What is Early Childhood Screening?
Early Childhood Screening is a programme that helps to identify health and developmental needs of young children before and during preschool years. There are two main types of screening programmes: general and specific. General screening programmes look at a wide range of issues including vision, hearing, height, weight, development, speech, and review of health and immunization information. 
Specific screening programmes do an in-depth analysis of each one of these issues.
Early Childhood Screening in Belize
Early detection of delays is crucial to the development of speech, language, cognitive, and psychosocial abilities. However, there is no formal Early Childhood Screening Programme done in Belize. If a parent and/or teacher feel that a child is not exhibiting the normal range of growth within the developmental stages, they would recommend that child to the Pre-School unit. The Pre-school Unit would then get the authorization from the parents and then the National Resource Centre for Inclusive Education (NRCIE) would be called in to do testing. However, many children are not identified and diagnosed until they are well into Primary School. To ensure that an “at risk” student is identified early and get the necessary help, pre-school teachers must possess the skills needed to use at least an informal screening instrument. They can call upon NCRIE to do a more formal test and to make recommendations. The key is equipping all interested persons with the skills so that they can work provide support for each other, resulting in a more unified endeavour.
Steps taken to improve the Early Screening in Belize
In January 2008, educational experts from Fontbonne University, working in coordination with St. John’s College, preschool teachers and Ministry of Education Personnel, got together to develop an appropriate screening instrument to be used by preschool teachers to help them identify “at risk” students. The screening instrument evaluated the students in the areas of receptive language, expressive language, basic concept development, fine motor skills, social/behavioural development, and cognitive functioning. A sample screening was done at 6 preschools. The sample screening was necessary to (1) familiarize the teachers with the process and (2) to make sure that the items on the instrument were not culturally biased.
The second leg of the Early Childhood Screening Project began in May of 2008. A meeting was held in the SJC JC AV room. Participants included one or two teachers from each of the six preschools, Preschool Unit Personnel, NRCIE personnel, Director of the Hunter Commission for Social Outreach, three professors from Fontbonne University and four graduate students from Fontbonne University.
The purpose of the meeting was to train the participants in the use of the screening instrument that had been developed in the first phase of the project.
Pre-school teachers were asked to participate in the screening as they will be ones who will be responsible for doing screenings at the beginning of each academic year. The team then proceeded to screen children at the sample pre-schools. The instruments used were for three and four year olds. The data gathered was used to further refine the instruments to make them useful in the Belizean context. Additionally, the Fontbonne professors began work on a five-year old screening instrument which could then be used in the primary schools since it was noted that only a small percentage of children begin their schooling in the country’s pre-schools.
On a subsequent visit, the Fontbonne professors did a series of workshops for NaRCIE personnel and pre-school teachers on several topics including: Speech and Language Disorders, Hearing Screening instruction and practice, Supportive Strategies for Speech-Language-Hearing Development.
During this time, discussions were held with the Director of QADS and with the Chief Education Officer about the development of the screening instrument. The Ministry of Education personnel were excited by the project and this led to the training of education officers based in the different district offices in the use of the screening instrument. These individuals then went into the field to pilot the instrument and presently the data collected has been sent to the professors for evaluation and further refinement.
The goal is to continue the project by training more teachers in its use so that it can become an official instrument in use in the educational system. This instrument will greatly increase the likelihood that students who need specialized instruction will be identified early in their school careers and will then be able to access the resources that they need to become successful students.
