The Portage Home Teaching Scheme is an early childhood home visiting educational and support Service designed to help young children with additional needs and their families. It is a home-based intervention program for families of young children that supports parents as their children’s first, most valuable and influential teacher. Developed in Portage, Wisconsin by David E. Shearer in 1969, Portage Scheme has been used in many countries across the world to help children with special needs and disabilities in both rural urban areas.Portage model is based on the commonsense principle that parents are the key figures in the care and development of their child. Over the years, the Portage Model has evolved as a provider of quality programming and enhanced services in the area of early childhood and especially as an early intervention model.
The Portage Project is designed as an early intervention program model to service children with disabilities between the ages of birth to six, as well as their families.The Portage model is appropriate for use in various settings including Anganwadis, village and urban preschools, pre-kindergartens, infant programs, and Head Start programs, just to name a few. The Portage Project also offers training and technical support to other programs serving young children and distributes materials to support quality early childhood programs, In addition to providing direct home-based services to children and families.
The Portage Project is guided by the following four core values:
1.) Strength-Based: a focus on the strengths of children, families, and programs;
2.) Ecological: consideration of the larger environment in which children, families and programs exist;
3.) Family Focused: families and programs are the decision makers; and
4.) Relationship Based: most effective work is through relationships based upon trustthat supports each individual and forms the basis of the program implementation.
