"Raising the Bar" on Quality for Licensed Home Child Care Agencies
A message from Joyce Minten, Assistant Director/HCCSS Co-coordinator, Home Child Care Support Services,Affiliated Services for Children and Youth (ASCY)

 “Aim for the highest” Andrew Carnegie

 On Thursday, March 30, Affiliated Services for Children and Youth (ASCY), in partnership with Today’s Family and the Region of Waterloo, launched “Raising the Bar” on Quality for Licensed Home Child Care Agencies. The standards which were originally developed and implemented with licensed centre-based programs have been modified so they are relevant for licensed home child care agencies. Approximately 40 staff from the licensed home child care agencies in Hamilton and Waterloo participated in the launch.

In addition, special guests from the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, City of Hamilton, Region of Waterloo and Licensed Home Child Care Programs from as far away as London, Peel and Brantford joined us for the afternoon. Dr. Jean Clinton, child psychiatrist, presented an engaging keynote address on brain research and the importance of the early years of development.

The “Raising the Bar” on Quality Initiative began in Hamilton as an offshoot of the Healthy Child Care Environment Project. It was developed by the Supervisors’ Network – supervisors of licensed centre-based programs – and was co-coordinated by Affiliated Services for Children and Youth (ASCY). “Raising the Bar” on Quality originally began as a community standards (accreditation) program for licensed centre-based programs to promote and maintain best practices to ensure healthy child care environments for children in the Hamilton community.

In spring 2002, “Raising the Bar” on Quality was launched in the licensed centre-based programs in Hamilton and is still going very strong. Since the launch, the program has been introduced to five other communities across Ontario – Waterloo, Brant, Peel, London and the five area counties and Lanark County. It was presented at the national Canadian Child Care Federation conference, Plan-It Quality in Regina in June 2005 and at this year’s CCCF conference in Calgary.

The community standards have also been adapted for Special Needs Resourcing Programs and are being piloted in Hamilton by Integration Resources HUB.

The licensed home child care agencies in Hamilton and Waterloo are piloting this version of “Raising the Bar” on Quality over the course of the coming year. The next stage is to adapt the model for home child care practitioners, which we hope to complete some time in 2007.

Other news from the Affiliated Services for Children and Youth (ASCY):

Leaping into Literacy – A Day for Home Child Care Practitioners

On Saturday, May 27, ASCY, in partnership with Today’s Family and Mohawk College, hosted its first ever, Leaping into Literacy – A Day for Home Child Care Practitioners. Sixteen home child care practitioners participated in this fun-filled training day which promoted the importance of incorporating early literacy into their programs and provided them with the opportunity to create literacy-rich resources. During lunch, home child care practitioners shared a variety of literacy-based resources that they had created or used in their programs.

Family Child Care Training Program

This past year, several home child care practitioners in Hamilton completed levels of the Family Child Care Training Program.

• 3 completed Level One
• 8 completed Level Three
• 2 completed all three levels of training
  
  Congratulations to everyone!

A publication of the: