What are the requirements to work in an early care center?

As awareness of the needs of children in the early years of their development increases, psychological intervention and health care in the field of childhood is a service offered by more and more professionals from both the health world and Psychology in general. The idea that children are just small versions of adults has already been discarded, and today we know that they present qualitatively different characteristics, not just a lack of experience and knowledge.

In the field of health intervention in young children, early care is the most demanded discipline and the one that is specifically in charge of caring for children from 0 to 6 years of age who may present some type of problem or deficit in their development at an emotional, maturational level, in language or in their abilities motor.

This type of intervention offers great satisfaction to the professionals in charge of caring for the children's needs and requires a high level of training, as well as some specific requirements.

If you want to dedicate yourself to early care and you want to know the main requirements to achieve your professional goalsPlease see the article below.

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What is early attention?

Early care is the discipline specialized in providing health, psychological, speech therapy, or any other area of ​​bio-psycho-social development that children from 0 to 6 years of age may need.

More specifically, early care professionals are experts in offering care and/or preventive treatment for children with developmental problems or at risk of suffering from them.

Likewise, these problems can also have various causes, and these can be of prenatal origin (originated before childbirth), perinatal (originating during delivery or immediately after delivery) or postnatal (originating after delivery and up to 6 years).

Interventions in early care are carried out in a multidisciplinary way by a team of specialized professionals working in a coordinated manner, among which three types of profiles stand out: psychologists, speech therapists and physiotherapists.

In addition to that, the intervention of the child's family is also essential, since the support of both parents and siblings or other close relatives, can function as a very useful therapeutic element during the intervention, even if they do not adopt professionalized roles.

But let's see in more detail what are the requirements to dedicate yourself professionally to early care.

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Main requirements to work in an early care center

Although early care can be an apparently heterogeneous discipline, which can be carried out in one way or another depending on the background of the professional who performs each intervention, in the case of Spain there are some essential requirements that are necessary to work in a health center early attention.

1. basic profiles

As indicated, early care teams are made up of essential professionals who work in a joint and coordinated manner and who come from the health sciences and Psychology.

These profiles are those of the psychologist specializing in early care, the speech therapist and the physiotherapist, and each of them offers a crucial service to attend to those deficits that the little one may present in its development.

In this multidisciplinary team, the psychologist will attend to those emotional deficits, psychological alterations, problems of maturational development or cognitive disorders; The speech therapist attends to language development deficits at a stage of life in which it is essential to relate to others and not have problems in language. first years of school, and the physiotherapist is in charge of the physical sphere, working on the prevention and detection of alterations that affect psychomotor skills and position. In all three cases, you have to go through 4-year university courses, and then train in specializations.

Each of these specialized professionals is responsible for attending to an area of ​​child development and to achieve success in their intervention it is necessary that they have the training and experience suitable.

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2. specialized training

To become an early care professional it is necessary to specialize with one of the many masters and postgraduate studies that are offered in our country and also on the Internet online. In this way, up-to-date training is obtained and more adapted to the practical aspects of day-to-day care for children and families.

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other professionals

In addition to the classic team of early care professionals, there are other complementary profiles that are specialists in child development and make their knowledge available for intervention with the child small

These other professional profiles can be requested by the specific institution in which the service is requested or by the relevant administration, and the most common are graduates in. Early Childhood Education, graduates in Primary Education, Pedagogues and Educational Psychologists.

Tailored intervention

Another of the main characteristics of early intervention intervention is that it must be adapted at all times to the characteristics of each boy or girl, always attending to their needs and their welfare.

This means that primary care professionals should always work according to the level of development of the child, their particular needs, their socio-cultural environment and their family situation. That is why it is of great importance to also work with the patient's family.

Working with the family is key

As previously indicated, the work with the family in the intervention in primary care must be constant and close, since the child's family represents a very important support for the client.

In these cases, the early care professional is the one who designs the intervention programs and strategies, but the The patient's family can also give their opinion on the type of intervention and is the one who puts it into practice on a day-to-day basis.

Do you want to train in early attention?

Do you want to improve your skills in early care and offer your patients the best possible treatment? Do not miss the opportunity to study the Master in Early Attention of Instituto Serca.

In this high-quality programme, you will be able to learn the latest techniques and approaches in this crucial field, and stay up to date with the latest research and developments. ¡Click here for more information and to enroll!