ICDP APPROACH

"Start with what they know, build with what they have"

- LAO TSU 700 B.C                                                                                 continue (page 1 of 5)

New insights in child development brought to light the significance of psycho-social intervention that should be considered as one of the essential objectives of any programme of assistance aimed at children at risk. In addition to health and nutrition, the overall agenda should also include the psychosocial component, not always present in such programmes.

The ICDP approach is based on the idea that the best way to help children is by helping the children’s caregivers. Under pressures caused by poverty, migration, catastrophes, wars, as well as cultural changes due to pressures of modern life, the basic psycho-social requirements for human development may be lacking, even though the child may physically survive. At the centre of basic human psycho-social needs is the need for establishing a long-term, stable, and caring relationship with the primary caregiver, without which children cannot develop properly. This is confirmed by evidence from many research studies in early affective deprivation (Spitz 1945, Hunt 1982, Skeels 1966). The objective, therefore, must be to sensitise caregivers, in order to enhance their ability to provide good quality care and to release empathic feelings towards their children. The most feasible strategy for helping children on a large scale is to support and educate children’s network of stable caregivers, which in practice means sensitizing families and communities to enhance their own ability to sustain the social, cultural and environmental conditions necessary for the growth and development of children.

CULTURAL APPROACH, WITHOUT IMPOSING FROM OUTSIDE

All cultures develop their own mechanisms for survival, development and care of children, and it is those ‘indigenous practices’ which need to be identified and reactivated in order to stimulate development which is truly authentic and long-lasting.

The first steps in this type of intervention, which, in fact, is more like sensitising than intervening, is to identify the local child rearing practices that can serve as a basis for further extensions and development, rather than impose concepts and regulations from outside. Rejection is a protective impulse when elements from outside are introduced that cannot be assimilated.

This rationale is applicable to most areas of intervention, regardless whether the intervention is material, technological or educational.

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