Conference on quality home childcare

CHILDMINDING IN the home is by far the most common form of child day care worldwide and the family home has the capacity to provide the highest quality childcare, a conference in Cork will hear this week.

The 25th International Family Day Care Organisation Conference (IFDCO) 2009, which is being hosted by Childminding Ireland, opens tomorrow at University College Cork. The theme of the conference is celebrating quality family childcare.

Almost 120,000 children are minded by 37,000 childminders in Ireland and president of Childminding Ireland, Patricia Hayes Murray, who has also been IFDCO president since 2006, said that the family home has the capacity to provide the highest quality childcare when the childminder (or family childcare provider) has “the diverse qualities and skills required and is supported with training and networking opportunities”.

She told The Irish Times: "Experts and delegates are coming from all over the world – from as far away as Japan, Australia and New Zealand – to attend this focused conference and give us guidance for current best practice and quality in childminding in the family home.

“The conference will highlight the fact that worldwide, most children are being cared for in family settings, whether in their own home or by a woman who lives nearby.”

Hayes Murray wants to highlight the great support mechanisms that the Government has introduced since the late 1990s to support and sustain childminding, including tax breaks for minders.

Helen Lynch, lecturer in Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the School of Clinical Therapies, will discuss a study on Everyday learning in everyday environments for Children under three. "Children learn through play, through doing and being in their environments," the report says.

Lynch says, for example, that many babies’ experiences of free movement on the floor has been restricted, often due to safety concerns related to sudden infant death syndrome. Parents choose not to put them on their tummies on the floor resulting in delays in the developmental milestone of rolling over which precedes crawling.

In September, Lynch starts the next part of her study exploring learning environments of Irish children under three in the context of how the social environment and physical environment support learning.

Parents of children in the Cork area who will be one in the next month or born in the next month or two who are interested in taking part can contact Helen Lynch at 021-4901535 or h.lynch@ucc.ie