The ICDP programme was introduced in the Higashi Mikata Hoikuen nursery school. The nursery is located in the Hamamatsu (浜松市, Hamamatsu-shi) city in western Shizuoka Prefecture. Link to the nursery website: ひがしみかた保育園 (h-mikata.com).
Hitoshi Maeshima, ICDP trainer and doctor by profession, shared his story about this new ICDP endeavour:
This year (2021), I was contacted by a nursery school director who asked me to become their school doctor. The school in question is the Higashi Mikdat Hoikuen nursery, which opened in April 2021. It can accommodate 120 children and 27 nursery teachers. Several months later, around the 10th of June, the director, the secretary and a nursery teacher visited my clinic and we agreed that I should become their official doctor. I used this opportunity to talk about ICDP; I explained that I went to England three times to participate in ICDP training workshops and afterwards I started to apply the ICDP programme in Japan. During the ten years of using the ICDP programme I discovered how by following the simple ICDP guidelines the relationship between caregivers and their children can be improved, promoting a balanced development of the child’s emotions and intellect. The director has many years of experience in childcare and immediately expressed interest in the programme and showed her appreciation and understanding about the importance of the ICDP guidelines in childcare. She confirmed that she would like to apply the ICDP programme in practice in the nursery and also with the nursery teachers. I agreed to help introduce the programme and we made plans for the training. My first visit to the nursery took place on 14th of July 2021 – during this visit I started the training of the nursery teachers ( see photo above).