Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) Program

The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) program is based on research on promoting resilience and reducing the risk of young children developing social and emotional skills deficiencies. It helps teachers assess their entire classroom environment as well as individual children, and provides clear guidelines for what teachers can do to promote resilience in young children. It has been used with white, African-American, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native-American children aged 2 through 5. The DECA-Clinical* (DECA-C) behavior-rating scale is designed to support early intervention efforts to reduce or eliminate significant emotional and behavioral concerns in young children.

Approach
DECA helps teachers assess and adapt the classroom environment to promote positive relationships, self-control, and initiative-taking as core skills for school-readiness. It also helps teachers identify behaviors that are not age-appropriate and target explicit strategies to help individual children. DECA is also parent-friendly. Teachers and parents:

• Collect information on current classroom practices (e.g., environment, daily activities, age-appropriate materials) and background information on each child (e.g., strengths, needs, culture, etc.).


• Administer the DECA tool to assess for attachment (e.g., "During the past 4 weeks, how often did the child do things for himself?"), self-control (e.g., "During the past 4 weeks, how often did the child handle frustration well?"), initiative (e.g., "During the past 4 weeks, how often did the child ask adults to play with or read to her?"), and behavioral concerns (e.g., "During the past 4 weeks, how often did the child cooperate with others?").

• Review their ratings together and create an individual profile for the child; after each child has his or her own individual profile, the teacher can create a plan for the classroom.

• Develop and implement strategies for each child (if needed) as well as for the entire classroom, to better support children’s strengths and devise protective factors.

• Through observation, evaluate progress to see if the created plans are effective.

Training and technical assistance are available. Training sessions are flexible in length and can range from a 2-day (13-hour) training session to one that lasts from 4 to 6 weeks to allow for staff to practice with the materials and their new skills. For more information, contact Janet Burke at (804) 644-9590, ext. 3017 or jburke@childsavers.org.

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