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| Helping kids have healthy relationships for life
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Early Childhood Australia (ECA) has launched Start Early, a professional learning package designed to help early childhood education and care providers support young children to develop healthy relationship patterns for life.
With financial backing from the NSW Government the long-term strategy aims to prevent family and domestic violence by helping educators explore and understand how everyday behaviours and attitudes shape a child's lifelong relationships.
According to ECA, Start Early was developed to help early childhood educators and teachers explore how everyday behaviours and attitudes shape young children's relationships for life. The intervention has been designed for use when children are young, when their attitudes, skills and behaviours are forming, to prevent domestic and family violence in the long term.
The program was developed with the support of a panel of early childhood research and practice experts including:
- Associate Professor Richard Fletcher, Faculty of Health and Medicine's Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle, convenor of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) national network of fatherhood researchers whose work covers men's behaviour and father-infant/child attachment.
- Carmel Richardson, Director of university-based Wiradjuri Preschool Child Care Centre, who works with early childhood undergraduate students and has authored several publications.
- Pam Linke, a consultant on early childhood and parenting, former president of the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health and author of numerous publications for parents and early childhood professionals.
The ECA says the program is firmly grounded in Australia's National Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), the core resource that guides early childhood educators in their practice.
To encourage educators to take a look the first three modules of the program are available free until September 2016. These modules are:
- Respectful relations: which supports children to learn about and develop skills for respectful relationships
- Gender, respect and identity: which was developed to increase educator awareness of young children's emerging understanding of gender and identity and the role each plays in shaping respectful relationships for life and
- Father inclusive practice: this module develops understanding of the benefits of fathers' involvement for young children's long-term wellbeing, and the practices that engage and include fathers in their child's early education and care.
For more information on Start Early and to sign up for the free modules click here.
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