Page 17 - Accelerating Research and Impact - Issue 6

Creating an enabling environment
for early childhood development
This research funded by the Public Policy Research Funding Scheme from Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office investigated the mediating
roles of parental investment and parental distress in the link between poverty and children’s cognitive development, including attention and executive functioning, language (Cantonese and English), memory and learning, and visuospatial processing.
The team led by Prof Maggie Ka Wai LAU of School of Graduate Studies conducted assessments and surveys with preschool children and their parents in the 2019/2020 academic year, with an aim to inform policies in relation to the advocacy of maximum working hours, flexible work-life balance arrangements, quality parenting, accessibility of childcare service as well as promoting maternal employment:
• compared with household income, parental time investment and quality child-parent interactions generate positive impacts on early child cognitive development
Key policy recommendations
• the advocacy of active implementation of family- friendly policies, promotion of quality parenting, and increased access to childcare services will be crucial to enable parents to engage in learning- related activities with their children
• Promotion of family- friendly policies
To provide direct or indirect subsidies to companies undertaking family-friendly policies
• Advocacy of quality parenting
To provide subsidies to non- governmental organisations to promote quality parenting in early childhood
• Increase accessibility to childcare services
To implement fee remission measures to increase the accessibility to childcare services and to support the family function of working mothers
Caring for Lives Around Us
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