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FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: A Safe and Caring StartI spent several years as the Coordinator of Early Childhood & Kindergarten for the Government of the Northwest Territories and I quickly came to understand just how crucial children’s first years of life are. At this stage in life children are sponges, the experiences and influences they encounter becoming the foundation for their future lives. A quick Google search on “the roots of” and “early childhood” finds links to information on: mental health, resilience, health, behaviour and learning. In other words, the health and well-being of Albertan youth and adults alike is significantly impacted by their early years. I can think of no greater priority than fostering healthy children and families across the province.

Sara was one of my students from many years ago when I taught at an International school in Milan, Italy. One of my most prized possessions is a letter that she wrote to my parents. It was my fourth year teaching the same students (the Italian way) and the start of a regular school day. We always began with writing and on this day the assignment was open ended, with no requirements except that what they wrote had to serve a real purpose. Sara’s letter began: Dear Susan’s Mom and Dad, Thank you for making Susan… I was touched with how this little girl valued how important I was because I believed in her and helped her see the very best in herself.

These students I taught are now all in their twenties and most of them are Facebook friends. I enjoy following their lives and I feel honoured that I was somehow a part of their path in the early years. As adults, we have a profound impact on the young children in our lives—as parents, teachers, grandparents, neighbours and friends. We all have a role to play. This gives us both the opportunity and responsibility to be role models, to see the best in children, to show we care.

In this month’s news bulletin, Safe and Caring has partnered with several leaders in early childhood development. Our panel of early years experts and champions share their perspectives, research and advice for helping Alberta’s adults give our children a happy and healthy start in life.

– by Susan Hopkins, Ed.D., Executive Director

THE SOCIETY FOR SAFE AND CARING SCHOOLS & COMMUNITIES

NEWS BULLETIN March 2015

telephone: (780) 822-1500email: office@safeandcaring.caweb: www.safeandcaring.camail: 11010 142 St., Edmonton, AB T5N 2R1

www.facebook.com/SafeAndCaring

The Society for Safe and Caring Schools & Communities

@SafeAndCaring Safe and Caring is a centre that fosters effective networks and partnerships to improve the quality of life for all of Alberta’s children.

FEATURED EVENTS

Visit www.safeandcaring.ca/special-events to view more upcoming events!

• March 13-14 / Diversity, Equity and Human Rights Conference (DEHR)Safe and Caring will be hosting a resource table at ATA’s third annual DEHR event

• March 11-13 / Community Conferencing Facilitator TrainingSafe and Caring is partnering with Engage Consulting to sponsor and deliver a 3-day workshop on community conferencing as a restorative practice

• April 24-26: Alberta School Councils’ Association 2015 ConferenceSafe and Caring will be hosting a resource table and presenting on a School-Wide Approach to Building Healthy Relationships and Supporting Sexual and Gender Minority Youth

• May 5-11 / Mental Health Awareness WeekSafe and Caring is working with the Canadian Mental Health Association – Edmonton to develop resources, host events and raise awareness of youth mental health

• March 3 / Edmonton City Council “Through My Eyes” ScreeningSafe and Caring is facilitating a film screening and discussion of vulnerable children and youth policies with Mayor Don Iveson and City Council

• March 5-6 / Building Bridges: Mighty Peace Teachers’ ConventionSafe and Caring will be presenting on a School-Wide Approach to Building Healthy Relationships and Supporting Sexual and Gender Minority Youth

Early strong foundations result in the best possible outcomes for children.

The research is clear that the most important thing children need to thrive is to live in a supportive environment. That environment must include safe and caring relationships that begin at birth with a primary caregiver and extends to other adults in a child’s life.

Children who are at the greatest risk for the poorest outcomes – learning, health and behaviour, are children who accumulate a burden of risk factors – family violence, drug abuse, neglect, abuse, mental illness, poverty. The burden is more than any child could be expected to overcome.

EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Research & Knowledge

Mobilization

Early childhood development is a primary focus area for our research and knowledge mobilization strategies at The Centre. We learned through the Early Years Continuum Project Evaluation that communities are effective in helping to build capacity to support healthy child development (prenatal to school entry). In Alberta, programs that seek to help adults with their own and childrens’ development were designed. For example, there are 46 Parent Link Centres (PLC’s) that provide parent and family supports to more than 160 communities across the province.

In September 2007, The Centre undertook the Alberta Benchmark Survey to determine what adults knew about child development. Over 1,400 Albertans from across the province participated by way of phone survey. They answered questions about their experiences with children and understanding of child development.

• Adults were more aware of physical and cognitive developmental milestones of children than social and emotional milestones, although gaps in knowledge were identified.

• Although knowledge of specific milestones was limited, adults were aware of how to support development.

These findings were presented to child health and parenting leaders to inform the development of programs, policies and future research. The study contributed to the goal of improving the health and well-being of children, families and communities in Alberta.

The 2007 Benchmark Survey provided baseline information. The results from a second survey in 2014 determined if public knowledge about early childhood development had increased over the past five years. Findings showed that there was a general appreciation of the importance of the “early years” for lifelong learning development and some understanding of how to support child development, but there were important gaps in knowledge of when children achieve specific developmental milestones. Parents were mostly confident about their parenting skills. There is an unmet need for child care among parents, and general satisfaction about child care among those using it. (Continued...)

March’s Guest Contribution by Aimee Caster, Communications

Director for the Alberta Centre for Child, Family & Community Research

(The Centre).

In 2013, The Centre led the inclusion and analysis of eight questions focusing on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the annual Alberta Adult Survey. In total, 1,207 completed interviews were conducted (a 20.9% response rate) with 612 females and 595 males. Three questions covered abuse, and the remaining five focused on aspects of household risk that can increase dysfunction.

• Before the age of 18, 27.2% experienced abuse and 49.1% experienced family dysfunction.

• ACEs rarely occur in isolation. Having one ACE increases the probability of experiencing another one by 84%.

• Children who experienced more ACEs were more likely to be diagnosed with mental health conditions or substance dependence in adulthood.

• Children who experienced more ACEs were more likely to perceive their physical health, emotional health and social support as poor.

• The association between ACEs and poor health remained strong even when other risk factors for poor adult health outcomes, such as poverty, were taken into consideration.

• Children who experienced both abuse and family dysfunction had the highest risk for negative health outcomes in adulthood.

different roles, the different contexts and the different incentives.”

In addition to their focus on knowledge exchange and mobilization, The Centre also generates evidence that supports policy decisions that directly help children, youth and families.

For Robyn, “information is not knowledge until you do something with it.” Adults need to know how to best benefit the children in their lives, and The Centre’s role is to help them access the information they need to make the best decisions possible.

As a grandmother herself, Robyn is thankful for the opportunity to be a vital part of her grandson’s life, and mindful of her own and others’ impact on his early development.

CHAMPIONS OF A SAFE AND CARING WORLD: Robyn Blackadar, MBA, BA

Robyn Blackadar (MBA, BA), Executive Director of the Alberta Centre for Child,

Family & Community Research (The Centre)

“Your child is being influenced by many adults. We need all of the adults in a child’s life—grandparents, teachers, neighbours, friends—to understand and be mindful of their shared responsibilities and impact.”

by Meaghan Trewin, Communications Coordinator

(Continued from previous page...)

These results suggest the need for the creation of an overarching framework that provides strategic direction and integration of supports. There is an opportunity to further normalize and make accessible already existing high-quality early years’ programs and services that support families and children’s healthy start.

There is a great deal of evidence on the benefits of investing in and supporting positive early childhood development. Yet we continue to see examples where children are facing challenges as a consequence of physical or environmental vulnerability.

We are pleased to support the provincial government’s Early Childhood Development Priority Initiative by co-chairing the Early Childhood Development Research and Innovation Strategy.

The goals of the Strategy are to:

• Build awareness of existing research and create ways to utilize current evidence;

• Influence the creation of new knowledge to address gaps and anticipate the ongoing need for research; and

• Create a collaborative environment that enhances relationships between researchers, policy makers, practitioners and the public.

We welcome input from readers that will help inform how we can work together to achieve these goals and build a stronger foundation of supports for early childhood development in Alberta.

As President and CEO of The Centre, an organization dedicated to creating and mobilizing evidence to ensure the well-being of children, Robyn Blackadar is one of Safe and Caring’s valued partners and fellow champions for child and youth well-being.

Having earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Business Administration, Robyn’s career prior to joining The Centre cultivated her expertise in research, policy analysis, policy implementation, knowledge mobilization and evaluation.

In her current role, Robyn draws on this background to oversee The Centre’s diverse research priorities, including: early childhood development; middle childhood and youth well-being; family capacity building; community capacity building; and tracking long-term outcomes.

This work includes Co-Chairing the Early Childhood Development Research and Innovation Strategy, which aims to build awareness of existing research, influence creation of new knowledge and create a collaborative environment that enhances relationships between researchers, policy makers, practitioners and the public to the benefit of early childhood development.

In Robyn’s experience, the collaborative element of this work is essential, because different stakeholders often have very different priorities for research. “One of the best things you can do is bring together researchers, policy makers, community members, service providers, caregivers and youth and have them talk and be more clear and coordinated around what knowledge is needed... and start to synergize more sustainable connections between the

The Centre collaborates with hundreds of research experts from across the province. Those who were a part of The Centre’s projects and initiatives mentioned in this article include Suzanne Tough, Dawne Clark, Michelle Gagnon, Sandy Davidge, Pamela Valentine, Cathie Scott, Angela Vinturache, Hamideh Bayrampour, Donna Slater, Ben Gibbard, Kathryn MacLellan, Rhonda Breitkreuz and Laurel Sakaluk-Moody.

To learn more about The Centre, our research, initiatives and projects related to early childhood development, please visit our website at www.research4children.com or call (780) 944-8636.

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In their 1996 Report on Aboriginal Peoples, the Royal Commission spelled out how: “Children hold a special place in Aboriginal cultures. According to tradition, they are gifts from the spirit world. They carry within them the gifts that manifest themselves as they become teachers, mothers, hunters, councilors, artisans and visionaries. They renew the strength of the family, clan and village and make the elders young again with their joyful presence.” Of all the treasures we have inherited from our First Nations, this may just be the most important.

The Canadian psyche is grounded in the belief that a safe and caring Nation is one that cares passionately about the needs of its children: all of its children. This moral conviction is embraced, not just from a sense of duty and compassion, but also foresight. After all, how else is Canada to become even more safe and caring, and lay the foundation for the next safe and caring generation, than by addressing the needs of its children?

But high-minded principles and passion alone are not enough to help families deal

with the challenges they are struggling with today; even more important is to have practical strategies. And here is where recent scientific advances are profoundly supplementing traditional wisdom.

One of the most important of these advances is the realization that babies are all, in a fundamental sense, born “premature.” An extraordinary burst of neural growth and sculpting takes place in the first year of life, guided by the baby’s caregivers. In particular, a baby’s capacity for self-regulation–how she manages energy expenditure in response to stressors and then recovers from the effort–is being wired. So too is her “stress-reactivity”: the sensitivity of the alarm system buried deep in the brain that triggers fight-or-flight reactions.

The newborn’s basic needs haven’t altered from when she was inside the womb. She still needs to feel warm, safe and secure. For this critical first year of life, the caregiver has to carefully monitor and manage the baby’s needs. A big part of this is not only feeding the baby and making sure she’s not too hot or cold, but calming her when she’s startled.

We now know that babies are startled even while they’re in the womb, and even while they sleep. Because startle reactions consume so much energy, it’s imperative this doesn’t happen too often. The better a caregiver reads the baby’s signs and adjusts the stimulation or soothing to suit the baby’s needs, the more safe and secure the baby will feel.

A number of factors can interfere with a caregiver’s ability to perform this role. For example, severe illness might seriously interfere with a caregiver’s capacity to cope with the demands of caring for a baby. Physical absence limits the opportunities to cultivate the connection. Especially important are biological challenges in the

newborn that can render arousal-regulation extremely challenging for baby and parent alike.

But quite often what parents most need is not education, but help with their own self-regulation. This is not simply because it is so much harder to care for a baby when we are over-stressed, but because, under severe stress, a caregiver’s very ability to read–let alone respond to–a baby’s cues is severely diminished.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR

Self-Regulation

“An extraordinary burst of neural growth and sculpting takes place in the first year of life, guided by the baby’s caregivers...

For this critical first year of life, the caregiver has to carefully monitor and manage the baby’s needs. A big part of this is not

only feeding the baby and making sure she’s not too hot or cold, but calming her when she’s startled.”

A SAFE AND CARING CANADA

A safe and caring Canada is one that recognizes the high levels of stress that so many families are struggling with today and the impact this has on their children.

To meet this challenge, parents—and indeed children and youth—need to master the five key steps of self-regulation:

1. Read the signs of excessive stress, in yourself as much as in your child

2. Identify the stressors

3. Reduce the stressors

4. Work on enhancing your self-awareness—bodily and emotional—first in yourself, and then in your child

5. Develop individualized coping strategies.

By practicing self-regulation, we will be able to nurture our next generation of “teachers, mothers, hunters, councilors, artisans and visionaries.”

Guest Contribution by Dr. Stuart Shanker, D. Phil, CEO of the MEHRIT Centre, Dist. Research Professor,

Dept. of Psychology, York University.

Every program manager has wondered “Are we really making a difference?” and “How do we prove it?” In the past decade, the Community-University Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth and Families (CUP), University of Alberta has worked collaboratively with managers of early childhood development (ECD) programs to develop evaluation plans to help them respond to these questions.

However, the reality is that as funding sources become more competitive, the demand for evaluation and program accountability grows and yet ECD programs struggle to find adequate resources and capacity to conduct evaluations. Program staff are working at maximum capacity, under time pressures, and may not understand why specific data is being collected. Funders may request that programs use specific evaluation methods that do not seem to match with the intended outcomes.

Ultimately, there is a disconnect in how we think, define and use evaluation depending on our role, sector and organization.This can lead to misunderstandings about the difference we are making.

What are some things we do know?

We know that strong well-rounded ECD programming provides healthy experiences and creates a foundation for a lifetime of healthy outcomes. We know that policies and programs that promote development during the first five years of life help reduce expensive interventions in later years. We know that funders who support initiatives that improve ECD outcomes are increasingly requiring evidence of program and service effectiveness. We know that community agencies struggle to support the capacity, knowledge and skills to collect the evidence needed to demonstrate their impacts and justify continued support. We know we need to talk more about this process. We know we need to talk more about evaluation.

What don’t we know and what are we going to do about it?

There is a lot we don’t know or yet understand… but our aim is to change this through collaboration and conversation. We have created a network of interested program managers, researchers, government partners and funders working in the field of ECD. We have created the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN) to support conversations among the partners to shift the way people think about evaluation. Evaluation is not a once a year event but an ongoing process for program reflection and improvement. We also want to understand and address capacity barriers around evaluation for ECD programs.

To date, the Network has engaged 35 partners across provincial and territorial government departments, university departments, funding agencies and community organizations. In the coming months we will:

• Distribute a survey to ECD stakeholders involved in evaluation for feedback on their practices, thinking and capacity in evaluation;

• Complete a report outlining the nature of the evaluation capacity issues within the ECD sector; and

• Host forums across the province to foster critical discussions among partners about the true evaluation capacity needs within the field of ECD.

If you are interested in learning more about the ECN or joining us, please visit our webpage at www.cup.ualberta.ca/projects-initiatives/ecme/current-project-list/ecn-overview or email us at ecninfo@ualberta.ca.

Only by sharing your views, can you shift the conversation!

Hmmm, our wrench doesn’t seem to match

this nut.

HOW DO WE KNOW WE ARE

Making a Difference

for Children?Guest Contribution by

Rebecca Gokiert and Karen Edwards, Community-University Partnership (CUP) at the University of Alberta.

Image: Ben Tsang, Communications Assistant, Safe and Caring

YOUTH PERSPECTIVES: One Wish for All of Alberta’s ChildrenSafe and Caring asked Albertan children and youth: “If you had one wish for all of Alberta’s young children, what would it be?” Read what they had to say!

Moms & Dads:You are invited to participate in the

Early Childhood Parenting Study

Despite an abundance of available information, parents today are often unsure and ambivalent about how they should parent in certain situations. Children’s exposure to socialization begins within the family, mainly through direct parent-child interaction. Early childhood marks a unique period in the development of parent-child relation-ships, because parents’ take more active roles in helping their children fulfill their different needs in response to their developmental changes.

Therefore, I am interested in learning more about parenting during the early child development and education years.

• Do you have a preschool-aged child (year before kindergarten)?

• We are interested in parenting during the early childhood years

• If you would like more information or want to be involved, please contact us!

Dr. Christina Rinaldi (Principal Investigator)Email: crinaldi@ualberta.ca or sedev@ualberta.ca Phone: (780) 492-5624

Images: AJ Montpetit, Patrick Giblin, iStock