Planning Policies for Early Childhood Development: Guidelines for Action

These Policy Guidelines for early childhood development (ECD) are a “roadmap” for helping governments and other stakeholders to collaborate in establishing policies that will ensure all children achieve their full potential. The purpose of these Guidelines is to provide an ECD Policy Toolkit for national planners of governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to help them: 1. Conduct participatory processes for policy planning that include institutions of government and civil society at all levels 2. Prepare National ECD Policies or Policy Frameworks with strategies for fi lling critical gaps in services for vulnerable children and for guiding the development of comprehensive and culturally appropriate ECD programmes, and 3. Insert concepts of the integrated approach to ECD into related cross-sectoral and sectoral policies and plans.