Child Care Pilot Project

Scope of the Pilot Project

Description

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

The pilot project is a demonstration project based on a random assignment research methodology. In other words, the children participating in the study will be randomly divided into a program group of children who will receive the intervention and a control group of children who will not receive the intervention. The control group will serve as a point of comparison for evaluating the effects of the intervention on the program group. For this pilot project, the intervention consists of the enriched child care services defined in the previous section.

Five minority Francophone communities will be selected to participate in the pilot project. In each community, 40 three-year-old Francophone children will be selected and placed at random in one of two groups: 20 children will be part of the program group and will receive the enriched child care services in French in existing child care centres; and 20 children will be part of the control group and will continue to receive the child care services they normally receive.

For the purposes of the pilot project and consistent with section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a Francophone child is defined to be the child of a parent “ayant droit”; in other words, a child i) one of whose parents’ first language learned and still understood is French; or ii) one of whose parents has received their primary school instruction in Canada in French; or iii) one of whose siblings has received or is receiving primary or secondary school instruction in French in Canada. The pilot project is thus addressed to all children eligible to attend French-language schools, and not only to children who already speak French or who are presently attending a French-language child care centre.

Children participating in the pilot project must be representative of all the Francophone children in their community and reflect their reality in which they live (e.g., some have an Anglophone parent, some do not speak, or speak little, French at home). This implies that if, for example, 50 per cent of the children in the community have an Anglophone parent, then 50 per cent of the children participating in the pilot project should have an Anglophone parent.

Moreover, the pilot project is addressed to children who are three years old before January 1, 2007. In other words, the children participating in the pilot project must be between 2 years and 8 months of age and 3 years and 8 months of age when delivery of the enriched child care services begins in September 2006.

Each community must have a minimum of 40 three-year-old Francophone children. Parents must consent to participate throughout the duration of the pilot project and to allow their child to be a potential participant in the pilot project, throughout its duration, before the children are randomly selected. There will be a round of selection to assign the children to the program and control groups. If the number of three-year-old children in the community is greater than 40, there will be a second round to select a larger number of children, so that information on them and on their families can be collected in order to develop a portrait of the community. Parents must be informed and must understand that their child could be part of the program group, the control group or might not be selected in the second round.

Moreover, by giving their consent, parents agree to allow their child to be tested to evaluate his or her linguistic and cultural knowledge and overall development; to participate in surveys on their family and socioeconomic status (see Research activities section ); and, for parents of children in the program group, to take part in family literacy workshops, and to put family literacy activities into practice and to discuss them.

Implementation of the pilot project in the communities, which will include random selection of the children and training for child care providers and family literacy practitioners, will begin in the Spring of 2006. The child component of the enriched child care services is scheduled to start in September 2006 and will run until the end of September 2007. The family literacy workshops will commence in the Fall of 2006 and will consist of about 12 three-hour sessions that take place once every week or every two weeks.

The period of time during which the enriched child care services will be offered could be extended by one year in order to better capture the effects of those services on the linguistic and cultural development of the children. This could require a commitment on the part of the children, the parents and the communities to participate longer in the pilot project. A decision in this regard will be taken in mid-2006.

Research activities

It is important to assess whether the enriched child care services in French have had an impact on the children’s outcomes. Therefore, there will be direct evaluations of the children and various data collection activities: surveys of parents as well as surveys of key community representatives.

To evaluate the effects of the enriched child care services on the children’s linguistic, cultural and overall development, there will be evaluations of the children in the program and control groups at regular intervals, and their aggregated results will be compared. The children will be evaluated on their knowledge and use of French, their knowledge of and identification with Francophone culture, and their readiness to learn. Only the children in the program and control groups will be evaluated.

Moreover, to understand the influence of socioeconomic, family, cultural and community factors on the children’s outcomes, the parents of the children in the program and control groups will participate in at least two surveys:

• The first survey, conducted at the time delivery of the enriched child care services begins, will provide a portrait of the children and families living in the communities. To produce a more complete and statistically more reliable portrait, the parents of the children selected in the second round will also be questioned. Although these children will not receive the enriched child care services and their development will not be evaluated, the contribution of their parents in the first survey is very important, because it will allow more complete information to be gathered on the circumstances of families living in minority Francophone communities.
  
  
• A second survey will be conducted at the end of the pilot project to gather information from the parents of the children in the program and control groups on any changes in socioeconomic and family factors that may have influenced the development of their children.

The information gathered in these surveys will pertain to, for example, family background, socioeconomic status, linguistic profile, use of French in the home and in the community, cultural resources and practices, and family literacy.

Finally, at the time delivery of the enriched child care services begins, a survey will be conducted with key representatives of the participating communities in order to obtain information on such topics as community history, community literacy, cultural resources and practices, and Francophone community organizations.

All personal information collected will be kept confidential and will be used exclusively for statistical purposes.

Operational structure

The Knowledge and Research Directorate of Social Development Canada has overall responsibility for all aspects of the pilot project. However, as previously indicated, an advisory committee has been created. Its role is to provide advice on the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the pilot project.

SDC is in the process of hiring a research firm, which will be responsible for managing the pilot project (and is referred to in this document as the “project manager”); in other words, the firm will be responsible for setting up and managing the pilot project in each of the communities and will also be responsible for such research activities as data gathering and analysis (direct evaluations of the children and surveys) and the writing of research reports. The project manager will hire a community coordinator for each of the participating communities (see the Criteria section).

An organizational chart that describes the key participants in the pilot project in each community is included in Annex C for information.