Sharing Web Resources Week 6

This week I decided to explore the maltreatment link on the zero to three website. I have not really looked at this area as it has not pertained to the topics we have talked about thus far. In this section of the site one can learn more about child abuse and neglect, impact of trauma, and safe babies’ court teams. Safe babies court teams is a project that began in developmental science. Their aim is to “1.    increase awareness among those who work with maltreated infants and toddlers about the negative impact of abuse and neglect on very young children; and,
2.    change local systems to improve outcomes and prevent future court involvement in the lives of very young children.” (Zero to Three, 2014).

When I researched the site about the issue of equity I was lead to a power point presentation titled “Implementing Strengths-Based Initiatives to Achieve Equity” (Mayoral, 2014). The power point showed a few different graphs. One showed childhood poverty in the US broken down by race and ethnicity and the other showed an early language gap which increases dramatically from ten months of age to thirty six months of age (Mayoral, 2014). The presentation discusses the inequity of children who are facing severe disadvantages when they begin school (Mayoral, 2014). The way this presentation talked about inequities really opened my eyes to the challenges that children are facing to succeed academically. I was always aware of the types of inequities that were out there, but the graphs really helped me to visualize the high numbers of children who are facing inequities and how it appears to be increasing. On the eighth and last slide of this presentation there is a list of seven strengths based policy and systematic changes Below are these strengths based policy and systematic changes.

1. Focus on strengths.

2. Empower and support communities.

3. Shift from family involvement to

culturally competent family engagement.

4. Reduce language barriers by providing materials in

native language.

5. Increase culturally and linguistically competent and

measures and services.

6. Increase supply of qualified, bilingual and bicultural

birth-to-three professionals.

7. Provide information and empower parents by helping

them understand child development, ways to promote

learning, and how to become their child’s advocate

(Mayoral, 2014).

The Zero to Three website offers some really great resources of articles to read in regards to inequities in the early childhood field. I recommend taking a look at some of these articles as they really put everything into perspective with research to back up the findings.

References

Mayoral, M. V. (2014). Implementing strengths-based initiative to achieve equity. Washington, D.C.: Zero to Three.

Zero to Three. (2014). The safe babies court teams project. Retrieved from Zero to Three: http://www.zerotothree.org/maltreatment/safe-babies-court-team/