Understanding families and family-early childhood practitioner relationships…

Both family systems and family-centred approaches to early childhood intervention recognise and take into consideration family and cultural diversity in order to ensure that intervention practices are sensitive to and respectful of family beliefs, desires, and preferences. This is accomplished, to a large degree, by the relationships early childhood practitioners have with families and family members, and especially relationships that support and strengthen family competence and confidence. Early childhood intervention is now practised throughout most of the world (e.g., European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2015; Guralnick, 2005; New & Cochran, 2007; Odom, Hanson, Blackman, & Kaul, 2003). In many countries, and especially those that differ considerably in the ethnic, linguistic, and religious makeup of their citizens (Fearon, 2003), such diversity demands highly individualised practices in order for early childhood intervention to be culturally sensitive and competent. Within this diversity, however, is one common feature: the family (however defined) as the primary social context for child learning and development, and carer-child interactions as sources of variation in child learning, development, and socialisation. As noted by Richter (2004), caregiver sensitivity and responsiveness to child behaviour shapes and influences social acculturation where these “nurturing caregiver-child relationships have universal features across cultures, regardless of differences in specific child care practices” (p. 3). The importance of caregiver-child interactions is no doubt the reason so many approaches to early childhood intervention place primary emphasis on influencing caregiving practices, and why supporting and promoting caregiver competence and confidence are viewed as a primary way to have capacity-building and empowering consequences. The chapters in this section of the book include insights and guidance for adopting practi