Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 5 March 2020
1086. Deputy Bríd Smith asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of early years practitioners that participated in the Better Start CDP initiative in 2019; the number of practitioners that paid for their attendance; the rate of pay they received; and the amount spent on the initiative. [3088/20]
View answerResearch evidence indicates that an important driver of high quality in early learning and care provision is continuing professional development (CPD) for practitioners. To overcome identified challenges in accessing CPD courses, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs are currently piloting the introduction of a limited number of approved CPD courses through the Better Start Quality Development Service, delivered free to practitioners along with a payment paid to services to support practitioners' participation in the training.
The payment made to services for participation may be used by the service provider either to pay staff directly, to compensate them for time spent outside working hours in attending training, or to pay for relief staff to provide cover when practitioners taking part in training are given time-off in lieu or take part in training during working hours.
The three CPD courses that are included in this pilot are:
- Hanen, which teaches participants practical strategies for encouraging children’s development of language skills in the context of everyday activities. It is an 18 hours course delivered over 3 days.
- Lámh, which is a manual sign system used by children and adults with intellectual disability and communication needs in Ireland. This course is 6 hours long.
- Aistear and Play, which forms part of the National Síolta Aistear Initiative and aims to support practitioners’ understanding and use of the Aistear curriculum framework and the Aistear Síolta Practice Guide, to improve the quality of early childhood curriculum implementation for children from birth to six years. This course is 12.5 hours long.
The number of practitioners who completed the training courses in 2019 is set out in the table. As all the training programmes in the payment pilot were available free of charge to participants, none of the practitioners paid for their attendance.
Total Number of Payments issued in 2019 – 1534
|
Hanen |
593 |
|
Lámh |
334 |
|
Aistear and Play |
615 |
|
Total |
1542 |
The total spent on the initiatives including the full costs of the National Síolta Aistear Initiative (which include both delivery of training by Better Start, and training coordinated by Better Start and delivered by other organisations, including City/County Childcare Committees, as well as support costs), the cost of delivering the Hanen and Lámh training, and the CPD payment pilot, was €702,300 in 2019.
An evaluation of the payment pilot is under way, both to inform decisions on further roll-out and to inform the Workforce Development Plan currently being developed.
