Family and community engagement
Core Function 4 focuses on ensuring that families and communities are active participants and partners in supporting children’s learning and development across early learning settings, at home, and in their communities.
Core Function 4
Engaging parents and communities is an essential component in the implementation of early learning programmes. Programmes need to account for parental and caregiver engagement in a way that acknowledges the realities of parenting while offering nudges, or supportive and frequent messages, to engage in their children’s learning. Embedding behavioral science techniques, which means looking deeply at what people do and why they do it, when it comes to early childhood policies and services may make them more effective as opposed to just educating parents.
A strong relationship between families and pre-primary programmes creates a better transition between a child’s learning at home and experiences in pre-primary and even primary school. Because communities are children’s immediate contact with the outside world, community engagement is increasingly highlighted as an important aspect to consider when developing or strengthening pre-primary education. Programme-level transition planning strategies can engage families and communities in helping children make a smoother transition to the primary schooling years.
Often, family and community issues fall under the scope of multiple ministries, such as the ministries of social welfare and health, rather than the ministries of education. It is therefore ever more important for there to be strong intersectoral coordination between ministries of education and those in charge of family and community issues in order to ensure these services are synchronized.
Cross-cutting considerations
Family- and community-based learning opportunities need to be created to ensure that young children’s right to develop is not compromised. Additionally, providing ongoing mental health support to parents of young children to address their own social and emotional needs is important as this will in turn enable them to better care for their children. Supporting parents, particularly in times of crisis, can help them engage in more responsive caregiving practices and allow them to better support their own children, protecting them from the worst effects of adversity.
The availability of data is key to informing caregiver and communities of the importance of early childhood education, and especially the importance of play-based learning, particularly in situations of crisis and conflict. Further, back-to-preschool and go-to-preschool campaigns need to be organized to further encourage early learning in disaster- or conflict-affected communities
Particular measures should be taken to promote father/male caregiver engagement in children’s learning, given that gender roles and norms typically dictate against this and assume that support for young children’s learning is the role of women. This recognizes that men’s engagement in, and support for, children’s learning has benefits for children, women, families, and men themselves, including more openness to questioning traditional gender roles. If men’s engagement and dressing barriers to their involvement is not systematically proposed, there is a risk of reinforcing inequitable gender norms and stereotypes around who is responsible for caregiving and child development/learning.
It is also important to link gender-transformative parenting programs, such as those that promote gender-equal relationships, shared decision-making, improved couple communication, and nonviolence and changes to gender norms, roles, and stereotypes, to ECE interventions. Providing men and women with safe spaces to reflect on and actively question what it means to be man or be a women in society, and to challenge inequitable gender norms and power imbalances can contribute to improved parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices. This can help ensure that all girls and boys receive the quality care, supports, and services they need to survive, grow up healthy and well-nourished, and develop to their full potential, free from gendered norms and attitudes that are discriminatory and limiting.
Field note: El Salvador: Building resilience and mitigating the impact of toxic stress in young children: A model for transforming parenting and male caregiving in El Salvador. This field note discusses program initiatives led by Save the Children that helped to mitigate the impact of violence on young children in three departments in El Salvador, employing a model that included building resilience, promoting positive parenting, and providing transformative male caregiving in children’s early years.
Information, advice and support should be shared with parents and communities to promote the inclusion of children with disabilities in school and the wider community. Engaging parents and caregivers can be a critical strategy to promote inclusion of marginalized communities. Additionally, people with disabilities, their families and disabled people’s organizations should be involved in partnership with development actors to further the inclusive education agenda in early childhood education.
Digital learning and educational tech
Educational technology and digital learning approaches can also be leveraged to improve the home learning environment through support to parents and caregivers, particularly if children do not have access to pre-primary education. For instance, during the pandemic, parents and caregivers often were first-line responders for children’s care and learning, in addition to the family’s general well-being.
However, very often parents and caregivers are not trained teachers and may not be aware of best practices when it comes to engaging with their children via educational technology or digital learning. Some important considerations, therefore, include that parents may not have the time or knowledge to appropriately evaluate the technology or content thereof their child may have access to. Caregivers are central to achieving impact when it comes to remote learning, so interventions should either target their needs directly or support caregivers to mediate their children’s access to and learning through technology (Korin, 2021). McCoy and her colleagues echo this sentiment, stating that digital learning programs need to be complimented by services that support parents and caregivers to provide warm, stimulating care for children while also ensuring their own (adult) mental health and financial security and their own digital literacy and skills. It is also important to monitor how caregivers are using and being supported to use these technologies and the effects it may have on children’s outcomes.
Example: Lao PDR - Providing early learning opportunities for young children. This case study highlights how the Government of Lao PDR supported parents during the closure of pre-primary education facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic in providing a mix of digital and non-digital early learning options.
Example: India - Lessons from the pandemic. This report highlights the work conducted by Pratham during the pandemic and their use of SMS messages and WhatsApp to engage families, and through them reach their children. How useful content was designed for the family and the child and how social structures were leveraged to engage families is discussed, as well as how they used remote means to stay in touch with children and their families.