CHCPR510A: Design, implement and
evaluate programs and care routines for
children
Design and implement programs to enhance
development of children
Contents
Gather information about each child’s development to inform the
program and routines
3
Develop and implement child-centred programs that aim to
extend children’s experiences and develop their self-help skills
4
Strategies to widen children’s experiences
4
Helping children develop self-help skills through a routine
5
Develop and implement programs and routines to foster all
aspects of children’s development in a holistic way and support
smooth transitions
Programming for individual children
6
Ensure programs provide for capabilities, interests, emerging
skills and backgrounds of children who attend the service
9
Diverse resources
9
Ensure all resources required for program are identified and
available at the required time
11
Develop a flexible daily timetable, incorporating developmental
opportunities, routines and transition experiences
12
Accommodating children’s rhythms and timings in a routine
12
Provisions and their role in planning daily routines
14
Appendix 1: Individual family service plan models
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Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
Gather information about each child’s
development to inform the program
and routines
We have looked at strategies for gathering information on the program from the
major stakeholders. Other information that will be helpful for programming is
information on the child’s family and backgrounds.
Children are individuals and all have unique characteristics and needs, this also
includes identical twins. In order to continue to build an understanding of the
children in the service we need to consider each child as an individual in relation
to their family and social context.
Factors that will influence how children are cared for in the service include:
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home environment
family lifestyle and composition
social relationships and environment
cultural and language background
peers, friendships and caregivers
child-rearing practices.
The more information a service can gather about a child and their background the
easier it will be to provide care for the child.
The most effective methods for gathering information before the child starts care
and at the start of care are enrolment forms and interviews and an Individual
Family Service Plan (IFSP) which is particularly useful with families from diverse
backgrounds.
Most enrolment forms will gather basic information such as names, parents,
addresses, occupations, developmental history, care needs, medical requirements
and history and may even gather simple information on the child’s likes and
interests.
An IFSP will allow you to discuss specific needs with the parents and address
requests for caregiving.
In Appendix 1 you will find some model IFSPs.
Activity 1
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© NSW DET 2010
3
Develop and implement child-centred
programs that aim to extend
children’s experiences and develop
their self-help skills
In children’s services, we strive to ensure that whatever we do is child-centred.
Pause and reflect on what the concept ‘child-centred’ means. Did you say that it is
about developing and supporting children?
In your studies and experiences working with children, you would probably have
come across many ways in which we can develop and support children so that
they can thrive in all the development domains and, in the process, grow up into
individuals with a sense of identity, emotionally healthy, caring, and respectful of
others.
Let us look at one way of supporting children—ie, widening their experiences so
that they can grow to become individuals with a love of learning.
Strategies to widen children’s
experiences
Reflect on the scenario blow.
Blake, 4, on visiting his aunt in the country was fascinated by the
grasshoppers. He was given a bug catcher and encouraged to collect some (he
is reminded to treat them carefully and to let them go later). Off he went.
After collecting some grasshoppers in the dusty and drought-stricken garden
where most things were brown, he was found busily placing the grasshoppers
into a bowl of water 9the dog’s bowl).
When asked what he was doing, he said he was washing them because they
were dirty. Blake had only seen green grasshoppers and was putting his
knowledge of their colour (same as the dirt) and that you wash things that are
dirty.
After rescuing the grasshoppers from their bath, Blake’s aunt talked to him
about their colour. Why do you think they’re brown? They gathered some
books on insects and looked at camouflage and how animals and insects are
often the colour of their environment to protect them from predators.
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This reminds me of a three-year-old girl who had placed four newborn kittens into
a suitcase. When asked why she had done that, she said that it was to keep them
safe and warm. Little did she know that the poor kittens could suffocate. As
caregivers, we are educators. We would take (grab) the opportunity to explain
about how the kittens (like us) need to breathe.
You probably know of incidents similar to these, where a caregiver is an educator
and takes every opportunity to widen the child’s experiences. Children are
teachers—they can teach us what their interests are and we can take their lead.
Activity 2
Children as teachers
Follow children’s lead and we can discover new and exciting things—from a child’s
perspective.
Activity 3
Helping children develop self-help skills
through a routine
The development of the children’s self-help skills—do you know what stage this
relates to in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It is the fourth level of the pyramid,
which is about the need to feel competent and capable and our entitlement to
self-esteem.
Here are some ideas on how to encourage children's self-help skills:
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Involve the children in the daily routines as much as is practical.
Ask children to volunteer to help prepare for main events such as meal
times and rest time.
Ask children if they would like to help you to set tables or make up beds,
to set up equipment, etc.
Remember: The more the children are encouraged to participate the more likely
they are to progress through Maslow's pyramid.
Activity 4
Activity 5
The more children are encouraged to participate, the more likely they will
progress through Maslow’s pyramid.
Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
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Develop and implement programs
and routines to foster all aspects of
children’s development in a holistic
way and support smooth transitions
Programming for individual children
Think of the children you work with (if you are already working in a children’s
centre) or think of siblings in the families you know. It is easy to see that children
are individuals—with their individual likes dislikes, needs, temperaments and
strengths and interests.
Program for individual children
How do you program for groups, bearing in mind that each child in every group is
an individual? We first need to gather information about individual children so we
can understand how their needs and interests differ from those of others—and
how they converge.
Activity 6
Program for groups
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© NSW DET 2010
Activity 7
Daily routine
Reflect on what you know about planning care routines (from your work
experience or from what you’ve read or studied).
Think about how a routine structures the day to enable a smooth flowing and
predictable day. A good program will also have some routine built into it to
provide a framework on which to operate much in the same way our skeleton
provides a framework for our bodies. It is not obvious but holds everything
together.
How do you view the way in which daily routines are related to programming? A
program is the ‘big picture’. Daily routine is one way in which a program is
implemented.
Program during routine times
We cannot program without taking into account the daily routine of the room and
the service—this should support the program rather than the program being
dictated by the routine.
A daily routine needs to be flexible to fit a program’s philosophy. For example, the
daily routine needs to allow children to continue a provision they are engrossed
and postpone morning tea for a little later.
Incorporating transition times
Transition time refers to that time when children move from one part of a daily
routine to another, for example, when they move from outdoor play time to
music time. Transition time is something we consider when programming. For
example, in our program, we take into consideration that some children may not
want to stop what they have been doing and move on to another part of the
routine. If one of the cornerstones of our program is flexibility, how do we handle
such a situation? What strategies do we use to ensure that transitions are smooth
and children are happy?
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© NSW DET 2010
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Incorporating the outdoor program
Planning for outdoors is important just as planning for indoors is but
unfortunately, many services neglect to plan effectively for what equipment to
put out and little thought is given to the unique learning opportunities the
outdoors present.
Here are some good examples of outdoor areas:
A water experience
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A camping experience
Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
Ensure programs provide for
capabilities, interests, emerging skills
and backgrounds of children who
attend the service
Resources and the learning experiences they are part of provide children with
learning opportunities—as such they too play the role of a teacher. We need to
provide a wide range of resources in the room and they need to be open-ended
resources that will provoke curiosity and learning.
The planning of resources for experiences are integral to programming—in fact,
there needs to a space on our programming format so resources can be listed.
Remember to use community resources. Develop a list or resource database to
assist planning. In particular, include people within the community, service staff
and families. Also, take a close look at the physical resources available in the
service and consider how they can be adapted or modified for use in a number of
ways. Remember that children improvise with what they have and use resources
in innovative ways.
Experiences and resources should be selected on the basis of a number of criteria:
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Do they support and develop children’s identities?
Do they develop competence, self-esteem and confidence in children?
Children who are confident will respond to challenges more positively.
Do they allow for a number of different ability levels so a child can make
an attempt at a level they feel comfortable with?
You will probably think of other criteria. Below are more criteria, this time
focusing on diversity.
Diverse resources
Always think about the impact of every resource you choose in terms of the
messages conveyed to the children and families using the service. Remember that
as caregivers we continually build on our understanding of the backgrounds of
service users and we make sure that our resources reflect diversity from the local
community, thus creating for the children a feeling of familiarity.
Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
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Remember to always be inclusive and not to marginalise anyone or send subtle
messages about one group being better than another—be aware of what
messages you are sending to boys or girls, children from various cultural
backgrounds, children of different economic backgrounds, children with
additional needs, children with disabilities and children from different family
structures. Are you (or the resources and experiences you are providing) making
them feel unwanted, not as good, odd or ‘abnormal’? Or are you teaching
everyone to value difference and diversity?
Below are a few guidelines on inclusive practice and the use of diverse resources.
If you have completed studies in inclusive practices, you will find this to be an
opportunity to revise. If you are working in childcare, take this opportunity to
reflect on practices at work.
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Use authentic materials—real, everyday resources not stereotypical ones.
Ensure resources cover all areas within the program not just a few photos,
a couple of bilingual books and a few multicultural dolls or pairs of
chopsticks.
Avoid tourist or token approaches, eg, a week for a specific ethnic or
cultural group. Instead integrate diversity into everyday experiences and
routines. Adapt routines to reflect varying cultural needs of children and
families.
Diverse resources should be easily identified in the service and available
all the time, not just brought out of the storeroom for special occasions
like accreditation.
Resources need to:
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portray realistic images of people who are like the children in the service
as well as introducing people who are different to broaden their
knowledge and experience
show diverse physical characteristics, including children with a disability
reflect the diverse range of families and family lifestyles
challenge gender roles
challenge cultural stereotypes
reflect children with additional needs
reflect the everyday lives of users and community members
include languages other than English, even if there are no children with
other languages in the service
include some stereotypical resources to trigger discussion.
Remember that appropriate resources and experiences alone do not constitute
good quality care. Needless to say, we, as caregivers, play a critical role in
supporting children’s development and well-being—children respond to us if care
about them and value and respect them.
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© NSW DET 2010
Ensure all resources required for
program are identified and available
at the required time
Of course spontaneity is great and helps develop children’s imagination, but for a
planned program you should ensure that all the resources are available and in
good condition when the children need them. For example, for the music
program you should ensure that there are enough musical instruments to go
around so that no child misses out. Or suppose that today you are going to use
scarfs as a prop in the movement session. The music has been chosen and is ready
to be played, a placed cleared and you discover that all the scarfs have been tied
together to be used as a decoration in the home corner. A little forethought and
preparation would have been all that was needed to ensure that the resources
were ready at the required time.
Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
11
Develop a flexible daily timetable,
incorporating developmental
opportunities, routines and transition
experiences
Accommodating children’s rhythms and
timings in a routine
Most of us feel comfortable and secure when we have routines that are
maintained. We have discussed in the forum choices about what we like to eat
and when we like to eat, to rest when we feel like it and so on.
As caregivers, we would encourage children to follow the routine at the centre. As
adults, we are aware of the feeling of emotional stress and hardship when there is
a disruption to our routine. We also know how it feels to be reassured and
confident when our needs are being catered for by routine.
The question that arises, however, is: How do we get all children in our care to
follow one routine when they might each have their own individual rhythms and
timings?
Activity 8
External influences affecting child’s rhythms and
timings
There are a number of external influences on a child’s individual routine.
Activity 9
Activity 10
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© NSW DET 2010
Child’s individual rhythms and timings
One of the first aspects of children that the staff of any service needs to look at is
the ages of the children enrolled at the centre. Are they under two, between
three and five or of widely varying ages?
It is important to look at the children’s ages because it will have a bearing on the
grouping of children and the planning of rooms, for example:
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A pre-school service has children from only three to five years. If the
service has two rooms, how will staff group the children? They would
most likely have a mix of three to five year olds in each room.
A long day care service would have children from 0–5 years. If there are
two rooms, how would staff group the children? One set-up may be to
have a mix of 0–5 year olds in each of the two rooms. Alternatively, the
service might put the infants and toddlers in one room and the
preschoolers separately in the other room. In each of these
groupings,there would be several different needs which all have to met on
an individual basis.
Once we have grouped the children at our centre, we need to ask ourselves how
we will be able to meet the individual needs to children within these groupings?
Differences in children of the same age
It is important to remind ourselves that all children are unique. Even within an age
group, there are individual needs and differences. Each child will learn new skills
at different times although there is a general age range that we can expect
children to learn new skills. Not all two-year-olds will toilet-train at exactly the
same time. Not all five year olds will use identical vocabulary to express
themselves. It is important that routines are planned so that children can have the
opportunity to show they are ready to take on the new skill as well as practise it
and accomplish a task using that skill.
Catering for the differences in the sleep patterns
among infants
Have a look at the following table of typical sleep patterns of infants.
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© NSW DET 2010
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Typical sleep patterns of infants
Newborns
Newborns may sleep anywhere between 12 to 20 hours out of
every 24 hours, in around four to six sleep periods. They do not
usually have a regular sleep pattern, although a patter may emerge
after about the sixth week of life.
For three
months
Many three-month-old infants sleep approximately 15 hours out of
24 hours, in about four sleep periods, with longer wakeful periods
for feeding and sleeping in between. Some many sleep for a long
period at night while others wake up a couple of times at night for
feeds.
From six
months
More predictable sleep patterns start to develop after six months of
age. There’s usually a long sleep at night and two or three naps
during the day. Some will wake at night.
From 12 months
After the first birthday, many infants are sleeping for 10 to 13 hours
in each 24 hours and have one daytime nap of one to three hours.
This pattern will probably remain stable through the toddler years.
Activity 11
Provisions and their role in planning
daily routines
In this next section we are going to discuss provisions. This means looking at what
other factors need to be considered when planning a routine. Examples of
provisions are:
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physical provisions—eg resources and the environment
human provisions such as the caregivers, parents and children.
Physical provisions
We will be investigating strategies for utilising the physical provisions of the
environment to help effectively plan daily routines. Physical provisions can be
resources such as bedding and nappy-changing equipment and it can also be how
we arrange the room. For example, some children need less rest time than others
so thinking about how you can accommodate these preferences may involve
having areas set up for quiet activities with a barrier separating that area from
those children who will rest for longer times on their beds.
How you arrange the physical provisions will depend on the architectural design
of the building as well as on what resources you have at your disposal. You will
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© NSW DET 2010
need to talk with your colleagues on how best to arrange the physical provisions
to best meet the needs of the children.
Activity 12
QIAS principles on routines
What does the Quality Improvement and Accreditation System (QIAS) specify
about routines? The standard set by QIAS shows us the importance of establishing
quality care routines for the children and maintaining these standards at all times.
Access the QIAS Quality Practices Guide at
http://www.ncac.gov.au/publication_extracts/qias_qpg_preambles.pdf
Quality area 6: health, nutrition and wellbeing
Activity 13
Activity 14
Activity 15
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© NSW DET 2010
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Appendix 1: Individual family service
plan models
Model 1: Individual family service plan
Individual family service plan
Child’s name:
Date:
DOB:
Review:
Age:
Recommendations
for planning
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Strategies
Responsibility
Evaluation
Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
Model 2: Individual family service plan
Individual family service plan
Name:
DOB:
Age: _____years _____months
Address:
Centre:
Case manager:
Summary of present performance:
IFSP team members:
Name
Position
Signature
Review dates:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
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© NSW DET 2010
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Model 3: Individual family service plan
Name:
Age
Date:
Long-term objective
Person responsible:
Review date:
Rationale
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Short-term
objectives
Experiences
Strategies
Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
Model 4: Individual family service plan
Name:
Age
Date:
Evaluation
Name:
Date
Objectives
Experiences
Strategies
Follow-up
Model 5: Individual family service plan
Child’s name:
Age
Date:
Evaluation
Evaluator’s name:
Objectives
Rationale/Things
I’m ready for
Areas of intervention
1
2
3
4
5
Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
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Model 6: Individual family service plan
Child’s name:
Program beginning:
DOB:
Current age:
Domain
Baseline
Goal
Cognitive
Play
Social
Language
Fine motor
Gross motor
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Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9397
© NSW DET 2010
Model 7: Individual family service plan
Child’s name:
Program beginning:
DOB:
Current age:
Domain
Goal
Evaluation
Cognitive
Play
Social
Language
Fine motor
Gross motor
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© NSW DET 2010
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