TOY for Inclusion: Community Based Early Childhood Education And Care (ECEC) For Roma Children

The TOY for Inclusion approach creates and strengthens cross-sectoral co-operation among all agencies that are involved in promoting the well-being and education of young children, especially those with minority or vulnerable backgrounds (ECEC, health, social services and community development organizations). The core idea of this project is to move away from the perspective that some children and families are harder to reach than others. Instead, the aim is to adopt a new perspective where services become easier to reach. This can be done by promoting inter-sectoral work, flexible solutions and contextualized responses to specific needs. TOY for inclusion improves the transition experience of vulnerable children, and especially those with a Roma, minority or migrant background, to schools. It does so by creating community based Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Play Hubs, where relationships between young children and families from different backgrounds are built. They are located in areas that are reachable for all families, and are designed and run by multi-sectoral teams composed by representatives of communities, school and preschool teachers, health services, parents and local authorities (Local Action Team). So far, 16 Play Hubs have been opened in 8 EU countries. From 2018, about more than 10.000 children, 5000 adults and 1000 practitioners participated in the activities in the Play Hubs. With With ‘TOY to Share: Play to Care’ we are: – Increasing access of harder to reach children (0-6) to inclusive and quality ECEC settings through the upscaling of the TOY for Inclusion approach – Increasing the knowledge and skills of educators, leaders of educational institutions, practitioners of the health sector, careers and local policy makers – Embedding the TOY for Inclusion approach in local educational policies.