Children Archives - SRDC

Scaling Nurturing the Future

Wallaa Daramlly — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 22:10:42 +0000

Phase III of Scaling Nurturing the Future focuses on scaling up an innovative early childhood mental health promotion program within Francophone communities in minority settings across Ontario. Building on previous phases, the project continues to strengthen the capacity of early childhood educators, enhance intersectoral collaboration, and support the integration of practices that promote children’s social and emotional well-being.

This phase introduces new strategies to support sustainability, including training-of-trainers, the development of mental health champions, and ongoing professional learning opportunities. Overall, it aims to embed practices more deeply within participating organizations while expanding the program’s reach at a provincial level.

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Harmonious Transition Pilot Project

Wallaa Daramlly — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 18:47:37 +0000

This pilot project aims to test ways to better equip and support educators in order to enhance their role with children and families (1) by making the development of the child apparent to identify their needs, and (2) by piloting a process for transferring the child’s record to the school. This project stems from the work of the provincial intersectoral network for the promotion of mental health in early childhood of Francophones, whose meetings are coordinated by AFÉSEO and funded by the Commission nationale des parents francophones (CNPF), through the project Réseau d’intervenantes et intervenants en petite enfance francophone (RIIPEF).

The first aspect of the project aims to implement and evaluate the ASQ and ASQ: SE, which are tools for measuring children’s general and social-emotional development, in educational centres. The goal is to collect, analyze, and use evidence-based data to support child development in French-speaking contexts. The second part of the project aims to develop a structured collaborative process for sharing knowledge about each child between early childhood education services and schools during the transition to school. The goal is to better support each child according to their needs and characteristics.

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Provincial Training Initiative: Phase 2 Evaluation

Wallaa Daramlly — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 15:52:38 +0000

The Provincial Training Initiative (PTI) is a multi-year project collaboration between Children’s Mental Health Ontario and the Lead Agency Consortium that will increase the number of child and youth mental health clinicians trained to deliver evidence-based treatment designed for children and youth with complex and significant mental health needs. The mandate of PTI is to build and implement a sustainable and supported provincial training model to improve the availability, consistency, and delivery of evidence-based clinical treatment modalities across the province. The project is rooted in a vision that aims to ensure children and youth with complex and significant mental health needs will have consistent access to appropriate high-quality evidence based intensive treatment services within their communities across the province. SRDC has been engaged to conduct the Phase 2 Evaluation of PTI, including process, outcomes, and economic evaluations. Results will help inform future enhancements or expansions of PTI as well as processes and structures for other provincial initiatives.

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Learning Outside Together: Phase Two of the Early Childhood Educator Outdoor Learning Program

Wallaa Daramlly — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:56:36 +0000

Building on the learnings from the previous three years, the second phase of the Learning Outside Together: “Incorporating traditional wisdom and promising practices to futureproof child care programs” (LOT) initiative is funded by the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care. LOT is designed to increase confidence, knowledge, and skills needed to deliver land-based learning opportunities. This online professional development program focuses on supporting educators to create meaningful outdoor experiences with and for children, increase the length of time spent with children outdoors, and learn about Indigenous teachings, protocols and practices related to the land. This three-year project is a continuation of the joint partnership between the Early Childhood Educators of BC (ECEBC), the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society (BCACCS), and SRDC.

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Canada Learning Bond Allocation by Birth Cohort, Geography, Household Income, and Savings Behaviour

Wallaa Daramlly — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:58:11 +0000

This report examines outcomes of the Canada Learning Bond (CLB), a Government of Canada postsecondary education savings initiative that aims to increase higher education savings and access among children who likely face financial barriers to attending. The CLB supports children born in 2004 or later who live in low-income households.

Children who meet CLB eligibility criteria are provided an initial payment of $500 into their registered education savings plan (RESP), as well as an additional $100 for each year they are eligible up to age 15 (for a maximum allocation of $2,000). Children in care (i.e., who have a public caregiver who receives an allowance under the Children’s Special Allowance Act) are also eligible for the CLB regardless of their household income.

SRDC analyzed newly available data to examine CLB allocation and how it promotes higher education savings, with a special focus on variation by birth cohort and household income, as well as among urban and rural Canadians. This report answers three research questions:

What is the allocation of CLB funds to families by birth cohort and household income?
What can current data tell us about the catalytic impact of the CLB on education savings, broken down by birth cohort and household income?
What are the specific barriers to accessing the CLB among rural Canadians?

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Early Words Environmental Scan

Wallaa Daramlly — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 18:04:58 +0000

The Early Words program supports healthcare practitioners by facilitating the selection and distribution of culturally reflective and developmentally appropriate high-quality children’s books to families. This program provides healthcare professionals with linguistically and culturally reflective resources to share with families in their care, as well as an opportunity to connect families to additional community resources to deepen their at-home early literacy practices. Since 2020, Early Words has trained over 1,000 healthcare providers across Canada, providing foundational and customized early literacy training, training modules and professional development, as well as online tools and resources for healthcare providers and families. By September 2024, Early Words is positioned to reach 44,000 children through 95 clinics across Canada. Provincial and territorial public health units have expressed interest in working with the Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation (CCLF) to support Early Words. In order to support jurisdictional programs, SRDC has been commissioned by CCLF to conduct an environmental scan on national strategic public health priorities relating to early literacy and broader health domains such as mental health, socio-emotional development, positive parenting, and social inclusion.

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Estimating the Economic Benefit of the Early Years

Wallaa Daramlly — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:29:16 +0000

The Martin Family Initiative (MFI) Early Years began in Maskwacis, Alberta, in 2018 with the aim of co-developing and implementing Indigenous-led, community-based, and relationship-driven early childhood services supporting children. The Early Years bridges community expertise and leadership across the health, education, and social services domains to support Indigenous women, children, and families. With support provided to families prenatally through to preschool stages, the program recognizes that strong Indigenous families and communities are integral to fostering healthy child and brain development. The Martin Family Initiative has engaged SRDC to conduct an economic evaluation of the Early Years to gain insight into both the inherent and economic costs and benefits associated with co-developing and implementing a culturally-grounded, holistic, and Indigenous-centred early childhood intervention model. The economic evaluation will comprise the benefits and costs of the Early Years for individuals and families, community, and governments. This project involves collaboration with members of the community, Maskwacis Health services, and the Martin Family Initiative.

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Girls’ Mental Health Project Evaluation

Wallaa Daramlly — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:09:19 +0000

Building on the evidence review update for Girls’ Fund programming, the Canadian Women’s Foundation (CWF) is piloting anti-oppressive mental health support training and capacity building for up to six Girls’ Fund grantees. These additional supports (i.e., training and a toolkit) will offer grantees promising, evidence-based practices to increase protective factors using a strengths-based and anti-oppressive approach. As programs adopt these additional supports, SRDC is designing and implementing an evaluation strategy to capture the learnings from the pilot.

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Early Literacy in Canada: Review of Policy & Practice

Wallaa Daramlly — Mon, 15 May 2023 14:36:38 +0000

The goal of the Early Literacy project is to identify promising practices that support early literacy amongst children from birth to five years across a range of settings. To conduct this project SRDC is partnering with the Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation with a grant from the Max Bell Foundation. In conducting this project, SRDC will review early literacy policies as they relate to curriculum/pedagogical frameworks, professional development for early childhood educators, supports for home literacy, and community-based early literacy supports in Canada.

The project consists of three components:

Environmental scan of early learning frameworks and policy documents from Canadian and select international jurisdictions
Key informant interviews conducted with early learning experts
Literature review to compile formal evidence on the effectiveness of different approaches to promote early literacy, with a particular focus on translating policy to practice.

The final report is to synthesize learning from the three project components to explain the similarities and differences between approaches to promote early literacy development in different jurisdictions and across different settings.

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Improving Understanding of the Canada Learning Bond

Wallaa Daramlly — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 15:28:04 +0000

The Canada Learning Bond (CLB) is a potential contribution of up to $2,000 per child from the federal government to the Registered Education Savings Plans of children from low-income families. It can be used to offset the costs of the child’s later study in apprenticeship programs, CEGEPs, trade schools, colleges, and universities. This project sets out to better understand the CLB by answering three research questions concerned with variation in access by birth cohort, household income, and geographical factors, as well as the degree to which CLB is associated with overall and education-specific savings behaviour among parents.

The three questions are:

What is the allocation of CLB funds to families by birth cohort and household income?
What can current data tell us about the catalytic impact of the CLB on education savings, broken down by birth cohort and household income?
What are the specific barriers to accessing the CLB among rural Canadians?

SRDC is analyzing data from Statistics Canada including the Survey of Approaches to Educational Planning, Canada Education Savings Program files linked to the 2016 Census and a potential second linkage focused on the Longitudinal Administrative Database.

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