Noah's Ark

16 Pages·2014·0.14 MB·English

by  Debbie King

Parliament of Victoria
Family and Community Development Committee
Inquiry into the Social Inclusion of Victorians with a Disability
SUBMISSION FROM NOAH’S ARK, VICTORIA

Introduction
Noah’s Ark Incorporated (Noah’s Ark) is a non-government organisation providing early
childhood intervention (ECI) and inclusion support (IS) services to children with disabilities
and other additional needs and their families and carers. We are the largest early childhood
intervention and inclusion support service in Victoria operating from 20 centres in Melbourne
and regional Victoria. Last year our programs reached 1,800 families and 2,600 Early
Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services. Noah’s Ark receives funding from the
State Government (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development) for the
delivery of ECI services, Kindergarten Inclusion Support1, Pre-School Field Officer2 and
Parent to Parent Programs3. Noah’s Ark is also funded by the Australian Government
(Department of Education) as an Inclusion Support Agency4 (ISA) as part of their Inclusion
Professional Support Program (IPSP5).
Noah’s Ark is making this submission to the Victorian Parliament’s Inquiry into the Social
Inclusion of Victorians with a Disability in order to ensure that the needs of young children
with disabilities and their families are adequately recognised and considered as part of the
Inquiry.

Early Childhood Intervention
In Victoria, children with disabilities and/or developmental delays aged from birth to school
age (under 6 years) are entitled to receive support through the Department of Education and
Early Childhood Development’s (DEECD’s) Early Childhood Intervention Service (ECIS).
ECIS provides support to children and families in their own homes and in other natural
environments, such as kindergarten or child care, to support their development and their
everyday experiences and activities. ECIS staff are skilled professionals with training in a
variety of disciplines including Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Psychology, Social
Work, Teaching and Physiotherapy. ECIS staff work in multidisciplinary teams and operate
as transdisciplinary key workers offering a consistent contact point for families and carers.
Access to ECIS is via a Central Intake process in each DEECD Region. Families are
allocated to the next or best available place according to their needs and location. ECIS
services are free of charge to the family. Children will remain within the ECIS program until
they commence formal schooling.

1 In the North East Region only
2 In the North East Region – Swan Hill only
3 In Gippsland only
4 Noah’s Ark is the Inclusion Support Agency in 9 of the 17 Dept. of Education Victorian Regions
5 The objective of the IPSP is to promote and maintain high quality, inclusive education and care, for all
children, including those with ongoing high support needs, in eligible ECEC settings. This is achieved by
increasing the knowledge and skills of educators, and the capacity of education and care services, through
providing professional development, advice and access to additional resources as well as inclusion support.

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Inclusion Support
Noah’s Ark offers inclusion support to Australian Government regulated ECEC services
including Long Day Care, (LDC), Occasional Care (OC), Family Day Care (FDC), Out of
School Hours Care (OSHC) and Vacation Care (VAC), with to Victorian Government
regulated ECEC services though the Kindergarten Inclusion Support (KIS) and the Pre-
School Field Officer (PSFO) programs.
Noah’s Ark’s ISA program provides practical advice and support to individual ECEC services
on an as needed basis in order to build their capacity to facilitate a child’s inclusion in the
service. With support from the ISA, Australian Government regulated ECEC services may
be able to access the Inclusion Support Subsidy (ISS) which can contribute to the cost of an
additional educator when they are including a child or children with high support needs.
With funding from the Victorian Government, Noah’s Ark provides the KIS program in the
North West Victoria Region. KIS aims to build the capacity of kindergartens to support the
access and participation of children with a disability and high support needs and/or complex
medical needs. KIS packages may allow kindergartens to have an additional kindergarten
assistant in their program to raise the staff: child ration and support the inclusion of a child or
children. Additional assistants are supplied and managed by nominated non-government
organisations such as Noah’s Ark.
The Pre-School Field Officer (PSFO) program is an early intervention outreach service that
is available to State-funded kindergartens and preschools for any child with developmental
concerns. The primary role of the PSFO is to provide advice to preschools to support the
access and participation of children with additional needs. Referrals for PSFO support can
come from staff or parents or others.
Issues for consideration of the Committee
A number of issues are considered by Noah’s Ark to be relevant to the Committee’s Inquiry.
In summary these are:
(cid:2) The importance of inclusion for young children and their families
(cid:2) The recognition that young children with disabilities and their families also experience
social exclusion and may require specific support to achieve their inclusion in settings
where other children and families participate and are active
(cid:2) The improved early childhood policy context
(cid:2) The importance of adopting universal design
(cid:2) The need to adopt broader evidence based practice
(cid:2) The impact of discrimination
(cid:2) The multiple dimensions of exclusion and inclusion
(cid:2) The conflicting purposes in Kindergarten Inclusion
(cid:2) The mismatch in policy and practice in state government programs
(cid:2) The need for changed policy and practice in kindergartens, pre-schools and schools
(cid:2) The impact of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
The focus of this submission is on inclusion in children’s services and we recognise the
importance of inclusion as a concept that includes participation in the broader community.
We believe that the principles and challenges we have outlined in this submission have
relevance to other settings in the community. As our expertise is in children’s services we
have chosen to emphasise this dimension of children’s’ inclusion.

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Importance of inclusion for young children and their families

For children with disabilities, as for all children, the early years are critical to their
development and wellbeing. Like all children, children with disabilities learn from adults with
whom they have strong, positive relationships, and from each other, through play and social
interaction. Like all children, children with disabilities need time to explore, play alongside
others and practise new skills until they achieve mastery. Children with disabilities
particularly benefit from the opportunity to develop skills in supportive environments and in
the company of typically developing children. If this happens, they are more likely to use
these skills in all aspects of their lives and to develop friendships and connections within
their community (Buysse and Holllingsworth 2009, Odom 2002).
Inclusive practice benefits all children (Odom, Schwartz and ECRII Investigators 2002).
Children with disabilities can increase their language and social skills through interaction
with typically developing children; while typically developing children can learn about
similarities and differences and to be more accepting of difference. Inclusive practice also
benefits educators who learn new skills which they are able to apply more generally in their
work. Families feel less isolated and more positive towards their child with a disability and
towards themselves as parents (Hardin, Wesley and Lohr 1998).
The evidence shows that despite the challenges, children with disabilities can and do form
meaningful friendships with typically developing children and these connections “not only
provide enjoyment, but help promote their growth and development” (Goldman and Buysse
2008, p2). In fact, there are also strong indications that, when they receive appropriate
support, children with disabilities make the same cognitive progress in mainstream services
as they do in specialised programs (McLoughlin and Stonehouse 2006) while achieving
greater progress in the areas of social competence and communication through their
interaction with typically developing peers. (Buysse and Holllingsworth 2009, Odom 2002).
Ensuring young children with disabilities are included in settings in which other children and
families participate (including both ECEC and informal community settings) is therefore
beneficial to their development and to the development and social skills of their typically
developing peers.

Young children and their families also experience exclusion

When families receive advice that their child has a disability or developmental delay they
experience a form of grief (Bruce, 2000). Gone is the child they wished for and expected
and all of their future expectations for that child and in its place is the child they have - a
child with a set of needs and issues that they may not understand or accept at this early
stage. For many families the temptation is to hide away, particularly if their child has
unusual or attention-grabbing looks or behaviour. Families may isolate themselves from
extended family, friends and the community. They may feel and be extremely isolated and
excluded from mainstream life.
Specific care is needed to make these families feel accepted and feel able to take their place
in their community. This care is different to the care needed to support the inclusion of
adults with disabilities and needs to embrace the whole family, not just the individual child.
The first place where children and families require acceptance is in the ECEC sector.
Children with disabilities need to be able to attend ECEC programs alongside other children.
Participation in ECEC services not only facilitates the learning and development of the child
but also facilitates the social inclusion of their parents (particularly the mother) who is able to
work and/or participate in community activities while their child is being cared for.
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Inclusion is not just ‘access’ or ‘being present’. Effective inclusion means that the child is
participating in the full ECEC program and that their learning and development is receiving
the same priority as other children. To be effective educators of children with disabilities,
ECEC staff need to have adequate teaching skills, the confidence to apply them to children
with non-typical development and access to pedagogies and curricula that anticipate and
accommodate the inclusion of children with disabilities.
In addition to ECEC, children with disabilities and their families may need specific supports
and active welcoming to participate in community locations and activities, including locations
usually frequented by children and families such as playgrounds, pools, libraries, cinemas
and shopping centres and in public activities such as community sport (e.g. AusKick, Little
League) and events such as family days, fireworks displays and community markets.
Without a clear welcome and proper planning for their participation, children with disabilities
and their families may be effectively excluded from such locations and activities, with all of
the consequences that this then entails.

The improved early childhood policy context

The policy context in the early childhood area has developed significantly in the last decade.
There has been clarification in the expected outcomes for children through the Victorian
Early Years Learning and Development Framework and the regulation of the standard of
children’s services, through the Australian Government’s National Quality Framework. These
policy developments place a greater expectation on all children’s services supporting the
care and learning of all young children. The development of common outcomes for all
children in particular has been significant in raising aspirations about the access and
participation of children with disabilities. These outcomes include that:
(cid:2) Children have a strong sense of identity.
(cid:2) Children are connected with and contribute to their world.
(cid:2) Children have a strong sense of wellbeing.
(cid:2) Children are confident and involved learners.
(cid:2) Children are effective communicators.
The creation of common outcomes has set the foundations for greater collaboration between
the early childhood and early childhood intervention fields, for example the Early Childhood
Australia and Early Childhood Intervention Australia Position statement on the inclusion of
children with a disability in early childhood education and care.
One of the challenges in these fields working together in the past has been their different
histories Early Childhood settings were not initially designed for children with a disability. The
policies of the routine institutionalisation of children with a disability meant they were
excluded from the community during the first half of the twentieth century, the period in
which community based services for children expanded significantly (Mellor, 1990). In the
1970s, when new services were set up for childhood with disabilities they remained
segregated services for children with a disability and their families. The early childhood
education and care and early childhood intervention professions and sectors have
developed independently. Current approaches to inclusion of children with disabilities in
children’s services remains deeply affected by this division of services for children with
disabilities and services for other children. This is regardless of four decades in the growth of
our knowledge about child development and learning, and that children with disabilities are
far more similar than different to, and learn significantly from, their peers.

One immediate issue of concern is the recent establishment of a review into the early
childhood referrals by the Australian Government through the Productivity Commission’s
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Inquiry into Child Care and Early Learning. The focus of that enquiry appears to be on cost.
Any reduction in progress towards high quality early childhood services will reduce the
opportunities for children with disabilities as high quality inclusion develops out of high
quality services. Qualified educators and better child:staff ratios make it more likely inclusion
will be successful.

The importance of adopting universal design

A consequence of children’s services being developed when children with disabilities were
institutionalised and excluded from the community is that children’s services were not
designed to accommodate children with disabilities. A concept that has been adopted from
architecture is universal design. The principles of universal design in building is that it is
more efficient to build a building to meet everyone’s needs than to have to retrofit it for
someone outside average expectations.
This approach has relevance in children’s services as well. While buildings for children’s
services have been modified to meet the physical needs of people with disabilities, the
programs run by services also need to become universal. If the programs are not adapted, a
child with a disability may access a building, but not necessarily participate in a program.
This is because the curriculum, the pedagogy or the social environment is not flexible
enough to cater for difference.
A focus on universal design is helpful in differentiating between post and future approaches
to inclusion. First efforts to include children with disabilities attempted to address the gap
between the children’s service and the capacity of a child with a disability by employing an
additional adult, an integration aide to look after the child when they could not fit into the
program. This approach creates a barrier to children with disabilities meaningfully
participated. Its limitation is that it focuses its a response on what the child cannot do, rather
than focusing on how the environment can be adapted to support the child’s developmental
needs.

The need to adopt broader evidence based practice

In developing services that are universal in design it is important to draw on the evidence
about what supports the best learning environment for all children.
This involves inter related strategies including:
(cid:2) Curriculum approaches
(cid:2) Professional inclusion support
(cid:2) Regular assessment and tiered learning
(cid:2) Parent engagement.
Curriculum
Curriculum has been proven to have an impact on the experience and learning outcomes of
children with disabilities and other additional needs in early childhood education programs.
Current evidence based curriculums include:
The Incredible Years Series Training Programs by Carolyn Webster Stratton which provides
an approach to improving behaviour.
The Opening the World of Learning (OWL) by Judy Schickedanz and David Dickinson in
collaboration with Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, which provides a literacy based
curriculum.
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Following children’s interests and scaffolding learning are also curriculum approaches that
have a scientific evidence base.
Professional Inclusion Support
Specialist professional support to teachers develops their capabilities and knowledge about
typical and atypical child development which can then be applied in broader contexts and for
the benefit of all of their students. Dinnebeil and McInerney’s Itinerant Early Childhood
Special Education Services (2011) and Buysse and Wesley’s Consultation in early childhood
settings (2005) provide comprehensive best practice frameworks for the delivery of
professional support to teachers. Both models rely on visiting inclusion support
professionals working closely with teachers developing their teaching and learning strategies
relevant to the child/ren in their group and supporting them to develop their skills, knowledge
and confidence more broadly. At present the Victorian early childhood system does not
have a consistent approach to the professional support to educators, which can lead to
educators feeling unsupported.
Regular Assessment and Tiered Learning
This approach has been developed in the US where it is termed ‘Response to Intervention’
(RTI). The approach uses regular assessment to identify which students need additional
attention in certain areas and then offers a tiered approach to teaching. RTI assumes that:
(cid:2) The education system can effectively teach all children
(cid:2) Early intervention is critical to preventing problems from getting out of control
(cid:2) The implementation of a multi-tiered service delivery model is necessary
(cid:2) A problem solving model should be used to make decisions between tiers
(cid:2) Research based interventions should be implemented to the extent possible
(cid:2) Progress monitoring must be implemented to inform instruction
There are a range of emerging tools for short and regular assessments. Grisham-Brown
and Pretti-Frontczak, Assessing Young Children using Blended Practices (2011) provides a
broad framework on assessment.
Parent Engagement
Parents are crucial in the achievement of learning outcomes by all children and particularly
children with disabilities. There is emerging work in effective ways to engage parents in
inclusion programs and some evidence to suggest that their engagement will result in
improved outcomes.
These varied approaches demonstrate that strategies that assist children with disabilities
also can assist a range of children.

The impact of discrimination on families and children

When children and families experience poor inclusion practice, such as being made to feel
unwelcome or like they are creating problems for others, they are more likely to hide away
and not seek to participate than they are to fight the discrimination they are experiencing.
These experiences in the early years can impact on the children and family’s expectations
and activities for many years to come. In our experience the combination of the vulnerability
of families who have and child with a disability and the weakness of and process delays of
antidiscrimination legislation effectively allow services to either opt in or out of allowing
children with a disability into their program. In one regional centre we work in the children
with disabilities attend less than 30% of Kindergarten. This is contributed to by professionals
and families recommending the friendly services and the other services finding reasons not
to become involved. Our understanding is that this is common across Victoria and is also
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prevalent in the School system. The ongoing building of segregated specialist schools in
Victoria also work against support for inclusion in the early years.

The multiple dimensions of exclusion and inclusion
Noah’s Ark Inc has undertaken a number of projects focused on inclusion. In its report
Inclusion in Children’s Services: Next Steps (2006) both barriers to and factors that
support inclusion were identified. While this report is somewhat dated, the issues it raises
remain relevant. There have been no major developments in this area over the past two
decades. The following sections are taken from the report. The summary of barriers as
identified from the literature and the experience of the Victorian field (pp 5 – 7) follow. It
commences with barriers from the literature.

Barriers related to access to services and funding for inclusion support
• lack of information about inclusion and available services and supports
• difficulties negotiating and securing sources of funding
• the need for a diagnosis to secure funding
• constraints placed on funding, inflexibility about its use.

Barriers related to beliefs and expectations of parents and professionals
• professionals and parents having different priorities in goals and desired behaviours
for children
• mainstream and specialist service providers having different philosophical and
theoretical perspectives and priorities
• attitudes of parents of typically developing children

Barriers related to program implementation
• underlying philosophy or culture of the service
• capacity for the program to put principles into practice
• aspects of service quality: group size, adult-child ratios, training, facilities, and
planning time
• lack of individualisation of the program
• lack of active support for relationships between children with and without additional
needs
• services that are not family centred in their practices
• policies and funding promoting additional staffing as the default position for support
for inclusion, along with the view that extra staff should work exclusively with the child
with additional needs
• use of a withdrawal model by specialists
• additional stresses experienced by families with a child with additional needs

Barriers related to training and management
• lack of planning and meeting time
• lack of availability of sufficient appropriate specialist support and advice
• insufficient training for mainstream staff and specialists about meeting the needs of
children with disabilities in inclusive settings.
• lack of familiarity by specialist staff with early childhood programs
• lack of skills in specialist staff for working in partnership with practitioners
• difficulties recruiting and retaining competent and confident staff
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• lack of perceived incentives for including children with additional needs.
• The barriers from a Victorian practitioner’s perspective follow. This was based on a
series of regional focus groups.

Barriers related to access to services and funding for inclusion support
• children coming to kindergarten without a diagnosis
• confusion about who initiates the process of applying for additional funding
• lack of knowledge of the child by the professional completing the form requesting
additional funding
• language barriers
• the process of applying for funds being based on a deficit model
• criteria for accessing additional funds
• the timing of advice about funding
• policies that do not allow services to use both Preschool Field Officers and early
childhood intervention specialists
• timelines for applying for funding
• structuring of funding for family day care
• limited number of hours for which assistants are funded
• low wages for additional workers
• lack of sufficient number of services, leading to long waiting lists
• increasing trend for services to make decisions driven by cost minimisation
• changed perceptions and expectations of children’s services.

Barriers related to beliefs and expectations of parents and professionals
Parents’ attitudes and understanding
• lack of clarity about what successful inclusion looks like
• use of different criteria for judging quality
• concerns about school readiness
• reluctance to ask for what their child needs
• lack of support or even hostility towards children with additional needs by parents of
typically developing children.

Practitioners’ understandings, beliefs and expectations
• belief that they have to ‘cure’ the child and get him or her ready for school
• unrealistic expectations about what can be achieved
• belief that they have to be experts in order to engage in inclusion
• an inflexible notion of readiness as an aim
• lack of confidence and low morale
• feeling that they are being watched, judged or criticised by specialists.
• fear of the new or unknown.

Roles and perspectives of early childhood intervention professionals and specialists
• lack of understanding of the purpose of inclusion
• tendency to focus on the child, not the child in the context of the group
• lack of opportunities to observe the child in the group.

Barriers related to program implementation
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• inadequate child-staff ratios
• inappropriate programming for children
• tendency to label children and have rigid expectations
• use of a deficit model or even a very traditional developmental model
• inappropriate use of the additional assistant.

Barriers related to staffing, training and management
• unrealistic expectations by management about what staff can do
• increasing use of very young staff who lack experience
• growing trend for centre co-ordinators to be very young
• high staff turnover
• increasing use of agency staff.
• Inadequate communication between mainstream and early childhood intervention
services
• professional isolation of kindergarten teachers
• dual focus of committees of management
• ways that inclusion is carried out
• unevenness among services in numbers of children with additional needs
• inadequate time to support inclusion
• insufficient numbers of relief staff
• lack of time for Preschool Field Officers to be ‘hands-on’
• lack of on-site support
• difficulties accessing training because of lack of time or compensation
• lack of support to apply training to particular programs.

The report identified that the connections between early childhood intervention specialists
and mainstream services are very limited. There is a major gap between what happens in
early childhood intervention services and mainstream services, and better connections are
desperately needed.
Identified deficits in the knowledge and skills base of practitioners include the following:
• lack of an agreed definition of inclusion
• lack of appreciation of what inclusion means in practice
• lack of understanding of what family-centred means in daily practice
• lack of skills and understandings related to partnerships with parents
• lack of sufficient confidence to talk effectively with parents
• too little attention to inclusion as a part of pre-service training
• too much on-the-job training with no opportunity to experience a range of settings
• lack of solid grounding in theory.

Strategies to improve inclusion were also identified in summary (pp7 – 9).
Strategies that promote inclusion – the literature
A number of authors detail what constitutes an inclusion program of high quality, using
dimensions of early childhood programs of high quality for all children as a foundation. The
literature emphasises the importance of preparing parents and practitioners for the inclusion
of children with disabilities.
Strategies to promote inclusion – views from the Victorian field
• improvements in overall operation of programs: smaller group size, better staff-child
ratios, provision (time release) for time to reflect and to plan, strong leadership and
attention to the design of buildings and spaces
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• increasing funding to support inclusion
• developing sound program policies to underpin daily practice
• having a strong philosophy that emphasises belonging, identity and each person’s
contribution and link that to daily practice
• having a general early curriculum framework for early childhood services
• greater emphasis to co-ordinating experiences of the child
• collaborating with parents, taking advantage of their wisdom
• broadening notions about relationships with parents beyond a problem focus
• providing training and support about partnerships with parents
• developing resources for parents to help them to understand inclusion
• developing a resource for parents of a child with additional needs about what to look
for in a service
• helping parents of children with additional needs with smooth transitions in their
child’s early years
• increasing the understanding of practitioners and families of typically developing
children about what it is like to have a child with additional needs.

Supporting staff in inclusive practices – the literature
The literature emphasises the following as critical to supporting staff in inclusive practices:
• good relationships between adults
• a clearly articulated philosophy that emphasises and values diversity in children
• policies and procedures which foster mutual collaboration and cooperation between
children’s services and specialist services
• highly collaborative planning and decision making between children’s services
personnel, specialist services and families
• positive, collaborative and cooperative relationships between professionals.

Working as a consultant
The role of specialists and advisors in relation to early childhood practitioners has been
highlighted as a particularly significant factor in successful inclusion. The role of consultant is
an appropriate and effective concept on which to base a relationship. It can be a powerful
tool for collaborative problem solving and change. The successful consultant must possess a
range of skills, including interpersonal, communication, problem solving, group facilitation,
and skills in working with organisations. To be effective as consultants, professionals need
skills in establishing effective collaborative partnerships with other professionals. Specialists,
advisors and practitioners need ongoing support and training in a range of areas to perform
their key roles.
Strategies for supporting staff – views from the field
Training
• In pre-service training, ensure a better balance of theory and practice, include more
attention to working with families and inclusion, and give students opportunities to
see inclusion.
• Integrate ongoing professional development and in-service training, include the
application of general information to the specific contexts and settings of each
service and include opportunities to observe and model good practice.
• Provide hands-on, on-site and collaborative support to practitioners so that they can
justify what they are doing and what is happening in their services in ways that are
convincing to parents.
• Provide on-site mentoring to help practitioners apply principles to their own practice.
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