Planning, designing and managing for quality in the integrated system

The first edition of the Handbook of Early Childhood Education Services is intended to be a useful tool to accompany and support the work of all those who - with different roles and competences - are involved in the world of early childhood education services.

The Handbook is the result of the efforts of a multi-professional technical group set up at Istituto degli Innocenti in Florence. It draws much inspiration from the work carried out in the interregional contexts of meetings and propositional reflection that took place within the framework of the monitoring activities of the educational services for children promoted by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers - Department for Family Policies and carried out with the collaboration of Istituto degli Innocenti.

Focusing fundamentally on preschool provision, as the main ingredient of the supply system, the manual consists of over 200 factsheets, and is full of links to specially prepared databases on both updated data on the demand for and supply of services for 0-6 year olds and, finally, on the legal and regulatory frameworks currently in force in the various regional areas of the country.