UEY Goals:
- Strengthen the capacity of communities to use quality local research to help them make decisions to enhance children’s lives
- Enable community members to work together to address the needs of children
Prairie Children UEY Objectives:
- Gather Information regarding the holistic development of children to:
- Demonstrate assts and needs of children within southeast Saskatchewan
- Guide Strategic planning and program development
- Mobilize Community around data by:
- Enhancing parent and community wisdom around early childhood development
- Building capacity to use data and research and take action to improve developmental health, well being and competence of children
- Evaluate community action plans to:
- Determine effectiveness of research and data collection used in action plans
- Recommend changes that ensure quality, long-term programming continues to address identified early childhood needs.
Three Components of the UEY:
A. Gathering Information:
One key piece of information is around children’s readiness to start school. This information is an indicator of how the community has been supporting its young children and their families over the first five years of children’s lives. This information is provided by two instruments:
- The Early Development Instrument (EDI)
- The Parent Interviews and Direct Assessments of Children Survey (PIDACS)
It is also important to understand the family and community factors that influence children’s development. This information is gathered through the following means:
- The development of an Inventory of Community Programs and Services including a Community Program Survey
- Local Socioeconomic Characteristics
B. Building Knowledge:
Once data is collected it is important that this knowledge is shared with the local communities. A Dissemination of Information plan entitled Sharing the Knowledge has been developed to ensure the results of research is shared throughout the community. The following reports will be published and shared as the project progresses:
- The Community Research Report
- The Community Mapping Report
- Community Action Plan
C. Mobilizing Communities:
When effectively shared with the Community, the UEY research provides information in clear and compelling ways. Valuable lesions are learned about the needs and strengths of the community with respect to early childhood development. As this understanding improves, the members of the community can determine how they will work together to improve children’s outcomes based on the research evidence. The research-based information can also be particularly powerful in convincing decision-makers of a need in the community with respect to children.
Our UEY project is divided into 27 Neighbourhoods. Each Neighbourhood will be encouraged to assess their own needs and take appropriate actions through a collaborative approach to address those needs. This work will be unique according to each neighbourhood’s features and will be ongoing well after this UEY project has ended.
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For more information on the components listed:
Ruth Barker - Community Coordinator - UEY Project Prairie Children... Prairie Futures ruth.barker@holyfamilyrcssd.ca
Ph: 306.848.4371
C: 306.861-5021 Fax: 306.842.7033
Holy Family RCSSD - 110 Souris Ave. Weyburn, SK S4H 2Z8
The Understanding the Early Years initiative is funded by Human Resources and Social Development Canada. For further information, visit www.hrsdc.gc.ca
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