As part of Abu Dhabi Inspires

• First platform in the region to focus on ECD-related services and resources
• Aims to strengthen capabilities and confidence of parents and caregivers to support the holistic development and well-being of children from birth to 8 years old

  The Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority (ECA) has launched the Parents Platform to strengthen capabilities and confidence of parents and caregivers to support the holistic development and well-being of children from birth to 8 years old. The Parents Platform is part of Abu Dhabi Inspires, a program that drives forward innovative responses to current realities.

The Parents Platform, the first for early childhood in the region, aims at promoting community engagement by providing a sustainable content and sharing the necessary resources with parents, caregivers and stakeholders, to help them support children’s development and well-being, and enrich their experiences with the best practices for parenting. Moreover, the Parents Platform aims at making a community aware of the importance of early childhood development (ECD) and has the necessary tools to advance this vital sector.

Furthermore, ECA affirmed that the Parents Platform aims at providing parents and caregivers with the best resources, knowledge and practices towards achieving ECA’s goals and developing the early childhood sector which stars from pregnancy to 8 years old. In addition to bringing together the available resources and services for children and parents at the Emirate level, Parents Platform offers rich and sustainable content for its users, including families, child-related local and international entities and organizations, researchers, graduate students, volunteers, content creators and the business sector.

 The Parents Platform serves as a holistic and multi-sectoral hub for the most important ECD’s resources. It features valuable, interactive and accessible content that helps the target audience better understand child development pillars.  The Parents Platform also aims at raising the community awareness of the importance of adopting an aligned approach that is consistent with best international practices for parenting and nurturing the child from pregnancy to 8 years old, due to the importance of this age in shaping the child main characteristics and developing his capabilities and the physical, intellectual and mental health.

According to ECA, launching the Parents Platform came in partnership with a leading group of subject matter experts and specialists, local and international child-related entities and institutions from the public and private sectors, universities, institutes, and leading research and studies centers. This aims at offering the important knowledge resources to advance this sector, promoting the best practices derived from the scientific results of ECD’s recent research and studies, and deepening the Parents sense of parental responsibility and providing them with a rich and integrated content.

 The Parents Platform also supports both Arabic and English, with the aim of ensuring integrated and effective engagement between users, supporting the knowledge-based economy in ECD areas, creating a positive and advanced environment for bringing up children, monitoring challenges and helping the target audience overcome them, and maximizing the contribution of local content to developing the early childhood sector.

Additionally, the Parents Platform allows its users, including parents, caregivers, researchers and early childhood practitioners, to access the latest results of scientific studies and research, ECA’s most important projects and programs, and ECD-related recommendations. The platform also enables them to publish and share their research, suggestions and experiences in ECD, as well as answering their inquiries by leading global experts and specialists in ECA’s four key topics, including Health and Nutrition, Child Protection, Family Support, and Education and Early Care.

Within its strategic programs, ECA is keen on providing parents and caregivers with the necessary expertise, knowledge, skills and resources to develop their capabilities, improve their children’s health status, ensure implementing the best practices for child education and care, and correct misconceptions. The authority is also working on developing specialized systems and platforms to collect, track, analyze and use data to obtain the newest information on children, parents, caregivers and early childhood practitioners, thus providing them with integrated services. In addition to developing a flexible and effective strategy for following up and evaluating ECD process, ECA is using this data in assessing quality of ECD’s services.

ECA further called on the public to utilize the important resources and valuable information provided by  the Parents Platform, by visiting ECA website: www.eca.gov.ae, and clicking on  the Parents Platform tab in the home page.