kidSKAN

Canadians 55 and older think younger adults should “wait their turn” when it comes sharing in the country’s wealth, despite evidence that it’s getting harder for adults with young children to raise families.

This was a finding from a recent poll conducted for UBC researchers Paul Kershaw and Lynell Anderson from the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP). The poll included respondents from Saskatchewan, as well as those in BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada; the full polling data is available here.

UBC researchers commissioned this poll as a follow-up to the release of their national report card, Does Canada Work for All Generations? The report looked at the challenges today’s young families – Generation Squeezed – are facing across the country.

Kershaw partnered with kidSKAN’s Nazeem Muhajarine and Sue Delanoy to release the report card at the University of Saskatchewan on Oct. 18. The Generation Squeezed story received media attention across the country and even from the New York Times.

We’re encouraging members in kidSKAN to fill out a survey on new physical activity/sedentary behaviour guidelines for children aged 0-4 that are being developed by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP).

New Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines for older children were released in January 2011.

CSEP is looking for feedback on the draft guidelines. The link to the survey monkey is only open for 10 days, so fill it out quickly. It should only take about 10 minutes.

Canadian parents today are raising families with less money and time than the baby boomer generation, even though the country’s economy has doubled in size since 1976, says a new study released at the University of Saskatchewan on Oct.18.

Paul Kershaw of the University of British Columbia released the study, Does Canada Work for All Canadians?, with Nazeem Muhajarine and members of his Healthy Children research team (including kidSKAN) at the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU).

“What we’re seeing is something I call ‘Generation Squeeze,’” says Kershaw, an associate professor at UBC’s Human Early Learning Partnership and lead author of the study. “The generation raising young kids today is squeezed for time at home, squeezed for income because of the high cost of housing, and squeezed for services like child care that would help them balance earning a living with raising a family.”

As a provincial network, kidSKAN represents the work of many people. One of those at the heart of it is Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine. Muhajarine is Professor and Chair in Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan, and leads the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit’s (SPHERU) Healthy Children research team. We sat down with him recently to find out more about him and his life’s work. The short interview can be seen on kidSKAN's YouTube channel.

Congratulations to kidSKAN project manager Fleur Macqueen Smith, who wil be receiving the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health’s Knowledge Translation Graduate Student Award at the Canadian Public Health Association’s annual conference in June for her master’s research on communities of practice.

Fleur interviewed people in two communities of practice to develop a checklist to build effective communities of practice in person and online, which we are using to guide the kidSKAN community of practice; the graphic to the left shows a tag cloud of what one person discussed. The checklist reads:

Whether or not you were able to attend Dr. Paul Kershaw’s inspiring talk about Smart Family Policy in November, you can now watch it on kidSKAN’s own YouTube channel.

We’ve also included short informal segments from an interview that kidSKAN did with him. (You can also order free copies of these videos on CD by contacting mike.chouinard@usask.ca).

Kershaw is a political scientist at the University of British Columbia. He uses research to be both a cheerleader and critic of Canadians when it comes to early childhood development. Using Early Development Instrument (EDI) data, he and other researchers have been able to determine the enormous social costs when nearly 30% of children reach kindergarten “vulnerable” in some way, as is the case in Saskatchewan and many other provinces. In response, Kershaw and his colleagues have developed a “Smart Family Policy” framework that will help children, support families and grow the Canadian economy.