Child Development, 0-6 years

Understanding Child Development for 0-6 Children

This is a free resource for social workers, early year’s workers and parents. It is designed to ensure that social workers, those who work in early years and other professionals in child care have instant access to high quality information on child developmental norms relevant to the 0-6 year’s age group.

This free resource helps you to:

• Access information and pertinent video links in relation to child developmental milestones.

• Utilise theoretical frameworks, via succinct knowledge summaries, video links and hyperlinked references to enhance an understanding of child development and its relevance to practice.

• Draw on significant legislation and policy relevant to work with children and families in NI.

• Utilise and reflect on pertinent case studies which are based on realistic scenarios in practice.

• Critically reflect on social work / early year’s observational skills and knowledge.

• Make decisions based on evidence whilst on practice placement or within the work setting.

• Enhance your professional competence in relation to decision making, based on observations and assessment of child development.

• Understand the impact of child neglect on child development.

The Northern Ireland Social Care Council (NISCC) has been working in partnership with Skills for Care and Development, the University of Ulster and Queens University Belfast to develop this new and innovative mobile application for Child Development. It is underpinned by the expertise of the two universities in Northern Ireland and the authorship and intellectual copyright belong to the Social Work Departments at Queens University Belfast and the University of Ulster through both authors, Dr Anne Campbell and Professor Mary McColgan.

The need for such a responsive tool was identified by the Office of Social Services who have jointly funded its development along with the Skills for Care and Development (the sector skills Council for Social Care and Early Years).

The app presents a cost effective method of delivering peer reviewed educational material and for this reason, the development of the app has been warmly welcomed by employers across all sectors in child care service provision.