Over the past two years, ECSC’s Integrated Diversity Early-education Access (IDEA) Pathway bilingual playgroups have supported hundreds of children and families from CALD backgrounds to successfully engage with preschool. Many of these families came from new and emerging communities and faced a range of barriers to accessing preschool. These included language barriers, a lack of information about the early childhood education system in Australia, and fears and misconceptions about the preschool environment. Funded under the NSW Government’s Start Strong Pathways initiative, ECSC’s IDEA Pathways playgroups have achieved outstanding results in connecting with families, reducing isolation and addressing these access barriers. But it hasn’t come from nowhere.
The IDEA Pathway playgroups draw on ECSC’s decades of experience in providing high quality Bicultural Support to children from CALD backgrounds and their families. The program reflects key aspects of our Bicultural Support model, including:
- Highly trained Bicultural Support Workers, who are recruited for their language and cultural skills, and who hold (as a minimum) a Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care and who participate in ongoing training and support with ECSC.
- A strengths-based approach to language and culture, which affirms children’s home languages and promotes the benefits of cultural diversity within early childhood settings.
- Actively affirming home languages and cultures through songs, dances, rhymes, stories, dolls and other resources.
- Facilitating access for families to information about early childhood education, child development, allied health services and government support. This also includes addressing fears and misconceptions in culturally sensitive and non-threatening ways.
- Supporting Early Childhood Education and Care services to meet the needs of children from CALD backgrounds and their families.
Over a six-week period, each bilingual playgroup built a safe and familiar environment where children participated in a culturally rich, semi-structured play time. Children quickly became comfortable with the environment and looked forward to attending each week. Parents had the opportunity to express their thoughts, experiences and questions about early childhood education. Our workers then provided active support to families to apply, access and settle in, to early education services in their local area. While the gains have been significant, there is still much more work to do in supporting the thousands of CALD families with young children across NSW to successfully engage with early childhood education and care.
ECSC’s Bicultural Support team is ready to work alongside Early Childhood Education & Care (ECEC) providers to welcome and include children from CALD backgrounds and their families. The service includes working 1:1 with CALD children to help them settle in to the ECEC setting, as well as facilitating culturally appropriate activities such as music, storytelling, art and cooking, with all children in the centre to promote a welcoming and inclusive environment. While the Start Strong program has received a welcome extension for the next 12 months, funding is available on an ongoing basis to engage our Bicultural Support Workers through the Commonwealth Government’s Inclusion Support Programme. Contact us to find out more on (02) 9569 1288 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
Together, we can address the barriers and give children from CALD backgrounds the best chance to ‘start strong’ on a lifetime of learning.