The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) Program is comprised of five steps that focus on building three core protective factors within a young child – healthy relationships, initiative, and self-regulation – through promoting resilience in the family and early care and education environments.
The first step consists of collecting information, getting to know the young children in our care, their families, culture, and overall way of life. The second is actually completing the DECA on each child, which both teachers and parents can do. The third step is about summarizing assessment results, both on a group (classroom) level and an individual level. Step four is where you plan and implement strategies, and the final step is when you review and evaluate the progress of all that’s been done, before starting the process all over again. (For more on the DECA Program’s five steps, watch this video.)
When it comes to the third and fourth steps, it can be challenging to figure out the best ways to take them on. What do you do with the data you now have? How do you summarize it, and discuss it with teachers/caregivers, and especially parents/families? How can you put strategies into action, not only in the classroom and care environment, but the home as well? This is where programs partnering with parents/families is essential, and recently, one program reached out to us to share how they took on the DECA Program’s third and fourth steps in a creative way.
Clayton Early Learning, located in Denver, CO, took the third and fourth steps of the DECA Program into their own creative hands and designed what they call their “DECA wall.” In the photos below, you’ll see how they used this wall to explain their use of the DECA, to provide definitions of the three core protective factors, to share the results of the completed parent assessments on a group/classroom level, and to provide a way for parents/families to access strategies to implement at home. Our team was elated to see such a beautiful and impactful way of sharing results and strategies. We hope it gives you and your program some inspiration and that it sparks your own creative minds!
And here’s a bit more on this DECA wall from the Clayton Early Learning team:
We wanted to brainstorm a way to loop in our parents and families. We have a data wall at our school that we use to share data with parents/families in an approachable way. This summer, we worked on our DECA wall, showcasing beach ball pie charts! The pie charts showed parent ratings for infant, toddler, and preschool total protective factors in the spring. Our early intervention team selected some of the home strategies from the e-DECA to share via QR code.
(Click on the images for a bit of a closer look!)
January 22, 2024
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