Abstract
Canadian strategies for supporting young children and families increasingly begin with the question of what needs to happen at the community level and how schools can lead the transformation. These strategies draw from a “population health” perspective, which views healthy child development and educational successes as growing out of universal supports for all children and their families rather than programs targeted to at-risk groups or isolated transition strategies. This chapter reviews studies of a universal Canadian model in which schools become community hubs for integrated preschool services, including kindergarten, child care, and family support. In this service integration model, community outreach and family support, beginning in the preschool period, play critical roles in contributing to healthy child development and learning, seamless transitions, and parental engagement with the education system.
By “parent” we mean the adult(s) who deal with services such as the parent, stepparent, guardian, grandparent, etc. We generally use the term “family” as a more inclusive term, but occasionally use the term “parent” for clarity in reporting research results or common usage in the literature (e.g. “parent involvement”).
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Notes
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The tool can be accessed online at: http://www.toronto.ca/firstduty/index.htm.
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Acknowledgments
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Atkinson Charitable Foundation provided major funding support for Toronto First Duty research, along with the City of Toronto. The City of Toronto and the Toronto District School Board also provided assistance in data gathering. We thank all the participants and the other members of the TFD research team for their generous contributions.
The opinions and interpretations in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the sponsors.
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Arimura, T.N. et al. (2011). Schools as Integrated Hubs for Young Children and Families. In: Laverick, D., Renck Jalongo, M. (eds) Transitions to Early Care and Education. Educating the Young Child, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0573-9_16
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