Director's blog
June 29th, 2010 - The day after our national consultation meeting on 24th June, the draft Early Years (0-6) Strategy was released for consultation in Northern Ireland. We look forward to having a long-term plan for early care and education in the Republic of Ireland.
Children 2020
Ireland doesn’t have a comprehensive and sustainable system of early care and education that meets the needs and rights of all our children. We can’t achieve this overnight, but we can put the plans in place.
Download PDFs of our latest publications
Download PDFs of our latest publications: Planning for the Early Years, Children 2020: Giving children a strong start in life, Why early care and education?, The foundations of growth – investing in the next generation.
Why?
We all want our children to thrive, to be happy, and to develop to their full potential. Children’s early years are a wonderful opportunity. High quality care and education in their early years allows children to start strong, giving them solid foundations upon which they can build their lives.
Welcome to Start Strong
Start Strong is committed to advancing high quality care and education as a right for all young children in Ireland. Our advocacy is built on clear evidence of the benefits this brings for children, for the economy and for society.
We work to promote informed policy development and increased investment in young children. We support our advocacy with new research and the analysis of good practice. In particular, we are working to encourage the development of a 10-year national plan to bring early care and education in Ireland up to the highest international standards by 2020.
Start Strong was originally founded in 2004 as the Irish Childcare Policy Network (ICPN), a coalition of organisations and individuals interested in progressing childcare and early learning policies in Ireland. Following a series of generous contributions from our funders, ICPN incorporated as a company, hired full-time staff, and evolved into Start Strong in 2009.