Interconnections between family, child care and education

Child care and early education settings are often the first step in the child’s journey towards a more diverse social world, bringing new relationships with adult caregivers and educators, friendships with other children and encounters with the wider community.These settings not only provide experiences for children’s learning and development but also provide families with social support, exposure to alternative models of caregiving and new ways of understanding children’s development. Thus, the influence of early childhood education and care (ECEC) on children and their development is both direct, via the interactions and experiences children have in their ECEC setting, and indirect, via the influence of ECEC on the family. This intersection of the family and the ECEC setting as complementary, inter-related influences on children’s development is an example of the mesosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model.