Day 2 Summary
Participants agreed that parents should be supported in their roles as promoters of early language and literacy. Two specific strategies were raised, the Roving Caregivers Programme amd the use of television.
The Roving Caregivers Programme, developed in Jamaica, is an early stimulation programme aimed at providing support for parents of children 0-3 years, particularly in disadvantaged communities. The programme has been successful in improving developmental outcomes of the children it serves. A second early stimulation progamme has been developed in Jamaica by the TMRI at the UWI, with community health aides specifically trained to provide support for parents of children 0-3 years. The programme run by community health aides showed significantly greater developmental benefit to children than the Roving Caregivers Program. This was published in the Lancet Series of papers on Early Childhood Development. (I will ensure that these papers are included in the EduExchange Resources). This finding is similar to that in the USA, where programmes to stimulate young children run by persons in the health sector have also been shown to have better child development outcomes than those run by other persons. It is important to note , however, that both programmes were beneficial to children. Both programmes have suffered from sustainability problems; the Roving Caregivers Programme would need funding to replicate it all across Jamaica and the Community Health Aide Programme would need more Community Health Aides employed to the health sector.

Television programmes have been found to be much less beneficial to child development than the interaction with adults, particularly for language development, where children need context. In one study, where the television was on all day, without parent interaction and support, the children's language development was considerably less than where there was no television. It seems that when television is present, there is less face to face interaction with adults.