Dear colleague,
On 25th April we will be launching our submission on the National Early Years Strategy. You are warmly invited to attend. There are details below.
The National Early Years Strategy must be ambitious and must set out a plan for how we can transform our early care and education policies over the years ahead - and so deliver better outcomes for children, for society and for the economy.
A highlight of our work in the last month was the seminar on the Scandinavian childcare model, which we organised jointly with Barnardos, OPEN and the National Women's Council of Ireland. Our enewsletter includes a summary of the seminar's presentations and coverage.
This enewsletter also includes the latest news on our campaign to strengthen parental leave and work-life balance policies - which aims to make it easier for parents to balance their work and caring responsibilities, and to enable children to remain at home for at least their first year.
This month we also have articles on the Children's Rights Alliance's Report Card 2013, the State of the Nation's Children report, an initiative to support diversity and equality in early care and education services, and the development of a European Quality Framework on early care and education.
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Date for your diary: 25 April - submission launch
 Start Strong will be launching our submission on the National Early Years Strategy on Thursday 25th April, from 11 to 12 am in Buswell's Hotel, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2. Please join us.
The National Early Years Strategy is a hugely important opportunity for the future of early care and education in Ireland. Our submission to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs draws on research evidence, national and international standards, consultation with children, and the consultation we carried out with our supporters last autumn. If you are interested in attending the launch, please email us. |
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Scandinavian Childcare: Making it Happen
 On 4th March, Start Strong, Barnardos, the National Women's Council of Ireland and OPEN jointly held a seminar on the Scandinavian model of childcare. The seminar explored the model's key features, and made a strong call for greater public investment in the Irish system, setting out short and medium-term steps to move us in the direction of the Scandinavian model. Read more |
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Parental leave and work-life balance
 On 8th March - the deadline set by the European Council of Ministers - the Irish Government issued a statutory instrument to amend parents' entitlements to leave and flexible work arrangements, to meet the requirements of the 2010 EU Directive.
It's good that we have complied with EU legislation, but doing it in this way meant that we did the bare minimum. It's essential that the Government keeps up the momentum and moves now to publish the Family Leave Bill in the current Dáil session, as it had promised to do. Read more
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Children's Rights Alliance - Report Card 2013
 The Children's Rights Alliance recently published its Report Card 2013. Based on the idea of a school report card, this annual report assesses the Government's performance over the last year relative to the Government's commitments on children.
Grades for specific policy areas vary widely - with a grade of A for the Children's Rights Referendum, but a fail grade of F for child poverty. On early care and education, the Report Card gives the Government a B-, slightly lower than last year's B grade. Read more
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The State of the Nation's Children
 The Government has just published the 2012 edition of the annual State of the Nation's Children report. The report draws together the latest statistics across a range of indicators of children's health, education, behaviour, relationships, well-being - and of the supports available to them.
It includes one indicator for the quality of early care and education: the percentage of services delivering the Free Pre-School Year that receive the higher capitation grant. Read more |
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Diversity and equality in the early years
 The evaluation has just been published of the Pre-School Education Initiative for Children from Minority Groups. The initiative involved training and mentoring for early childhood educators in diversity and equality practice, using the Anti-Bias Education approach.
The evaluation is very positive, demonstrating the effectiveness of the anti-bias approach in achieving positive change. However, it will be a challenge maintaining the work and providing the level of mentoring required. Read more
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Towards a European Quality Framework
 Last November, Eurochild organised a policy roundtable in the Netherlands on the need for a European Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care. The report of the event has just been published. Building on the recent Communication from the European Commission on early care and education, the policy roundtable called for the development of a robust and inclusive Europe-wide framework on the quality of early care and education services, to allow the benchmarking of quality standards across European countries. Read more |
Start StrongAdvancing children's early care and education in Ireland
  www.startstrong.ie+353-1-662-4018
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| Supporters
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 | The Economics of Children's Early Years
Start Strong's report presents the compelling economic case for Government investment in early care and education. Read it now
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 | If I Had a Magic Wand
Our recent publication presents children's own views on early care and education services. Read it online |
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