Preparing Practitioners To Work with Infants, Toddlers and Their Families: Issues and Recommendations for the Professions.

This publication offers a framework for thinking about the issues surrounding the preparation of personnel who work with infants, toddlers, and their families. Also provided are a common language with which to communicate across disciplines and recommendations for collaborative action to improve training for all infant/family practitioners. Section I reviews some of the difficult training issues confronting professionals and their organizations, such as role clarification, respect, and relationships. Section II describes the variety of settings and service programs that employ infant/family personnel in myriad roles, differentiating domains of professional concern in fostering infant/toddler development. Section III examines efforts to define "competence" for practitioners working with infants, toddlers, and their families. Section IV outlines in seven areas a set of key concepts which underlie all sound practice with children and families in the first 3 years of life. Section V looks at four elements of training that seem to foster competence and describes their use in preservice, inservice, and professional development activities. Section VI suggests priorities for collaborative action among parents, policymakers, educators, and professionals to improve training of infant/family practitioners. Appendix A provides examples of promising training approaches; appendix B lists sources of additional information. (RH)