El desarrollo psicomotor y la calidad de la atención temprana

Abstract

A transversal study was conducted to determine the relation between alert psychomotor development of children, 0 to 5 years old, and the quality of early attention of public and private Child Development Centers in the Municipality of Cuenca. The survey was conducted from August to December 2009 and consisted in measuring the attention process, the professional level of caretakers, available infrastructure, and family involvement. Using a simplified cluster sampling approach, 30 centers were randomly selected out of 166 centers. The composition of the sample of children was based on the following considerations: 5% delay in development, 3% error of inference, 95% confidence interval and 10% loss, resulting in a sample of 447 (n) out of a total study population of 8145 (N) children excluding the children with previous diagnosis of disability. To test the children’s delay in development the scale of Nelson-Ortiz (1999) was used. 23,3% of the centers were public, 23,3% had no legal registration, 10% of the centers were serving children with disability, 20% were rated as having very good quality, 3,3% good and 76,7% poor. Of the children surveyed 26% were not evaluated in their respective centers, 72,7% had teachers without professional qualification. The prevalence of children with alert development was 10,5% (IC 95%: 7,8 to13,7%), of these 79,6% had no record of detection and 93,9% were not referred for diagnosis or intervention or curricular adaptations. A significant relationship (p < 0,05) between the quality of early attention and the alert development of children was found.