Young children’s brains are built through interactions with adults. High quality interactions between an adult and child in the first five years is at the heart of building the young brain. Our project partners with the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) to harness the potential of their First 5 Forever (F5F) program to support children’s early development. F5F programs bring together program facilitators, children and carers to engage in early literacy experiences. This project seeks to boost F5F facilitators’ confidence, competence and capacity to implement brain building interactions with children and model to carers the interactional strategies that promote optimal child development. To do this we will work with the SLQ and F5F Managers and Facilitators to co-design a suite of resources for professional development purposes that are accessible and enable understandings of optimal interactional strategies for children’s development. The goal is to make every interactional moment matter in a child’s first five years by building and extending the capacity to all adults who interact with children to optimise their development and wellbeing.
Contact Dr Sandy Houen for more information
