The Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development is a free online publication that includes articles on the main topics related to the psychosocial development of children - from birth up to 5 years of age. This is the result of a project headed by the Center of Excellence for Early Childhood Development (CEDPI) and the University of Montreal in Canada with the help of experts from Canada, US, England, Australia and New Zealand.
The National Council of Health Secretariats (Conass), an organization that brings together state health departments, established a partnership with CEDPI to translate the Encyclopedia into Portuguese and invited the Maria Cecilia Souto Vidigal Foundation to perform the technical review of the translation.
Aimed at public policy makers, professionals of the area and parents, the encyclopedia covers 44 topics related to answering the following questions:
1. How important is this subject?
2. What is the most current and conclusive data available on this subject?
3. What can be done to improve services, policies and research?
This structure allows for different types of searches - a general overview as well as an in-depth view of each topic. In addition, some of the subjects include brochures aimed at parents, written in a simple, straightforward way, that are designed to help them in the development process of their children.
A few of the topics included in the encyclopedia are aggressiveness, breastfeeding, crying, stress, early childhood education programs and the reform of social welfare and reproduction technologies.