Integrated children’s services. What does it mean for early childhood education?

One of the priorities at SDN Children’s Services is to break down the barriers of access to early education for children who are traditionally marginalised, such as children with disabilities, children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. One way of addressing these barriers is to provide support services for children who have additional needs in our early education and care centres.

SDN Children’s Education and Care Centres are staffed by skilled and experienced early childhood education professionals. Our staff members providing support services specialise in helping children with high support needs. We are currently working to better integrate our services so that children, and their families, have the benefit of all our staff expertise. Although there are benefits for children and families, integrating professional disciplines is complex. As a way of exploring these complexities, SDN invited one of Australia’s foremost experts on integrated children’s services, Associate Professor Joce Nuttall from the Faculty of Education at Australian Catholic University, to address our annual SDN staff conference.

Joce Nuttall’s keynote address