“It’s easy to say that we see parents as experts. But as the project progressed, we increasingly realised how little we truly understood about what that actually means—and how much we still have to learn about adapting our practices and actions to genuinely put it into practice.” “It was more than just a childcare arrangement; it was a support system that allowed the twins to flourish – especially S, who has a disability – while giving the mother the space to regain her own strength.” Those quotes, from Be-in partners, refer to the core of the Be-In project and its objectives: (1) to gain a deeper understanding of the policy, research, and practice with regard to inclusion of children with special needs and partnership with parents in inclusive ECEC settings; (2) To strengthen the competences of ECEC professionals and organisations in developing, implementing, and evaluating new practices; (3) To facilitate transnational learning for ECEC professionals, via international training, jobshadowing trajectories and intervision sessions; (4) To equip trainers, ECEC coordinators, and local authorities responsible for ECEC with state-of-the-art knowledge, inspirational examples of good practices, and methods to support the ECEC sector.
The importance and the benefits of engaging with and reaching out to parents concerning their child’s education and care have been acknowledged by ECEC experts (EC, 2021). This collaboration is even more essential for parents of a child with special needs, to allow inclusive practices to be implemented. However, professionals still encounter difficulties in transforming this vision into actions. This requires professionals who consider parents as co-educators within a strength-based perspective, but also that organisations create conditions in order for professionals to be able to listen and dialogue with parents on a daily and reciprocal basis (EASNIE, 2017, 2022). In the three partners countries, Portugal, Belgium and Iceland, there was a perceived urgent need to strengthen parental voices and foster stronger partnerships between ECEC professionals and parents within inclusive ECEC environment. During this three-year project, th Be-In partners wanted to explore concretely how to support the competences of ECEC professionals in building such a partnership with parents, towards shared care, to ensure children’s well-being and support inclusive environment.