Inclusion
Inclusion in Early Childhood Services: Ongoing Challenges
(2002)
Llewellyn, G., Thompson, K., & Fante, M. (2002).
Inclusion in early childhood services: Ongoing challenges.
Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 27(3), 18
- 23.
Background
Federal policy in Australia promotes the availability
of flexible and high quality child care for young children
of working parents and particularly for children with
additional needs. Yet with inclusion not being compulsory,
there are numerous opportunities for it to become derailed
as attempts are made to implement policy into practice.
With this as background, the Office of Child Care,
NSW Department of Community Services (DoCS), commissioned
a research project to generate a picture of current
inclusion practices in NSW early childhood services.
Overall, the project reported a strong commitment from
early childhood services to including children with
disabilities, tempered by several ongoing challenges
to the inclusion process. This paper addresses these
challenges.
Method
Surveys were sent to 1195 children's services from
six DoCS' areas and two local government areas. These
surveys requested information about the enrolment of
children with disabilities in a nominated week in August
1999, the sources of funding accessed to support enrolment,
the types of support provided, the impact of funding
on enrolment and barriers to working with children with
disabilities. 353 completed surveys were returned (32.5%),
and the results analysed using SSPSS or content or numerical
analysis.
Small group interviews and focus groups were also held
with children's services personnel. These focused on
barriers to enrolment of children with disabilities,
existing attitudes around the enrolment of children
with disabilities, and factors that contribute to the
successful inclusion of children with disabilities in
children's services. Similar focus groups were also
held with personnel from government departments and
peak organizations.
Results
229 services enrolled a total of 946 children with
disabilities in the named week. Most of these services
(88.2%) were preschools and more than two-thirds of
the children came from the Sydney metropolitan area.
The findings can be summarised in the following thematic
sections:
- Securing Funding
Key issues raised here were:
- Having to negotiate the multiple sources of government
funding, each of which has their own eligibility and
accountability criteria. Further, application processes
were found to be poorly understood, complex, and resource-intensive.
- Having to obtain a disability diagnosis to secure
funding. Concerns raised here included staff becoming
involved in difficult and intensive negotiations with
parents and professionals so as to receive the necessary
documentation and placing a potentially segregating
label on a child so early in his or her development.
- Dealing with funding inequities and uncertainties.
- Enrolling Children with Disabilities
This practice was made difficult by the following
identified constraints:
- Obtaining and keeping competent and confident staff.
- Duty of care and fear of litigation concerns owing
to a lack of knowledge, skills or resources to adequately
meet the needs of children with disabilities.
- Children with a disability being regarded as adding
an unwelcome and additional responsibility to already
busy services.
- The ongoing separation of specialist and mainstream
services which works against inclusion by fostering
competitive rather than collaborative working relationships.
- Inclusion in Practice
Early childhood service workers identified many challenges
they faced in the process of putting inclusion policy
into practice:
- Inadequate staff:child ratios.
- Lack of access to specialist advice.
- Untrained aides, rather than special aides, being
more likely to provide support to the overall centre
programs in addition to assisting children with a
disability.
- Co-ordinating the many services involved, such
as family support, vacation care and early intervention,
thereby having less 'floor time' with the children.
Discussion
The picture of mainstream early childhood services
generated by this study suggests that the experience
of children with disabilities and their families remains
primarily one of 'special treatment'. This experience
is exacerbated by the perception in the sector that
including children with disabilities can proceed only
if funds are made available to support the child and/or
the service.
An equally important component of inclusion practices
are the attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge of service
personnel, and the willingness of both early childhood
workers and specialist early intervention staff to work
together in identifying and preparing for the full range
of potentially eligible children.
For policy makers, planners and service personnel,
two broad recommendations are proposed:
- That a collaborative policy, planning and funding
framework be developed for the inclusion of children
with disabilities in early childhood services in NSW;
and,
- That training objectives which jointly address
the learning needs of mainstream early childhood services
personnel and early intervention specialists be developed
to ensure a collaborative approach to family-focused
and child-oriented inclusive practices
More specific practices geared toward making the inclusion
of children with disabilities in early childhood services
easier and more equitable are also promoted:
- Simpler, more positively phrased application processes
that identify child and family goals with the support
required to reach these. Failing this, support at
the service level to prepare funding submissions and,
at the very least, a simple written resource with
full details of the schemes, their application processes,
and how to write a successful application could be
made available.
- Devolution of allocation and coordination of funds
to the local level to ensure a better match between
the infrastructure and resources of the community
and the needs of the child and family.
- Community-based 'one-stop-shops', comprising children's
services and diagnostic services to provide a central
location for distributing funds, resources, coordination
and collaboration between specialist teams and mainstream
early childhood services.
- All extra resources - whether funding, service
staff or consultant specialists - are used to assist
the child to participate in the everyday routines
and activities of the service.
- All staff must engage in family-centred work training.
Three problem areas that require much needed research
remain:
- There is little to guide early childhood agencies
in how to achieve successful inclusion;
- There is little to assist families in choosing
one service over another; and,
- There is scant evidence of which inclusion practices
are most effective for particular children with disabilities
and their families.
Young Children with Disabilities in NSW Children's
Services (1999)
Llewellyn, G. & Fante, M. (1999). Young Children
with Disabilities in NSW Children's Services. Office
of Childcare: NSW Department of Community Services.
A summary of this project can also be found in NSW
Department of Community Services (2000). Insights
Into Research: Four Studies on Early Childhood Issues
and Children's Services (pp. 93 - 122). Office of
Childcare: NSW Department of Community Services.
Background
There is a remarkable lack of data about children with
disabilities and child care arrangements in Australia
with child care data only indicating informal and formal
care for children generally. Some Australian evidence
however points to unmet demand for both child care and
respite by families of young children with disabilities
(Bowman & Virtue, 1993; Llewellyn, Dunn, Fante,
Turnbull & Grace, 1999).
Further, children with disabilities and their families
have been shown to remain primarily within the specialist
sector in which services, such as early intervention,
are provided only to those with special needs. This
is not to suggest that children with disabilities are
not entering child care: children with disabilities
are being included in all types of child care arrangements.
However, children with disabilities are still regarded
as a separated group, apart from and different to the
common experience of the mainstream child care sector.
International research shows increasing numbers of
infants and young children with disabilities to be attending
formal child care from an early age. Studies from North
America for example, have demonstrated that families
of young children with disabilities are seeking entry
into the workforce at the same rate as other families
and are increasingly seeking inclusion experiences for
their child with a disability (Landis, 1992; Bailey,
Blasco & Simeonsson, 1992; Freedman, Litchfield
& Warfiled, 1995).
These families however have greater difficulty finding
appropriate and adequate child care arrangements, particularly
if their child has high support needs or complex health
care needs or is assisted by technology. Factors associated
with organisational context can act as barriers or facilitators
of inclusive settings to the extent that, for example,
when government policies prohibit funding being used
in flexible ways, funding itself becomes a barrier to
inclusion.
Of the few international studies that have attempted
to determine the enrolment of children with disabilities
in early childhood services, estimates vary from around
1% to 5% of all children enrolled (Crowley, 1990; Markos-Capps
& Godfrey, 1999; Parrino & Thacker, 1994). The
most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figure
contained in the Disability, Ageing and Carers,
1998 publication put the rate of disability in children
aged 0 - 4 years as 4% for Australia as a whole. Based
on 1993 ABS figures, the reported rate of disability
amongst the NSW population aged 0 - 17 years is 6.5%.
The literature supports the inclusion of children with
disabilities in the everyday activities of preschool
programs with the caveat of ensuring the provision of
high quality programs and appropriate curricula (Kontos,
Moore & Giorgeffi, 1998). Maintaining good inclusive
programs has been shown to require several elements,
of which the primary one is good relationships between
adults. Other components include:
- A clearly articulated philosophy that emphasizes
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.
- An ability to accommodate specialized and/or intensive
programs for children with disabilities with the naturalistic
experiences of the children's services setting.
- Positive, collaborative and cooperative relationships
between adults aiming to seek the best outcomes for
the child and their family.
A family centred approach to working with families
with children with disabilities is also strongly supported
in the international literature. Eight key elements
have been identified as achieving family centred practices
(Shelton & Stepanek, 1995):
- Acknowledging the family as the constant in the
child's life.
- Facilitating family/professional collaboration.
- Exchanging complete and unbiased information between
families and professionals.
- Honouring cultural diversity.
- Respecting each family's individuality in their
adaption to their child's needs and each family's
expressed goals.
- Facilitating family-to-family support and networking.
- Ensuring all services are flexible, accessible
and comprehensive.
- Appreciating families as families and children
as children first, taking into account their wide
range of strengths, concerns, emotions and aspirations
beyond their need for specialized services and support.
Australian research suggests that despite intended
policy, families of children with disabilities do not
experience services as being family-oriented. The call
remains for all staff, no matter how experienced, to
engage in staff development to acquire the knowledge
and skills required for collaborative and family-focused
roles. At the very least, child care services need to:
- Make a commitment to including children with disabilities
and communicating this commitment to families.
- Provide adequate information in ways which are
user-friendly for families.
- Offer extensive opportunities for families to ask
questions and receive answers which meet their need
to know.
- Allow sufficient time to observe inclusion in action
and develop their own level of comfort with the concept.
- Provide a variety of ways to 'try out' inclusion
for the child and the family.
For families of children with disabilities, making
the move between caring for their child at home and
arranging formal child care can be stressful given concerns
about whether or not their child will be accepted, understood
and adequately cared for. Research suggests that clearly
defined procedures and processes, sharing the experience
with other parents and the provision of family-friendly
literature can assist in this process.
Of course, not all families will seek an inclusive
setting for their young child particularly if the child
has high support needs. Yet for those families that
do, there is a remarkable lack of family-friendly information
about the options available.
Aims
This research consultancy - Young Children with Disabilities
in NSW Children's Services - was undertaken on behalf
of the Office of Childcare, NSW Department of Community
Services. The project was conducted over a 7-month period
from April to October 1999. The focus of the project
was on children aged birth to six years in children's
services, with a later addition of Out of School Hours
(OOSH) and Vacation Care services (up to age 12) at
the request of the Office of Childcare.
The project aimed to:
- Identify appropriate service models for inclusion
of young children with disabilities in children's
services that facilitate the achievement of better
outcomes for these children and their families;
- Identify factors which contribute to young children
with disabilities being actively included into particular
children's services; and,
- Develop recommendations about the most appropriate
and relevant service type/s and models for use across
the children's service sector in NSW to ensure children
with disabilities, their families and their communities
achieve positive outcomes.
The above purposes were later extended to include OOSH
and Vacation care services with the aim of exploring
the current provisions and models used by OOSH and Vacation
Care for children with disabilities.
Methodology
The central core of this project was a snapshot picture
of children with disabilities in children's services
by way of:
- A field survey with children's services in selected
regions of NSW;
- Focus groups with children's service personnel
in those regions;
- Interviews and focus groups with members of children's
and disability organizations; and,
- Interviews with key Commonwealth and State department
personnel involved in children and/or disability policy,
planning and service delivery.
Research and recommendations were based upon aspects
of:
- Policy, Planning and Funding
- Service Models
- Training
- Resources Support
Results
(A) The Field Survey
Of the 1195 children's services involved in the field
survey, 353 returned surveys. 229 of these services
enrolled 946 children with disabilities. Preschool and
long day care centres represented by far the majority
of services enrolling children with disabilities (90.5%).
The most common diagnosed disability type was language/speech
delay (27.2%), followed by global developmental disability
(15.6%).
80.2% of children with a diagnosed disability were
accessing specialist medical and disability personnel.
This occurred on a consultative basis for over 30% of
these children. Early intervention and therapy services
were widely used for children with a diagnosed disability.
Speech therapy was the most frequently used service.
55% of children awaiting diagnosis were receiving outside
support arranged by the service.
75.4% of children were receiving assistance from additional
staff, specialist aides or teachers with specialist
knowledge. Untrained aides were usually employed to
meet the needs of all children within the service.
For 47.3% of children with disabilities equipment generally
available in the service was used to meet their special
needs. Toys and games and then books were most frequently
used and these may have been purchased in addition to
existing equipment.
For 44.2% of the children with disabilities staff training
was implemented. This comprised mainly of specific intervention
strategies. Training was of a general nature for all
of the staff more often when children were awaiting
a diagnosis.
For 19% of children modifications were made to buildings.
These modifications were associated with easier mobility
and access; primarily in pre-schools and long day care
services.
9.2% of children were recipients of specialist equipment.
Services were concerned with equipment costs versus
the length of a child's stay in the service.
28% of respondents used funds to access specialized
or additional staff to increase the staff:child ratio
or to meet children's specific needs. 19% said that
funding advantaged the service through access to additional
staff; 18% said that funding aided inclusion; 11% felt
that access to advice and direction facilitated by funding
produced a better qualified service worthy of a good
reputation with regard to serving children with disabilities.
22% of respondents felt that financial constraints
acted as a barrier to enrolling children with disabilities.
The second most common barrier was inadequate staff:child
ratios. There was a perception that children would require
help separate to the centre population and a lack of
professional support discouraged enrolment. The 'level'
of a child's disability influenced enrolment decisions.
(B) Consultations and Literature Review
In keeping with the review of current literature three
substantive issues emerged from the consultations described
above:
- Children's Services Have Become An Accepted
Part Of Life For Many Australian Families
At the Commonwealth level, child care policy is focused
on ensuring affordable, flexible and high quality
child care for young children in Australia. Families
with children with disabilities are no different in
wanting - and needing - to participate in children's
services and child care arrangements for their child
with a disability. Moreover, being included in mainstream
early childhood services - as part of their local
neighbourhood community - is the first and essential
step on the path to full inclusion in the community
for children with disabilities and their families.
Being part of mainstream OOSH and Vacation Care services
confirms for children with disabilities, their families
and the wider community that children with disabilities
are an integral part of our communities.
- The Experience of Children with Disabilities
and Their Families Remains Primarily One of 'Special
Treatment'
This is the case despite increasing numbers of children
with disabilities participating in early childhood
services, OOSH and Vacation Care. This experience
is exacerbated by the perception in the sector that
including children with disabilities can only proceed
if funds are made available to support the child and/or
the service. While this project has found that funds
are an important component of support to the inclusion
of children with disabilities, equally important are
the attitudes, beliefs and knowledge of service personnel.
- Children's Services Including OOSH and Vacation
Care and Early Childhood Intervention Services Have
a Shared Responsibility to Identify and Prepare for
the Full Range of Potentially Eligible Children Within
Their Everyday Practice.
To do so, children's services including OOSH and Vacation
Care, in collaboration and consultation with early
childhood intervention specialists, need to develop
service models that are sufficiently flexible to respond
to changing demographics in Australian society and
the diversity of families and children in the community.
These demographics include:
- Increasing participation of families with young
children in the workforce;
- Unmet demand for suitable child care and for
respite as well as work-related commitments;
- Better informed parents with expressed choices
based on information and their desire to gain value
for money; and,
- Increasing the numbers of children with disabilities
included in mainstream children's services
(C) Policy, Planning and Funding
In the area of policy, planning and funding, several
key issues emerged:
- There is currently no comprehensive policy, planning
or funding framework for the inclusion of children
with disabilities in NSW children's services. Responsibilities
are spread across multiple departments at Federal
and State level - the Commonwealth Department of Family
and Community Services (FCS), the NSW Department of
Community Services (DoCS), the NSW Department of Education
and Training (DET), the Ageing and Disability Department
(ADD) and NSW Health.
- These various government departments have differing
policy objectives, planning processes and funding
eligibility and accountability criteria. This results
in a complex, confusing and fragmented approach to
providing services to children with disabilities and
their families.
- There are multiple sources of funding to assist
the inclusion of children with disabilities in children's
services. However these sources have varying funding
objectives and eligibility criteria and are poorly
understood by the children's services sector, early
childhood intervention personnel and families. These
funding sources require resource-intensive documentation
that is particularly over-burdensome given the small
amount of additional funds available to support inclusion
of children with disabilities.
- The most frequently accessed funding scheme was
DoCS Special Needs Assistance (26.7%), followed by
DET Intervention Support Program (19.9%), FCS SUPS
(14%), FCS SNSS (12.6%), with low frequencies for
DET Disabilities and Learning Difficulties scheme
(3.4%) and ADD funding (2.5%).
- There is a perception by the children's services
sector that inclusion of children with disabilities
is dependent on extra funding. Therefore, services
can be unwilling to accept children with disabilities
without access to extra funds particularly when there
is neither legislative mandate nor policy directive
to do so.
- The multiple and frequently incompatible data bases
of information held by the various government departments
on children's services including OOSH and Vacation
Care militate against developing a comprehensive understanding
of children's services in NSW and engaging the sector
in research and development projects.
- This fragmented approach to policy and planning,
the funding complexity and the perception that children
with disabilities cannot be included in mainstream
children's services unless additional funding is forthcoming,
all actively work against mainstream children's services
welcoming children with disabilities and their families.
(D) Service Models
A focus on service models brought the following
issues to light:
- Current models of practice with regard to inclusion
of children with disabilities in NSW children's services
appear to be based on individual or professional perceptions
of how children should be included and/or on funding
criteria.
- A number of barriers to and factors influencing
successful inclusion for children with disabilities
were identified. These stemmed from the funding constraints
noted above; attitudes such as a child with a disability
being viewed as 'additional' to the group of children
in a centre; limited staff skills and knowledge; and,
inadequate resources to effectively support children
with disabilities.
- The most common model adopted is consultative specialist
support followed by the addition of another staff
person to work with the child with a disability. In
the latter case, a support person may work exclusively
with the child in the childcare setting or work with
the entire service, staff, children and families to
ensure successful inclusion of one or more children
with disabilities. Exactly how this occurs appears
to be dependent on staff attitudes toward inclusion
and service priorities.
- There are also various models of specialist professional
assistance to early childhood services. These range
from a withdrawal model where the professional works
exclusively with the nominated child away from the
rest of the group to provision of a consultancy service
where the professional works with and through the
child care staff to ensure that the child is fully
included in all experiences undertaken by children
within that service.
- There is an absence of information about the experiences
of children with disability or their families in children's
services including OOSH and Vacation Care and indeed,
no information about how the various models of practice
referred to above influence child, family or community
outcomes.
- At this time there is little evidence to propose
one or more definitive best practice models. The findings
of the field survey suggest that the most frequently
accessed support by children's services, that is,
outside specialist support, is a function of funding
policy rather than necessarily a function of best
practice based on educational principles, family-centred
philosophies, or integration or inclusion policies.
(E) Training
Key issues also emerged from the area of training:
- There is a lack of awareness and knowledge in parts
of the mainstream children's services sector of the
importance of, and the need to include children with
disabilities, and the processes by which successful
inclusion can occur.
- There is a lack of knowledge about children with
disabilities and a lack of confidence in services
to accommodate these children leading to an over-estimation
of the support required for children to be included.
- A divide exists between the specialist educational
approach from the early intervention sector and the
generic educational approach favoured by the mainstream
children's sector. This divide is based on different
educational philosophies and professional perspectives
and is reinforced by separate pre-service, in-service
and continuing education programs.
- There is a lack of awareness of the necessary components
to ensure best practice with families with children
with disabilities. The concepts of family-centred
work, which actively supports families in their decision-making
and promotes family empowerment to make choices that
are congruent with their family goals, beliefs and
values, are not widely understood in the mainstream
children's services sector.
(F) Resource Support
Finally, resource support for the inclusion of children
was characterized by a number of key issues:
- There is a lack of accessible, comprehensive, and
easy to follow documentation to support the process
of inclusion of children with disabilities and their
families in mainstream childhood services. In particular
what is missing is information to support families
as their child enters a mainstream children's service
either from home or from an early intervention service.
- There is a shortage of qualified and experienced
children's services personnel to provide the additional
support that services may require to assist the inclusion
of children with disabilities.
- There is a lack of collaborative interaction between
specialist and mainstream childhood services around
information exchange, resource sharing, efficiency
and effectiveness processes and liaison with families
and the community.
- There are a number of services, by report, which
are not engaging in discussion about, nor enrolling
children with disabilities.
- There is no readily available support for children's
services including OOSH and Vacation Care when a family
wishes to enrol their child with a disability without
prior notice.
Recommendations
1.1 It is recommended that DoCS,
through the Office of Childcare, in consultation with
key stakeholders including the Commonwealth Department
of Family and Community Services (FCS) and with particular
reference to the Early Childhood Intervention Coordination
Program (ECICP) Management Committee, and as a matter
of urgency, undertake a project to develop a collaborative
policy, planning and funding framework for inclusion
of children with a disability in mainstream children's
services including OOSH and Vacation Care in NSW.
The objective of this recommendation is to develop
a collaborative, coordinated and comprehensive framework
for policy, planning and distribution of funds to ensure
the inclusion of children with a disability in mainstream
children's services including OOSH and Vacation care
in NSW.
1.2 It is recommended that serious
consideration be given to developing a comprehensive
funding model which allocates funds on a per child basis
to be made available as needed to all children's services
including OOSH and Vacation Care used by the child and
that, in the first instance, DoCS gives serious consideration
to putting in place a planning and distribution model
which allocates funds to individual children to redistribute
the Special Needs Assistance funds until such time as
the comprehensive policy, planning and funding framework
referred to in Recommendation 1.1 is implemented.
The objective of this recommendation is to simplify
an overly complex, fragmented, rarely transportable
and typically misunderstood system of allocating funds
by acknowledging the diversity of children's needs and
that these needs may vary across service settings and
change over time and in the first instance to ensure
equitable distribution of Special Needs Assistance (SNA)
funds that are currently distributed on a previous allocation
formula that has not changed since 1987.
1.3 Until such time as a comprehensive
policy, planning and funding framework can be put in
place, it is recommended that each funding scheme, as
a matter of priority, produce and then widely distribute
simplified documentation in relation to funding objectives,
eligibility criteria and accountability requirements.
The objective of this recommendation is to ensure that
families and children's service personnel across the
State are aware of, and supported to, apply for financial
support to assist the inclusion of children with disabilities
in children's services including OOSH and Vacation Care.
2.1 It is recommended that DoCS,
through the Office of Childcare, as a matter of priority
and in consultation with key stakeholders, commission
a pilot project built on action research principles,
which involves early childhood specialists, children's
services personnel, families and researchers working
together to develop a best practice model for providing
the "best of both worlds" to children with
disabilities in mainstream children's services including
OOSH and Vacation Care.
The objective of this recommendation is to develop,
in a collaborative fashion, a best practice model for
the inclusion of children with disabilities in children's
services, that reflects international research and the
requirements of families, service personnel and local
communities.
3.1 It is recommended that DoCS
and ADD in consultation with key stakeholders and with
particular reference to the ECICP, and as a matter of
urgency, develop training objectives which address the
training needs of early childhood intervention and mainstream
children's services personnel and ensure that these
objectives are incorporated into funding agreements.
The objective of this recommendation is to ensure a
collaborative, coordinated approach to training to promote
a more effective and productive interface between early
childhood services and early childhood intervention
in NSW.
3.2 It is recommended that DoCS,
through the Office of Childcare, commission a review
of pre-service, graduate and continuing education courses
in education and health sciences in relation to information
on inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream
children's services including OOSH and Vacation Care.
The objective of this recommendation is to actively
encourage the educational institutions in NSW to identify
gaps and work towards ensuring more adequate training
in inclusive, family-friendly practices in the mainstream
children's services sector in NSW.
4.1 That DoCS, through the Office
of Childcare in partnership with ADD and in consultation
with key stakeholders, identify examples of exemplary
practice of collaboration between children's services,
early intervention services and OOSH and Vacation Care
and develop strategies to promote those key components
of good practice more widely to the mainstream children's
services and early intervention sectors.
The objective of this recommendation is to facilitate
wide distribution of local, inter-agency and service
collaboration and coordination best practice efforts
to best suit the particular needs of that community.
4.2 That DoCS, through the Office
of Childcare in collaboration with ADD and in consultation
with key stakeholders, commission an action research
project involving families, mainstream children's services
personnel and early intervention workers in developing
best practice guidelines for the 'transition' of children
with disabilities and their families from their home
and/or early intervention settings into children's services
including OOSH and Vacation Care.
The objective of this recommendation is to ensure that
children with disabilities and their families do not
experience undue stress in moving from home and/or early
intervention services into children's services including
OOSH and Vacation Care.
Conclusion
Approaches to inclusion are currently driven by funding
criteria and the perception that additional funding
is fundamental to the successful inclusion of children
with disabilities. Successful inclusion in the future
requires cohesive, clear and universally understood
approaches to policy, planning, funding, training and
resource management.
There are exemplary practices occurring in NSW where
service directors show strong leadership and create
a welcoming, inclusive and developmentally and educationally
sound environment for children with disabilities along
with their peers. The next task is to identify the essential
components of this practice and translate these into
action across the children's services sector so that
all children with disabilities, their families and their
communities may benefit.
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