title: Early Childhood Development Programme--early detection.
abstract: The Early Childhood Development Programme has four main objectives. These are: 1. To foster child development in families with young children largely through personal involvement of the family in an education context. 2. To provide enrichment programmes to enrich the social, emotional and physical environment and to ensure that children with special needs have these needs met optimally. 3. To provide for the early detection of children who are more vulnerable because of the presence of a condition which may tend to limit optimal development and make the child more open to adverse influence of social or cultural pressures; that is a health assessment programme. 4. To provide a family support service for families of children with special needs to enable these families to foster and to fulfil themselves in the society in which they live. This family support service is seen as providing a structure for home centred parent/infant habilitation aimed at keeping the family in the main stream insofar as education and health are concerned.
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D002654:Child Care; D002657:Child Development; D002662:Child Health Services; D002669:Child Welfare; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004493:Education; D004644:Emotions; D004777:Environment; D005190:Family; D005581:Foster Home Care; D006801:Humans; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000458:organization & administration*