Best Start Child and Family Centres
– a working plenary session to understand the issues for public health and to develop policy recommendations for next steps
This session was introduced as an opportunity for alPHa members to follow up on some of the ongoing work that has been underway since the release of With Our Best Future in Mind, the report on early childhood education and family supports that was presented to the Premier by Dr. Charles Pascal in 2009.
The Pascal Report, as it has become known, lays a framework for a system that supports children and their families in the early years, with an emphasis on learning, but also touching on other factors that influence development from the prenatal period to age 12.
Because public health has always had a hand in some of those factors (Healthy Babies Healthy Children, work with Best Start Networks, prenatal supports, immunization, screening, speech and language etc.), alPHa’s members took an immediate and active interest in integrating its roles within the comprehensive system envisioned by Dr. Pascal.
Presentation by Assistant Deputy Minister of Education
Following an overview of the importance of early childhood interventions to support healthy development by Dr. Paul Roumeliotis (linked at right), Assistant Deputy Minister of Education Jim Grieve addressed delegates to emphasize the immeasurable impacts of early influences on lifelong trajectories. He identified good health, early learning and parental support as the three key ingredients for a good childhood development recipe, and emphasized that there is solid support for building on the strong investments that have already been made, because there is no uncertainty about the dividends.
alPHa Members were invited to ask questions about the Province’s plans for the Early Learning Strategy and related interventions.
Q -What is ahead for pre-school children?
A - Child Care has only recently been transferred to the Ministry of Education, so they are still finding their way. Defining and integrating learning and care services for children from 0-3.8 years are being looked at in context of the Best Start and Early Learning Centres, which are envisioned as a community hub of core services. This is a goal that is widely shared, but further work is required to turn the current constellation of services into a truly integrated system that serves the needs of children and their families.
Q – Is there any word of a Provincial strategy for nutrition?
A - Jim Grieve agreed that that too many kids are arriving unable to learn due to hunger. Teachers are often buying food out-of-pocket and in some areas there are more formal lunch and breakfast programs in others, but there is no consistent system and there may be an overreliance on parents who are unable to provide. The fact of the matter is that subsidized nutrition programs are very expensive and governments are presently loath to spend.
Q - How do we make sure that this plan survives the next election?
A – There is cause for optimism here, as the Opposition’s only objections to it were of a financial nature, i.e. questioning the wisdom of spending this kind of money in the present economic climate. Mr. Grieve sees his responsibility as making sure that this strategy is so well implemented, so established and so desired that it will be too hard to “unring the bell”. He also pointed out that parents, children and teachers are all enthusiastic supporters, and this should resonate with politicians of any stripe.
Q – Has thought been given to utilizing existing unitnegrated structures (e.g. putting qualified teachers in non – school board settings)
A – This is already happening to a limited extent with some creative management, but there are some procedural limitations that need to be examined.
Q – How are Special Needs children being included?
A - There is a reference group of specialists giving advice on how to manage children with special physical and cognitive needs as they are brought into the system. He referred to the fact that autism spectrum disorder specialists (e.g. IBI) are not allowed into schools as an example of some of the “turf” issues that need to be worked out.
Q – What about the challenge of disparate Ministry funding sources?
A – It is very difficult to consolidate funding at the source, as dollars are often directly linked to discreet programs. There is more communication now among the various “silos” now, but progress on the ground will be slow but hopefully steady.
He closed by reiterating that Public Health has always been the key ally in early childhood development and learning, because it shares the same motivations. He also emphasized that the needs for these services are just as great in middle to high income areas. His final word of advice was not to wait for policy makers to make decisions before getting on with it. They’ll catch up eventually.
Towards a Vision: alPHa’s Support for the Early Years Strategy
The objective of this session is to generate further ideas on practical steps toward an alPHa vision, position statement and action plan for supporting the Early Years Strategy. alPHa’s members have already expressed a strong desire to work with its Provincial partners to utilize public health expertise and experience in early childhood interventions to ensure that the goals of this strategy are met . alPHa now has a regular dialogue with the Ministry of Education, which is a positive indication that the walls of some of the silos are beginning to come down.
The task before alPHa’s members is now to devise a clear position statement that reaffirms our support for a robust and integrated system of child and family services that support early childhood development, and makes a strong statement about our desire to do some of the work. This will require an action plan and renewed efforts to advocate for investments in existing programs (like Healthy Babies Healthy Children), which emphasize that early interventions yield such enormous economic and health dividends.
A day-long visioning exercise was held on February 9 2011, during which medical officers of health and senior managers in family health programs from health units throughout Ontario, deputy ministers from the health, education and children’s ministries, the Chief Medical Officer of Health and Dr. Pascal shared the important things that public health is already doing for Ontario’s children and began to generate concrete ideas on how to do incorporate them into the proposed system.
A summary of the proceedings and a briefing note from of this day (linked on your right) were used to present some of the ideas that were generated by these operational level experts. alPHa’s Board of Health trustees and Medical Officers of Health were invited to then add further thoughts on translating them into healthy public policy at their tables.
After each table reported back, the ideas were synthesized into a draft Resolution for further action by alPHa's Board of Directors.
