Feature Article March 13, 2003
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Early Years Centre finally announced for HFL&Aby Jeff Green
Months after giving verbal approval to the recommendations from an early years committee in Hastings, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington (HFL&A), the provincial government finally decided to announce the establishment of an Early Years Centre in the riding last week.
The plan that has been approved will see the Child Centre in Sharbot Lake become the lead agency for the riding, with locally administered unique satellites being located in Napanee and Bancroft. The three groups will share the $500,000 annual budget the province has allocated for each riding.
Brenda Elliott, the Minster of Family, Community and Social Services (MFCSS) announced the establishment of 61 Early Centres in ridings throughout the province. The other 42 ridings already have early years centres up and running.
The original plan was to have the centres open this spring, but necessary construction to the Child Centre and the two satellites is not yet through the building approval stage, so a mid-summer opening seems more likely.
The steering committee which sent the proposal to set up the services in HFL&A to the ministry, was headed by former NAEC principal Brenda Martin. The steering committee was given a very tight time frame to come up with a plan, and it was a daunting task to try to bring services to children in a vast rural area, she said.
We needed to have a different model than in other ridings, and so we made North Hastings Childrens Services (Bancroft), and Lennox & Addington Resources for Children (greater Napanee) unique satellites. As unique satellites, the two agencies will have more control of their own programs and access to a portion of the annual budget of the centre.
In their initial report, the steering committee had recommended that the Bancroft, Napanee, and Sharbot Lake agencies share lead agency status, but that suggestion was unacceptable to the ministry. The unique satellite system was then suggested as a compromise, and was accepted by the MFCSS.
HFL&A MPP Leona Dombrowski, who as childrens critic for the opposition Liberal party has been critical of the governments record on childrens services, has nonetheless expressed her appreciation of the model being proposed for HFL&A. I think what Brenda Martin and the steering committee have come up with should be a model for the delivery of childrens services in rural Ontario, Dombrowski told the News earlier this year.
The HFL&A Early Years Centre will be built around 50 playgroups scattered throughout the riding. Each weekly playgroup will be served by a resource person from one of the three main agencies, or one of 5 other agencies that will be operating them under contract. The playgroups, aside from being opportunities for parents and children to get together, also act as the access point for all the other services offered under the early years initiative.
The advantage of using this model, says Brenda Martin, is that it decreases the distance families have to travel to access childrens services. This is essential in a rural area that has no public transportation available.
The Early Years Centres were called for by the Early Years Report that came out in 1999. The report found that by the time children enter the school system, they are already either advantaged or disadvantaged by the learning that has taken place in the preschool years. It urged the provincial government to develop programming to meet the needs of pre-schoolers in the areas of early literacy, mental health, hearing, and others, and called for the establishment of Early Years Centres to accomplish these goals.
Becoming the lead agency of the Early Years Centre will not bring much change in the programming at the Child Centre in Sharbot Lake, aside from some increases in the numbers and locations of playgroups run by the Centre. The Child Centre was chosen basically because they were doing what needs to be done across the riding, according to Brenda Martin.
The Centre will be undergoing a renovation shortly, which will increase program and office space, but most of the increased service will be offered in parts of Lennox & Addington and Central Hastings which are currently lacking in service. A van is to be purchased by the Lennox & Addington Resource Centre. It will be based near Kaladar, and will be used by an early childhood educator to run playgroups throughout Central Hastings.
The Early Years Centre is not involved with publicly funded child care, which is separately administered through the City of Kingston for Frontenac County.
