Abstract

Policy and Practice Issues for the Successful Inclusion
of Children with Disabilities in Early Childhood Programs

Sharon Hope Irwin, Donna S. Lero and Kathy Brophy

This presentation provides highlights of three studies of Canadian child care programs that focus on their experiences with including children with special needs. Our research confirms the importance of considering multiple factors that are critical for successful inclusion.

Factors within centres that are critical for successful inclusion include: the director’s inclusion leadership – modeling commitment, ensuring staff are supported within the centre, acting as an advocate for inclusion, and marshalling resources to support inclusion efforts; staff’s attitudes and commitment toward inclusion; overall program quality; and skilled support staff or in-house resource teachers to enhance ratios. The support and involvement of resource consultants and a range of specialists is also important to help staff develop skills that allow them to promote the development of children with a wide range of special needs, modify existing curricula, and encourage positive peer interactions among children.

The policy context is critical. Policy-related funding and supports strongly affect both overall program quality and centres’ capacities to include children with special needs successfully. Policies operate both directly (affecting eligibility criteria for subsidies and the nature of funding and staff support available to centres to support inclusion) and indirectly (affecting overall centre quality, and teachers’ level of training and morale).

Policies and practices are needed to maintain and extend centres’ capacities to successfully include all children on a continuing basis. Specific policy challenges include ensuring overall program quality and quality inclusion within inclusive early childhood programs, while expanding the number of settings that can do so.

Bio

The paper on which this presentation is based was written by D.S. Lero, S.H. Irwin and K. Brophy. It will be presented by Sharon Hope Irwin.

Sharon Hope Irwin, Ed.D. is the founder and Director of SpeciaLink, a non-profit organization dedicated to education and advocacy that supports inclusion of children with special needs in community programs. Sharon has been involved in providing leadership to early childhood programs and in research and policy development in this area for over a decade.

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