2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE EIGHT - Public Welfare and Charitable Institutions (§§ 1 — 1422) › Chapter 22 - Act For The Development And Implementation Of The Public Policy On Early Childhood In Puerto Rico (§§ 391 — 398) › § 391 - Definitions

For the purposes of this chapter, the following terms shall have the meaning expressed hereinbelow:
(a) A.C.U.D.E.N.— Child Care and Development Program of the Children’s Care and Integral Development Administration.
(b) A.D.F.A.N.— Administration of the Family and Children.
(c) Accreditation.— An official recognition granted to a program by a recognized institution or organization following an evaluation process in which it is verified that said program operates at satisfactory levels of excellence and quality in the programmatic or academic as well as in the administrative aspect.
(d) Birthing/Labor.— The culmination of human pregnancy whereby an infant issues forth from his/her mother’s uterus.
(e) Learning environment.— The physical and psycho-emotional space that provides materials, experiences, and opportunities for involvement and learning in all dimensions of development.
(f) Attachment.— It is a significant reciprocal relationship; it is the bond between the child and his/her caregiver which makes him/her feel loved, cared for and protected, through contact and sensory stimuli (voice, eye contact, sound, and touch, among others).
(g) Learning.— It is the lasting change in conduct and in human capabilities as a consequence of the interaction and experiences with the environment.
(h) Archaeology.— The science that studies all things relative to the arts and monuments of antiquity.
(i) Arts.— The manifestation of human activity whereby a personal and selfless vision is expressed to interpret something real or imagined with plastic, linguistic or soniferous resources.
(j) Plastic arts.— The expression of ideas in representative form by employing a wide array of materials, forms, lines and colors; the manipulation of these materials and elements to obtain a work of art. Plastic arts also include two of the Fine Arts: painting and sculpting.
(k) Popular arts.— The arts cultivated by mostly anonymous artists, based on the traditions of a people.
(l) Visual arts.— A group of disciplines which enable human communications through time or between individuals. Visual arts represent images and express feelings by employing different media, in accord with the discipline to which they belong. Some of these disciplines are those called traditional visual arts, such as drawing, sculpting, and painting, and the nontraditional visual arts, such as animation, interactive art, calligraphy, and photography.
(m) Well-being.— Optimum affective state in which persons feel and manifest a sense of satisfaction and serenity.
(n) Screening.— The process/means whereby the health of the child is assessed, through information provided by the parents/relatives, by medical tests/examinations, development screening tests, sensory tests, and behavioral tests, with the purpose of conducting individualized planning according to the strengths and needs of the child.
(ñ) Life cycle.— The continuous process of passing from one stage of human development into another invariably, and therefore, predictably.
(o) Learning community.— Group of persons who share interests and objectives, who learn from one another and who develop collective strategies to foster the integrated development of children.
(p) Governor’s Multi-sector Council on Early Childhood.— A Committee composed of representatives from government agencies that, one way or another, offer early childhood services, and representatives from professional organizations, providers of early childhood services, parents, higher education institutions, and parents’ organizations, among others, whose purpose is to develop and implement the public policy on early childhood.
(q) Physical growth.— Development in terms of height, weight, and other bodily changes that take place as the child grows older. These changes can be measured and quantified.
(r) Preconception and prenatal care.— A care program for women in their reproductive years, which ranges from the time before pregnancy to the term of pregnancy before the baby is born. This care program increases the chances of having a healthy baby and includes prenatal education and counseling.
(s) Culture.— Group of lifestyles and customs, knowledge and degree of artistic, scientific and industrial development within an era, a social group, etc.
(t) Popular culture.— The conglomerate of manifestations whereby the traditional life of a people is expressed.
(u) Curriculum.— The whole of daily experiences which, when organized and guided by pre-established purposes, encourage children to become actively involved in their learning process. It is an educational tool that is organized and flexible, which lends support in guiding the learning experience and the development of children in an integrated manner. It is supported by philosophical and theoretical paradigms, as well as empirical findings, which allow us to know and understand children. The curriculum should offer strategies to tend to the particular characteristics of the children’s physical, social, emotional, linguistic and cognitive development, so that they may reach their individual potential. An appropriate curriculum stimulates natural curiosity, exploration and problem solving by providing a temporal and a physical setting.
(v) Dance.— One of the Fine Arts, whereby dancers use rhythmic body movements, usually accompanied by music, as a means of communication and expression.
(w) Sports.— Regulated recreational activity conducted for children in their early childhood with a formative-educational (noncompetitive) purpose and which comprises the phases of movement education and initiation in pre-sports activities and playing with simple rules. Sports stimulate the development and practical exercise of values and skills, such as respect for others and team work.
(x) Playful sports.— Sports activities engaged in outside of the professional and educational settings for amusement, recreation and entertainment; this kind of sports has no delimited time or space or strict rules which constrain its possibilities. These sports are practiced in community spaces for sports, on the streets, in parks, in free recreational spaces of the city, and at recess in schools. These sports include movement or sensory activities conducted during spare time and which place demands on children that are within their reach according with their physical condition and their age and which are practiced according to the developmental stage of children in their early childhood.
(y) Integrated development.— Child development which takes place simultaneously and comprises all dimensions of being, such as the physical, the social, the emotional, the linguistic, the cognitive and the creative areas.
(z) Social-emotional development.— Social-emotional development is the continuous evolution of the relationship of individuals and the persons around them, their emotions and their feelings (towards others and towards themselves). A healthy social-emotional development in children involves their ability to establish positive relationships with other children and with the adults within their environment. These relationships are essential for children to be able to develop a sense of security and self-esteem, to feel capable and to have a positive view of the world around them.
(aa) Enjoyment of spare time.— The use of spare time to conduct playful activities, such as recreational, artistic or sports activities, among others.
(bb) Child safety devices.— The mechanisms which help in the prevention of injuries in young children. These are used to prevent minors from being injured due to hazards — both internal and external — in homes and day care centers.
(cc) Early education.— A program constituted by enriching educational experiences that aim to achieve the integrated development of children from the time of their birth to the age of eight (8) years. This program has two educational levels: (1) pre-school level: from the time of birth until the age of four (4) years (includes infants and toddlers), and (2) grade school level: from five (5) to eight (8) years of age.
(dd) Assistive technology equipment.— The products, devices or equipment acquired commercially, modified or adapted, used to maintain, increase or enhance the functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.
(ee) Pre-grade school children.— Children between five (5) and six (6) years of age who typically attend Kindergarten.
(ff) Grade school children.— Children between six (6) and eight (8) years of age who typically attend the first, second or third grade in grade school.
(gg) Ethics.— Group of moral principles that govern the behavior of a group or society. As a science, ethics are the theory of moral behavior; ethics study morals and human behavior in order to determine what is right, and from that standpoint, how people are to conduct themselves.
(hh) Ethnography.— The science that studies and records the culture of peoples and communities.
(ii) Medical home.— A model for rendering cost-efficient high-quality services that uses a teamwork approach to provide health care services. A medical home originates in a primary health care facility that offers family-centered services. This model encourages the alliance between families and primary health service providers, in order to access all the medical and related services their children need and for children to reach their full potential. A medical home keeps a comprehensive and centralized record of all services related to the health of each family, so as to ensure continuity in health care services. This model strives to ensure services that are accessible, continuous, comprehensive, coordinated, compassionate and culturally appropriate.
(jj) Infants.— Children from the time they are born to the time they take their first steps.
(kk) Child play.— Any playful activity that is physical or mental in nature and provides experiences for integrated development and the formation of character.
(ll) Breastfeeding.— Feeding babies with breast milk to meet their nutritional requirements. In addition to nutritional and immunological benefits, breastfeeding has the potential of fostering emotional balance in infants and lay the foundations for the management of interpersonal relationships. Breastfeeding is deemed to be one of the most powerful tools to cultivate the mother-child relationship.
(mm) Licensing.— The process of evaluating, supervising and granting a written permit or license by a duly authorized institution, whereby a natural or juridical person is authorized to initiate or continue with the operation of an establishment or institution devoted to the care or education of minors, or the placement of minors in institutions for their adoption.
(nn) Literature.— The art that employs words as the instrument for and means of expression; literature is also one of the Fine Arts. Literature also refers to the array of literary productions of a nation, an era, a genre, or a specialized field.
(ññ) Health maintenance.— The group of efforts conducted by all parties involved in the preservation of the health of an individual or group of individuals. Health maintenance includes practices directed to the prevention, remediation or management of diseases.
(oo) Toddler.— A term to denominate infants from the time they begin to walk with little control over their movement to the age of three years.
(pp) Music.— The art of organizing sensibly and logically a coherent combination of sounds and silences (of human voices, musical instruments or both), by using the principles of melody, harmony and rhythm, with the purpose of causing delight, stimulating the senses and stirring the sensibility of those listening. Music is also one of the Fine Arts.
(qq) Museography.— The group of techniques and practices relative to the operation of a museum.
(rr) Early childhood.— For the purposes of this chapter, the stage within human development that ranges from birth to the age of eight years.
(ss) Developmentally appropriate practices.— The teaching and learning process, conducted so as to conform to the developmental stage and the particular way of learning of children, in order to help them meet challenging but reachable objectives that contribute to their continuous learning and development. These are practical guidelines developed in 1986 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and which have been updated recently, whereby the knowledge on child development is applied in the decision-making process regarding the practices employed in a program serving children in their early childhood. These present concrete strategies and examples of behavior accepted by the profession to guide teachers and caregivers as to how they should behave in terms of the care and development of the children under their care. Their fundamental principles and performance indicators are predicated on research in terms of how children grow and learn. They also provide guidelines for programs, administrators, teachers, parents, lobbyists and others who advocate for children.
(tt) Public policy.— The body of laws, regulatory measures, courses of action and fiscal priorities relative to a particular issue, promulgated by a government entity and which has an effect on the entire population.
(uu) Preschoolers.— Children between three (3) and four (4) years of age.
(vv) Prevention.— Interventions or actions applied at different levels in order to prevent or minimize the risk of the impact of a condition or a situation.
(ww) Promotion.— Actions directed toward enhancing the effect of strategies directed to improving the quality of life of children, such as those conducive to the incorporation of educational or child-rearing practices that are appropriate for this population.
(xx) Social protection.— The group of actions devised and conducted by different public and private sectors which strive to propitiate and assure coexistence within a peaceful environment free from violence, where children and youths are protected from mistreatment and negligence.
(yy) Early childhood recreation.— A group of diversified and stimulating playful activities engaged in for the enjoyment and amusement of children, from which they derive a sense of satisfaction and well-being and whose characteristics will change in accordance with the needs, abilities, interests and preferences proper to each child and his/her developmental stage.
(zz) Mental health.— May be defined as the state of optimum balance between a person and his/her social-cultural environment, which allows him/her to achieve self-fulfillment, to forge healthy relationships, to attain a sense of well-being and quality of life, to contribute to his/her community and to participate in a productive and fruitful manner in intellectual and working settings. However, the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) establish that there is no “official” definition of what constitutes mental health and that any definition concerning this matter will always be influenced by cultural differences, subjective assumptions, disagreement between professional theories and other considerations.
(aaa) Fetal alcoholism syndrome.— A condition characterized by the presence of abnormal facial features, retardation in growth, and problems concerning the central nervous system which may be present in an infant if the mother consumes alcohol during pregnancy. Children with this syndrome may face physical limitations and experience learning, social and behavioral problems.
(bbb) Public safety, safety in facilities, safety at home, safety in transportation, environmental safety.— These are some of the contexts in which strategies are developed and implemented in seeking to assure the well-being and the physical and emotional safety of children. Each of these aspects is a core component of a safety plan devised jointly by the different public and private sectors.
(ccc) Safety in emergency management.— The necessary preparations to face and address emergency situations in which the integrity of minors could be affected. This area includes the preparation of contingency plans to address any emergency situations that might arise.
(ddd) Safety in media and technology.— This area comprises the different safety aspects that must be addressed in view of the ever-increasing — and at times indiscriminate — exposure of children in their early childhood to the use of diverse technological equipment and communications media, such as television, computers, radio, and cellular phones, among others.
(eee) Safety in the prevention of unintentional injuries.— All measures, plans, initiatives and aspects relative to accident prevention and the protection of minors in situations which might place them at risk of sustaining any kind of harm due to preventable hazardous situations.
(fff) Family-centered services.— (1) Services to provide support and to procure the preservation of families, predicated on an approach based on their particular strengths and characteristics and which recognizes that the well-being of children is centered in their families. (2) Services rendered, whereby families are the center of any and all interventions.
(ggg) Habilitation services.— Interventions that strive to build the skills of a person with functional limitations caused by physical, psychogenic or social harm.
(hhh) Theater.— The art that involves the craft of acting and whereby stories are enacted before an audience by resorting to speech, gestures, scenery, music, sound and lighting, among others. It is also one of the Fine Arts.
(iii) Transition.— Action and effect of passing from one activity or living situation into another; for example, the passing of an infant from the home environment to the day care center, or the transition of a child from preschool to Kindergarten.
(jjj) Well baby care.— Initiative for the procurement of the well-being and the medical care of children during their first three years of life. The three main goals are assuring the vaccination of every child, providing families with the information they need about safety, nutrition and management of challenging situations, and identifying and offering treatment for health problems and developmental deficiencies.
History —June 18, 2008, No. 93, § 2.