Source: Decoda – Literacy Solutions
Focus: Early Childhood Educators
Summary: A series of five cultural competency video modules for Early Childhood Educators was created in a partnership between the Musqueam Nation, BC Aboriginal Child Care Society, City of Vancouver, Collingwood Neighbourhood House, and other community partners.
Source: Ojibikens Indigenous Cultural Network
Summary: There are ninety EarlyON centres in Toronto that provide a welcoming drop-in environment. Parents and caregivers and children access services and programming together and can:
• join fun activities – reading, storytelling, sing-alongs, games and more
• get advice from professionals trained in early childhood development
• find out about other family services in the community
• connect with other families with young children
Ojiibikens means ‘little root.’ Ojiibikens is a land-based EarlyON program for children ages 0-6, and their siblings, parents and caregivers. Our mobile team provides Indigenous land-based programs in partnership with EarlyON centres and community organizations across Toronto. We are creating hands-on, outdoor learning environments for children that integrates language, culture, food, and physical activity. The core of land base education is about families being on and connecting with the land. Our activities will reclaim and rebuild land-based skills of growing, harvesting to preparing our Indigenous foods and traditional medicines.
Source: Child Safety Commissioner, Australia
Summary: This booklet assists Kindergarten, primary, and secondary teachers, and other school personnel in understanding and working with children and young people whose lives have been affected by trauma. The majority of such children will have come from backgrounds of abuse and neglect, although some of them will have suffered as refugees, or experienced war or dislocation overseas. An even smaller number will have experienced illness, painful medical interventions or one-off traumas such as disasters or accidents. Calmer Classrooms particularly addresses the needs of children who have been traumatized by abuse and neglect. These children may be involved in the child protection and family support systems. Some may not be able to remain in the care of their families and are living in foster care or other forms of state care.
Source: Saskatchewan Government – Health
Summary:As of August 4, 2020, all child care services as defined in The Child Care Act, 2014, are limited to a maximum of 25 children per building space. This may mean 25 children per facility or, in the case of larger facilities where area permits, a facility reconfigured to allow a maximum of 25 children in one defined area. These areas must be separate for each group and need to be separated by a barrier (floor to ceiling barriers not necessary) that can prevent children, toys and other items from crossing over. The child-to-adult ratios and usable floor space requirements for the child care areas must align with the Child Care Guidelines for Care and The Child Care Regulations, 2015.
Groups of children and the staff members assigned to them must stay together throughout the day and cannot mix with other groups. Staff should remain with the same group. Groups must be within in the same room/space at the same time, including pickups and drop-offs, meal times, playtime and outdoor activities.
Children are restricted to attending a single facility to reduce transmission risks. All child care facilities located within special care or personal care homes are subject to all general restrictions and must have private entrances and separate spaces so there are no shared common areas. There must be no interaction between children and residents of the home.
Source: Statistics Canada
Summary: Highlights:
Source: Statistics Canada
Highlights:
Source: Aboriginal Head Start Association of BC. Editor: Annie Jack
Summary: The start of kindergarten can be both an exciting and worrisome time for children and families as they step into new worlds, new beginnings. For Aboriginal children and families, the transition to kindergarten can be experienced much differently from their non-Aboriginal counterparts. This is in large part due to the lengthy history of oppression and marginalization that Aboriginal people have experienced in their relationship to formal schooling systems. Yet, early learning programs that respond to the social and historical realities of Aboriginal families offer the potential and promise to connect them with schools in positive ways.
The Aboriginal Head Start Association of British Columbia, representing 12 Aboriginal Head Start (AHS) sites in urban and northern communities in BC, is committed to supporting the early childhood development of Aboriginal children. The preschool program instills pride in their Aboriginal heritage and focuses on children 3 to 5 years of age, with the intent of bringing them to the school readiness stage in order to ensure an easy transition in to kindergarten. Family involvement is a major factor contributing to the success of the program. Aboriginal Head Start represents one of the important ‘stepping stones’ that will lead families on their continuing journey with learning.
Source: Employment and Social Development Canada
Summary: Children hold a sacred place in the cultures of Indigenous Peoples. With that comes a sacred responsibility to care for them. High-quality, culturally-specific and well-supported early learning and child care (ELCC) programs, services and supports that are specifically designed for and with Indigenous families and communities will make a genuine difference in the early experiences of children. This, in turn, will support children’s long-term development and life outcomes. High-quality Indigenous ELCC programming empowers young children with a strong sense of identity. It provides educational opportunities and school readiness and contributes to their overall health and wellness from early years into adulthood.
ELCC programs can holistically support parents and families to participate in their cultures and languages. Programs provide access to information and resources, connections to community, alignment to unique health, education and social needs, and child care for children while parents participate in traditional lifestyles, work, training, education and other facets of their lives. For the purposes of this Framework, Indigenous ELCC includes a wide range of programs and activities designed to support children aged 0 to 6 in their development, learning and cultural identity. Indigenous ELCC programs and activities aim to support culturally-based language, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical development in the home, in a preschool or nursery school, or in a home child care or daycare setting.
Source: Resource Sheet No. 7 for the Closing the Gap Clearinghouse, Margaret Sims,
May 2011, Australian Government, Health and Welfare and Family Studies
Summary: The National Partnership Agreement for Indigenous Early Childhood Development (COAG 2008a) aims to halve the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade, halve the gap for Indigenous students in reading, writing and numeracy within a decade, and ensure all Indigenous 4-year-olds have access to quality early childhood education within five years, including in remote areas.
Currently 75% of Indigenous children between 3.5 and 4.5 years of age do not attend any formal early childhood service (FaHCSIA 2009). Of those who do, 34% are attending a community-based (i.e. non-school) program, 30% a kindergarten or pre-first year of school program in a school setting or a preschool, 21% a child care program and 2% family day care. Of the infant cohort, 29% had attended a playgroup or similar group in the month prior to data collection. Alternative care was provided for the children by the child’s other parent (51%), grandparents (49%), other relatives (30%) and a parent living elsewhere (6%). In order to achieve these targets it is important to understand that early childhood education cannot be separated from child, family and community health and wellbeing. In acting on this understanding, Indigenous early childhood programs in Australia are sometimes interpreted as ‘leading the way’ in current attempts to reinterpret early childhood education as a strategy to address social inclusion (Sims et al. 2008). Internationally, such a perspective is often positioned as quality early intervention or, more recently, integrated service delivery (Azzi-Lessing 2010; Katz & Redmond 2009; Melhuish et al. 2010) which is known to be particularly effective for addressing disadvantage.
Source: Institute of Urban Studies, University of Winnipeg
Summary: The Early Development Instrument (EDI) is a 103-item checklist that assesses readiness for school (i.e., “age-appropriate developmental expectations”) in kindergarten. In Manitoba, the EDI is completed province-wide (37 school divisions) by kindergarten teachers in the second half of the school year every two years. Some independent and First Nations schools participate voluntarily. Parents may opt their children out of the assessment. The items on the EDI are grouped into five domains: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills and general knowledge. Children are assessed as “ready” or “not ready” for school in each of the five domains based scoring above or below the 10th percentile using Canadian norms as a cut-off.
The objective of this study was to determine how Metis children fare on the EDI compared to children who are not Metis. As well, we examined performance by EDI domain, sex, and region.
