Child Care Pilot Project

Enriched Child Care Services

Request for Proposals from Minority Francophone Communities Background Benefits for Communities Guiding Principles for the Pilot Project Enriched Child Care Services Scope of the Pilot Project Responsibilities of Project Manager Responsibilities of the Communities Criteria Application Instructions Evaluation Process Annex A - Evaluation Criteria for the Letter of Intent Annex B - Template for the Letter of Intent Annex C - Organization Chart for a Community

SDC has established an advisory committee composed of representatives from the Commission nationale des parents francophones, the Fédération canadienne pour l’alphabétisation en français, l’Alliance canadienne des responsables, des enseignantes et des enseignants en français langue maternelle, university researchers and SDC. The committee agreed that, in order to meet the needs of minority Francophone communities, the enriched child care services should include both child and family components, as well as training for those providing the enriched services.

The child component would be child care services for children in child care centres that would develop language skills in French (knowledge and use of the French language) and a sense of identity (awareness of and a sense of belonging to the Francophone culture, remembering that a number of children come from families of mixed culture and language and also have an Anglophone culture). These child care services should also have a francization component for children who need to acquire skills or improve their skills in French.

The family component would endeavour to foster parental participation in the child’s learning. Such participation could take the form of keeping abreast of and supporting what the child learns at the child care centre, and through quality interactions with the child. To guide parents in this endeavour, family literacy services will be offered to the children and their parents in the form of workshops at which parents will receive advice, resources and training on how to encourage their children’s learning, notably by exposing them to reading and writing.

For a given intervention to be evaluated in each community, enriched child care services must be the same and must be applied in the same way in each community. To implement the enriched child care services and to ensure that they are the same in each of the participating communities, it was necessary to identify a preschool program that would be used in child care centres and a family literacy model that would be offered to the children and their families.

SDC thus engaged experts to evaluate and recommend various French-language preschool programs used in Canada. The preschool program chosen to be delivered to the children for the duration of the pilot project is the programme des prématernelles fransaskoises offered to young Francophone children in Saskatchewan. This program meets the objectives of enriched child care services in that it was designed to address the francization needs of children in minority Francophone communities and contains activities for parents and specific features to promote the use of the French language. For further information on this program, please consult the documentation available (in French) at the Internet site: http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/francais/fransk/prematernelle/html/index.html .

SDC also engaged experts to evaluate and recommend French-language family literacy models. The Ontario model Des livres dans mon baluchon was chosen to be delivered to the parents and children. This model meets the objectives of enriched child care services in that it takes into account the special characteristics of minority communities and helps parents understand the overall development of their children and enables them to follow their children’s progress in all areas of development. For further information on this model, please consult the documentation available (in French) at the Internet site: http://www.coindelafamille.ca/outils/resource.asp?id=441 .

The committee has recognized that best practices in the field of early childhood development and family literacy show that training is key for obtaining positive results. Enriched child care services thus include training on the preschool program and on the family literacy model for both child care providers and family literacy practitioners.

In addition, for the delivery of the child care services in child care centres and the family literacy services, documentation, material and thematic resources (such as training manuals, teaching guides, books, compact discs and toys) will be provided to the communities, at no cost, and the communities will be able to keep them after the pilot project ends.