Be Inclusive: towards inclusion of children with special needs and their parents in ECEC

<< Background >>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.<< Objectives >>“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.<< Implementation >>Each local consortium engaged in a three-year action research, with two pilots ECEC centres in each country. (1) Development phase: a literature review on inclusion in ECEC and partnership with parents (PR1), presented during an initial international training (C1); a baseline study for each ECEC; individualised learning questions and action plans, refined through an international jobshadowing trajectory (C2-7). (2) Implementation phase: the partners tried out innovative, in an iterative process of testing, documenting, evaluating, adjusting and new testing, with regular intervision sessions. Ex.: an ECEC centre in Belgium reviewed their familiarisation guide for the first conversation with parents. In Iceland, one ECEC centre transformed the role of parents during meetings with ECEC professionals and specialists. (3) Conclusion phase: an in-depth analysis of each case study, from all gathered documentation and final interviews with ECEC staff, shared in three country reports (PR2-3-4) and dissemination events (E1-4). For example, in Portugal, the partners organised four municipal forums with all local organisations. In parallel, all partners integrated their learning experiences into the tool “Connecting with parents” (PR5). << Results >>The main results are: (a) All partners reported a clarified understanding of the complex topics of inclusion and partnership with parents, enriched by transnational exchanges; (b) ECEC professionals directly involved enhanced their reflective, methodological, and professional competences. Ex.: a centre in Belgium has already begun applying the same iterative process to review, together with staff and parents, their evaluation procedure; (c) The project facilitated the implementation of innovative practices, with an impact on children and parents. Ex.: in Iceland, they began using videos of children during meetings with parents. It contributes to a more positive image of children, which affected positively the exchanges with the parents; (d) Tangible outputs were produced, to support dissemination: presentations of the literature review, a catalogue of inspiration resources, narratives report on the case studies, the reflection tool “Connecting with parents”; (e) The engagement of local, national and international stakeholders increased around the topic inclusion in ECEC and partnership with parents. Ex.: in Portugal, an ECEC professional was invited by the health centre to explain her work with a child and her parents.