Service Integration

Nobel laureate Dr. James Heckman will be among the many experts coming to Moose Jaw this May for a comprehensive conference on early childhood development (ECD).

Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, will be the keynote speaker for Imagine Our Future – Investing in the Early Years, May 9 to 11.

The Moose Jaw Early Childhood Coalition is hosting the conference. Among those joining Heckman will be Dr. Stuart Shanker, Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at York University; Dr. Clyde Hertzman from UBC’s Human Early Learning Partnership; Jim Grieve, Assistant Deputy Minister, Ontario ELD; and Dr. Jean Clinton, McMaster University.

Aboriginal children make up a quarter of Saskatchewan’s child population, but they account for 80 per cent of the children within the child welfare system.

This is one of the key findings from a new report called Kiskisik Awasisak: Remember the Children, Understanding the Overrepresentation of First Nations Children in the Child Welfare System.

The report on Aboriginal children is part of the overall Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse 2008. It was put together from data in 2008 by a team from universities across the country and follows up similar reports using data from 2003 and 1998.

This month, in Saskatoon, one of the research team members, Dr. Vandna Sinha, assistant professor from McGill University’s Centre for Research for Children and Families, outlined the report’s findings concerning the characteristics of children and caregivers, of households, of cases and forms of maltreatment.

“Neglect is the primary category of maltreatment in 46 per cent of investigations,” Sinha said.

The University of Saskatchewan's Innovation Place will be the site of a gathering this month to examine First Nations children and their representation in the child welfare system. The event takes place Jan. 17 from 1:30 to 4 p.m. at the University of Regina's Faculty of Social Work Saskatoon Campus, Classroom 1 - The Atrium, Innovation Place (153-111 Research Dr.), Saskatoon.

The event will feature a presentation by Dr. Vandha Sinha, assistant professor at McGill University’s Centre for Research for Children and Families, on “Kiskisik Awasisak: Remember the Children, Understanding the Overrepresentation of First Nations Children in the Child Welfare System.”

Kiskisik Awasisak was publicly released on Nov. 14, 2011, and is the first report of the First Nations Component of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 2008.

The full report can be viewed online, as can a briefing document.

Saskatchewan gets points for a putting Early Childhood Education (ECE) under one ministry and having an early childhood curriculum framework, but the province is lagging in other areas, says a new national report.

Early Years Study 3 was released Nov. 22, just days after the death of one of its authors, Dr. Fraser Mustard, a pioneer in the field of early childhood development.

As a feature of the study, the authors included an Early Childhood Education Index that looks at how the provinces are doing. It’s organized into five categories, each with its own criteria: governance, funding, access, learning environment and accountability. The maximum score is 15, and only three provinces – Quebec, Prince Edward Island and Manitoba – received passing marks. Saskatchewan, along with B.C. and New Brunswick, received a 4.5.

While most provinces aren’t making the grade, the authors did find some areas of progress. More provinces are expanding play-based kindergarten programs, are combining departments that oversee ECE and are doing more to monitor and report on early childhood vulnerability. On the whole though, Canada, as a country, needs to be doing more to support the early years.

Sue Delanoy, community partner on kidSKAN, has been an advocate for children and youth in Saskatchewan for more than 25 years.
In this kidSKAN interview on our YouTube channel, she talks how circumstances in her home life led her into the field.

One of the services she's advocated for during this time is greater access to high quality, affordable child care. Advocating for child care didn’t start out as her career ambition. She was working for the provincial government, but she found that it was difficult to return to work after the birth of her first child as she found few options for child care. Initially she started her own day home, which led to working for the province again, this time with the child daycare licensing branch.

International rankings such as the UNICEF’s Innocenti Report Card have put Canada at the bottom among industrialized countries when it comes to supporting early childhood education and care services.

In an article earlier this year, Martha Friendly, executive director for the Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU) examined why we’ve fallen behind. Her article, “The Fundamental questions about early childhood education and care in Canada: Why do we do what we do? How can we do better?” appeared in the spring issue of the Manitoba Child Care Association’s publication, Child Care Bridges.

Until the last decade, there was little information to compare countries, but more recently organizations like the OECD and UNICEF have produced reports that don’t show Canada in a good light, despite our wealth and a range of social services.

Interestingly enough, as Friendly points, one factor, or at least a common denominator, for countries at the bottom in UNICEF’s report card is that they tend to be liberal democracies. For the 10 indicators of quality early childhood education and care, countries such as the United States, Australia, Ireland and Canada each received three marks or fewer; Canada and Ireland were last, as they achieved only one indicator. (The indicators include staff-to-child rations, ECEC training, accessibility, provision of public funding for child care and kindergarten.)