Background:

Turkey is one of the Phase 1 Countries which will pilot “Integrated Approach to ECCD”. The reason for Turkey being selected is the Early Childhood Development and Pre-school activities that have been ongoing since the beginning of 1990. The activities were mainly initiated within the framework of GoT-UNICEF MPO 1991-96, and continued in the current Program Cycle 1997-2000, with an attempt to integrate all related health, nutrition and education activities for initial phase of ECC-SGD. New Country Program, building on gained experiences, is promoting ECCD in a more integrated manner in the years of 2001-2005.

Early Childhood Development and Education (ECD-1991-1998)

Objectives of the ECD are to:

• Introduce family and community-based ECD models as an alternative to existing centre-based pre-school model in Turkey..
• Develop ECD programs for engaging the mother (caretaker) and the child around the same activity which would be challenging to both of them.
• Utilize media, and non-formal channels for dissemination of basic ecd knowledge to all families (particularly at risk).
• Pilot the most appropriate, cost-effective ECD models to cover the children and families in need and not covered by the available services.
• Help change ECD National Policies towards more community-family centered non-formal eccd models in Turkey.

- Exposing government officials to different type of ECD services around the world and communicate their impact on coverage.

- Collaboration with Universities and different sectors of the government in designing ECD models tailored to the needs of families in poor settlements (shanty towns and villages).

- Conducting demonstration projects to ensure programs' applicability and sustainability.

- Advocating for the good practices, decisions, and policy orientations proposed and/or implemented by the government, NGOs or both.

Activities:

Activities planned and carried out during the planned period of 1991-1998, to achieve the above objectives in the area of ECD can be grouped under three headings;

1. Advocacy: Organizing study tours, seminars, conferences, TV discussions on alternative ECD models to reach the most needy. Selected activities are carried out under this heading:

- Seminar on Different Models in ECD (Bob Myres, and High Scope were invited speakers) 1990. This seminar provided a platform for discussing different models and program strategies to address the developmental needs of the children and their parents. Home-based, community-based and center-based ECD models and their possible applications in Turkey, were discussed with academia and the ECD implementers from the Ministry of National Education. Proceedings of this Seminar have been published in English and Turkish and distributed widely (Different Models of Early Childhood Development, edited by Sevda Bekman, Unicef Turkey, Ankara 1991).

- Study Tour of high level Government Officials to Colombia and Venezuela to visit Hogares and Escuela Nueva in 1991.

- Policy Development Seminar with high level Government Officials and the University in 1994 which lead to conceptualization of multi-purpose pre-school centers as to combine community and center-based ECD programs.

- Providing Technical Support to National Symposiums in 1992, and 1997 as well as to National Council on Preschool Education in 1995.

2. Program Developments and pilot implementations:
The advocacy activities in ECD, have contributed to the design and implementation of home-based, community-based as well as center-based ECD models targeting the families in urban poor or rural settlements.

Mothers Training Programs: Initiated in collaboration with MONE-Non-formal Education Directorate General and Universities in 1991 and since 1996, Government continues the programs as one of their formalized in-service training programs. There are two programs with similar objectives but different audience:

1. Mother Child Education Program is designed for the mothers and their six year old children. The primary aim of this program is to help children’s cognitive development through the active involvement of mothers. Mother and Child Education Foundation (MOCEF), under the coordination of MONE, currently manages the Program.

2. The Mothers Training program for 0-4 age group is under direct responsibility of MONE, with limited financial and technical input from UNICEF. This Program attempts to empower the child’s immediate caregiver to produce “enabling” environment, starting from birth. Activities of the Mothers Training Program for 0-4 age group have been enhanced by the inclusion of the films of Better Parenting Initiative (BPI- Video-based Parent Education Program).

Better Parenting Initiative (BPI- Video-based Parent Education Program - Video-based parenting; Facilitators' information sheets, MONE-UNICEF Turkey, Ankara 1999): In collaboration with MONE General Directorates of Preschool Education and NFE, the activity was initiated in April 1993. 2 hours video films covering the development of the child before birth until the age of 8 and the facilitators guides have been produced. The films are utilized in the following ways:

- integration into mothers training program.

- area-based rural women/mothers training program.

- TV programs for women and education.

- Pre and in service Training of ECD Teachers/instructors.

- low-cost quality day care for the working mothers with limited income.

- parents training seminars.

- literacy courses.

- family counseling (including female productive health care).

- toy workshop (where parents/adults learn how to make toys from re-cycled materials and how to play with the children, using them, so that the adult-child interaction and development would be enhanced.

- two preschool busses which were donated by a private company, and the municipality gave the gasoline and the driver, visited the far away quarters of the district to provide children of 5 years of age with preschool experience, and parents with family counseling. This is currently being replicated in a poor settlement of Ankara.

3. Evaluation and Monitoring of ECD:

Throughout the implementations of these activities, series of needs assessment, monitoring and evaluation studies were carried out:

- Needs Assessments in ECD a) 1991 in four provinces of Urfa, Diyarbakir, Adiyaman and Bayburt (Needs Assessment in Early Childhood Development, unpublished research report, MONE-UNICEF Turkey, 1992). b) 1994 needs assessment in Küçükçekmece (Needs Assesment for pre-school education in Küçükçekmece District, unpublished research report MONE-UNICEF Turkey, 1994) c) 1997 needs assessment in Keçiören (Need Assessment for pre-school education in Keçiören District, unpublished research report MONE-UNICEF Turkey, 1998). All these assessments pointed to the fact that the ECD activities need to start at home first and foremost to produce “enabling” environment to parents. These assessment studies also clearly highlighted the synergy between survival, growth and psycho-social- cognitive development of the child.

- Impact analysis of Mothers Training Program (0-4 age) in 1995 proved that mothers were able to produce more stimulating, healthy, and safe learning environments for their infants right from the beginning of their lives.

These early experiences led the Government and UNICEF to include ECD as one of the program priorities for the Program Cycle of 1997-2000. Later in 1998, recognizing the accumulated experience and knowledge in the area of ECD, Turkey was included in first phase of the global initiative for integrated approach to ECCD. ECCD is one of the central strategies in adressing the issues of child survival, growth, and congnitive-psycho-social development in Turkey.

Strategic Planning for ECCD: Government of Turkey- UNICEF Joint Workplan for 1999-2000 (as Phase 1)

Current GOT-UNICEF Programme of Cooperation for 1997-2000, and the Recommendations of Mid-term Review, encouraged integrated programming and field implementations of ECCD. Within the Child Rights Perspective and CEDAW, such integration is valid for all projects and respected activities. In this context, and given that Turkey is a Phase One Country for field testing, ECCD become the entry point for the integrated programming in Türkiye not only for the current cycle, but for the next Program Cycle for 2001-2005.

Within the framework of current Master Plan of Operations (MPO), recommendations of Mid-term Review (September 1998), as well as of the ECCD Startegy Paper following strategies and actions are currently being carried out:

Civil Society Mobilization

Working closely with NGOs, Media, and University students activities for:

- awareness raising about the importance of integrated ECCD to provide more effective services for the children in Turkey;
- producing ad hoc audio-visual, to provide basic ECCD information for families, service deliverers, and others who take active part in child’s day to day life, are currently being carried out.

Rural and Intra-urban Disparity Reduction

The program and its respective project activities will combine health, nutrition, education and environmental upgrading (water and sanitation) activities to promote integrated ECCD at the grass-root level. In over thousand mothers in the villages of area-based project have started "mothers training programs" this year. They, starting before their babies are born, and until after their children are five years of age, will continue learning how to CARE for their children's survival, growth and social/cognitive development. First evaluation of this activity will be carried out in June 2000.

Social Research and Monitoring

The Program’s following projects made necessary adjustments to provide base-line data through its operational research designs on and for integrated ECCD.

Monitoring CRC and NPA information network include basic indicators to a) provide base-line data for ECCD and b) identify further research needs for assessment of ECCD activities qualitatively and quantitatively.

Nutrition information and health surveillance project in collaboration with Rural Disparity Reduction Program, revised the ongoing nutrition and health training activities in villages of Yozgat and Van and added the CARE (P.L Engle, The Care Initiative: Assessment, Analysis and Action to imrpove Care for Nutrition, New York, UNICEF 1997) component for enhanced survival, growth and psycho-social-cognitive development of children.

Planning and Policy Development

Overall ECCD strategy is contributing to the planning and policy development discussions at different platforms, and meetings which are jointly organized by related counterparts. Within this overall context, related projects carried out the following activities:

ECCD as an integral part of Child Survival Projects: In terms of providing support for parents to prepare themselves for parenthood, and to learn about care of their newborn babies, Safe Motherhood Project has a lot to offer. It is pleasing to note that Türkiye is also the Pilot Country for IMCI (Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses) and the Ministry of Health taking active role in this joint UNICEF-WHO initiative. It is therefore, expected that ECCD will become an integral part of IMCI mutually supporting each other.

Child Development and Education Project has been the center peace for promoting Early Childhood Care for Development. The Project, in its 1999 Work Plan revised its objectives and strategies within the framework of ECCD Strategy Paper. The project designed its activities following the “life cycle” approach to human development (Beryl Levinger, Critical Tranisitons in Human Development, Washington DC World Bank, 1997). This approach is elaborated in the following way:

- Early childhood: the project will ensure that children’s needs for basic health and nutrition are met. The project will also ensure and design activities that Children receive psycho-social stimulation starting from birth until they settle into their formal schools. Here the major trust is to collaborate with the health and nutrition activities of the other projects while providing more direct support in the area of psycho-social development of the child. In collaboration with Program 2, alternative ways in which integrated ECCD services are directly provided for children, will be searched and recommended for larger scale planning.

- Middle childhood: the project will also ensure that all children weather they are girls or boys, do attend primary school and acquire basic life skills. Quality improvement in classroom learning, especially in rural village schools and in urban slums will be the major concern of the activities directed towards the children between 6 –14 age group.

- Adolescence and life long learning: This is the life cycle period where youth could become active partners in advocating, designing and implementing integrated ECCD activities. This is the time young girls and boys are prepared for parenthood through formal, non-formal and informal channels of learning. Thus, in collaboration with Program 1, youth groups, civil societies and parents will become active partners of ECCD starting from the birth of the child involving young parents, and working with them in preparing their children schooling years. Thus, the parents and the larger community will become active partners of the school as well.

Assuming that if the parents and other adults who provide care for young children are oriented towards better care for survival, growth and development, the rate of children at risk and in difficult circumstances will be reduced. However, there are children in foster homes, institutions and with families at risk where delayed development is a possibility. Integrated ECCD will look into the needs of these children and of their immediate caretakers. Within this context, the Project will ensure that the children in need of special protection will have access to quality ECCD services; a) through provision of care for survival, growth and psycho-social development; b) through training of caretakers, to ensure the sustainable quality ECCD services.

ECCD in Earhquake Recovery Program in 1999-2000:

In 1999, Turkey was hit twice by devastating earthquakes leaving thousands of people, homeless and children without parents. One of the major activities of the Recovery Plan UNICEF Prepared, included introduction of Child Friendly Space which ensured immediate CARE for pregnant and lactating mothers, health and nutrition surveillance for babies and children, and crèches and day-care centers for 0-6 age group. Currently, UNICEF has equipped 40 day-care centers in pre-fabricated cities. These centers are also planned to be utilized to create “community spirit” where parents will be provided with learning opportunities in effective parenting. Existing Better Parenting Video Films and materials as well as Mothers Training Program are planned to be carried out through out the summer.

Conclusion and the Next Steps:

In conclusion, integrated ECCD approach is opening new fronts for collaboration and coordination of all sectors towards building an “enabling” environment for human development as a whole. By doing this, new learning opportunities and challenges for children, their parents/care takers, service providers as well as policy makers, are being continually introduced. In order to take tha challenge, following are the next steps towards integrated ECCD in Turkey:

- Establish Inter-sectoral ECCD Committee, composed of related sectors of Ministries of Health and Education, universities, and NGOs. This step will be finalized during the ECCD workshop in 5-8 June 2000.

- Design participatory action research(es) which will identify the positive and negative impact of CARE practices pointing to the possible intervention for ECD in “at risk” social-cultural settings (by mid 2000).

- Initiate Mothers Training Program and evaluation study in area-based project sites of Van and Yozgat(in 1999-2000). This activity is ongoing.

- Document the results with recommendations for ECCD intervention strategies (by end 2000).

- Include ECCD as a “priority” in the current Country Programme Preparation Process (CPPP) for 2001-2005 (ongoing).

- Situation Analysis

- Country Note

- Program preparation

- Monitoring Evaluation (Annual reviews, Mid Term Review and Final Evaluation).

- Advocate for more comprehensive policy development and planning for integrated ECCD at national as well as community level in the country (ongoing).

- Design ECCD as an Academic Program “tailor made” graduate/post-graduate courses for those who wish to pursue a career in the area. A post graduate course (3 Credit) in ECCD has been designed and approved by the Senate of Hacettepe University. The Department of Child Development will start the course in September 2000. The course will allow to further elaborate the basic components of ECCD in Turkey while providing pre-service training courses for the expert of in the area of Child Development.