The Canadian Child Care Federation and the Association of Canadian Community Colleges sought and received funding from Human Resources Development Canada to discuss seven strategies that would:

• develop and validate a statement of occupational standards for child care practitioners that would apply equally to people working in centre- and in family-based settings (click here to view the full document);
• update the 1995 CCCF national guidelines for ECCE training programs so that they would reflect current knowledge and be consistent with the occupational standards;
• examine the feasibility and possible structure of a national accreditation system for ECCE training programs;
• examine the feasibility of a national process for the certification of individual child care practitioners;
• explore the capacity of prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) and professional development to improve the educational ladder in child care; and
• identify best practices and successful strategies in distance education.

A model was assembled to show how these various strategies for capacity building in a sector interact together in support of a stronger service delivery infrastructure.

Working together, these seven strategies improve the capacity of the sector to provide high quality services by enhancing the training infrastructure, providing multiple entry points to training and educational opportunities, and addressing turnover by enhancing the possibilities for horizontal and/or lateral career moves.