PLATform with ONline Interventions for Children

Typical child development is often taken for granted both by the parents and educators, up until the moment they face some issues and challenges of early childhood themselves. There is a vast number of developmental challenges that we encounter in the early stages of childhood and it is often unclear how the professionals and parents should act and which actions undertake. After the through insight into the practices regarding the early intervention in all partners' countries it was obvious there was a lot of room for practice improvement especially in regard of introducing some handy tools to the wide audience of users via digital technologies available such as smartphones. Thus the idea of developing a platform with online interventions and mobile application for tracking developmental issues seemed as a valuable contribution to the community, especially the parents and early childhood teachers and caregivers. Since the importance of early intervention lies within having the action taken as early as possible it seemed crucial to enable them to follow the milestones and either dismiss the concerns or take the steps in the right direction in order to provide the child with the adequate specialist's attention and treatment.

The creation of the platform and the application depended heavily on the quality of the PR1 and the research taken in all five partner countries. Our main goal was to create an evidence based project result in the shape of the guidelines for best practices and early intervention exercises to improve the key competences of professionals working with the children in childcare and preschool as well as parents, who lack support and knowledge and often reach for the world wide web to seek help. In such attempts they come across a variety of information, most of which is not supported scientifically and of a dubious quality. By implementing this project we aimed to provide high quality scientifically proven data and best practices as regarded by the relevant experts in order to allow parents, teachers and caregivers to be able to face the issues regarding the developmental challenges and support them in stirring in the right directions when trying to reach professional help. By publishing those materials on the platform and within the application, we wanted to make it highly accessible and free to use to all stakeholders, thus providing a highly inclusive project results that would be useful to many and would benefit the children.

In our project activities there were planned and implemented in three phases. for each phase, the partners agreed and carried out the activities at the same time according to previously agreed rules or, depending on the activities, they agreed together on the ways and methodology of carrying out certain activities. The above referred to joint thinking, evaluation and reflection of each individual activity. A large part of relationship communication the preparation, organization and implementation of the activities took place through email correspondence. In first phase referred to guidelines for best early intervention exercises and developmental tracking practice. This phase was led and coordinated by the Croatian team. In this phase, all partners formulated and prepared protocols for desktop research, and instruments for qualitative research.. This included protocols for focus groups with ten – twelve experts, as well as questionnaires for parents and questionnaires for experts. Questionnaires for experts included self-evaluation competencies for inclusive practices. The selected experts to complete the questionnaire are: preschool teachers, teachers, early childhood educators, pediatricians, language therapists, psychologists who work in nurseries, kindergartens, outpatients, polyclinics and other institutions. Research questions were established, and each expert conducted an analysis of pertinent professional literature, professional or scientific articles, and documents from UNICEF and WHO. The results obtained were thoroughly analyzed, leading to the formulation of conclusions and the creation of written expert. articles.Croatian partner conducted the desktop research and filed research in each country. Two main research questions were asked: 1. what are the quality indicators during early observation and early intervention from the position of parents and experts? 2. what support do parents and experts need during the process of early detection and early intervention? The partners have agreed on how the documents will be analyzed and how the abstracts will be written. Written study in the form of report with best practice guidelines. It is important to note that during this phase there was a departure from the initial large sample of respondents, and that during the implementation a common conclusion was reached that it is also not necessary to write the mentioned professional article at the beginning of the agreed hundred pages, the optimal number of pages that the article includes was agreed upon. In second phase referred to making off On- line platform with screening instruments and early intervention exercises. For this phase an Italian partner was coordinator. That was a innovative solution facilitating easy access to the platform for early intervention, designed for children from birth to the age of six,that was translated into six languages. The app was designed and in the communication with partners there were choosen the very best tools. The application encompasses developmental milestones, monitoring tools, advice, and suggested activities to encourage child development, particularly addressing developmental concerns.All partners gave different solutions for the app to be more simple and understandable for parents of the children. The third phase referred to making of Development tracker mobile application.For this phase a Turkish team was coordinator .The platform and its content were seamlessly integrated into the mobile application. The project teams tested the app and according to their input certain changes were done. Two LTT activities were realized which aimed to raise the level of professional competences of researchers. Two live transnational project meetings and more online meetings were realized at the same time. Notably, in every of five countries were organized multiplier event on which participants (parents of preschool children and experts who work in diverse fields), had an opportunity for them together to think and suggest changes in application. Before each individual event, team members prepared materials in printed and online form, including signature lists, brochures, flyers, receipts, etc.The application projects were presented on the respective websites of five partners. Additionally, comprehensive updates on all realized activities were consistently published on the Facebook pages of the involved partners.

Main outputs of PLATONIC project that have been planned and achieved are: 1. ‘’Guidelines for best early intervention exercises and developmental tracking practices’’ as a main output of the first phase of project is translated in all six languages: Turkish, Macedonian, Croatian, Portuguese, Italian and English and available to download from platform. Guidelines are consisted of: General Guidelines for Early Intervention, Indicators of Quality, Suggestions For Improving Competencies For Providing Early Intervention Activities Among Professionals, Guidelines For Improving Competencies For Early Intervention In Inclusion Settings, Recommendations For Settings And Environment Preparation For The Meeting With Parents. Other concrete outputs are research design, protocols for desk-top research, protocols for focus groups with experts in the relevant fields, and instruments for the quantitative study (questionnaires for parents). Questionnaires for experts have not been planned in project but it was necessary to construct that instrument as well and collect data from both groups to establish questions for more in-depth qualitative study (focus-groups) and to find the answers to two main research questions described in research design proposal. 2. E-learning platform with child development milestones; strategies for enhancing children’s development; translated in all six languages. 3. Mobile app developed for easy access to the platform; with developmental milestones, suggestions for enhancing children’s development; translated in all six languages available for Android (Google Store) an iPhone (App Store) 4. Other outputs: - More integrated use of ICT and open resources in preschool institutions; we are more competent in using video conferences, as well as other technologies: Google Drive for sharing materials, collecting and analysing science papers and materials with open access, presentation skills while sharing results in international conferences, creating materials for dissemination, - Applying new teaching methods and open pedagogy approaches that we learnt during project activities . We accomplished: increased access to on-line materials to pre-service educators; in-service preschool teachers and special educators; Increased access to on-line child-development content for parents and professionals; Increased transnational cooperation and exchange of good practices in the field of preschool education. 5. Document with research results is available in English and uploaded in the platform with open access. Project results are presented in 5 international conferences and published in Book of Abstracts.