The availability and the quality of early education and care (ECEC) in the European Union is a growing concern due to major social changes, such as the massive access of women to education and to the labour market, as well as to the increased understanding about the role played by early years in children’s development. In this context, even if childminders have a key role in society, childminding offer in Europe is still highly fragmented, and in particular, domiciliary childminding, which is often not or not enough regulated, neither in terms of labour conditions nor professionalisation despite its high demand. This situation is even more complex in the case of children with ASD, especially considering the impact of austerity measures on welfare systems implemented in the last years. More concretely, despite the differences among EU countries, training pathways for domiciliary childminders have at present a common feature: specific learning for children with special needs is not addressed in separate and specifically developed modules, but integrated in general modules of care. This approach seems insufficient to fulfil the need of skilled caretakers of families dealing with children with special needs. In this sense, the ChildIN project aims at providing specific blended training for childminders for children with special needs, by focussing on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The reason for this choice is related directly with the need expressed by the communities to which the partners of the consortium belong, and to a general need of Europe related to the increased diagnosis of ASD in children. This will impact directly on the addressed target group, childminders, and on the final beneficiaries of the action, families dealing with ASD, contributing therefore to increase wellbeing of the overall community – through inclusive practices, quality of training and care, improved professionalisation and employment conditions. The 6 partners of the consortium, from 4 countries of Europe, representing VET and certification providers, national and European associations representing families and people with ASD, and public bodies providing welfare and support to families and communities will work for 24 months to provide: • A competence framework for childminders working with children with ASD, to be validated by key stakeholders and experts; • The learning architecture related to the competence framework, completed with learning outcomes and assessment tools to achieve competences described in the framework; • A database of resources for dealing with children with ASD; • A tested and validated set of blended training materials implementing the learning architecture; - Guidelines on how to use tools and materials provided by the project, in order to support usage of results by other VET players in Europe; • A policy brief, that on the basis of the experience of the project in the field, will provide useful insights for policy planning, contributing then to the improvement of the learning offer for childminders, and to the improvement of quality care to care recipients. All the outputs will be delivered with open licenses for free full use and re-use by organisations across Europe. The organisation of national dissemination events and a final conference in Brussels will help to ensure its dissemination and sustainability.
The availability and the quality of early education and care (ECEC) in the European Union is a growing concern due to an increased understanding about the role played by early years in children’s development, and to the need to support parents work-life balance. However, childminding offer in Europe is still highly fragmented, and especially domiciliary childminding, which is often not or not enough regulated, neither in terms of labour conditions nor professionalisation despite its high demand. Indeed, there is a wide range of professional profiles covered by childminding, as the ESCO profile 5311 « Childcare worker » confirms it: babysitter, crèche and kindergarten professionals, family day care worker, nanny, out of school hours care worker, etc.). In addition, the training offer for those profiles is highly heterogeneous, especially as regards children with special needs, not addressed in separate and specifically developed modules, but integrated in general modules of care. This is the case for autism. Within this context, ChildIN aims to improve the well-being of autistic children and their families, as well as the professionalisation of childminders. This main goal required a complementary consortium, composed by 6 partners from 4 member states: • IPERIA, the French platform for the professionalisation of home employment, lead partner, • The Conseil départemental de la Nièvre, a regional public authority, France, • Cooperativa COMENIUS (VET provider), Portugal, • APPDA (Association for Developmental Disorders and Autism), Portugal, • TECHPAL (VET provider), Poland, • Autism Europe (international non-profit organisation representing autistic people), Belgium. In order to reach this double goal, 2 main objectives were defined: 1. The development of a specific training programme in “blended format” (including both face-to-face and distance learning) for childminders taking care of children with autism, 2. The elaboration of a policy brief to promote the professionalisation of childminding for autistic children. To do so, a competence framework and a learning architecture (intellectual output 1) for childminders taking care of children with autism was developed, with a 3 EQF level and a total length of 35 hours. The research carried out for this purpose made it possible to create a data base on autism (intellectual output 2), gathering more than 200 resources in 4 languages (English, French, Portuguese and Polish). On this double basis, a training programme and specific training materials were developed also in 4 languages (intellectual output 3): a training kit with learning contents for trainers and learning materials for trainees, including practical exercises, case studies, quiz and satisfaction questionnaires. Given the Covid-19 crisis, the training was practically delivered 100% on distance learning, as well as almost of the events planned for the launching and closure of the training. Despite these difficulties, a total of 53 childminders completed the training programme, from which 16 in France, 21 in Portugal and 16 in Poland (65% of the enrolled participants), with high satisfaction rate of 76%. In order to facilitate the replication and to ensure the sustainability of the training, practical guidelines (intellectual output 4) were developed, including concrete recommendations and suggestions. Lastly, a policy brief (intellectual output 5) for policy and decision makers was elaborated and presented during the final conference of the project, initially planned in Brussels, but organised online in April 2021 due to the pandemics. More than 150 participants attended it, among which different stakeholders, experts on autism and childminding, as well as representatives of the European Commission and members of the European Parliament.