New local initiatives to improve early childhood education in the corridor have come out of the latest Early Development Instrument (EDI) report, which showed kindergarten students were falling behind in achieving some critical developmental milestones.
In the report, which was based on 2011-2013 surveys answered by kindergarten teachers, Squamish South, which includes Valleycliffe, was at 44 per cent vulnerability and Squamish North, which includes Garibaldi Highlands and Brackendale, was at 30 per cent. The lower the percentage, the better.
Sea to Sky Putting Children First has set this year’s goals around improving the EDI scores, according to Julia Black, the project coordinator for Sea to Sky, Putting Children First Early Childhood development Initiative.
One of the initiatives is an upcoming campaign to educate parents on limiting their own screen time.
“There has certainly been a lot of public campaigns around screen times for kids, but what about the adults and what is that doing to children and attachment?” asked Black. “Adults are modeling their attachment to a gadget rather than to a child, so that is one of the areas we wanted to focus on.”
Another initiative planned for this year is community-based workshops for families around the value of play, children learning through play, and nurturing relationships, which fosters social-emotional development.
Black said some of the programming that is already established in Squamish, such as the Mother Goose program through Sea to Sky Community Services, enhances early childhood development.
“It is an excellent program to build parent-child attachment,” Black said. “It is play-based, it is around rhyming, alliteration. It’s good for early literacy, but it is about attachment, so, for example, facing our children and playing with our children.”
Something still in the planning stages is creating a United Way Avenues of Change community hub with the aim of fostering social and emotional competence in Squamish North, Black said.
“It would be looking at really bigger things,” she said.
One significant change could be working to improve transit. The bus comes to Brackendale only on the hour, and many of the early childhood development programs are downtown, Black said.
“Programs might start at 9:30, so if a parent with children misses that 9 o’clock Brackendale bus, they are not going to make it to the programming.”
Another big idea involves bringing in the schools to have open gyms after school lets out, in order to give children somewhere to go after school that isn’t home to a screen, Black said.
“There are different ways of looking at engaging the community, and engaging these children that might help families out,” Black said.
Another initiative that has just started up as of the end of June is the Sea to Sky Community Services Early Years Centre, located at Sea to Sky Community Service’s portable at Squamish Elementary School.
The centre is a one-stop-shop for parents to gather information on, among other things, existing early years programs, child care services, family support services, child mental health, public health and other programs and services designed for families with young children.
“This new program will increase the support we can give to parents, easing their stress and helping their children to develop,” said Suzie Soman, director of early child development with Sea to Sky Services.
