Caritas Europa: Giving children the best start in life

Learning to walk. Photo: Will Francis on Unsplash

Caritas Europa, together with the European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities, co-signed a position paper on the need to highlight the importance of early childhood intervention (ECI) in the recent European Care Strategy.

Early childhood intervention programmes include speech and physical therapy, among other types of services. They support babies and young children with developmental delays and disabilities, and they are crucial to the child's future and the family.

Nowadays, only a few European countries have laws on family-centred ECI, and the visibility of ECI is very weak in both the Disability Rights Strategy and the Child Guarantee. The recent European Care Strategy strongly focuses on early childhood education and care, but doesn't address early childhood intervention, which is often a precondition for children to access education.

The position paper highlights the main challenges and proposes solutions to EU and national authorities.

It also strongly focuses on the family-centred approach as a key element for quality ECI, essential to improve the family's bond, prevent the placement of children in institutions, and boost the participation of children in education and society.

Read the paper here: www.caritas.eu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/PP-ECI-the-best-start-in-life.pdf