Early Intervention in the Round: a Great Idea but...

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This assignment will focus on the concept of “Early Intervention”. Main points will be drawn from a paper published in 2008 by Professor Andrew Pithouse titled ‘Early Intervention in the Round: A Great Idea But....’ Discussions will take place on the benefits and issues concerned with early intervention. From this, possible solutions and approaches to these issues will be considered. Early interventions validity in today’s education will be analysed, with a particular focus on areas which may need to be tackled by government policy. In addition, my own personal experiences will be utilised to support my arguments. Finally, a summary of the key points will take place with an emphasis on whether early intervention overcoming or not those risks and no doubts pointed in A. Pithouse article. Early Intervention can be defined as the goals for early childhood treatment, ‘to provide support to families to support their children's development; to promote children's development in key domains such as communication or mobility; to promote children's coping confidence, and to prevent the emergence of future problems’ (Wolfendale, 2004). Before reviewing the evidence on early interventions, it is important to establish some ground rules for the analysis. The first is that one must be clear about what type of intervention one is analysing. Early intervention refers to programs such as childcare or home visiting that are designed to promote the development of children from birth through the time they enter the school, and typically, these programs are targeted to children identified as high risk for poor development (Wolfendale, 2004). The second caution is that one must be clear about what children and families received the intervention. Using childcare as an example, the age at which child enters childcare is obviously a critical mediating factor, but so too are factors such
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