Environment in Home and Center Based Settings Effect on Socio Emotional and Language Development of Infants

Abstract

Majority of infants of Dharwad district were under the care in home settings (76.48 %) and newline23.52 per cent were in center-based care. However, in rural locality all were under home care and none newlinein center-care. Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS) was used to assess home newlineenvironment as well as Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) centers. The observations of newlinecaregiver and child s interaction, quality of environment was made in child s homes and day care newlinecenters. newlineA sample of 112 infants of 6 to 36 months and their caregivers were drawn from urban and newlinerural areas of Dharwad district revealed that rural homes had significantly lower quality child care newlineenvironment when compared to urban homes and center-based settings. Most of the infants newlinebelonged to average level of socio-emotional (66.66 %) and language development (63.28 %) newlinefrom all three types of child care settings. Infants from center-based settings had significantly newlinehigher socio-emotional and language development indices than infants from home reared newline(both urban and rural). Better maternal education, positive temperament and interaction with newlinethe child predicted better developmental indices. The quality of center environment, caregiver newlineinteraction, caregiver-child ratio negated the ill effects of other factors implying that infants newlinefrom poor home environment and with difficult temperament benefit more from quality care newlineenvironment in centers. newlineThe intervention was highly beneficial in enhancing child care environment among newlinerural families. The gain in mean scores of quality on child care environment was significantly newlinehigher on dimensions of personal care routines, in provision of language and books, activities newlineand interaction. There were no changes in control group on any dimensions of child care newlineenvironment indicating that intervention as the causal factor for better quality of environment.