Europe & North America
The programme was created in response to observations of the needs of parents who have problems with their children’s upbringing and education and find it difficult to manage them. Children and adolescents manifest these problems through behaviour and emotions, but they have not yet escalated to the point where placement in an institution is necessary. Placement in an educational institution seems to become less and less appealing to both parents and their children until the problems become completely unmanageable in the home environment.
Inclusion and equity in education can be improved when there are investments in children’s health and nutrition through well-designed school feeding programmes that provide food to children in school. Both a social safety net and a school health intervention, school feeding provides an opportunity for education systems to address multiple barriers at once.
Inclusion in education must start in the early years when the foundation for lifelong learning is built and fundamental values and attitudes are formed. Inequality in learning and development emerges during early childhood, before children begin primary school. Beginning to address inclusion when children begin primary school is simply too late.