From The Australian Early Childhood Association Inc (AECA) ... voice for young children

to Early Childhood Australia ... voice for young children.

What does it mean?

• Let's look to the future
• Let's focus on children ... Children's needs, development, education, health and wellbeing
• Lets focus on what's important
• It's time to move into the future with renewed energy and focus
• Let's embrace Early Childhood Australia
• A new name ... a new intensity
• Still a powerful and passionate ... voice for young children!

Early Childhood Australia has changed its name a number of times:

• Australian Association for Preschool Child Development 1938
• Australian Preschool Association 1974
• Australian Early Childhood Association Inc 1980
• Early Childhood Australia 2003

'Early Childhood Australia' puts the emphasis on children and their early years rather than on where the organisation is located.

There is also a lesser and more pragmatic reason for changing - people who do not know us find it hard to locate us - which means many whom we might be able to support cannot find us.

The important thing now is to think about what potential the new name creates for us to advocate for children.

Here is list, not exhaustive, of how Early Childhood Australia currently advocates for children

We, all of us, advocate through:

• our network of Branches, regional groups and members;
• our policy work - these policies are on the Early Childhood Australia website and the requests for them are steady;
• our publications - these are made possible by the efforts of the Early Childhood Australia members: the early childhood professionals who write and review them. They provide an important tool for Early Childhood Australia to be responsive to issues that confront children and those who have responsibility for their growth and learning.

Following the September 11 tragedy, Early Childhood Australia published:

• Learning about peace
• Last year, as a result of Australian Defence Force involvement in East Timor, Early Childhood Australia worked with Defence and published Parenting at home and away by Pam Linke - 10,000 of these books have already been distributed to Defence Force families
• In response to requests for books on dealing with grief and loss, and seperation and divorce, Early Childhood Australia has published a book entitled Helping children in times of need.
• The first title in the new Early Childhood Australia Learning at Home series, Learning about feelings, is hot off the press.

• The Early Childhood Australia Biennial Conference
  The next conference, Children are the core of our society, is to be held in Tasmania in July this year will be the 24th Early Childhood Australia conference.
• Early Childhood Australia's Voice newsletter
• Early Childhood Australia 's Website
  The material on the website about children and bushfires, and children and war has been distributed to over 10,000 schools, services, organisations etc and has been republished by many organisations.
• The media
• Alliances with other organisations
  A new alliance with COTA National Seniors - around grandparenting - is a good example of the value of these alliances.
• Discussions with the Accreditation Council
• Our projects; for example, Building bridges has had an enormously positive response with much interest in the method used.
• The submissions we write, the delegations to Ministers and politicians and the meetings, meetings, meetings we attend
• Early Childhood Australia will be making a submission to the Broadband Redevelopment and also to the National Agenda for Children

• we wear our Early Childhood Australia badges;
• we talk about children and their needs;
• we do our work every day with and for children; and
• we make strong relationships with Government and support them to do their work well.

We will continue to be a voice for young children.

But we are doing things now, as AECA, that are making us think differently about our work.

AECA is an advocacy organisation - that's why we all joined - because we want to work in ways that make things better for young children.

As I have demonstrated, there are lots of ways in which AECA does this:The major unifying thread between those strategies is clearly advocacy - that is what we are about. But, when we look closely there is something else that gives strategic coherence to what we do.

Early Childhood Australia is a knowledge broker

Early Childhood Australia - all of us - gives people support (information in the broadest sense of the word) to do their jobs for, and with, children well.

AECA, now Early Childhood Australia, is a trusted source of information - the information that we provide carries the assurance of quality.

If we look at what Early Childhood Australia does, it is almost all about the brokering or linking quality information and support to people who have responsibility in some way for the care, growth and development of young children.

This is not just to the early childhood profession, but also to parents, grandparents, government officials and politicians, members of the media, people in other professions who have responsibility for young children, health professionals etc

Knowledge brokers exist in every community. These people act as intermediaries between existing knowledge and those who need it. For example, chemists often act as knowledge brokers for parents, people working in children's services are often seen as knowledge brokers by parents and others. Anyone who is a conduit for information about early childhood is a knowledge broker and part of an early childhood knowledge/information chain or bridge.

You are all knowledge brokers - for children, for parents, for your peers, for your professional colleagues. And so are many other organisations, professions, services and individuals

So the question is:

• to support Early Childhood Australia members;
• to deliver to those who see Early Childhood Australia as a trusted source of information and support; and
• to support those people/organisations/services who are also knowledge brokers or trusted sources of information and support for those who have responsibility for the care and well being of children?

• building on and resourcing existing relationships and support systems in communities builds capacity in them by leveraging the confidence and connections that already exist in communities. The aim is not to give people extra work but to support them to do their work well.

Given this, it makes good sense to support those people to do their job better. For example making information, on the needs of grandparents with significant responsibility for their grandchildren, available to those from whom grandparents will seek support such as older persons organisations, doctors, chemists and children's services, preschools and schools becomes an important strategy.

Making sure that early childhood professionals have the information and support they need to their job well for children is part of the same strategic approach.

Making sure that Government and the media have the information about children and the issues that effect them is also part of the knowledge brokering strategy. For instance getting information to Minister Anthony about children and war supported him to act out his role as the Minister for Children.

Right now, Early Childhood Australia is doing new work in two really exciting areas - both of which reflect our more coherent thinking about Early Childhood Australia as a knowledge broker.

Some of the work we have been doing has been related to use of technology in the early childhood sector, particularly the online environment of the World Wide Web.

Getting information off the web makes you think a bit differently. It is a strategy in some ways not too different from the publication of hard copy books, newsletters and magazines that Early Childhood Australia has been doing for long time - the difference is its reach, which is potentially so great.

Early Childhood Australia has become interested in how you can use technology to support people who are responsible for the care and education of young people.

One of the things that has become absolutely clear is that there is an enormous amount of good information on the World Wide Web, but finding it is very time consuming and, in my experience, even if you find it once it is pretty hard to find it a second time. I also know from experience that searching is a very time consuming process. Early Childhood Australia is tackling this issue.

This thinking has also influenced Early Childhood Australia's approach to strategic alliances and projects - we are working with COTA National Seniors to retarget our existing and new publications so that they are inclusive of grandparents who have significant responsibility their young grandchildren. This is using our strengths to enhance their capacity to support grandparents.

Finally, advocacy for children will remain the mandate for Early Childhood Australia as it has been for over 60 years.

The new name gives us all the opportunity to rethink the way we do things, to build on the work of past and use the strengths of this work to build capacity across the community to nurture young children and advocate for their wellbeing.

July 2003

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