A Practice Guide for Working with Families from Pre-Birth to Eight Years: Engaging Families in the Early Childhood Development Story

This guide was created because parents revealed, through extensive social research, that they often received inconsistent and confusing parenting information from different professionals and practitioners across different disciplines, leading to misunderstandings and a lack of confidence about how best to support their children's development. In response, the Standing Council on School Education and Early Childhood (SCSEEC) looked to the neuroscience evidence to determine what key information and practices will help professionals and practitioners to support parents and families to achieve the best outcomes for children. This guide was designed for professionals and practitioners to work from the same starting point, use a common language, and provide consistent messages about the early years regardless of what service, support, or information families access. This guide includes: (1) Shared Values that underpin work with families; (2) Four Key Principles of early childhood development based on the neuroscience evidence; (3) Practice Guides for working with families based around the Four Key Principles; (4) Self-Reflection Questions for professionals and practitioners to integrate the principles and practices into their work with families; (5) A Planning and Evaluation Framework for services to plan and assess their parenting initiatives; and (6) Resources. This guide includes information on four specific groups--fathers, grandparents, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) families. This guide also acknowledges the specific needs of families raising children with developmental delays and disabilities. [This guide was managed by the Department for Education and Child Development, South Australia.]