inequalities help to maintain or magnify existing economic and social inequalities. In a vicious cycle, children from families with few resources often fall quickly and progressively behind their more advantaged peers in their mental development and their readiness for school and life, and that gap is then increasingly difficult to close.
In summary, it is critical that we pay proper attention to young children’s issues as well as those affecting older children. International trends (migration, nuclear families, girls and women’s heavy workloads, increasing school enrolments, HIV/AIDs, globalization and dependence on the cash economy and resulting threats to women’s decision-making control and insecurity, etc.) affect every aspect of young children’s lives.
ECCD as central to a child rights strategy ensures a proactive approach in reducing exploitation (rather than just being reactive) by building families’ and communities’ sense of engagement with their children’s rights from an early age thus increasing the supportiveness of the environments in which children are growing up and reducing the number of children who need protection or rehabilitation projects. At the same we are strengthening the abilities of children to have a say in their own futures.
It is essential that all who are involved in influencing the context in which children live, learn and grow--family members to international policy-makers--meet their obligations.
For more detailed information on investing in ECCD, See "Why ECCD?" and What is ECCD?" See also the section entitled, "Programmng Guide" for further details on the preparation, planning, implementation, financing, monitoring and evaluation of diverse ECCD programming strategies.
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