Our project, called "Triangle", is part of a European context considering that basic trainings organized in many countries do not meet the new requirements of the childcare profession, whether in terms of level or in terms of direction. A particular reference is made to the lack of coherence between taught educational/care practices, the field practices exected by the child-caring structures and those advocated by the reference organizations. The aim of the project is to generate, through participation in high-level transnational mobility or "staff joint training events", the joint transformation of professionals from: • reference, support and/or advisory bodies. • educational / training institutions in the field of childcare • services, environments and childcaring operators. The transformation targets a better acknowledgment of the challenges to be met for upper-quality care within the respective areas of competences for the accompaniment, the training/teaching and daily caring of children and families as defined in the "European Code of Quality of Childcare". At each mobility, we will gather 40 volunteering professionals from Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland who will undertake the following activities together: 1) visit services, environments, and childcaring operators, 2) exchange on a. project's concerns and discuss what transcends national contexts and professional identities, i.e. what makes sense for the relevant stakeholders, b. overcoming the lack of coherence between the practices taught, practices implemented in the field and expected practices (in each national and transnational context) and c. how can each one in its own role, contribute to strengthen the required coherence for a quality childcaring; and 3) collect data/document the process of joint transformation at work. The challenge of our project is the reinforcement of the adequacy between the educational and care practices implemented by the childcaring professionals and the needs of the children and families, acknowledged in their diversity and their complexity. Indeed, the professions related to childcare call for multiple knowledge and skills, induced by the orientations given in terms of childcaring in Europe and influenced by societal issues that must be addressed (inclusion, diversity of family models, poverty, ...). The inclusion of all families, teamwork, registration into the network, childcare trainees, ... complexify these professions which must lay on solid formative ground. The challenge of initial training is first to make the daily care of each child the core preoccupation. Our strategy relies on the well-known benefits of the study tours to generate a joint transformation of mobility participants or "joint training staff events (ECFP)" as each stakeholder will have the double experience of welcoming and being welcomed. We also base our strategy on the composition of the delegations taking part in the ECFPs as volunteering professionals will travel together from and to each partner country. The delegations gathered by a Mobility Coordination Body, or ECFP, and supervised by an experienced coach will, therefore, be composed of representatives of: • A reference/support/advisory body • Educational/training institutions • Services/environments/care operators They will be invited to experience, at an international level, exchanges with their foreign counterparts along with other types of foreign professionals also involved in the childcare professional sector, focusing on upstream negotiated work objectives aiming to co-construct a common identity of "child-care professionals" including all ECFP participants, or, in other words, to co-build a shared vision of the expected skills by childcare professionals. Our hypothesis is that, driven by the force of the group and the decentralisation, they will become ambassadors in their local national context of the results obtained at the international level and will have the necessary know-how for the creation / maintenance of PLC / CAP, in the shape of Territorial Platforms which will meet on a regular basis in each concerned area, thus constituting rooms for the transfer / dissemination of the lessons learned during ECFPs. These platforms shall become the place for the follow-up of the local level construction, of the above-described coherence. The process of joint transformation will thus be able to continue or even spread in a contamination effect towards a rarely/ not at all mobile public.
The challenge of the Triangle project was nothing more nor less than to strengthen the alignment between the educational practices implemented by the care professionals and the needs of children and families, recognized in their diversity and complexity. Our choice to contribute? Traveling together, in a "triangle", to meet other "triangles", to be welcomed and to open in return the doors of his institution. The project has thus enabled the discovery of 4 child care systems: the French system, the ‘Tuscan approach’, those of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation of Belgium and the canton of Vaud, from the point of view of governance, training and care for children and families. The partners mobilized their network and offered travelers field visits, study days, workshops, presentations, exhibitions, formal and informal meeting times, ... It is by confronting other professional realities, in the context of a prepared and secure process of decentralization, that the participants become personally and professionally enriched, refine their professional skills to the benefit of a quality welcome for all and transform jointly.
In 2019, 6 partners from 4 countries co-submitted a project called "Triangle" as part of the Erasmus+ Program Key Action 2. These 6 partners are the ASBL Promemploi d'Arlon and the University of Liège (Belgium), the Regional Training Center for Childhood Professionals of Lille, later joined as an associate partner by the Sorbonne University Paris Nord (France), the University of Florence (Italy), Partners Childhood & Pedagogy of Lausanne and the Haute Ecole de Travail Social et de la Sante Lausanne (Switzerland). Concerns about the childcare sector are shared by all, such as the lack of consistency between educational practices taught, expected practices on the field and those advocated by the reference agencies or resulting from governance choices. The Triangle project proposed a scheme whose objective was to generate, through transnational mobility, the joint transformation of professionals from 1) reference organizations (governance), 2) educational/training institutions and 3) childcare structures, a transformation geared towards better taking into account each of the issues to be met for a quality childcare.