Kids need community

Make Children First helps region build healthy foundations

“I-I-I-I-I wa-wa-wa-want a drink of-of-of-of-of  wa-wa-wa-wa-water,” stammered Erin.  At three years old, her stuttering was taking its toll. Even simple requests produced frustration and anxiety – for everyone involved. Well meaning friends and family tried to convince her mother not to worry. “She’ll grow out of it,” they said.

 

What Pam learned, she passed along to other adults in her daughter’s life, like day care providers and family members. 

“Interacting with adults who knew how to support her seemed to make all the difference for Erin,” says Pam. “Today, Erin is 20 years old and can’t recall a time when she stuttered.”

Val Janz is implementation manager for Make Children First. She says Erin’s experience is a good example of how, when adults understand how to support children’s early development, they can help foster positive outcomes for them.

“Our hope is that all adults who are involved with children, whether that’s a day care worker, parent or neighbour, will know how to support healthy childhood development.

“We need to realize that supporting children is a community responsibility, not just the job of parents, teachers and doctors,” says Janz. “When the community takes ownership of early childhood development, it creates an overall social environment that affects every child in a positive way.”

Helping the community live up to its responsibility is the goal of Make Children First.

Provincially funded, but community run, the objective of Make Children First is to build a model for early needs identification, increased community involvement and greater integration of services that support young children.

It’s a grass roots approach that involves service providers, parents and community members in early childhood planning. Community experience, rather than abstract theories, forms the basis for decision-making. There is also an emphasis on helping parents link into services earlier.

“It’s a ‘doing with’ rather than a ‘doing for’ approach,” says Janz.

Using input from the community, Make Children First developed a social marketing campaign to increase community awareness of how critical a child’s first six years are. It offers practical ways to support young children through radio, television and print advertisements. The ads focus on the significance of good nutrition, playtime, talking, reading and singing with children as well as using caring words and gentle touches to communicate and form healthy early relationships.

Partnering with other organizations, Make Children First also helps fund training to expand community knowledge around important child development issues.  For example, conferences on topics like parenting, breastfeeding and early childhood education planning have drawn over 1000 participants from the region.

“Building community capacity takes time,” says Janz. “It’s not something you do this year and measure success next year.”

But measurement over time is important.

MCF is working with the University of British Columbia’s Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) to assess kindergarten children’s readiness to participate in, and benefit from, school activities. An Early Development Instrument (EDI) not only identifies areas of vulnerability within the community (so they can be addressed), but also measures improvements in the community’s capacity to support young children over time.

Janz says Make Children First is looking for more input and involvement from the community.

“And it’s critical to have involvement from non-traditional stakeholders like the business community because our children of today will become our community leaders of tomorrow,” she says.

To find out how you can get involved in early childhood development planning in the Kamloops region, call Valerie Janz at 554-3134 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it