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choicesVol. 13, no. 8, December 2007 ISSN 0711-0677 www.irpp.org
Investing in Our ChildrenIRPP
Gillian Doherty
Ensuringthe Best Startin Life
Targeting versusUniversality in EarlyChildhood Development
F ounded in 1972, the Institute for Research onPublic Policy is an independent, national,nonprofit organization.
IRPP seeks to improve public policy in Canada bygenerating research, providing insight and sparkingdebate that will contribute to the public policydecision-making process and strengthen the quality ofthe public policy decisions made by Canadiangovernments, citizens, institutions and organizations.
IRPP's independence is assured by an endowment fundestablished in the early 1970s.
F ondé en 1972, l’Institut de recherche enpolitiques publiques (IRPP) est un organismecanadien, indépendant et sans but lucratif.
L’IRPP cherche à améliorer les politiques publiquescanadiennes en encourageant la recherche, en mettantde l’avant de nouvelles perspectives et en suscitant desdébats qui contribueront au processus décisionnel enmatière de politiques publiques et qui rehausseront laqualité des décisions que prennent les gouvernements,les citoyens, les institutions et les organismescanadiens.
L’indépendance de l’IRPP est assurée par un fonds dedotation établi au début des années 1970.
Gillian Doherty has been involved in child andfamily issues for over 30 years in a variety ofroles, including those of clinical psychologist,university and college instructor in childdevelopment, and Director of Policy Services forthe Ontario Ministry of Community and SocialServices. Currently she is a consultant andresearcher in the early childhood field, with afocus on the promotion of children’s optimaldevelopment, and an adjunct professor at theUniversity of Guelph, Ontario. She was the leadauthor of the background report on services andfinancial supports for children under age six andtheir families provided by the federal governmentto the OECD to assist it in its 2003 on-site reviewof early childhood education and care in Canada.She has written extensively on the importance ofchildren’s experiences prior to school entry fortheir future academic success, initially for thefederal government in 1991.
This publication was produced under thedirection of Sarah Fortin, Research Director, IRPP.The manuscript was copy-edited by ZofiaLaubitz, proofreading was by Mary Williams,production was by Chantal Létourneau, artdirection was by Schumacher Design andprinting was by AGL Graphiques.
Copyright belongs to IRPP. To order or requestpermission to reprint, contact:
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All IRPP Choices and IRPP Policy Matters areavailable for download at www.irpp.org
To cite this document:
Doherty, Gillian. 2007. “Ensuring the Best Start inLife: Targeting versus Universality in EarlyChildhood Development” IRPP Choices 13 (8).
The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of IRPP or its Board of Directors.
Contents3 Introduction
6 Targeted Initiatives: What Do We Know?
30 Universal Early Childhood Education and Care(ECEC): What Do We Know?
33 Benefit/Cost Ratios
36 Policy Implications and Discussion
40 Conclusion
41 Notes
41 References
Investing in Our Children / Investir dans nos enfantsResearch Director / Directrice de recherche
Sarah Fortin
T his research program examines issues related tofamily policy from the perspective of lifetimeinvestment in human capital based on in-depth
empirical and analytical evidence of the strengthsand weaknesses of current policies as well as evi-dence supporting alternative strategies. The IRPP'sresearch in this area focuses on recent developmentsacross the country in policies that are geared towardchildren.
C e programme examine les politiquespubliques familiales selon une perspectived'investissement à long terme dans le capital
humain et sur la base d'études empiriques et analy-tiques des forces et faiblesses de nos politiquesactuelles, et explore des stratégies de rechange. Ilmet l'accent sur les récents choix des gouvernementsfédéral et provinciaux en matière de politiques des-tinées à l'enfance.
Acknowledgements
M any thanks to the following individuals,who generously provided informationabout their targeted initiatives: Lynne
Robertson from Aboriginal Head Start, Public HealthAgency of Canada; Mariette Chartier and DarleneGirard from Healthy Child Manitoba; Joanna Blaisfrom Manitoba Education and Youth; Cynthia Abeland Helen Hodgson from the Ontario Ministry ofChildren and Youth Services; Louise Therrien fromthe Quebec, Ministère de la Santé et des Servicessociaux; Dannie Giguère from the Quebec, Ministèrede l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport; KathyAbernethy and Gail Russell from SaskatchewanLearning; Debbie Bell from HIPPY Canada; JenniferChalmers, evaluator of the Western Arctic AboriginalHead Start Program; Juanita Duncan, University ofRegina; Dorota Dziong from the Parent-Child MotherGoose Program; Kathy Lenihan from ABC Head Start;and Ruth Sischy from the Toronto Parenting andFamily Literacy Centres.
I am also indebted to the two anonymous peerreviewers whose insightful comments and sugges-tions made this a much stronger paper than it wouldotherwise have been.
Introduction
C anada is facing a workforce shortage resultingfrom low birth rates and increasing numbers ofbaby boomers retiring over the next two decades.
These demographics and the demands of new technolo-gies and the global economy for workers with good peo-ple, literacy, numeracy, problem-solving anddecision-making skills mean that Canada’s future pros-perity depends upon increasing the productivity of whatwill be a much smaller workforce in the future.Increasing productivity requires public policies supportedby adequate levels of government funding to ensure thatevery child reaches his or her fullest potential (Dodge2003; Fortin 2006; Lefebvre and Merrigan 2003).
The research evidence is clear; the foundations forgood adult physical health, social competence, communi-cation skills, adaptability, literacy, and numeracy are laiddown before entry into kindergarten (McCain, Mustardand Shanker 2007). Children who enter school lacking thebasic knowledge and skills required to benefit from theschool program are more likely to experience social andacademic difficulties and drop out prior to graduation(Heckman 2000; Stipek 2001). The costs of failure tograduate from high school are substantial for the individ-ual and for society. The individual faces decreasedemployability and earning potential and an increasedlikelihood of lifelong levels of poorer physical and mentalhealth (Canadian Council on Learning 2006; Keating andHertzman 1999). Society faces decreased workforce pro-ductivity, decreased government revenue and increaseddemands for social assistance and health services. Forinstance, adults with less than a high school diploma —19percent of the population — contribute 9 percent ofincome taxes while consuming 35 percent of governmentincome transfers such as employment insurance andsocial assistance (Canadian Council on Learning 2006).
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Ensuring the BestStart in LifeTargeting versus Universalityin Early Childhood Development
Gillian Doherty
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As a replacement, the new government instituted theUniversal Child Care Benefit (UCCB), a taxable pay-ment of $100 a month to all families for each childunder age six, and allocated $250 million annuallybeginning in 2007 to create new child care spaces(Government of Canada 2006). The UCCB has beencriticized as being insufficient to make regulatedchild care more affordable for most parents and fail-ing to address the need to expand child care avail-ability. Subsequently, the government promised in theMarch 2007 budget to provide additional annualfunding of $250 million to provinces and territoriesfor the creation of child care spaces (Government ofCanada 2007a). The promise of this additional fund-ing in 2007, in combination with the $250 millionannounced in 2006, still represents a substantial cutto the $1 billion committed by the previous govern-ment in 2005.
During the discussions leading up to and followingthe NCA, there was little debate about targeted initia-tives for children deemed vulnerable to poor develop-mental outcomes or their role in an overall ECECsystem. Yet such initiatives have been government-funded in Canada for over 15 years. By 1990, NovaScotia was supporting 30 part-time programs basedon the American Head Start program for preschoolersliving in low-income families and Quebec was fund-ing maternelles quatre ans in low-income urban com-munities and maisons maternelles in targeted ruralareas (Doherty 1991). In 1990, the Ontario govern-ment created Better Beginnings, Better Futures as a25-year project to explore the potential of targetedprograms to prevent developmental problems amongchildren living in economically disadvantaged neigh-bourhoods (Peters et al. 2000). The federal govern-ment’s Community Action Program for Children(CAPC) began in 1993 (Boyle and Willms 2002).Subsequently, additional government money has beeninvested to continue and/or expand some of theseprograms and to fund new targeted initiatives such asthe federal Aboriginal Head Start programs for on-and off-reserve children, Manitoba’s Families Firstprogram, Quebec’s Services intégrés en périnatalité etpour la petite enfance à l’intention des famillesvivant en contexte de vulnérabilité (SIPPE) andSaskatchewan’s KidsFirst program.
Currently, targeted ECEC initiatives receive inexcess of $260 million from various sources, of which$145 million comes from the federal government and$99 million from provincial and territorial govern-ments (see table 7, page 28). Given the limited
Recognizing the need to give all Canadian childrenthe best possible start in life, the First Ministers estab-lished the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Council ofMinisters on Social Policy Renewal in 1996 to reviewexisting social programs, engage in broad public con-sultation and develop a comprehensive strategy tosupport the development of young children. The result,known as the National Children’s Agenda (NCA), artic-ulates a vision of Canada as a country where all chil-dren have the opportunity to reach their full potentialas adults and a policy framework for intergovernmen-tal initiatives to support young children and their fam-ilies1 (Federal-Provincial-Territorial Council ofMinisters on Social Policy Renewal 1999). The NCAwas followed in 2000 by the federal-provincial-territorial Early Childhood Development (ECD)Agreement under which the federal government com-mitted to transfer $500 million annually by 2007-08 tothe provinces and territories to fund the promotion ofhealthy pregnancy, birth and infancy; parenting andfamily support; child development programs; andstrengthening community supports (CanadianIntergovernmental Conference Secretariat 2000). Inpractice, only a small proportion of these funds wasused for providing direct services to children.
The subsequent Multilateral Framework Agreementon Early Learning and Child Care announced in 2003focused specifically on children’s programs. Throughit, the federal government undertook to transfer $900million to the provinces and territories over five yearsfor services in settings such as child care programsand nursery schools (Human Resources DevelopmentCanada 2003). The 2004 Speech from the Throne sig-nalled the federal government’s wish to develop, incooperation with the provinces and territories, a pan-Canadian early childhood education and care (ECEC)system based on the principles of quality, universality,accessibility and child development (Government ofCanada 2004). In the following year, the federal budg-et committed $1 billion annually for five years to sup-port the development of such a system (Governmentof Canada 2005a). During the next few months, bilat-eral agreements were signed with each of the 10provinces and initial federal funding transferred tothem. These agreements and their related federalfunding laid a foundation for the establishment ofuniversal ECEC services across the whole country.
The election in 2005 resulted in a change of gov-ernment and the announcement that the recentlysigned bilateral ECEC agreements and their futurefunding would be terminated effective April 1, 2007.
susceptibility is associated with physical or mental dis-abilities or health problems (2002). Consistent withWillms’s definition, this paper focuses on interventionsfor children prior to school entry who had a normal birthweight and do not exhibit indications of a disability orevidence of conditions such as fetal alcohol syndrome(FAS) but do have developmental problems. Thus, thepaper does not include discussion of the Canada PrenatalNutrition Program (CPNP) and similar provincial or terri-torial targeted initiatives to improve the nutrition of thefetus or services for special needs children.
Two broad community development initiatives tar-geting areas where children are deemed vulnerablebecause their neighbourhood has a high concentrationof low-income families or families of Aboriginal ances-try are excluded. The first — 1,2,3 Go! — does not pro-vide any direct interventions but instead responds toissues of concern to the community by mobilizing com-munity members to work together to address them(Centraide of Greater Montreal 2007). The second,Brighter Futures for First Nations and InuitCommunities, provides funds that may be used for awide variety of purposes such as community mentalhealth promotion; public awareness and preventionactivities related to family violence or suicide; improv-ing birth outcomes; parent education; and/or culturalactivities (Government of Canada 2007b). While some ofthese activities directly or indirectly address children’svulnerability to developmental problems, the broadmandate and emphasis on culturally appropriateapproaches has resulted in initiatives that are very com-munity-specific. This makes it difficult to tease outwhich strategies are appropriate for replication in othercommunities. However, CAPC, another broad communi-ty initiative, is discussed. CAPC funding is specificallytied to services for children under age six and theirfamilies and is intended to enhance the children’s devel-opment (Government of Canada 2007b) Almost everysite provides direct services to children and/or parentingeducation and supports parents in their parenting role(Beaudoin and Turcotte 2002).
The National Longitudinal Survey of Children andYouth (NLSCY), the Étude longitudinale du développe-ment des enfants du Québec (ELDEQ) and the federalgovernment’s Aboriginal Children’s Survey (ACS) sup-port and inform the development and implementationof initiatives for vulnerable children by identifying howchild, family and community factors influence childdevelopment and expanding our understanding of childvulnerability. Other initiatives, such as the federal gov-ernment’s Understanding the Early Years Project and
funding available for services to young children, it isimportant to examine what we know about the cost-effectiveness of targeted programs and engage in adebate about whether they provide the largest socialreturn for the ECEC money they receive.
ObjectivesThis paper seeks to identify the most promisingstrategies for enhancing the development of vulnera-ble children and to contribute to the debate abouthow best to achieve the NCA goal of ensuring that allchildren in Canada have the best possible start in life.
It begins by describing Canadian early interven-tion programs for vulnerable children and what weknow about their impact on children’s development.Since the body of Canadian evaluations is extremelysmall, Canadian findings are supplemented withAmerican findings from similar initiatives. Concern isoften and appropriately expressed about the validityof using American experience to inform Canadianpolicy development because of the differencesbetween the two countries in factors such as theavailability of universal health care and the extent ofthe social safety net. Nevertheless, it is the onlyoption, given that few evaluations of early interven-tion strategies have been conducted in countriesother than the United States. All Canadian evalua-tions are reported regardless of the rigour of theirmethodology and the extent to which it isolates theeffect of the intervention from other influential fac-tors. However, only American evaluations with rigor-ous methodological designs that have been reportedin a peer-reviewed journal or conducted by a researchorganization such as the National Institute for EarlyEducation Research at Rutgers University are cited.
The paper then considers four specific policyissues: the relative efficiency of a targeted versus auniversal approach for assisting vulnerable children;the conditions required for high-quality ECEC; thebenefit/cost ratios associated with different types ofearly childhood interventions; and what is required tosupport the healthy development of all Canada’s chil-dren. In conclusion, the paper identifies a need torethink the current targeted approach to enhancingthe development of vulnerable children.
ScopeWillms uses the term “vulnerable children” to denoteyoung children susceptible to poor developmental out-comes as a result of their environmental circumstancesand states that this does not include children whose
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Targeted Initiatives: What Do WeKnow?
A robust body of Canadian research documentsthat children living in a low-income family, afamily that is Aboriginal, and/or a family
whose home language is other than that used in thecommunity at large are less likely to enter schoolwith the skills required to take advantage of what itoffers (Doherty 2007). Each of these three familycharacteristics can be viewed as a marker indicatingchildren’s increased vulnerability to poor develop-mental outcomes. The existence of such easily identi-fiable markers makes a persuasive case for targetingthe provision of initiatives intended to enhanceyoung children’s development to communities withrelatively large proportions of such families.
Targeted initiatives to promote the development ofchildren deemed vulnerable to poor developmentaloutcomes exist in all parts of Canada. They may befully funded by the federal and/or a provincial gov-ernment or rely on a combination of governmentfunds, donations and their own fundraising. Thetypes of activities engaged in depend upon the prem-ise on which the initiative is based. When the basicpremise is that children’s development is bestenhanced by working directly with them, the primaryfocus is on group programming for children.Initiatives that focus on providing parenting educa-tion and support are based on the premise that thechild’s development can be best enhanced by chang-ing parenting behaviour and the home environment.2
Other initiatives operate on the premise that changingvulnerable children’s developmental trajectoriesrequires working with both the parent and the childand, to a greater or lesser extent, these initiativesprovide both programs for children and educationand support for parents.
In an effort to provide information in the mostuseful way for policy development, commentators inboth Canada and the United States have adopted theconvention of discussing initiatives operating underthe same premise as a single group, using a three-part categorization scheme of parent-focused, child-focused and two-generation programs. In reality, notall initiatives fit neatly into this categorization; forexample, Head Start focuses on children’s program-ming but also provides some parent supports includ-ing assisting parents to access other communityresources. Nevertheless, the three-part categorization
the Early Child Development Mapping Project beingundertaken by the Human Early Learning Partnershipin British Columbia, support and inform initiatives inspecific communities. Their provision of informationabout a community’s socio-economic and demo-graphic characteristics, the availability and locationof resources within it, and the developmental level ofits child population assist communities to addressresource gaps and monitor the effect of actions taken.Neither longitudinal surveys nor community mappingengage in direct service provision and further discus-sion of them is outside the scope of this paper.Additional information about these initiatives andtheir findings can be found in Kershaw et al. (2005)and McCain, Mustard and Shanker (2007).
Identification of targeted initiativesCanadian initiatives to enhance vulnerable children’sdevelopment directly by working with the childrenand/or indirectly through parent education wereidentified through the federal government’s report onits early childhood activities (Government of Canada2007b); federal, provincial and territorial governmentWeb sites; and leads provided by individuals. Specificinformation about program design and child out-comes was collected from material posted on Websites, documents provided by the programs, publishedresearch and data obtained through personal commu-nication. In order to keep the length of the report rea-sonable, the discussion of American initiatives forvulnerable children and their outcomes is limited toinitiatives similar to those existing in Canada.Comparable American initiatives were identifiedthrough the comprehensive reviews undertaken byGormley (2006) and Karoly, Kilburn and Cannon(2005); these also provided some information aboutthe outcomes of these initiatives. Additional informa-tion on child outcomes was sought through a key-word search of the University of Toronto Librarycatalogue. The findings from single-site demonstra-tion initiatives such as the Carolina Abecedarian andthe High/Scope Perry Preschool projects are notincluded in the report because they were extremelyexpensive; for example, it cost $15,270 per child perschool year in 2003 dollars for the Perry PreschoolProject (Aos et al. 2004). Such expenditures wouldnot be feasible to replicate on a large-scale basis.Information on the outcomes of demonstration proj-ects such as the High/Scope Perry Preschool is sum-marized in Anderson et al. (2003), Aos et al. (2004)and Karoly, Kilburn and Cannon (2005).
However, they vary on two other important dimen-sions: the intensity of the intervention and the back-ground of the person who delivers the program. At oneend of the intensity continuum, Quebec’s SIPPE andSaskatchewan’s KidsFirst initiatives begin working withthe mother when she is pregnant and parents may con-tinue in the program until the child is five; they alsoprovide assistance that goes beyond parent education.Mother Goose and HIPPY are at the other end of thecontinuum: both focus solely on teaching parents howto stimulate their child’s development through eitherweekly group meetings or biweekly home visits for a30-week period. The Manitoba, Saskatchewan andHIPPY programs rely on paraprofessionals for servicedelivery while the programs operated by SIPPE andMother Goose are staffed by people who have a profes-sional degree.
Manitoba’s Families First programFamilies First, part of the provincial Healthy ChildManitoba initiative created in 2000, operates in each ofthe regional health authorities in the province and isdelivered by them. As of March 31, 2006, the programhad the capacity to provide home visits to 1,581 fami-lies using a 2005-06 budget of $9,486,000 (Governmentof Manitoba 2006; Darlene Girard, Healthy ChildManitoba, personal communication, March 20, 2007). Itis important to note that this budget includes fundingfor the province’s universal screening of every familywith a newborn in Manitoba as well as an in-depthassessment of families identified as possibly vulnerableto determine whether they should be referred toFamilies First.
In addition to providing assistance in accessing othercommunity services, Families First uses a home-visitingprogram to deliver a specific parenting and child devel-opment curriculum that addresses basic care, health andsafety; child development; parenting issues such as dis-cipline; and strategies to enhance family functioning.Home visitors create an individual binder of activitiesand information that is left with the family and discusswith parents ways to incorporate their new learninginto their daily routine. There is no formal requirementthat parents work with the materials between visits andfamilies choose the level, intensity and duration ofinvolvement. As indicated in table 1, home visitorsreceive preservice training through the ManitobaCurriculum for Training Home Visitors; this includesmodules in child development and parenting, safety andwell-being and the materials used in the program(Creating Great Kids and Growing Great Families). Over
scheme is a useful policy tool in that it enables con-sideration of the relative effectiveness of focusing onchildren, focusing on parents, or providing an inter-vention that combines parent and child services.
This section provides an overview of each categoryof intervention, beginning with parent-focused initia-tives and concluding with two-generation programs.Each of the three categories is organized as follows:(1) Canadian initiatives; (2) evaluations of Canadianinitiatives; (3) evaluations of comparable Americaninitiatives; and (4) discussion. A summary table isprovided for each of the Canadian initiatives in eachcategory, indicating the target population, servicesprovided, duration of intervention and approach tostaffing. Table 7 (page 28), provides the best availableinformation on federal and provincial/territorialfunding for targeted initiatives to promote the devel-opment of vulnerable children and the number ofchildren/families receiving assistance.
Parent-focused initiativesParent-focused initiatives seek to enhance the child’sdevelopment indirectly by changing parental behav-iour and enhancing the home environment; they pro-vide parents with information about child developmentand effective parenting strategies and teach them howto engage in educational activities with their children.The service is usually delivered through home visitsbut may be provided through group or individual par-ent meetings in an agency’s office. Home visiting hasthe advantage of enabling linguistic and culturalmatching between staff and family, may be less threat-ening for some parents, and eliminates the need for theparent to travel in order to receive the service. Thehome visitor focuses on the parent during the homevisit; direct contact between visitor and child is limitedto modelling how an activity should be done.
There are five Canadian parent-focused initiatives:Manitoba’s Families First program, Quebec’s Servicesintégrés en périnatalité et pour la petite enfance àl’intention des familles vivant en contexte de vul-nérabilité (SIPPE), Saskatchewan’s KidsFirst program,the Home Instruction for Parents of PreschoolYoungsters (HIPPY) Program and the Parent-ChildMother Goose Program. Table 1 provides basic infor-mation about each of these five initiatives.
As illustrated in the table, all the initiatives pro-vide parents with information on child development,effective parenting and activities to stimulate chil-dren’s development and all but Mother Goose delivertheir interventions primarily through home visits.
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Table 1Descriptions of Targeted Parent-Focused Initiatives
Initiative Population served Services provided Duration Home visitorsor parent educationtrainers
Sources: Government of Manitoba (2006); Government of Saskatchewan (2005, 2006); Quebec, Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (2004); Home Instructionfor Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) Canada (2006, undated); Parent-Child Mother Goose Program (2007); personal communications: Darlene Girard,Government of Manitoba; Gail Russell, Government of Saskatchewan; Louise Therrien, Quebec Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux; Debbie Bell, HIPPYCanada; Dorota Dziong, Parent-Child Mother Goose Program.
Manitoba’sFamilies First(part of theHealthy ChildManitobainitiative)
Quebec’s Servicesintégrés en périna-talité et pour lapetite enfance àl’intention desfamilles vivant encontexte de vul-nérabilité (SIPPE)
Saskatchewan’sKidsFirst
HIPPY
Parent-ChildMother GooseProgram
Families identified any-where in the province asneeding support throughManitoba’s universalscreening of all newbirths and a subsequentfollow-up by a publichealth nurse. Parent mayreceive service until thechild is age five
Women in any part ofthe province referred bya hospital or social serv-ice who are pregnantand under age 20, and/orliving in severe poverty,and/or have immigratedto Canada within theprevious five years
Family may receive serv-ice from the twelfthweek of pregnancy untilthe child reaches age five
Off-reserve families witha child under age fiveidentified throughscreening of all newbirths and a subsequentin-depth assessmentwho are living in any ofthe nine communitiesdeemed to have thelargest concentration ofvulnerable families
Low-income familieswith a child aged threeto five living in any ofsix areas in BC or in theareas of Montreal andToronto with a HIPPYprogram
Low-income and/orimmigrant families witha child under age four
Depends onfamily needs andparent desire. Nodata on averagelength of partici-pation
Depends onfamily needsand parent desire.No data on aver-age length ofparticipation
Depends on familyneeds and parentdesire. No data onaverage length ofparticipation
30 weeks a yearfor each of twoyears
Parents may takea 30-week ses-sion when theirchild is under agetwo and then asecond 30-weeksession when thechild is aged twoto four
Paraprofessionals witha minimum of grade12 or equivalent andrecent relevant experi-ence such as workingwith families
Two weeks of preser-vice training and ongo-ing in-service training
Typically a nurse,although people withother post-secondaryeducation in fieldssuch as social work orpsychology may beemployed
In-service training.Materials for use bythe local service deliv-ery agencies have beendeveloped by theprovince
Paraprofessionals, typi-cally people who haveraised their own children
In-service training inthe materials used inthe program
Paraprofessionals, typi-cally members of thecommunity who areHIPPY graduates
Both pre- and in-service training
Staff from an agencythat provides servicesfor vulnerable childrenand their families
People providing theprogram are required totake a two-day trainingworkshop and thenparticipate in apracticum experiencefor 30 sessions in anexisting program
• Home visits every week for 9 to 12 months, then asindicated by family progress and desire
• Assistance in accessing other community resources• Parenting education • Information on and suggestions for enhancing child
development• Training to enhance family functioning, e.g. goal-
setting, problem solving
• Supports to vulnerable pregnant women• Home visits every two weeks during pregnancy, then
weekly until the child is age six weeks, every secondweek until age one, then monthly until age five
• Parenting education• Information on and suggestions for enhancing child
development• Counselling to enhance parent and family function-
ing, e.g. goal setting, problem solving, budgeting • Assistance obtaining other community services such
as child care• Activity groups for parents and their children
• Supports to vulnerable pregnant women• Home visits every week initially, then every two
weeks or less frequently depending on familyprogress
• Dedicated mental health and addictions services• Assistance obtaining other community resources • Access to dedicated regulated child care spaces
while parent pursues further education, works or isin need of respite child care
• Parent support groups
• Biweekly home visits 15 times over a 30-week peri-od during the school year
• Biweekly parent groups over the same period
• Out-of-home group meetings for parents once aweek for 30 weeks
experience. An evaluation of SIPPE was started in 2005and is ongoing (Quebec, Ministère de la Santé et desServices sociaux 2004; Louise Therrien, personal com-munication, September 12, 2007).
Saskatchewan’s KidsFirst programSaskatchewan’s KidsFirst program, initiated by the gov-ernment in 2001, operates in the nine communitiesacross the province deemed to have the greatest con-centration of vulnerable families. It is delivered bycommunity agencies operating under the supervision ofa KidsFirst Management Committee, with either a localschool division or health region being the partnerresponsible to the province. At the end of March 2006,home visits were being made to 1,150 families and theprogram maintained 128 dedicated regulated child carespaces for its clients (Gail Russell, Early Learning andChild Care Branch, personal communication, March 12,2007). The 2006-07 budget for KidsFirst was$14,033,000 (Government of Saskatchewan 2006). It isimportant to note that the budget includes not only theservices listed in table 1 but also $2,185,000 granted tocommunity child care services across the province toimprove their program quality (Government ofSaskatchewan 2006).
KidsFirst includes the provision of nutritional sup-plements and prenatal education to vulnerable preg-nant women; home visiting after the birth of the childwith the delivery of a specific parenting and childdevelopment curriculum that addresses basic care,health and safety, child development and parentingissues such as discipline; dedicated mental health andaddictions services for parents; and assistance inaccessing other community resources such as literacytraining. Initially, home visits occur once a week andthen gradually decrease as the family’s capabilitiesprogress; parents are expected to work with their chil-dren between home visits using the suggestions andmaterials provided by the home visitor.
There are also 128 regulated child care spaces oper-ated by other organizations in the community dedicat-ed for the use of KidsFirst parents to support themwhile they attend school, take skills upgrading, seekwork or require respite. A space may also be used toprovide an enhanced developmental opportunity for achild. KidsFirst may cover the whole or part of thechild care fee, depending on the family’s situation. Themix of services received by a family is tailored on acase-by-case basis to provide only those supports need-ed to address its needs, with the goal that the familywill be linked with services and support networks
the subsequent 18 months, they take additional train-ing in areas such as domestic violence (DarleneGirard, personal communication, March 20, 2007).
Quebec’s Services intégrés en périnatalité etpour la petite enfance à l’intention des famillesvivant en contexte de vulnérabilité (SIPPE)SIPPE, which targets women who are pregnant andunder age 20 and/or living in extreme poverty and/orare recent immigrants, is provided right across theprovince through regional Centres de santé et des serv-ices sociaux. The mother and the father may continueto participate in the program until the child is five(Quebec, Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux2004). Participants are referred by hospitals, otherhealth services and social services. In 2006-07, SIPPEserved 5,240 women, an estimated 56 percent of theeligible population, and had an annual budget of $48million (Louise Therrien, Quebec, Ministère de la Santéet des Services sociaux, personal communication,September 12, 2007).
Participants are provided with a variety of supportsincluding home visits lasting 60 to 90 minutes everysecond week beginning in the twelfth week of preg-nancy, information about good nutrition and healthpractices, food coupons and prenatal vitamins. Afterthe birth, there are weekly home visits until the childis six weeks old, then every second week until agetwelve months and monthly until age five. The homevisitor’s activities are tailored to the needs and aspira-tions identified by the family and may include theprovision of information about child development,child nutrition, effective parenting strategies and edu-cational activities to do with the child; budgeting andother life-skill counselling; assistance in accessingother services such as child care and job training; andaccompanying a parent to an appointment. Generally,the home visitor is a nurse, although sometimes theindividual may have another post-secondary profes-sional credential, for example, in social work. Theministry has designed materials to help the regionalcentres provide in-service training. As an employee ofa Centre de santé et des services sociaux, the homevisitor has access to consultation with and can refer aclient to a broad interdisciplinary team includingnutritionists, social workers, psychologists, speech andlanguage therapists, and medical doctors. Home visitsare supplemented by group activities for parents andtheir children and parents are encouraged and assistedto enrol their preschool-aged child in regulated childcare as a means of providing a group educational
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the parent, using role-playing. Between visits, parentsare expected to spend a minimum of 15 minutes aday doing activities with their child (HIPPY Canadaundated). There is a group meeting at a communitycentre or school every other week where parents maydiscuss their progress, ask questions or seek advice.The home visitors are parents from the communitywho have participated in HIPPY and receive preser-vice training related to the implementation of theHIPPY program and ongoing weekly training sessionsfor an average of 140 training hours in their firstyear (HIPPY Canada 2006; Debbie Bell, personal com-munication, March 12, 2007).
The Parent-Child Mother Goose programThe Mother Goose Program (Programme la Mère l’Oiepour parents et enfants) is a nonprofit organizationthat operates in eight provinces and the Yukon. Itreceives funding through provincial and municipalgovernment grants, fees that agencies pay to obtaintraining for their staff and be permitted to use theMother Goose programming materials and overallapproach, and donations. Two versions of MotherGoose are available: one targets children under agetwo; the other, children between the ages of two andfour. Each version provides a one-hour group experi-ence for parents/caregivers and their children for 30consecutive weeks.
The actual program is delivered by staff fromagencies working with vulnerable children in anout-of-home setting such as the agency’s officerather than by Mother Goose employees. There isnot a specific curriculum, such as exists in HIPPY.Instead, parents/caregivers receive demonstrationsand education on how to use interactive rhymes,stories and songs with their child to enhance thechild’s language and communication skills. Printedversions of the rhymes and songs are supplied toparticipants for use at home but there is norequirement that parents work with their childbetween sessions. The person leading the programis required to have participated in a two-dayMother Goose training workshop and obtainedhands-on experience in a mandatory practicumunder the supervision of a fully trained person fora minimum of 30 sessions. Additional trainingworkshops are available for staff members whowish to participate in them (Parent-Child MotherGoose Program 2007; Dorota Dziong, Parent-ChildMother Goose Program, personal communication,September 10, 2007).
within the community and develop the necessarylevel of self-sufficiency and stability to leave the pro-gram. As indicated in table 1, home visitors are typi-cally paraprofessionals who have raised their ownchildren and are given training related to the pro-gram (Government of Saskatchewan 2005; GailRussell, personal communication, March 12, 2007).
Home Instruction for Parents of PreschoolYoungsters (HIPPY)HIPPY Canada is a nonprofit organization thatreceives its revenue from the federal government,donations and its own fundraising. In 2005-06, 385low-income families were served, for an expenditureof $206,299 through six sites in British Columbia,one site in Montreal and one site in Toronto (HIPPYCanada 2006). Five of the HIPPY sites in BritishColumbia serve Aboriginal families. One of these sitesis operated by an Aboriginal consortium and servesfive First Nations, three other sites each serve a FirstNation on-reserve community, and the remaining siteserves Aboriginal families living in Vancouver(Debbie Bell, Executive Director, HIPPY Canada, per-sonal communication, March 12, 2007).
Children enter the program at age three and fami-lies are required to make a two-year commitment toparticipate in the program for 30 weeks during theschool year. The HIPPY program is very structuredand is implemented across sites in the same way usinga standard curriculum and standard materials. Theseinclude HIPPY storybooks for parents to read withtheir children and materials designed to assist childrendevelop visual-motor, language, discrimination andproblem-solving skills. All of the parent instructionalmaterials are prepared at a grade three level and areavailable in a number of languages. HIPPY Canadahas modified the standard HIPPY program for itsAboriginal sites by replacing some of its storybookswith First Nations titles and developing a languageenrichment program to support the transmission ofthe first language of the communities involved. HIPPYCanada has also contracted with Let’s Talk Science, anational organization that develops learning programsto improve science literacy, for the development offive different age-appropriate science activities to beincluded in the HIPPY standard age four curriculum inall its programs (HIPPY Canada 2006).
The family is visited at home every second weekby a HIPPY home visitor who brings a packet ofmaterials to be used in activities with the child andspends about an hour reviewing the materials with
HIPPY children on gender, ethnicity and family socio-demographic variables but whose parents had not par-ticipated in HIPPY (LeMare and Audet undated).3 Allthe children in one comparison group had attended acentre-based preschool program while the 14 childrenin the other comparison group did not have any pre-school experience. At the end of the kindergarten year,the HIPPY children outperformed the children in thecomparison groups on standard measures of knowledgeof concepts, overall cognitive development, and degreeof comfort with the school situation and were ratedhigher by their kindergarten teacher on a standardmeasure of school adjustment and peer relationshipskills. This pattern of results is positive; however, noneof the differences was statistically significant. The lackof significance may reflect the small sample size, a fac-tor that decreases the likelihood that statistical analyseswill detect even moderate-sized effects (Karoly, Kilburnand Cannon 2005).
Evaluations of comparable American parent-focused initiativesQuebec’s SIPPE and Saskatchewan’s KidsFirst initiativesappear to owe much of their design to the Nurse-FamilyPartnership (NFP) program pioneered in Elmira, NewYork, by David Olds and his colleagues over 20 yearsago. The initial program targeted pregnant women withno previous live births who met one of the followingeligibility criteria: under age 19; unmarried or living inpoverty. The women received home visits by publichealth nurses lasting 75 to 90 minutes starting in theprenatal period and continuing until the child’s secondbirthday. The frequency of the visits varied according tothe needs of the mother, with a mean of 9 during preg-nancy and 23 after the child’s birth. The intent was toimprove the women’s prenatal health, and thus birthoutcomes, reduce the incidence of neglect and abuse ofthe children, and improve the women’s life situations.The nurses followed detailed visit-by-visit protocols,implemented specific interventions and assisted partici-pants to access other health and human services (Olds etal. 1998; Olds et al. 1999). According to the NFP Website, the program is now operating in 23 states.
The original Elmira program has been subject to alongitudinal evaluation and also replicated and evalu-ated through randomized trials in Memphis, Tennessee,and Denver, Colorado.4 Fifteen years after entry intothe Elmira program, participants who had been unmar-ried and living in poverty had longer gaps between thebirths of subsequent children, received welfare for sig-nificantly fewer months and had fewer arrests by the
In 2005-06, the Mother Goose national organiza-tion and its largest provincial organization, inToronto, had a combined budget of $27,595. MotherGoose organizations operating in other jurisdictionsand/or the agencies delivering the program mayobtain additional funds for this purpose. Nationally,the agencies delivering the program reported havingserved a total of 1,649 adults (Dorota Dziong, person-al communication, September 25, 2007).
Evaluations of Canadian parent-focusedinitiativesThe three Canadian parent-focused initiatives thathave been evaluated are Families First in Manitoba,KidsFirst in Saskatchewan and one of the HIPPY sitesin British Columbia. Manitoba and Saskatchewanboth use data obtained from all the families that par-ticipated in the NLSCY in 1998-99, 2000-01 and2002-03 as performance indicators for their parent-focused programs (Government of Manitoba 2006;Government of Saskatchewan 2005).
Manitoba reports changes in parental behaviourand family function across the period but no infor-mation about changes in children’s development lev-els. However, American research indicates thatsuccessfully influencing parenting style or the fre-quency of parents’ engagement in educational activi-ties with their children is not always associated withenhanced child development (Gomby 2005).Saskatchewan reports reductions in the percentage ofbehaviour problems and improvement in averagescores measuring cognitive development for childrenin the total sample of NLSCY families in the provincebetween 1998-99 and 2002-03. However, it is diffi-cult to know what this means without knowing whatthe changes were among children in the subsample ofNLSCY families with similar demographic and socio-economic characteristics to those of the participantsin the intervention program. Saskatchewan hasrecently obtained a grant from the CanadianPopulation Health Institute for a three-year evalua-tion of its KidsFirst program (Gail Russell,Saskatchewan Early Learning and Child Care Branch,personal communication, March 12, 2007). This eval-uation should enable the provision of more specificinformation.
A quasi-experimental evaluation has been con-ducted in a single HIPPY site in British Columbiainvolving 14 children whose parents participated inHIPPY for two years and two comparison groups ofchildren who were individually matched with the
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cally similar children selected at the time of follow-up, some of whom had received another type of pre-school experience while others had no preschoolexperience. In grade three and again in grade six, theHIPPY children performed better on reading and lan-guage achievement tests than children in either com-parison group, although the difference was verymodest. There was no significant difference betweenthe groups in achievement in mathematics, level ofgrade repetition or placement in special educationclasses (Bradley and Gilkey 2002).
In the second study, the effect of HIPPY on chil-dren’s cognitive development, school achievement andclassroom adaptation was assessed at the end ofkindergarten and again at the end of first grade fortwo sequential cohorts of children whose parents hadbeen enrolled in HIPPY for two years in each of twodifferent sites. One site involved a randomized trial forboth cohorts, the “gold standard” for evaluation, whilethe other site used a quasi-experimental design (Baker,Piotrkowski and Brooks-Gunn 1999). No clear patternof results emerged. Children in the first cohort bene-fited on different measures and/or at different timesacross the two sites. There was no difference betweenHIPPY and comparison children in the second cohortin one site, while at the other site the comparisonchildren were rated higher than the HIPPY children onschool-readiness and school achievement at the endof kindergarten, although there were no other differ-ences at either point. The researchers report that theinconsistent results could not be explained by any dif-ferences in the characteristics of the cohorts at eithersite or in the way that the HIPPY program was imple-mented between cohorts.
Parents as Teachers (PAT) is another home-visitingprogram with similar goals to HIPPY. Like HIPPY, itemploys paraprofessionals and uses a relatively pre-scriptive curriculum and the provision of materialsfor the parent to use at home with the child. It wasoriginally designed for use with middle-class families,and little research has examined its effectiveness fordisadvantaged populations. Two randomized trialswith low-income families in California both foundsmall and inconsistent effects on parenting knowl-edge and behaviour and minimal impact on children’scognitive, communication, social and self-help skillsfor the participating group as a whole. However, fur-ther analyses indicated that children living inSpanish-speaking Latino homes made small but sta-tistically significant gains in receptive vocabularyand social skills (Wagner and Clayton 1999).
police and fewer incidents of verified child neglect orabuse (Olds et al. 1998; Olds et al. 1999). TheMemphis and Denver sites also report that partici-pants had longer gaps between births. Memphis alsofound lower use of welfare than found in the com-parison group two years after leaving the program,although Denver did not find any between-group dif-ferences on this variable (Olds et al. 1999, 2004b).
The NFP’s original goals did not include a focus onenhancing child development or school-readiness andthe results in these areas vary across sites and amongfamilies, with different characteristics within a site.Results are available for children up to age four forDenver, age six for Memphis and age fifteen for Elmira.At age four, children in the Denver site whose parentshad received home visits by nurses obtained higherscores on a language test and on a test measuring theircapacity for focused attention and self-regulation thandid children in the comparison group (Olds et al. 2004b).However, four-year-old participants in the Elmira pro-gram had no better ability to remain focused or to self-regulate than the comparison children; language skillswere not measured in this site (Olds et al. 2004b). At agesix, the total sample of participating children in theMemphis program obtained higher scores on tests ofintellectual functioning and language skills than thosein the comparison group and were rated by parents andby teachers as having fewer behaviour problems. Inaddition, the children of mothers who were consideredto have mental health problems obtained higher scoreson tests of arithmetic skills and verbal expressive abilitythan did the remaining group of participant children(Olds et al. 2004a). At age 15, there were no differencesbetween the total Elmira sample and the comparisongroup children in teacher reports of problem behaviour,incidence of suspensions from school or reports relatedto delinquency. However, the subgroup of children ofpoor, unmarried mothers had lower rates of arrests, con-victions and violations of parole than children in thecomparison group (Olds et al. 1999).
The Canadian HIPPY program is based on theAmerican HIPPY program and uses the sameapproach and most of the same materials. TheAmerican program began operating in 1984 and cur-rently has 167 sites nationally (Gomby 2005).Nevertheless, only two evaluations of its effectivenessusing a comparison group have been reported inpeer-reviewed journals and these present mixedresults. The first evaluation was a quasi-experimentalstudy involving 515 children whose parents had com-pleted two full years of HIPPY and 516 demographi-
the various challenges associated with their situation hasproven to be very difficult. In the United States, the ratesof attrition prior to the intended length of the programare typically between 45 and 60 percent (Gomby 2005;Wagner and Clayton 1999). Even when parents remainin the program for its full duration, research indicatesthat many of them miss in-home visits, fail to attendout-of-home parent meetings and/or or fail to work withtheir child using the program materials between homevisits (Gomby 2005; Wagner and Clayton 1999).
The educational background of the person provid-ing the intervention also may influence its success.Home-visiting programs targeting very low socio-economic neighbourhoods need visitors who canestablish and maintain good rapport with parents andhave the knowledge and skills to respond to familycrises as they arise (Gomby 2005). These are not min-imal skills, yet many parent-focused programs relyon paraprofessionals. Overall, the research indicatesthat programs employing paraprofessionals tend to beleast successful (Gomby 2005). A study that com-pared the effectiveness of the Nurse-FamilyPartnership program when delivered by nurses with aBSN degree and by paraprofessionals with no collegeeducation found that at age four the children whosefamilies had been visited by a nurse had better lan-guage, cognitive and self-regulation skills than thosewhose parents had been visited by a paraprofessional(Olds et al. 2004b). These results do not necessarilyimply that nurses make the best home visitors, butthey do suggest the value of post-secondary educa-tion in a discipline related to the provision of humanservices. In summary, the benefits to children’s devel-opment obtained through parent-focused initiativesare inconsistent and usually negligible. The inconsis-tency may reflect differences in the planned intensityof the initiative, the actual amount of interventionreceived by the parent and/or the educational level ofthe person delivering the program.
Child-focused initiativesChild-focused initiatives are based on the premise thatthe children’s home environment is unable to ade-quately support their optimal development and thatdirect work with the children is required in order tomake a real difference in their developmental trajecto-ry. The five Canadian child-focused initiatives are thefederal government’s Aboriginal Head Start Programand targeted prekindergarten in Alberta, Manitoba,Quebec and Saskatchewan. Table 2 provides basicinformation on each of these initiatives.
Early Head Start, a federally funded program thatbegan in 1995, serves children from birth to age threeand their families. It permits its 700 sites to provide aprimarily home-visiting program focusing on the par-ent, supplemented by two parent-child group activi-ties a month, a centre-based program for children, ora “mixed-approach program” in which home-visiting,and/or centre-based developmental programming isprovided to different families or in combination tofamilies either simultaneously or at different times.Seventeen Early Head Start sites across the countryrecruited twice as many eligible families as theycould serve and randomly assigned them to partici-pate in the program (1,513 families) or to be part ofthe comparison group (1,488 families). At age three,there was no significant impact on children’s cogni-tive or language development in programs using theprimarily home-visiting approach (Love et al. 2005).
Discussion Several commentators have concluded that generallythe use of primarily parent-focused initiatives as asole strategy has minimal or no effect on vulnerablechildren’s development (Barnett 2002; Farran 2000;Gomby 2005; Gormley 2006). Two hypotheses havebeen suggested to account for these disappointingresults. The first is that interventions concentrating onparenting education fail to address the contextual fac-tors influencing parenting style. They do nothing toaddress the immediate problems of inadequate incomelevels, substandard housing, and high rates of unem-ployment and are unlikely to address the high inci-dence of parental depression among parents living inpoverty (Farran 2000). Yet we know that parentaldepression saps psychological energy and is associat-ed with lack of engagement in educational activitieswith children and a hostile rather than supportive par-enting style (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan and Britto 1999).
The relatively low levels of intensity of many parent-focused initiatives and/or actual exposure to the inter-vention is the second explanation for thedisappointing results obtained with this approach. Theeffect of targeted interventions on child developmentis closely related to the intensity of the intervention(Barnett 2002; Gomby 2005; Gormley 2006; Ramey etal. 1995). Some parent-focused programs, such asHIPPY, provide their services for only a short time.Sustaining parent involvement also is an issue; it isessential for success because parents, not staff, providethe programming for the children. Obtaining sustainedinvolvement from parents living in poverty and facing
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Head Start on Reserve, established in 1998. Bothare completely funded by the federal governmentthrough financial transfers to Aboriginal nonprofitcommunity groups or bands/First Nations that areresponsible for designing and operating the serv-ice. Aboriginal Head Start in Urban and NorthernCommunities (AHSUNC) targets First Nations, Inuitand Métis children up to age six and their familiesliving off-reserve, with a primary emphasis onchildren aged three to five; Aboriginal Head Starton Reserve (AHSOR) targets children of the sameages living on-reserve. In 2005-06, the total gov-ernment expenditure for AHSUNC was $31,214,712for a total of 4,500 children served across 131sites; the total for AHSOR was $50,165,212, with9,101 children served in 354 sites (Government ofCanada 2007b).
As illustrated in the table, all five initiatives providepart-day, out-of-home programs. Two initiatives,Aboriginal Head Start and ABC Head Start in Alberta,also provide parents with assistance accessing othercommunity resources. In addition, ABC Head Startprovides weekly parenting education sessions andvision, hearing, speech and general developmentscreening for children. To the extent that they areavailable in the community, Aboriginal Head Startprograms hire staff who have a college early childhoodeducation credential. The children’s group programs inthe other initiatives are staffed by certified teachers.
Aboriginal Head StartThe Aboriginal Head Start Program consists ofAboriginal Head Start in Urban and NorthernCommunities, established in 1995, and Aboriginal
Table 2Descriptions of Targeted Child-Focused Initiatives
Initiative Population served Services provided and duration Staffing
Sources: Government of Canada (2007b); Public Health Agency of Canada (2004); Winnipeg School Division (2006); Quebec, Ministère de la Famille, des Aînés et de laCondition feminine (2007); Saskatchewan Learning (2006); ABC Head Start (2006a, 2006b); personal communications: Joanna Blais, Government of Manitoba; KathyAbernethy, Government of Saskatchewan; Kathy Lenihan, ABC Head Start.
Federal AboriginalHead Start inUrban andNorthernCommunities
Federal AboriginalHead Start onReserve
Manitoba’s preindergarten
Quebec’s pré-maternelle forfour-year-olds
Saskatchewan’sprekindergarten
ABC Head Start
First Nations, Inuit andMétis children up to agesix and their families liv-ing off-reserve
First Nations children upto age six and their fam-ilies living on-reserve
Four-year-olds living intwo specific school districts
Four-year-olds in low-income, inner city neigh-bourhoods, primarily inMontreal
Three- and four-year-oldchildren living in low-income neighbourhoodsthroughout the province
Children aged three anda half to five living inlow-income neighbour-hoods in Edmonton
Teaching staff are required to have thesame level of early childhood education(ECE) required in child care centres by thejurisdiction in which the program oper-ates. In most cases, the lead teacher hasat least a one-year college ECE credential
Preference is given to hiring Aboriginalstaff.
Elders are encouraged to take an activepart in the program
Each classroom has a certified teacherand a teaching assistant who often has acollege ECE credential
Each classroom has a certified teacher
Each classroom has a certified teacherand a teaching assistant who often has acollege ECE credential
Each group in the children’s program isstaffed by a certified teacher and twoteaching assistants
Screening by a primary health team con-sisting of two public health nurses, anursing assistant and a dental hygienist.Follow-up, if required, arranged throughthe Glenrose Hospital PreschoolAssessment Services Outreach Program
• Half-day group program for children aged three tofive for five days a week throughout the school year
• Promotion of child and family health and nutrition• Assistance to parents in accessing other community
resources• Many provide parenting education
• Part-day program, five days a week during theschool year
• Part-day program, four or five days a week duringthe school year
• Part-day program, 5 days a week during the schoolyear
• Part-day program, 4 days a week during the schoolyear
• Vision, hearing, speech and general developmentscreening
• Weekly parent education groups• Assistance to parents in accessing other community
resources
each with its own social worker; parent counselling andassistance in accessing other resources; and in-homevisits to families whose children have special needs toassist parents in implementing educational activities toreinforce the classroom curriculum. In 2005-06, ABCHead Start served 304 children and their families andhad a budget of $3,062,317, of which $2,580,942 camefrom the province (ABC Head Start 2006a, b; KathyLenihan, Executive Director, ABC Head Start, personalcommunication, February 6, 2007).
Two Manitoba school divisions, one in Winnipegand the other in a northern part of the province with ahigh proportion of families who live on-reserve, haveestablished targeted nursery (prekindergarten) programsfor children age four. These programs do not receiveprovincial funding; the Winnipeg program is financedthrough an education levy on property taxes while theother program has been able to obtain federal funding(Joanna Blais, Manitoba Education and Youth, personalcommunication, February 12, 2007). In September2005, the Winnipeg program was operating part-dayclasses in 58 schools and had an enrolment of 1,785children. The cost to operate the program is expected tobe approximately $4.1 million in the 2006-07 schoolyear (Winnipeg School Division 2006). Similar infor-mation is not available for the program operating inthe northern part of the province.
In Quebec, prématernelle for four-year-olds providesa part-day program operated by the local school boardfor four or five days per week over 36 weeks for chil-dren living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In 2006-07, the program served 4,881 children (Dannie Giguère,Quebec, Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport,personal communication, November 29, 2007). The esti-mated cost per child was $2,146 (Quebec 2007, 9). Nonew prématernelles for four-year-olds have beenopened since 1997, but the existing ones continue to befunded (Friendly et al. in press). This “freeze” reflectstwo important government initiatives. The first initia-tive was the 1996 reform of the education system,which included a provision for four-year-old childrenliving in disadvantaged neighbourhoods without a pré-maternelle to attend a regulated child care programwithout charge for 23.5 hours a week, with the expresspurpose of enabling them to participate in an educa-tional experience (Quebec, Ministère de l’Éducation1996). The second important initiative was the adop-tion of a specific and mandatory educational programfor use in all regulated child care settings, Jouer, c’estmagique, which was inspired by the AmericanHigh/Scope Education Approach, along with the rapid
There are Head Start sites in every territory andprovince. The federal government requires that allsites provide the following components: (1) promo-tion of school-readiness through a structured part-day preschool program for children age three to fiveduring the school year; (2) promotion of Aboriginalculture and language in the preschool program; (3)promotion of child and family health and nutrition;(4) assistance to families in accessing other communi-ty resources; and (5) opportunities for parent partici-pation on parent councils or other governing bodiesand in classroom activities (Public Health Agency ofCanada 2004). There is no required curriculum or cur-riculum approach and each site determines how bestto provide the required components in its communitycontext. To the extent that they are available, teach-ing staff in the preschool program are required tohave the same level of training as required for childcare centres in the jurisdiction in which the HeadStart site operates (Government of Canada 2005b). Inmost cases, the lead teacher working with a group ofchildren has probably a one-year college early child-hood education credential (Lynne Robertson, PublicHealth Agency of Canada, personal communication,February 19, 2007).
PrekindergartenTargeted prekindergarten programs are operating infour provinces: Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec andSaskatchewan. A nontargeted four-year-old juniorkindergarten program is also provided in Ontario.Alberta’s prekindergarten was initiated and developedby nonprofit organizations that operate Head Start-like group programs targeting children aged threeand a half to five living in low-income neighbour-hoods and also provide some parent supports. Theseorganizations supplement provincial grants for theprovision of kindergarten, which can be used for chil-dren younger than age five under certain circum-stances, with funds from other sources such as thefederal government, donations and their ownfundraising activities. The largest, ABC Head Start inEdmonton, has 12 sites and operates 19 half-dayclasses four days a week during the school year.These classes have 16 to 18 children each and arestaffed by a certified teacher and two assistants. Mostchildren attend for a single year only and then trans-fer to kindergarten. ABC Head Start also providesvision, hearing, speech and general developmentassessments through partnerships with other commu-nity agencies; weekly parenting education groups,
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all the children apparently made gains in their overallphysical health and social skills and 38 percent alsoexhibited enhanced literacy and numeracy skills(Lynne Robertson, Public Health Agency of Canada,personal communication, February 19, 2007). Theseresults appear promising but unfortunately the evalu-ation lacked a comparison group of similarAboriginal children who did not attend Head Start.This makes it impossible to isolate the effect of theprogram from other factors such as child maturation.
The Western Arctic Aboriginal Head Start Council(WAAHSC) is a network of eight AHSUNC programsin the Northwest Territories. One program has con-ducted two evaluation studies. The first compared theschool-readiness of 31 AHSUNC children at entry intokindergarten and again in first grade with a compari-son group of Aboriginal children from the same com-munity, matched on socio-economic status, familystructure and home language, who had not attendedthe program. On both occasions, the AHS childrenobtained significantly higher scores on school-readi-ness skills as measured by the Brigance PreschoolScreen and Kindergarten Screen (Brigance 1998). Inthe second study, the achievement level in reading,spelling and mathematics, as measured by the WIAT-II (Wechsler Individual Achievement Test II) (Wechsler2001), was assessed for 50 AHS children and a com-parison group when both groups of children wereeight to ten years old. The comparison group in thisstudy also consisted of Aboriginal children who hadbeen matched on socio-economic status, family struc-ture and home language with the AHS children.Again, the AHS children obtained significantly higherachievement scores (WAAHSC 2007; JenniferChalmers, Evaluator, personal communication,February 20, 2007).
PrekindergartenABC Head Start is the largest in a network ofprekindergarten programs in the Edmonton area, allof which evaluate the effectiveness of their children’sprograms through pre- and post-tests using a stan-dard tool to measure children’s social/emotional, cog-nitive, motor and language skills and their generalknowledge (Kathy Lenihan, Executive Director, ABCHead Start, personal communication, February 6,2007). ABC reports that 265 children assessed justbefore their entry into kindergarten showed a 25 per-cent increase overall in their abilities in all fourdevelopmental areas (ABC Head Start 2006a).
expansion of regulated child care spaces (Tougas2002). Currently, children deemed vulnerable todevelopmental problems because they are living in avery low-income or refugee family or have beenidentified by a social service can attend a regulatedchild care program for five half-days a week withoutcharge (Government of Quebec 2007).
Saskatchewan’s targeted prekindergarten programwas started by the provincial government in 1993 asa pilot project in two communities. In 2006-07, therewill be 119 provincially funded programs with ananticipated enrolment of approximately 1,900 chil-dren. School divisions decide if and where they wantto operate targeted prekindergarten and receive$48,346 for each program regardless of the numberof children enrolled. Many divisions augment theprovincial grant with funds from other sources. Thereis also some provincial funding available in the firstyear of operation for start-up expenses. Classes havea maximum enrolment of 16 children in a mixed agegrouping of three- and four-year-olds and operatehalf-days, five days a week during the school year.The province has produced a set of program guide-lines that emphasizes the use of direct concrete expe-riences and play to facilitate children’s development.Staffing consists of a certified teacher and a teachingassistant who often has a college certificate in earlychildhood education (ECE). Parents are encouraged towork in the classroom and/or sit on a parent council,and some programs also provide home visiting(Government of Saskatchewan 2006; KathyAbernethy, Saskatchewan Learning, personal commu-nication, February 22, 2007).
Evaluations of Canadian child-focused programsThe Canadian child-focused early intervention initia-tives with child outcome evaluations are AboriginalHead Start in Urban and Northern Communities,which has been evaluated twice, the ABC Head Startprogram in Edmonton, and the targeted prekinder-garten operated by Regina Public School District No.4. Table 3 provides an overview of their evaluationapproach, outcome measures and outcomes.
Aboriginal Head Start in Urban and NorthernCommunities (AHSUNC) The National AHSUNC Evaluation, the report ofwhich is yet to be released, involved nine sites acrossthe country. Over a two-year period in the program,
as having poor cognitive skills; there was little differencein ranking between the two groups on literacy skills.None of the between-group differences was statisticallysignificant (Krentz, Mensch and Warkentin 2004a).
In first grade, 43 of the prekindergarten children and23 of the comparison children were assessed at the endof the school year using the School Social BehaviourScales (Merrell 2002) and on mastery of the first-gradecurriculum using tools created by the Regina SchoolDivision. A higher proportion of the prekindergartenchildren obtained high or average scores on socialcompetence, both groups obtained very similar overallaverage scores on antisocial behaviour and mastery ofmathematics but most of the children reading belowgrade level were from the prekindergarten group.Again, there were no statistically significant differences
Unfortunately, the lack of a comparison group makesit impossible to isolate the effect of the program fromother influential factors such as maturation.
Regina Public School District No. 4 recently com-pleted a longitudinal study that started in kindergartenwith 48 children who had attended prekindergartenand 43 comparison children selected by their kinder-garten teachers as the best match possible in the par-ticular classroom to a prekindergarten graduate interms of cultural and family background. In somecases, teachers determined that a match was not possi-ble, resulting in slightly fewer comparison children. InOctober, a slightly higher proportion of the prekinder-garten children was rated by the kindergarten teachersas having highly developed communication and/orsocial/emotional skills and a slightly lower proportion
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Table 3Research Approach, Outcome Measures and Outcomes: Targeted Child-Focused Initiatives
Study Approach and sample Outcome measures Outcomes
Sources: Western Arctic Aboriginal Head Start Council (2007); ABC Head Start (2006a); Krentz, Mensch and Warkentin (2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2006); personalcommunications: Lynne Robertson, Aboriginal Head Start Program, Public Health Agency of Canada; Jennifer Chalmers, WAAHSC Evaluator; Kathy Lenihan, ABCHead Start.
Aboriginal HeadStart in Urban andNorthernCommunities(AHSUNC)
Prekindergarten
National AHSUNCEvaluation
Western ArcticAboriginal Head StartCouncil (WAAHSC);two studies in the samecommunity
ABC Head Start
Regina Public SchoolDistrict No. 4 prekinder-garten
Standard classroom obser-vational tool and inter-views with parents andkindergarten teachers
• Brigance PreschoolScreen andKindergarten Screen
• WIAT-II
• Measure of develop-ment in social/emotion-al, cognitive, motor andlanguage skills
• Merrell School SocialBehaviour Scales
• Measures of readingand mathematics skillsdeveloped by the schooldivision
All children apparentlymade gains in theiroverall physical healthand social skills and 38percent made gains inliteracy and numeracyskills
Children with HeadStart experienceobtained significantlyhigher scores on boththe Brigance Preschooland Kindergarten scales
When between ageseight and ten, childrenwith Head Start experi-ence obtained signifi-cantly higher scores onthe WIAT-II scales forreading, spelling andmathematics
25 percent increase inpost- over pre-testscores on social/emo-tional, cognitive/generalknowledge, motor skillsand language for thegroup as a whole
No statistically signifi-cant between-groupdifferences at entryinto kindergarten or atthe end of either gradeone or grade two
Comparison of children’s level of develop-ment over a two-year period. No comparisongroup
Study 1: comparison of school-readiness of31 children who had attended Head Startand 31 comparison children at entry intokindergarten and again at grade one
Study 2: comparison of achievement levels of50 Head Start children and 50 comparisonchildren in reading, spelling and mathematicswhen they were between ages eight and ten
Pre-post comparison of 265 children’s levelof development after a single year of pro-gram participation. No comparison group
Follow-up of 48 children who had participat-ed in the prekindergarten program and 43comparison children
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ies have compared siblings in an attempt to addressthe issue of differences in parents who do or do notparticipate in voluntary programs; this strategy ispossible because Head Start is consistently over-subscribed. One study used data from the NationalLongitudinal Survey of Youth to compare 927 HeadStart graduates with siblings who had not attendedthe program and found that participation closedabout a third of the gap in vocabulary test scores atage five. The benefit of Head Start faded out forAfrican American children after three or four yearsbut was maintained by the other Head Start gradu-ates and was associated with a 47 percent decreasein likelihood of repeating a grade in either elemen-tary or high school. The positive effect of Head Startfor all children exceeded that of enrolment in anyother preschool program (Currie and Thomas 1995).Another study compared 489 adults from differentparts of the country who reported having attendedHead Start with siblings who reported that they hadnot. It found that White children who had attendedHead Start were significantly more likely to completehigh school and attend college but this did not holdtrue for African American graduates. They were,however, significantly less likely to have beenbooked or charged with a crime than siblings with-out Head Start experience (Garces, Thomas andCurrie 2002).
The apparent fade-out of benefits for AfricanAmerican children found in the two above-mentionedstudies may reflect the children’s elementary schoolexperience, not the effectiveness of Head Start. Twostudies examined the quality of the elementary schoolattended by children from similar low-income fami-lies who had or had not participated in Head Start.Both found that the elementary schools attended bythe Head Start graduates were of much poorer qualityin terms of variables such as safety, teacher-studentrelations and the academic climate than those attend-ed by other children from similar low-income back-grounds (Currie and Thomas 2000; Lee and Loeb1995). Currie and Thomas found that the difference inschool quality between Head Start and non-HeadStart children was greater for African American chil-dren. A subsequent elementary school experience thatfails to support children’s development adequatelymay erode the benefits of Head Start.
Sibling studies do not take into account the possi-bility that family poverty may be deeper when onesibling is a preschooler than when another is, with theresult that the two siblings may have different home
between the groups (Krentz, Mensch and Warkentin2004b). By the end of the second grade, only 15 com-parison children were available for testing. At thattime, a slightly higher proportion of the comparisonchildren obtained high or average scores on socialcompetence while a slightly higher number ofprekindergarten children were rated as disruptive. Thecomparison children obtained slightly higher averagemathematics scores and as a group exhibited higherlevels of reading skills (Krentz, Mensch andWarkentin 2005). By grade three, only five compari-son children were available (Krentz, Mensch andWarkentin 2006).
No clear pattern emerges from this study concerningsignificant between-group differences. However, adegree of caution must be exercised in interpreting thesefindings. First, the extent to which the two groups ofchildren were similar to each other on salient character-istics such as family socio-economic status is unknown,as is whether some or all of the comparison childrenhad received some sort of group preschool experience.Second, sample sizes, especially in grade two, are small— a factor that decreases the likelihood that statisticalanalyses will detect even moderately sized effects.
Evaluations of comparable American child-focused programsHead Start Head Start targets three- and four-year-olds living inpoverty and is required by the federal government toprovide: (1) a centre-based structured program for thechildren; (2) child health screening and referral; (3)hot meals that provide at least a third of children’sdaily nutritional needs; and (4) social and mentalhealth services for both the child and the family. Thechildren’s group program may be offered on a part- orfull-day basis and most children attend for two years.
Head Start has been extensively evaluated since itsinception; unfortunately, however, many of the earlystudies lacked a comparison group, as did the morerecent federally funded Family and Child Experiences(FACES) study, which compared Head Start childrenwith national norms for all children (Zill et al. 2003).As a result, the effects of the program cannot be iso-lated from other factors that might influence chil-dren’s development. The early evaluations also tendedto use small samples from a specific site or communi-ty, thereby raising the question of whether they wererepresentative of Head Start sites in general.
More recent evaluations have used larger, samplesfrom various sites across the country. Two such stud-
PrekindergartenIn 2005-06, 39 states funded prekindergarten programsfor a total of 950,000 children, an increase of 40 per-cent in the number of four-year-olds being served since2001-02, which meant that prekindergarten now serveda larger number of children than Head Start. Most state-funded prekindergartens target children living in fami-lies with a very low income although four states nowhave universal prekindergarten (Barnett et al. 2006).
The National Institute for Early Education Research atRutgers University has conducted evaluations of state-operated targeted prekindergarten in four states. All fourstudies employed a regression-discontinuity design5 toobtain a comparison group. This design addresses the twoproblems of possible selection bias and increased skillsdue to maturation alone. All the studies also used randomselection procedures to obtain the group of children whohad participated in prekindergarten and the comparisonchildren without this experience. The number of childrenwith prekindergarten experience in the four studies variedfrom 1,170 to 384 (Hustedt et al. 2007; Lamy, Barnett andJung 2005a, b, c).
Statistically significant outcome differences betweenthe children with and without prekindergarten experi-ence were found in all four evaluations. The increase invocabulary over the year attributable to attending thepreschool varied from 24 to 42 percent and the increasein prereading skills from 42 to 64 percent. The threestudies that assessed premathematical skills reported anincrease in skills of between 24 and 64 percent. Noneof the four studies found significant between-groupdifferences in children’s ability to recognize, sound outor blend the sounds associated with letters. It is impor-tant to note that the comparison groups included chil-dren who had attended other types of group earlychildhood programs such as Head Start and child care.Thus the results isolate the effects of a specific type ofintervention rather than the influence of any groupprogram prior to entering kindergarten.
A study using data from the US National EarlyChildhood Longitudinal Study on a nationally repre-sentative sample of 10,224 children and controlling fora wide variety of family and neighbourhood character-istics compared reading and premathematical skills atentry into kindergarten between children who had oneof the following types of nonparental experience: (1)prekindergarten; (2) Head Start; (3) another group pre-school experience such as child care or nursery school;and (4) care from a relative or nanny. Prekindergartenparticipation was associated with higher scores onmeasures of reading and mathematical skills just after
environments and experiences. Random assignment ofeligible applicant children to Head Start or to a com-parison group increases the credibility of the findingsby increasing the probability that both groups arecomparable at the beginning of the study. Thisapproach has been used in two studies. In the firststudy, an identification number was randomlyassigned to each eligible child applicant and the chil-dren were then randomly divided into 80 Head Startand the 41 comparison group children. Assessments ofall the children and family background data collectedprior to the beginning of the study found no statisti-cally significant differences between the groups inparental education levels, family structure, or childreceptive vocabulary or early literacy skills. Childassessment after nine months of participation in HeadStart found a significantly greater improvementamong the Head Start children in receptive vocabu-lary and ability to recognize and make the soundsrelated to letters but not print awareness or socialskills (Abbott-Shim, Lambert and McCarty 2003).
In 2002, the US federal government initiated thelongitudinal Head Start Impact Study. In so doing, itrecognized the need for a large nationwide sample,randomized assignment of equally eligible childrenfrom the same neighbourhood to participate in HeadStart or not, and follow-up in elementary school. Theevaluation involves 2,449 children aged three and2,108 aged four drawn from 23 communities (Officeof Planning, Research and Evaluation, US Departmentof Health and Human Services 2007). The results ofthe first evaluation, based on data obtained ninemonths after the children’s enrolment, show signifi-cantly though modestly higher scores for Head Startparticipants on letter-word identification, prereadingtests, prewriting tests and vocabulary tests andreduced behaviour problems among children whoentered at age four. No significant between-groupdifferences were found for mathematics skills (Pumaet al. 2005).
Overall, the American findings on Head Startfrom the more recent, larger and methodologicallymore rigorous studies are encouraging and data onthe longitudinal federal evaluation now underwaywill eventually enable a firm conclusion.Meanwhile, several researchers agree that HeadStart has the potential to benefit vulnerable chil-dren’s development and enhance their school-readi-ness (Currie 2005; Garces, Thomas and Currie 2002;Gormley 2006; Hustedt and Barnett 2005; Ziglerand Styfco 1996).
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in the positive direction, but not significant. The lackof significance may reflect the small sample sizesand/or the possibility that the participant and com-parison groups were not comparable, a possibilitythat cannot be confirmed due to the lack of socio-demographic information on the two groups.
There is some indication that the American HeadStart program may have less of an effect on thedevelopment of its participants in relation to that ofcomparison children than its prekindergarten coun-terparts. This seems counterintuitive given that HeadStart, unlike prekindergarten, provides a variety ofhealth and social services for participating childrenthat would not be available to the majority of com-parison children. Several researchers have suggestedthat Head Start has lower overall quality than theprekindergarten programs operated by school boards(Hustedt and Barnett 2005; National Institute forEarly Education Research [NIEER] 2003). Researchshows that preschool programs of any type producethe strongest effects on child development whenteachers are well qualified, and that those with a BAin early childhood education are the most effective(Ackerman and Barnett 2006; NIEER 2003;Whitebook 2003). Only about one-third of all leadteachers in the American Head Start program havethis level of post-secondary education and in somestates less than 15 percent of them do (NIEER 2003).On average, American Head Start teachers earnabout half the salary of a kindergarten teacher in thesame state, a factor likely to contribute to highteacher turnover rates in that program (NIEER 2003).In most states, teachers in prekindergarten programsreceive the same compensation package as kinder-garten teachers in the same jurisdiction (Barnett,Lamy and Jung 2005; Hustedt et al. 2007). The cru-cial role in enhancing children’s development playedby contributors to quality such as staff training andthe number of children for whom an adult is respon-sible is discussed further in the following section.
Two-generation initiativesTwo-generation initiatives are based on the premisethat changing vulnerable children’s developmentaltrajectories requires addressing the multiple issuescontributing to their vulnerability and that this neces-sitates providing services to both the child and theparents. They typically have three components: agroup program for children; a parenting educationprogram intended to enhance parenting style andencourage parental involvement with the child in
entry into kindergarten than were obtained for theprograms categorized as other group preschool expe-rience, but other group preschool experience pro-grams, in turn, yielded greater benefits than did HeadStart or relative or nanny care. Kindergarten teachers,however, assessed children with prekindergarten orother group preschool experience as presenting moreclassroom behaviour problems such as poor self-reg-ulation. Behavioural concerns were not identified forthe subsample of prekindergarten children who hadattended a school-operated program. The researcherssuggest that behaviour problems “are not a necessaryconsequence of pre-kindergarten” (Magnuson, Ruhmand Waldfogel 2007, 50). Instead, they may reflectlack of exposure to school classroom behaviouralexpectations among children whose prekindergartenprogram was not operated by a school. The pre-academic benefits from prekindergarten were greaterfor children whose parents had low educational levelsand/or lived in poverty than for the full sample. Thepositive associations between prekindergarten andacademic achievement scores had largely dissipatedfor the sample as a whole by the spring of first grade,but the fade-out was less for disadvantaged children(Magnuson, Ruhm and Waldfogel 2007).
The findings from the prekindergarten studies dis-cussed above are very encouraging except for theindication in the Magnuson, Ruhm and Waldfogelstudy that achievement score differences betweenchildren who had and had not participated in publicprekindergarten fade quickly. A similar pattern offade-out related to achievement test scores has beenobserved in the Chicago Child-Parent Centers pro-gram, which includes a prekindergarten componentand is discussed in the next subsection. Nevertheless,longitudinal follow-up found that children who hadparticipated in the program still had significantlyhigher rates of high school completion at age 20 thanindividuals in the comparison group and lower ratesof grade repetition and use of remedial education(Reynolds et al. 2002).
DiscussionThe more recent, more rigorous evaluations ofAmerican Head Start and the evaluations of theCanadian Western Arctic Aboriginal Head Start andAmerican prekindergarten programs have consistent-ly found that centre-based preschool group programsenhance vulnerable children’s school-readiness atentry into kindergarten. The evaluation of the Reginapreschool program is an exception. The findings are
Centres have the most intense focus on children’s pro-gramming and CAPC probably the least.
The Community Action Program for Children(CAPC)The federal government’s CAPC program provideslong-term funding to community-based groups andcoalitions to develop and implement programs for chil-dren from birth to age six and their families living insituations that may hinder children’s development. Ittargets children living in low-income and/or teenage-parent families, children experiencing developmentaldelays and/or with social/behavioural problems, andneglected and abused children.
In a typical month in 2005-06, approximately 440projects served 67,884 different participants. The CAPCexpenditure through Health Canada in 2005-06 was$60,867,980 (Government of Canada 2007b). Historically,CAPC projects also have obtained funds from othersources such as other departments in the federal govern-ment; provincial, territorial, regional and municipal gov-ernments; donations; and their own fundraising. In2004-05, these other sources contributed $22,946,537(Public Health Agency of Canada 2006).
educational activities; and adult programs, such as lit-eracy and job skill training, intended to improve par-ents’ life chances. The degree of focus on eachcomponent varies across initiatives. Some focus moreof their attention on enhancing child developmenteither directly through group programming or indi-rectly though parent education than they do on adultservices such as debt counselling. Others put much oftheir energy into adult programs and/or broad com-munity development and much less into children’sprogramming. Canada has three initiatives that can beconsidered two-generation programs: the federal gov-ernment’s Community Action Program for Children(CAPC); the Ontario government’s Better Beginnings,Better Futures Program; and the Parenting and FamilyLiteracy Centres operated by the Toronto DistrictSchool Board. Table 4 provides an overview of theapproach in each of these initiatives.
As illustrated in the table, all three initiatives pro-vide group programs for children, parenting educa-tion, adult education and information about othercommunity resources. However, the extent to which asite focuses on a particular type of service provisionvaries: the Toronto Parenting and Family Literacy
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Table 4Descriptions of Targeted Two-Generation Initiatives
Initiative Population served Services provided Duration Staffing
Sources: Government of Canada (2007b); Public Health Agency of Canada (2004); Peters et al. (2000); personal communications: Helen Hodgson, Ontario Ministry ofChildren and Youth; Ruth Sischy, Toronto Parenting and Family Literacy Centres.
Community ActionProgram forChildren (CAPC)
Ontario’s BetterBeginnings, BetterFutures
Toronto Parentingand Family LiteracyCentres
Children from birth toage six living in low-income and/or teenage-parent families, or whoare neglected or abusedor have developmentaldelays or social/behav-ioural problems
Children from birth toage four living in com-munities whose charac-teristics may put themat risk, along with theirfamilies
Children from birth toage five living in low-income, culturallydiverse neighbourhoods
Families mayparticipate for aslong as theywish if they havea child under agesix
Families mayparticipate for aslong as theywish if they havea child under agefour
Families may par-ticipate for aslong as they wishif they have achild under agefive
Varies across sitesdepending on the mix ofservices
Varies across sitesdepending on the mix ofservices
Staff working in the chil-dren’s group programhave a minimum of atwo-year post-secondarycredential in early child-hood education
One or more of:• Parenting education• Group programs for children with or without their
parents• Individual programming for children• Literacy and job skills training• Provision of information about other community
resources• Community development
One or more of:• Home visits• Group parenting education• Supervised children’s playgroups• Parent/child drop-in programs• Provision of information about other community
resources• Community development
• Group program for children• Parenting education, primarily through modelling
with courses if specifically requested by parents• Lending library of books in the home languages used
in the community• Provision of information about other community
resources• Numeracy and literacy courses for adults, if requested
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2:30 p.m. On average, families attend two or threetimes a week, often starting when the child is aninfant, and stay for two to three hours each time. Thebudget in fiscal 2005-06 was $2.8 million and overthe year just over 10,500 children and close to 9,000adults attended one of the centres (Ruth Sischy,Toronto District School Board, personal communica-tion, March 6, 2007).
Each centre provides the same mix of services: (1)a group program for children, with parents/caregiversrequired to participate along with their child; (2) par-enting education, primarily through modelling bystaff during the group program, supplemented byparenting workshops when specifically requested byparents; (3) information about other communityresources; (4) a lending library with books in thehome languages used in the neighbourhood; and (5)adult literacy and numeracy courses when requestedby participating adults. The children’s group activitiesare provided by staff with at least a two-year post-secondary credential in early childhood education,most of whom also have prior experience workingwith families (Ruth Sischy, Toronto District SchoolBoard, personal communication, March 6, 2007).
Evaluations of Canadian two-generationinitiativesEvaluations have been conducted on all threeCanadian two-generation programs. Table 5 providesa summary of the evaluation approach and sample,outcome measures and outcomes.
Better Beginnings, Better FuturesIndividual sites in Ontario’s Better Beginnings, BetterFutures program vary in the mixture of services pro-vided and the emphasis placed on each service withina given site. The discussion in this report focuses onthe findings from the evaluation of the five sites serv-ing children under age four and their families. Theresearchers used two quasi-experimental designs. Thefirst, a “baseline-focal design,” involved a comparisonbetween baseline data collected on children age 48months and their families in each of the five sitesbefore the local program became operational and thenfive years after the program started on a differentgroup of four-year-olds and their families in the sameneighbourhood. The second approach, a “longitudinalcomparison site design,” involved recruiting a groupof infants and their families in each of the five targetsites and in three comparison neighbourhoods withouta Better Beginnings, Better Futures program plus a
Depending on the project, program componentsinclude one or more of: (1) parenting educationthrough home visiting or group courses; (2) groupprograms for children and their parent or caregiver;(3) group programs for children only; (4) individualprograms for children with developmental delays; (5)adult literacy and job skills training; (6) informationabout community resources; and (7) community out-reach and development. CAPC projects are encour-aged to deliver the mix of components that bestaddresses the needs and preferences of their commu-nity. As a result, there is no single CAPC model.
Ontario’s Better Beginnings, Better FuturesprogramBetter Beginnings, Better Futures, which began oper-ation in 1994, is a 25-year longitudinal demonstra-tion project targeting children living in communitieswhose characteristics may put them at risk for devel-opmental delay. There are eight sites, each in a differ-ent community; five focus on children from birth toage four and the other three on children age four toeight. In 2005-06, the Ministry of Children and YouthServices’ (MCYS) expenditures for all eight sites were$4.1 million, with an additional $800,000 providedby the Ministry of Education (Helen Hodgson, MCYS,personal communication, April 11, 2007). The fivesites serving children up to age four served a total of1,952 families and 2,667 children (Helen Hodgson,MCYS, personal communication, April 11, 2007).
Rather than requiring specific program compo-nents, the Ontario government encourages each siteto develop the types and mix of services best suitedto the community. The sites serving children frombirth to age five provide an example of the resultantvariation; one site puts much of its emphasis ondirect programming with children while another hasa strong emphasis on broad community development.Home visiting is provided in all five sites targetingchildren under age four but there is between-sitevariation in the background and training of the homevisitors, the frequency of home visits and the age upto which visits were made (Doherty 2001).
Toronto Parenting and Family Literacy CentresThe Toronto District School Board operates 54Parenting and Family Literacy Centres, each of whichis located in a high-density, low-income, culturallydiverse neighbourhood and is open to any familywith a child under age five. All centres operate fivedays a week during the school year from 9 a.m. to
prosocial behaviour and school-readiness, as assessedby junior kindergarten teachers between 1993-94 and1997-98. The longitudinal comparison site designfound that Walpole Island children obtained higherscores than children in any other Better Beginnings,Better Futures site in relation to the comparison sitein motor skills and expressive language. As notedearlier, each site chose its own mix of programs andfocus. The Kingston site invested extensive programresources in child care, both by enriching local childcare centres in the neighbourhood and also by pro-viding a large number of informal group programsfor children from birth on.
fourth other community. Data on the children andtheir families were collected repeatedly between 1994,when the children were three months of age, and 1998to determine whether there were any changes result-ing from living in a Better Beginnings, Better Futuresneighbourhood; data were also collected from chil-dren, families and teachers in the other four siteswithout the program (Peters et al. 2000).
The greatest benefit to children’s developmentoccurred in two sites: Kingston and Walpole Island.In the Kingston site, the baseline focus designfound a significant decrease in neighbourhood chil-dren’s behavioural problems and increases in their
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Table 5Research Approach, Sample, Measures and Outcomes: Targeted Two-Generation Initiatives
Initiative Approach and sample Outcome measures Outcomes
Sources: Peters et al. (2000); Boyle and Willms (2002); Palacio-Quinton (2002); Yau (2005).1 In Ontario, junior kindergarten is open to any four-year-old living in the school district and is provided by almost every school board in the province. Five-year-oldsattend senior kindergarten. 2 E = experimental (internvention) group.3 C = comparison group.
Better Beginnings,Better Futures1
Community ActionProgram forChildren (CAPC)
Toronto Parentingand Family LiteracyCentres
Two approaches: (1) comparison of datacollected on four-year-olds and theirfamilies in each of the five sites beforethe program was operational with dataobtained five years later from otherfour-year-old children who had partici-pated in the program at the same sites;and (2) comparison of data from chil-dren from each of the five sites withchildren from four neighbourhoodswithout a Better Beginnings, BetterFutures program
E2 = 700 from 5 sitesC3 = 350 from 3 sites
A longitudinal comparison between aprobability sample of families whoenrolled in CAPC during 1995 and 1996and a comparison of families participat-ing in the first wave (1994) and two-year follow-up (1996) of the NLSCY
E = 1,000 children C = 1,651 children from NLSCY familiesmatched with the sample on householdincome, family structure and parentaleducation level
Comparison of graduates from the pro-gram with peers from the same schoolwho had not received it at the begin-ning of junior kindergarten
E and C each = 108 children
71 percent in both groups had a homelanguage other than English
Higher levels of fine-motor skills, auditoryattention and memory, nonverbal problemsolving and lower levels of parentalreports of behaviour problems wereobtained for the sample as a whole
Outcome patterns varied across the sites.One site reported higher levels of overallschool-readiness, motor skills, auditoryattention and memory and decreased evi-dence of emotional problems. Anotherreported significantly higher motor andexpressive language skills. The greatestbenefit occurred when children partici-pated in children’s group programs
After statistical adjustments for baselinedifferences between the experimental andcomparison groups on the outcomemeasures, the gains over the two-yearperiod between the two groups were nodifferent
There was significant variation in out-comes across CAPC sites. Activities inwhich the child participated were associ-ated with the greatest effect on children’sdevelopment
At the beginning of junior kindergarten,the children who had participated in theprogram had substantially higher EDI rat-ings on social, language and communica-tion skills and general knowledge andsomewhat higher ratings on emotionalmaturity
Ratings from junior kindergarten teacherson the children’s overall school-readiness,social skills and evidence of behaviour oremotional problems. Testing of visual andauditory attention and memory and abili-ty to process and follow instructions
Parent’s report of overall developmentand behaviour
Data on both the E and C children col-lected at 3, 18, 44 and 48 months of age
Measures of child motor and social devel-opment; indications of child behaviouralor emotional problems; parents’ parentingstyle; indications of maternal depression;and indications of family dysfunction
Testing at the time of program entry andat 9 and 24 months thereafter
The Early Development Instrument (EDI)administered just after entry into juniorkindergarten (when the child was four)
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The Toronto Parenting and Family Literacy (PFL) CentresData were collected from 108 children who had par-ticipated in one of 10 different centres prior to schoolentry and 108 comparison children, randomly select-ed from the same schools, who had not attended aPFL centre. When the children were assessed at agefour, just after entry into junior kindergarten, usingthe Early Development Instrument (EDI) (Janus andOfford 2007), 55 percent of the comparison childrenreceived a low score on social competence, 51 percentreceived a low score on language/cognitive develop-ment and 54 percent received a low score on commu-nication skills/general knowledge. In comparison, nomore than 30 percent of the children who had partic-ipated in the program received a low score on any ofthese three scales. The between-group scores on eachscale are statistically significant (Yau 2005). Seventy-one percent of the children in each of the experimen-tal and comparison groups had a home languageother than English (Yau 2000).
Evaluations of comparable American two-generation initiativesReviews of American two-generation initiatives notethat, while several have reported effects on parents,very few have demonstrated any effects on children(Barnett 2002; Farran 2000; St. Pierre, Layzer andBarnes 1998). Differences in child outcomes amongthese initiatives appear to be related to the extent towhich the intervention provides direct services tochildren. This is illustrated by comparing the ChicagoChild-Parent Centers and the Comprehensive ChildDevelopment Program, as is done below.
The Chicago Child-Parent CentersThe Chicago Child-Parent Centers, established in1967, serve children aged three to nine and theirfamilies through home visiting, parenting education,helping parents to access other community resources,child health screening and remediation such asspeech therapy, a half-day preschool five days a weekduring the school year when the child is aged threeand four, a six-week summer program between thetwo years of prekindergarten, and a primary gradeprogram up to and including grade three throughwhich the children are enrolled in classes of reducedsizes a teacher’s aide in each class, extra instructionalsupplies and ongoing staff development (Reynolds,Miedel and Mann 2000).
A follow-up on 934 children who participated inthe program and a nonrandomized matched
The Walpole Island community had what theresearchers classified as a high-quality child carefacility that was attended by over 50 percent of thechildren participating in the research at age 48months (Peters et al. 2000, 31). Children in the otherthree sites had less exposure to direct interventionthrough group programs as a result of those threesites’ putting more emphasis on community develop-ment and home visiting than direct programmingwith children. The researchers concluded that “short-term outcomes were greatest in the area of programfocus, with child-focused programs affecting childoutcomes, parent/family focused programs affectingparent and family outcomes” (Peters et al. 2000, 56).
CAPCThe CAPC National Evaluation involved 1,000 familiesfrom 141 different sites across Canada and a compari-son group of 1,651 NLSCY families matched on level ofhousehold income, family structure and parental educa-tion. Interviews with families who enrolled in CAPC in1995 or 1996 and interviews with families participatingin the first cycle of the NLSCY in 1994 provided base-line data. Both the CAPC and the NLSCY parents werereinterviewed two years later. The outcome measuresused related to three areas: (1) child motor and socialdevelopment and indication of emotional/behaviouralproblems; (2) parenting skills, specifically the extent ofpositive support and of negative engagement with thechild; and (3) the extent of maternal depression andfamily dysfunction. At the 24-month follow-up, therewere no statistically significant differences in the healthand functioning of the CAPC families and the NLSCYfamilies (Boyle and Willms 2002).
CAPC sites vary in their primary objectives, themix of services they provide and the degree ofemphasis they put on each service. The initial statisti-cal analyses did not look for associations between thetypes of services children had actually received andchild outcome, but this has been done in a subse-quent analysis of the same data (Palacio-Quinton2002). Programs in which children participated, eitheron their own or with their parents, were associatedwith enhanced child development and decreases infamily dysfunction; programs for adults only had theleast effect on children’s development. These resultsare similar to those of Better Beginnings, BetterFutures in their finding that involving children indirect programming had the greatest effect on theirdevelopment.
Early Head StartEarly Head Start sites are permitted to choose whetherto provide a primarily home-visiting program, a struc-tured, centre-based child development program, or a“mixed-approach program” in which home-visitingand/or centre-based developmental programming isprovided to different families or in combination tofamilies either simultaneously or at different times.Seventeen Early Head Start sites across the countryrecruited twice as many eligible families as they couldserve and randomly assigned them to participate in theprogram (1,513 families) or be part of the comparisongroup (1,488 families).
At age three, when the intervention ended, therewere no significant differences in child outcomesbetween children who had attended a site using acentre-based approach and children in the comparisongroup, but children who had attended mixed-approachsites obtained significantly higher scores on a measureof receptive language than the comparison group. It isimportant to note that in practice children from a siteusing a centre-based approach and children from amixed-approach site had obtained almost identicalamounts of group programming; an average of 1,400hours in mixed-approach sites and 1,391 hours in cen-tre-based approach sites. This occurred because 30 per-cent of families in mixed-approach sites received EarlyHead Start Center care and other families used com-munity child care services that worked with the EarlyHead Start program. Parents in the mixed-approachsites received an average of two to three home visits amonth while those in the centre-based approach siteshad a minimum of two home visits a year (Love et al.2005). The researchers note that there were only fourcentre-based sites in the evaluation and that a smallsample size reduces the likelihood that statisticalanalysis will detect even moderate effects.
This evaluation supports the importance of directprogramming for children and does not provide suffi-cient evidence to indicate that the addition of homevisits significantly increases an intervention’s ability toenhance vulnerable children’s development. A follow-up of the children at age five found that the Early HeadStart children were significantly less likely to exhibitbehaviour problems and significantly more likely tohave a positive approach to learning. The greatesteffects were found among five-year-olds who hadexperienced both Early Head Start and a formal groupprogram such as Head Start, prekindergarten or centre-based child care at ages four and five (Administrationfor Children and Families 2006).
comparison group of 504 children from similar socio-demographic areas without a center found that whenthe individuals were age 21 there was a 41 percentreduction in receipt of special education, a 40 percentreduction in grade retention and a 49.7 percent high-er rate of high school completion among the partici-pants (Reynolds, Miedel and Mann 2000). Although95 percent of the participants were African American,the fade-out of developmental gains experienced byAfrican American participants in Head Start, as notedabove, did not occur in this program. The kinder-garten and probably higher-quality grade one tothree classrooms provided by the Chicago Child-Parent Centers may be a factor in this difference.
The Comprehensive Child Development ProgramThe Comprehensive Child Development Program(CCDP) targeted low-income children from birththrough age five and their families. Parentsreceived biweekly home visits by a case managerwho assessed parental needs, referred families toother services, obtained specific services for par-ents such as adult literacy education, vocationaltraining or employment counselling and some-times provided counselling themselves. Parentingeducation was provided through biweekly homevisits by an early childhood specialist between thechild’s birth and age three; these visits focused onthe parent and did not include direct work withthe child. The program was mandated to ensurethat all children aged three to five received devel-opmentally appropriate early childhood education.Some sites operated their own centre-based pro-grams, while others relied on community childcare programs.
Overall, the average participation in group earlychildhood education programs was two days a week.Thus most children had relatively little exposure todirect programming. At the beginning of the study,CCDP sites recruited twice as many eligible familiesas they could serve and then randomly divided thefamilies into a group that would receive the programand a comparison group. The evaluation conducted atthe end of the five-year program involved 2,213 par-ticipating children and 2,197 comparison children. Atthat time, there were no statistically significantbetween-group differences in child cognitive, lan-guage, emotional and prereading or arithmetic skillsor in parenting style or employment status (Goodsonet al. 2000).
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considered small and those between 0.50 and 0.79 aremedium (Karoly, Kilburn and Cannon 2005, 64).
Table 6 summarizes the effect sizes that have beencalculated for the American interventions discussedabove. The effect size for each program was calculatedon the basis of the evaluations cited in this report —that is, the effect size for HIPPY is based on the evalu-ations conducted by Bradley and Gilkey (2002) andBaker, Piotrkowski and Brooks-Gunn (1999). Whenreviewing table 6, it is important to note that theeffect sizes were all calculated on the basis of testsadministered immediately after the conclusion of theprogram so, while informative, they do not indicatelong-term effectiveness. Also, variations in the waythe child outcomes were measured mean that theeffect sizes may not be strictly comparable; neverthe-less, they do provide a sense of relative effectiveness.
The Comprehensive Child Development Program,unlike the other two-generation programs, had a mini-mal child-focused component. Its lack of impact rein-forces the evidence of the effect sizes associated withchild-focused programs, that vulnerable children’s devel-opment is best enhanced through participation in agroup program. The table also underlines the differencein level of effectiveness between Head Start andprekindergarten even though both provide structured,centre-based programs with the specific goal of enhanc-ing children’s development and preparing them forschool. The effectiveness difference is hypothesized to beassociated with Head Start’s chronic underfunding, itspoor levels of staff training related to child developmentand how to promote it, and its low compensation levelswhich are associated with high staff turnover rates and,as a result, lack of long-term relationships between staffand children (Hustedt and Barnett 2005; NationalInstitute for Early Education Research 2003). No calcu-lations of effect size for Canadian initiatives were found.
The cost and coverage of Canadian targetedinitiativesTable 7 (see page 28) provides the best availableinformation on federal and provincial/territorialexpenditures for targeted initiatives to promote thedevelopment of vulnerable children and the numberof children/families receiving assistance. The datapertain to the fiscal year 2005/06 except for SIPPE,Quebec’s prématernelle, the two Saskatchewan pro-grams and the expenditures for CAPC from sourcesother than Health Canada; in each of these cases, therelevant fiscal year is indicated on the table. As thetable shows, the federal and provincial/territorial
DiscussionTwo-generation initiatives vary considerably in theproportion of resources they dedicate to parental orchild interventions. Those associated with the greatestchild developmental gains — some CAPC sites; two ofthe Better Beginnings, Better Futures sites; theToronto Parenting and Family Literacy centres; andthe Chicago Child-Parent Centers — provide the great-est amount of direct programming for children. TheChicago Child-Parent Centers project used hierarchi-cal linear modelling (HLM) to determine the relativeimpact of different components of its program andconcluded that preschool participation was moreimportant than any of the other factors (Clements,Reynolds and Hickey 2004).
The same conclusion was reached by ProjectCARE, a second-generation abecedarian projectinvolving the addition of a family education compo-nent to the center-based intervention. In this project,families received an average of 2.7 home visits amonth, starting in the children’s infancy, and month-ly workshops on child development continuing untilthe children were on average age four and a half. Atthis age, the children from families that had receivedboth home visits and centre-based programmingobtained significantly higher scores than children inthe comparison group on standard tests of languageand cognitive skills but the two-generation interven-tion was no more successful in enhancing children’sdevelopment than the original centre-based programhad been (Ramey et al. 1985).
The relative effectiveness of targetedinitiatives The relative effectiveness of parent-focused, child-focused and two-generation interventions in enhanc-ing vulnerable children’s development is a key issuefor governments and service providers. A “statisticallysignificant” difference between the children who hadreceived an intervention and their comparison groupindicates that the association between program partic-ipation and child outcome did not occur by chance,but it does not enable one to compare different inter-vention approaches in terms of their relative effective-ness. This requires converting the outcome findingsfrom different interventions into a standard measurecalled the “effect size.” An effect size is the differencein means for an intervention and comparison groupon an outcome variable divided by the standard devi-ation. By convention, effect sizes under 0.20 are con-sidered negligible, those between 0.20 and 0.49 are
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Table 6Effect Sizes, Targeted Interventions1
Pre- Age atType of Cognitive Receptive Prereading mathematics Prewriting follow-upinitiative Program development vocabulary skills skills skills (years)
Sources: Aos et al. (2004); Barnett, Brown and Shore (2004); Hustedt et al. (2007); Karoly, Kilburn and Cannon (2005); Lamy, Barnett and Jung (2005a, b, c); Love etal. (2005); Puma et al. (2005). 1 Effect sizes under 0.20 are negligible, those between 0.20 and 0.49 are small, those between 0.50 and 0.79 medium and those over 0.80 large (Karoly, Kilburn andCannon 2005).2 n.a. = no assessments were done to measure these skills.3 Significant benefit to child cognitive development has only been found in one of the three Nurse-Family Partnership sites where child outcomes were evaluated. 4 The first cohort in the Head Start evaluation cited consisted of a group of children age three and a second group age four at the time of entry, hence there are datafor both four- and five-year-olds. Each of receptive vocabulary, prereading skills and premathematics skills was measured by two tools; reporting of a single effect sizeindicates that a significant between-group difference was only found on one measure.5 n.s. = no significant differences between children who received the intervention and comparison group children.* p < 0.05 or better
Parent-focused
Child-focused
Two-generation
HIPPY
PAT
Early Head Start(sites using pri-marily home visiting)
Nurse-FamilyPartnership
Head Start4
Pre-Kindergarden(PK) Arkansas
Pre-KMichigan
Pre-K NewJersey
Pre-K SouthCarolina
Chicago Child-Parent Centers
ComprehensiveChildDevelopmentProgram
Early Head Start(“mixed-approach” siteswith a strongchild group pro-gram component)
5
3
3
6
4
5
5
5
5
5
6
5
3
Effect sizes notcalculated
0.09
Effect sizes notcalculated3
0.12*
n.s.
0.36*
0.21*
0.26*
0.35*
Effect sizes notcalculated
Effect sizes notcalculated butno significantbetween-groupdifferences
0.23*
n.a.2
0.24*0.19*
0.22*0.24*
0.76*
0.96*
0.47*
0.71*
n.a.
n.s.5
n.s.
0.25*
0.44*
0.18*
n.a.
n.a.
0.12
0.06
0.10
0.18*
See scores forreceptive vocabu-lary, an outcomeoften used as anapproximatemeasure of cogni-tive development
0.35*
- 0.06
0.11
0.13*
0.16*
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
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Table 7Expenditures on Targeted Initiatives to Assist Vulnerable Children
Provincial andType of Federal and territorial Funds from Totals, all initiative Initiative Participants expenditures expenditures other sources funding sources
Sources: Parent-focused initiatives: Darlene Girard, Government of Manitoba; Louise Therrien, Quebec Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux; Gail Russell, Governmentof Saskatchewan; (HIPPY) Canada (2006); Dorota Dziong, Parent-Child Mother Goose Program. Child-focused initiatives: Government of Canada (2007b); Winnipeg SchoolDivision (2006); personal communication: Dannie Giguère, Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport, November 29, 2007. Two-generation initiatives: Government ofCanada (2007a); Helen Hodgson, Ontario Ministry of Children’s and Youth Services; Ruth Sischy, Toronto Parenting and Family Literacy Centres.1 Manitoba’s Families First expenditures also cover the cost of universal screening of every family with a newborn in the province and follow-up assessment of familiesdeemed vulnerable. 2 Saskatchewan’s KidsFirst program includes $2,185,000 granted to community child care centres for program improvements.3 The Mother Goose program is not delivered by Mother Goose employees but by employees of a variety of social services agencies. These agencies may obtain addi-tional funds specifically to cover the cost of staff time used in Mother Goose.4 The AHSUNC statistic for number of participants is from 2004-05; the comparable statistic for 2005-06 is not available.5 Manitoba also has a second prekindergarten initiative operating in a northern school district but statistics on the number of participants and the amount of expendi-tures were not available. 6 ABC Head Start is the largest of several similar programs in Alberta that also receive provincial funding, but it is the only one for which information was available. 7 The expenditure on Ontario’s Better Beginnings, Better Futures initiative is not available as separate amounts for the programs serving children under age four andthose serving children aged four to eight.
Parent-focused
Child-focused
Two-generation
Totals
Manitoba’s FamiliesFirst (2005-06)
Quebec’s SIPPE(2006-07)
Saskatchewan’sKidsFirst (2006-07)
HIPPY(2005-06)
Mother GooseParent-ChildProgram(2005-06)
Aboriginal HeadStart (2005-06)
Manitoba’sprekindergarten,Winnipeg only(2006-07)
Quebec’s pré-maternelle for four-year-olds(2006-07)
Saskatchewan’sprekindergarten(2006-07)
ABC Head Start6
(2005-06)
Community ActionPlan for Children(2005-06)
Ontario’s BetterBeginnings, BetterFutures(2005-06)
Toronto Parentingand Family LiteracyCentres(2005-06)
$63,520,726
More than$104,770,041
More than$91,514,517
More than$259,805,284
Capacity to providehome visits to 1,581families as of March31, 2006
5,240 women andtheir children
Capacity to providehome visits andhealth and addic-tions services to1,150 families as ofMarch 31, 2006
385 families
1,649 adults (par-ents or child’s regu-lar nonparentalcaregiver)
AHSOR —9,415 childrenAHSUNC —4,500 children
1,785 children(2005-06)5
4,881 children
Estimated 1,900children
304 children andtheir families
67,884 children andparents/caregivers ina typical month in2005-06
2,667 children underage four
Approximately 9,000parents or children’sregular nonparentalcaregivers and10,500 children
Accurate statisticsnot available
None (other thanECD Agreementfunds)
None
None (other thanECD Agreementfunds)
$56,551
None
AHSOR —$50,165,212AHSUNC —$31,214,7124
None
None
None (other thanECD Agreementfunds)
$168,683 (otherthan ECD Agreementfunds)7
$60,867,980 (CAPC funds) in2005-06 and$2,074,013 (otherfederal funds) 2004-05 estimate
No (other than ECDAgreement fundstransferred to theprovince)
None
$144,547,151
$9,486,0001
Allocation of$48,000,000
Allocation of$5,753,1742
None
$5,2063
None
None
Estimated$10,474,626
Allocation of$5,753,174
$2,580,942
$11,588,382(2004-05 estimate)
$4,900,000 for totalprogram (8 sites,only 5 of whichserve preschoolers)
None
$98,541,504
None
None
None
$149,748
$22,389 fromregional or munici-pal governmentsplus $47,658 fromother sources
None
$4,100,000from Winnipegschool division
None
Unknown amountfrom school divisions
$312,692
$4,160,745 regionalor municipal governments plus$5,123,397 fromother sources (both2004-05 estimates)
Yes, amountunknown
$2,800,000
More than$16,716,629
3. Quality matters. The effectiveness of group program-ming for children depends upon its quality — theextent to which staff understand child developmentand can translate this knowledge into effective pro-gramming, are not responsible for too many childrenand thus can provide individualized attention, andengage children in appropriate levels of linguistic andcognitive stimulation (Ackerman and Barnett 2006;Sylva et al. 2004; Vandell 2004; Wylie et al. 2006).
4. The characteristics of the child’s elementary schoolmatter. In the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, childrenwho participated in the preschool and kindergartencomponents and then in the classes with the reducedsizes, fewer children per teacher and extra instruc-tional supplies for grades one through three had sig-nificantly higher achievement scores on reading andmathematics and lower levels of grade retention atthe end of grade five than children who received thesame preschool and kindergarten programs but werenot enrolled in the supported grade one to threeclasses. The difference could not be explained bygreater school stability among the children in thesupported classes (Reynolds 1994).
5. Intensity matters. Group programs are more effectivein enhancing children’s development when they arehalf-day, five-days a week than when they are half-day, twice a week; a full-day group program is moreeffective than a half-day program provided for thesame number of days per week (Barnett 2002;Gomby 2005; Gormley 2006; Ramey et al. 1995).All the initiatives discussed in this section focus or
focused on children living in low socio-economicneighbourhoods. It is only recently that research hasdocumented the fact that many children living in mid-dle- and upper-middle-income communities are vulner-able to developmental problems as a result of theparenting style they experience and/or the extent ofparental involvement in educational activities withthem. The implications of this finding are discussed inthe following section, which looks at: (1) who Canada’svulnerable children are; (2) the efficiency and effectivenessof universal programs; (3) the implications of the currentlow quality of Canada’s child care; and (4) conditionsenabling high-quality early childhood education and care.
governments combined contributed approximately$243 million to targeted initiatives. Additional fundswere obtained from other sources such as municipalgovernments, donations and school boards.
Only two initiatives have developed estimates ofthe extent to which they reach their target popula-tion. Manitoba’s Families First calculates that itserves 81 percent of eligible women who agree toparticipate in the program (Mariette Chartier, HealthyChild Manitoba, personal communication, September25, 2007); Quebec’s SIPPE estimates that it serves 56percent of its target population (Louise Therrien,Quebec, Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux,personal communication, September 12, 2007). Bothof these initiatives are two-generation programs.Estimating the probable coverage by targeted initia-tives as a group is impossible given the data avail-able. Some programs have specific eligibilityrequirements over and above having a child underage six and living in the targeted low-income neigh-bourhood; others are open to all families with anage-eligible child but target only specific low-incomeneighbourhoods within a low-income community.
Lessons learnedThis section has focused on large, community-basedtargeted early childhood initiatives to enhance thedevelopmental trajectories of children deemed vul-nerable to poor development for environmental rea-sons. In so doing, it does not present the findings ofsmall demonstration models such as the PerryPreschool Project or interventions with low-birth-weight infants or children with physical disabilities orconditions such as Down’s Syndrome or fetal alcoholsyndrome (FAS).
Sufficient longitudinal, rigorous research has beenaccumulated to build confidence in the followingconclusions:1. Positive effects on vulnerable children’s develop-
ment are best achieved from initiatives that targetchildren directly with structured, centre-based pro-grams (Gomby 2005; Ramey et al. 1995; St. Pierre,Layzer and Barnes 1998).
2. Although parent/family-focused interventions maybenefit parents by, for example, increasing self-confidence, targeting children’s development indi-rectly through attempts to change parenting styleand/or improve parental education and/or parentalemployability generally has negligible effects onchildren’s development (Barnett 2002; Farran 2000;Gomby 2005; Gormley 2006; Ramey et al. 1995).
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and enter school with the level of physical, social, lan-guage, self-regulation and cognitive skills required tobenefit from the school program (Canadian Council onLearning 2007). Nevertheless, five large Canadian stud-ies have reported that 25 to 30 percent of five-year-olds in the general population are developmentallydelayed at school entry in one or more of these crucialschool-readiness skills (Doherty 2007).6 Such childrenare referred to as vulnerable children. Research indi-cates that children who live in an Aboriginal familymay be even more vulnerable than those in the generalpopulation. A study of 4,226 Aboriginal five-year-oldsin British Columbia found that 40 percent of themreceived a score indicating a lack of school-readinesson at least one scale of the Early DevelopmentInstrument (EDI) (Jennifer Lloyd, Human EarlyLearning Partnership, University of British Columbia,personal communication, October 31, 2006).7
All types of health and social outcomes appear asa gradient when plotted against the social and eco-nomic status of the population studied, a phenome-non known as the socio-economic gradient (Keatingand Hertzman 1999). Consistent with this generalfinding, the incidence of poor developmental out-comes in the general population at age five is highestamong children living in poverty. The prevalence ofvulnerability is lower among children living in mid-dle-income families and lowest in the most affluentfamilies. However, there are fewer children living inpoverty or in affluent families than in middle-incomefamilies, a group that in Canada represents about 75percent of the total population (McCain, Mustard andShanker 2007, 46). Targeting initiatives to enhancechildren’s development to children living in the low-est-income families excludes a large number of vul-nerable children and provides special programming tochildren whose school-readiness is not at risk. If ouraim is to enhance the school-readiness of all children,this approach may not represent the most cost-effec-tive use of public money.
Universal approach to address vulnerabilityThe alternative to targeting is a universal ECEC sys-tem. There is sometimes confusion about the mean-ing of “universal” in this context. It does not meana program in which all age-eligible children mustparticipate. It does mean a service that is widelyavailable and affordable for all families wishing touse it. Examples of universal ECEC systems arefound in Belgium, Italy and France, where virtually100 percent of all three- and four-year-olds partici-
Universal Early ChildhoodEducation and Care (ECEC): WhatDo We Know?
I t has long been evident that children living inlow socio-economic environments are more vul-nerable to health problems, behavioural disorders
and poor school careers than children from moreaffluent families. Recognition of this reality ledPresident Johnson to declare a war on poverty in1964 and to create the American Head Start programin 1965 (Zigler and Styfco 1996). Over the nextdecades, a plethora of targeted initiatives for low-income children prior to school entry, along withtheir families, followed. Now, however, policy ana-lysts and governments in the United States are begin-ning to question the value of targeting and somestates have moved from targeted to universalprekindergarten for four-year-olds (Barnett, Brownand Shore 2004).
In Canada, federal and most provincial/territorialgovernment decisions continue to be dominated bythe assumption that the majority of vulnerable chil-dren live in low-income families and therefore thatchild vulnerability is best addressed by targeted pro-grams. Recent Canadian research challenges theseassumptions. “In actual numbers, the NLSCY datashow that more than 70 percent of vulnerable chil-dren in Canada live in non-poor families” (McCain,Mustard and Shanker 2007, 77). Research also showsthat low-income children make substantial develop-mental gains when they receive nontargeted ECECservices (Caughy, DiPietro and Strobino 1994;Gormley et al. 2005; Kohen, Hertzman and Willms2002; Loeb et al. 2004; Magnuson, Ruhm andWaldfogel 2007).
This section explores two policy questions. First,should publicly funded programs to enhance chil-dren’s school-readiness target children living in fami-lies with the lowest incomes, as is currently thepractice in Canada, or be universally available to allfamilies wishing to use them? Second, what condi-tions are necessary to obtain the greatest benefit fromECEC programs? The following section examines thebenefit/cost ratios associated with targeted and uni-versal ECEC.
Who are Canada’s vulnerable children?The majority of children in Canada are born healthy,reach developmental milestones at the expected time
ECEC, whether it was child care, preschool/nurseryschool or a formal regularly scheduled playgroup, forchildren from all socio-economic backgrounds. The sam-ple in the first study was drawn from all the childrenborn in the United Kingdom in a single week in April1970 (Osborn and Milbank 1987). When 6,261 childrenwere assessed at age ten on five standard achievementtests, including 2,468 children who had not had any typeof ECEC experience, there was a statistically significantdifference on each test in favour of the children who hadparticipated in ECEC. Similarly, the longitudinal EffectiveProvision of Preschool Education (EPPE) study of 2,793children found that those who had participated in anytype of ECEC entered school with higher levels of cogni-tive skills than those without this experience (Sammonset al. 2002). The beneficial effects of participation inECEC on children’s reading and mathematical skillsfound at age five continued to be evident at age seven(Sylva et al. 2004). By age ten, the impact of the quality8
of the ECEC became more important than whether or notthe child had ECEC experience. Children who had partic-ipated in high-quality ECEC continued to exhibit a sta-tistically significantly better reading ability and slightlybetter mathematical skills than children who had attend-ed a low-quality ECEC program or children withoutECEC (Sammons et al. 2007).
The importance of high-quality servicesWhile these studies collapsed various types of ECECinto a single entity, other research has focused specifi-cally on the effect of participation in either child careor prekindergarten. Longitudinal studies conducted inboth Sweden and the United States comparing childrenwho have or have not participated in child care reportan association between such participation and moresuccessful school careers (Andersson 1992; Broberg etal. 1997; Burchinal et al. 1995; Caughy, DiPietro andStrobino 1994). However, this is not always the case.Other studies have found no between-group differencesor a negative association between participation in childcare and children’s elementary school performance(Vandell and Wolfe 2000).
A review of the last 20 years of child care researchconcluded that whether or not child care promotes chil-dren’s development depends upon its quality — theextent to which the interactions between adults andchildren are warm and supportive and the children haveample opportunities to engage in activities that providelinguistic and cognitive stimulation (Vandell 2004).
The importance of the level of child care quality forchildren’s development has been demonstrated by large
pate (OECD 2006, 78). The only jurisdiction inCanada that comes anywhere close to having uni-versal ECEC is Quebec. In 2006, there were 204,114regulated child care spaces in that province, includ-ing those in family child care settings (Quebec,Ministère de la Famille, des Aînés et de la Conditionféminine 2007), for almost 380,000 children (Institutde la statistique 2006). Low parent fees, as a resultof high government subsidization, and the govern-ment’s waiver of parent fees for very low-incomeparents make the available spaces affordable for themajority of families.
While the initial cost is higher for a universal thanfor a targeted program, a universal approach is anattractive alternative for two reasons. First, a higherproportion of vulnerable children would be reached(Belfield 2006a).
Support for believing that more vulnerable chil-dren would be reached by a nontargeted programcomes from three sources: Europe, Argentina and theUnited States. Most European countries provide uni-versal, publicly funded or highly subsidized ECEC forthree- and four-year-olds. Participation by three-year-olds in these programs is virtually 100 percentin France, Italy and Belgium and over 70 percent inGermany, Denmark, Hungary, Norway and Sweden(OECD 2006, 78). Argentina’s expansion of govern-ment-funded preschool was associated with a jump inpreschool enrolment from 49 to 64 percent (Berlinski,Galiani and Gertler 2006). Similarly, American stateswith universal government-funded prekindergartenprograms report that they are used by 60 percent ormore of age-eligible children (Committee forEconomic Development 2006). The high rates ofusage associated with affordable, widely availableearly childhood education programs increases theirability to reach a higher proportion of vulnerablechildren not living in poverty than services targetedto low-income neighbourhoods.
Second, there is clear evidence from Argentina,Britain, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Statesthat the school-readiness of children from all socio-economic backgrounds and their subsequent academ-ic success can be enhanced by participation in earlychildhood education, whether it is prekindergarten orordinary child care. In addition, as is the case for tar-geted programs, the returns to the public purse fromuniversal ECEC services outweigh their costs (seetable 10, page 35).
Two longitudinal British studies have documentedthe beneficial effect of participation in nontargeted
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colleagues report that the increase in school-readi-ness attributable to participation in prekindergartenwas 88 percent for prereading skills, 44 percent forpremathematical skills and 28 percent for vocabu-lary. Similar positive results have been found forWest Virginia’s universal prekindergarten with theincrease attributable to the program being 121 per-cent for prereading skills, 63 percent for premathe-matical skills and 30 percent for vocabulary (Lamy,Barnett and Jung 2005e).
Conditions enabling high-quality earlychildhood education and careStudies exploring the characteristics of those ECECprograms that are the most successful at promotingchildren’s development have reported remarkablyconsistent findings whether the program is targetedor nontargeted and regardless of what it is called.The adults responsible for a group of children havea university degree and specialized training inearly childhood education and are well compensat-ed, the group sizes and children-to-adult ratiosallow for individualized attention and support, andthe children receive a planned, purposeful, devel-opmentally appropriate daily program (Ackermanand Barnett 2006; Sylva et al. 2004; Vandell andWolfe 2000; Wylie et al. 2006). Effective ECEC pro-grams also have a physical environment and mate-rials that support good programming practices,provide regular professional development for staffand engage in ongoing self-evaluation (Ackermanand Barnett 2006).
The characteristics noted above are importantenablers of high-quality programming inasmuch asthey establish conditions that permit and encour-age such programming. Post-secondary educationand specialized training related to child develop-ment increase the probability that an adult willunderstand how young children develop, willrespond sensitively to them and will also providestimulating, developmentally appropriate experi-ences that promote their development. A purpose-ful, planned daily program increases theprobability that children will engage in develop-mental activities rather than aimlessly wanderingabout. Smaller group sizes and fewer children peradult enable a greater number of individual inter-actions between adults and children and the tailor-ing of activities to the particular needs of eachchild. Adults who earn enough to live on and feeltheir compensation reflects their level of education
longitudinal studies in both New Zealand and theUnited States. The New Zealand study followed childrento age 14 and found that the associations noted at ageeight between child care quality and level of mathemati-cal skills and reading comprehension persisted (Wylie etal. 2006).
In an American study, children whose child carewas rated in the highest third of quality levelsobtained higher scores on tests of preacademicskills and language at age four-and-a-half thandid children whose child care was rated in thelowest third. The difference in effect on children’sskills related to experiencing child care in eitherthe highest or lowest third of quality was 0.39 forpreacademic skills and 0.29 for language skills(National Institute for Child Health and HumanDevelopment [NICHD] Early Child Care ResearchNetwork 2002). At the end of grade three, andwith factors related to elementary school experi-ence controlled, children who had participated inhigher-quality child care obtained significantlyhigher scores on standardized tests of mathemati-cal skills, vocabulary and memory than childrenwho had participated in poorer-quality child care(NICHD Early Child Care Research Network 2005).A significant positive association between childcare quality and vocabulary score persisted evenat the end of grade six (NICHD Early Child CareResearch Network 2007).
Similarly, a second American study, Cost,Quality and Child Outcomes, found that the effectsize of level of child care quality just prior to entryinto kindergarten was 0.56 for sociability, 0.43 forcognitive skills and 0.18 for language skills.Participation in a higher- rather than lower-qualityprogram was associated with higher scores onmeasures of vocabulary and mathematical skillsand teacher ratings of the children’s sociability atthe end of grade two (Peisner-Feinberg et al. 2001).
Attending Argentina’s universal prekindergartenfor children from age three to five is associated withhigher scores on achievement tests in Spanish andmathematics in grade three, with an estimatedincrease of 8 percent for each year of preschoolattendance (Berlinski, Galiani and Gertler 2006).Two evaluations of Oklahoma’s universal prekinder-garten program both found higher levels of school-readiness just prior to kindergarten among childrenwho had participated in the program in comparisonto children without this experience (Gormley et al.2005; Lamy, Barnett and Jung 2005d). Lamy and her
observational tool as providing a program consistentwith supporting children’s development rather thanjust providing custodial care (Helburn 1995).Calculating effect sizes based on a sample with fewhigh-quality programs would underestimate childcare’s potential to enhance children’s development.
Benefit/Cost Ratios
M any of the benefits derived from ECEC pro-grams that enhance children’s developmentcan be translated into dollar figures and
compared with program costs to calculate abenefit/cost ratio. The standard methodology and eco-nomic equation used to perform a benefit/cost analysis,and thus determine the ratio, is described in detail byAos and his colleagues (2004, appendix D).
When considering benefit/cost estimates, it is essen-tial to recognize that they are not the final wordalthough they can provide a sense of the relative differ-ences across approaches. Benefit/cost analyses vary inthe benefits and costs included in the calculation andacross jurisdictions as a consequence of differences infactors such as the relative costs of personnel and facili-ties and whether the proposed program is full day or partday. For example, if a prekindergarten program yieldsthe same economic returns in two jurisdictions but wagelevels are higher in one, the benefit/cost ratio in thatjurisdiction will be lower. Sometimes a benefit/cost ratiois projected beyond the age of final follow-up by esti-mating lifetime differences on the basis of experience inthe general population such as the greater employability
and responsibility are more likely to stay. Thisresults in more stable adult-child relationships anda greater sense of security for the children andgives the adults a better understanding of eachchild’s developmental level. Indoor and outdoorspaces that are safe, child-friendly, pleasant to bein, large enough to permit a variety of activitiesand accessible to people with disabilities supportgood programming, as does the availability ofappropriate and sufficient materials.
The relative effectiveness of universalprogramsTable 8 summarizes the data available on effectsizes for universal prekindergarten and for univer-sal ECEC programs of all types combined. The onlydata located on effect sizes for child care relate tothe differences in the effect on children’s develop-ment directly associated with differences in pro-gram quality level (National Institute for ChildHealth and Human Development [NICHD] EarlyChild Care Research Network 2002, 2005; Peisner-Feinberg et al. 2001) or estimates of child outcomegains that would be achieved for specific incre-ments in program quality (NICHD Early Child CareResearch Network and Duncan 2003). There may besome reluctance to publish effect sizes for childcare based on combining data from all the childcare programs that participated in a specific evalu-ation due to the generally poor quality of the childcare programs evaluated. For example, only 14percent of the centres in the Cost, Quality andChild Outcomes study were rated on a standard
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Table 8Effect Sizes, Universal ECEC, Various Jurisdictions1
Receptive Prereading PremathematicsInitiative Jurisdiction vocabulary skills skills Prewriting skills Age (years)
Sources: Gormley et al. (2005); Lamy, Barnett and Jung (2005d, 2005e); Sammons et al. (2002).1 Effect sizes under 0.20 are negligible, those between 0.20 and 0.49 small, those between 0.50 and 0.79 medium and those over 0.80 large (Karoly, Kilburn and Cannon2005).2 The two evaluations of the Oklahoma initiative used different methodologies.3 n.s. = no significant difference between the children who had participated in the program and the comparison group children.4 n.a. = no assessments were done to measure this skill.*p < 0.05 or better
Prekindergarten
Any type ofcentre-basedECEC experience
Oklahoma2
Oklahoma
West Virginia
Britain
5
5
n.s.3
0.24*
0.27*
0.44*
0.79*
0.62*
0.93*
0.28*
0.38*
0.29*
0.41*
0.44*
0.64*
n.s.
n.s.
n.a.4
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educational attainment of the future workforce, ben-efit/cost estimates are likely to be conservative(Karoly, Kilburn and Cannon 2005).
The benefit/cost ratios presented in table 9 showa benefit of $1.23 to $7.14 for every dollar of pub-lic funds spent. The Chicago Child-Parent Centersyield the greatest return, with very clear benefits tothe child’s school career. Although it is a two-gen-eration program, its primary emphasis is child-focused and it includes additional support for theelementary school classes used by participants upto and including grade three as well as health andnutrition services. The Arkansas prekindergartenprogram, which provides a lower benefit, providessolely a classroom experience. Of the three parent-focused initiatives, the greatest benefit to the pub-lic purse comes from the Nurse-Family Partnership.This benefit primarily reflects savings to the childwelfare, social assistance and child and adult crim-inal systems and greater likelihood of maternalemployment. The NFP program was not designedto enhance children’s school-readiness or schoolcareer and does not provide the same level of ben-efit in these areas as do child-focused programs(see table 6, page 27). No benefit/cost analysis forHead Start is included in either of the two docu-ments located that review benefit/cost ratios forseveral initiatives.
of people who have completed high school in compari-son with those who have not, and the lower probabili-ty that they will use social assistance.
Targeted programsBenefit/cost analyses for targeted programs start byusing the statistically significant findings related todifferent outcomes between a participant and com-parison group. In the case of the benefit/cost esti-mates reported in table 9, this information camefrom the specific program evaluations cited earlier.The benefits are based on a number of variables, themix of which varies depending on what was meas-ured by the researchers. The possible variablesinclude reduced expenditures for grade repetitionand use of remedial education services; increasedlikelihood of high school graduation; savings to oneor more of the child welfare, social assistance orchild and/or adult criminal justice systems; andincreases in government revenue through increasedincome tax. The Chicago Child-Parent Centers bene-fit/cost ratio also includes benefits not accruing togovernment such as the half-day reduction in thecost of child care for employed parents. Becausebenefit/cost ratios do not include other potentialbenefits that were not measured in the program eval-uation, such as stronger national economic competi-tiveness as a result of improvements in the
Table 9Benefit/Cost Estimates for Targeted Initiatives
Year in which Estimated benefitActual cost per dollars are for every dollar
Type of initiative Initiative participant (dollars) denominated Duration spent (dollars)
Sources: Aos et al. (2004); Belfield (2006a); Reynolds et al. (2002). 1 Most of the benefits from the Nurse-Family Partnership come from decreased government expenditures for the child welfare, social assistance and juvenile/adultcriminal justice systems and increased income tax revenue from increased maternal engagement in paid employment.
Parent-focused
Child-focused
Two-generation
HIPPY (US)
Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP)1
PAT
ArkansasPre-K
Chicago Child-Parent Centers (preschool plus parent supportand education, does not includegrades-one-to-three component)
Comprehensive ChildDevelopment Program
Early Head Start (all sitescombined)
1.80 (at age 5)
2.88 (at age 15)
1.23 (at age 3)
2.32 (projectedupward to age 65)
7.14 (projectedupward to age 65)
0.00
0.23 (at age 3)
1,250
3,659
1,450
4,400
6,692
10,849
11,892
2004
2002
2004
2006
1998
1994
2002
Average 1.5 years
Average 2.5 years
Average 2.5 years
1 school year
9 months for each of2 years
Average 3 years
Average 22 months
incurred in implementing a universal prekindergartenprogram by suggesting various ways to fund it (2006).
Universal child careAnalyses of the benefits/costs of universal child carehave been done in both Canada and Switzerland. InCanada, two economists from the University of Torontoestimate that a nationwide high-quality universal childcare system for children aged two to five with parentfees geared to income would yield $2 for every dollarof public money spent. Their methodology, detailed inappendix B of their report, took into account factorssuch as costs not incurred for special education andgrade repetition and increased income taxes as a resultof increased parental workforce participation(Cleveland and Krashinsky 1998).
As indicated by table 10, the estimated cost per par-ticipant per year for universal child care is greater thanfor the American universal prekindergarten programs,even taking into account the exchange rate. There aretwo reasons for this difference. First, the child care dayis longer than the standard eight-hour work day, result-ing in a need for additional staff to cover the beginningor the end of the day. Second, some children participat-ing in child care would be younger than age three.
Universal prekindergartenNo benefit/cost analysis appears to have been donefor any of the four existing American universalprekindergarten programs. However, six other stateshave estimated the likely benefit/cost ratios if theyimplemented universal prekindergarten. The method-ology used was similar to that used to determinebenefit/cost ratios for targeted early childhood inter-vention but also included the need, in some states, toimprove program inputs so that they are similar tothose in the Chicago Child-Parent Centers — bachelordegree lead teachers with a specialization in earlychildhood education who receive the same compensa-tion packages as those received by other teachers inthe system, a maximum class size of 20 and no morethan 10 children to every adult (Belfield 2005, 2006b;Karoly and Bigelow 2005). As illustrated in table 10, apositive return on investment was estimated for eachstate, with benefits ranging between $2.62 to $1.18for every dollar spent. The Committee for EconomicDevelopment (CED) has estimated the likelybenefit/cost ratio for a nationwide prekindergartenprogram in the United States as at least $2 for eachdollar of public funds. The CED report addresses thesubstantial initial additional expenses that would be
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Table 10Benefit/Cost Estimates for Universal ECEC, Various United States and Canada
Estimated cost per Year in which Estimated benefitparticipant per dollars are for every dollar
Type of initiative Jurisdiction year (dollars) denominated Duration spent (dollars)1
Sources: Belfield (2005, 2006b); Cleveland and Krashinsky (1998); Karoly and Bigelow (2005).1 Estimated benefit/cost ratios differ across states for pre-kindergarten because of differences in factors such as whether the program would be part day or full day, 2 Prekindergarten estimates are in US dollars; child care estimates are in Canadian dollars.whether children would attend for one or two years and estimated costs to bring current quality levels in line with those associated with effective targeted programs. 3 The estimated cost per participant for child care is more expensive than for prekindergarten since the program operates year-round, not just for the school year, andfor a longer period each day. 4 The costs for implementing universal child care include the assumption of parent fees geared to income, with parent fees, overall, covering 20 percent of the actualcosts.
Prekindergarten2
Child care
Arkansas
California
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Ohio
Wisconsin
Canada-wide
1.58 (projectedupward to age 65)
2.62 (projectedupward to age 65)
2.25 (projectedupward to age 65)
1.18 (projectedupward to age 65)
1.64 (projectedupward to age 65)
1.62 (projectedupward to age 65)
2.00
4,865
4,339
6,418
6,500
5,900
6,445
8,5003, 4
2005
2003
2003
2003
2003
2003
1997
2 school years, full day
1 school year, part day
1 school year, lengthof day not stated
2 school years, full day
1 school year, lengthof day not stated
1 school year, lengthof day not stated
Up to 3 full years, 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
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Policy Implications andDiscussion
C anada is facing a workforce shortage resultingfrom demographic factors. This reality, andthe demands of new technologies and the
global economy for workers with good people, litera-cy, numeracy, problem-solving and decision-makingskills, means that Canada’s future prosperity dependsupon ensuring that every child reaches his or herfullest potential (Dodge 2003; Fortin 2006; Lefebvreand Merrigan 2003). The need to do this is so criticalthat one economist has suggested that “our mostpressing task as a nation…is to foster basic skills suchas literacy and numeracy” (Fortin 2006, 5).
Successful acquisition of literacy and numeracydepends upon a foundation of competencies devel-oped prior to entry into kindergarten, yet 25 percentof children in Canada enter school lacking one ormore of the essential foundation skills (McCain,Mustard and Shanker 2007). In 1999, MargaretMcCain and Fraser Mustard raised the alarm aboutthe extent of child vulnerability to developmentalproblems in Canada and urged governments to makea major effort to improve the opportunities for opti-mal early childhood development for all children.Nearly a decade later, the response of Canada’s feder-al, provincial and territorial governments to the needto promote every child’s development is woefullyinadequate in both approach and degree.
Federally, provincially and territorially funded ini-tiatives to assist the development of children vulnera-ble to poor developmental outcomes are limited toprograms targeting children living in low socio-eco-nomic neighbourhoods and to Aboriginal children.However, vulnerable children live in families acrossall income levels and in both the Aboriginal andnon-Aboriginal populations. Although the incidenceof vulnerability is highest among children living inpoverty, the largest number of children, approximate-ly 75 percent, live in middle-income households(McCain, Mustard and Shanker 2007, 46). Restrictingpublicly funded early-intervention initiatives for vul-nerable children to low-income and Aboriginal fami-lies misses the majority of children who arevulnerable.
We also know that positive effects on vulnerablechildren’s development are best achieved with interven-tions that target children directly with structured, cen-tre-based group programs. Yet, as table 7 shows, over 50
Desirable children per adult ratios are smaller foryounger children, with the result that each adult work-ing with younger children should not be responsiblefor as many as an adult working with three- and four-year-olds. In spite of the higher cost per child, the esti-mated benefit compares favourably with the estimatedbenefits for the prekindergarten programs.
Using annual data from Statistics Canada’s Surveyof Labour and Income Dynamics, a study in Quebeccalculated that implementation of the five-dollar-a-day child care program, now seven dollars a day, wasassociated with a 21 percent increase in maternalpaid employment outside the home and additionaltax income that offset about 40 percent of the cost ofthe program (Baker, Gruber and Milligan 2006).Similar findings are reported from Switzerland wherepublic investment of CHF 18 million in child care bythe city of Zurich is estimated to be offset by at leastCHF 29 million from additional tax revenue andreduced spending on social assistance (OECD 2006).
DiscussionTables 9 and 10 demonstrate that the benefits to societyof both targeted and universal large-scale ECEC initia-tives are greater than is their cost to the public purse.Such findings support the strong consensus amongeconomists, biologists and social scientists that publicinvestments in the early childhood period providegreater returns than at any other period in life (Lefebvreand Merrigan 2003; McCain, Mustard and Shanker2007). In fact, a group of American economists hasestimated that, “a dollar invested in early childhood[development] yields three times as much as for school-aged children and eight times as much as for adult edu-cation” (McCain, Mustard and Shanker 2007, 136). Thisis not surprising. Development is sequential and cumu-lative and it is during the preschool period that thefoundation is laid for the individual’s lifelong physicaland mental health, the child’s degree of success inschool, and the adult’s life skills and employability. Thehuman capital built through enhancing young chil-dren’s development assists in creating and maintaininga prosperous society and a prosperous society encour-ages tolerance and social stability.
ming that promotes children’s social, language andcognitive development (Doherty et al. 2006; Drouin etal. 2004; Goelman et al. 2006; Japel, Tremblay andCôté 2005).
As discussed in the previous section, the adultsresponsible for a group of children in the kinds of ECECservices proven to promote children’s development havea university degree and specialized training in earlychildhood education, are well compensated and providea planned, purposeful, developmentally appropriate dailyprogram. But in 2001, the most recent year for whichdata are available, the majority of people working direct-ly with children in Canadian child care had a one-yearcommunity college certificate or a two-year diploma;less than 15 percent had a bachelor’s degree or higherqualification (Beach et al. 2004, 16). Salary levels werelow and remain so. On average, staff in child care cen-tres who had a degree earned $21,023 in contrast to the$47,146 earned by an elementary school teacher withthe same level of education (Beach et al. 2004, 25). Thislarge discrepancy does not encourage degree-holders toremain in the child care field. Unlike the situation inkindergarten, where all the provinces and territoriesrequire the provision of a specific curriculum or types ofactivities in every program, only Quebec requires all reg-ulated child care settings to use a specific curriculum.
The characteristics associated with effective ECECare expensive but necessary. Yet outside of Manitobaand Quebec, child care programs have to rely on feespaid by parents for an average of almost 50 percent oftheir budget (OECD 2004, 57). However, parent feescannot be sufficiently high to cover the true cost ofproviding high-quality ECEC — for example, to coverthe cost of staff compensation that reflects the desir-able level of training. Raising ECEC fees to increasecompensation levels is not an option since it wouldreduce access. Instead, as noted by the OECD (2004, 72)in its report on its evaluation of services in Canada forchildren under age six, public funding of ECEC must besubstantially increased.
As a matter of comparison, child care in Europe isgenerally of high quality and generously subsidized bygovernment. Parent fees for children under age three incountries such as Finland, Norway and Sweden rangebetween 9 and 15 percent of the cost; fees are about 25percent of the cost in the rest of Continental Europe. Inmost European countries at least part-day fully subsi-dized ECEC is provided for all three- and four-year-olds(OECD 2006, 78).
Poor-quality child care is not simply a missed devel-opmental opportunity; it is known to be detrimental to
percent of federal/provincial/territorial early interven-tion funds are directed to parent-focused and two-gen-eration initiatives. While such interventions can yieldbenefits to the individual parent, such as increased self-confidence and job skills, and to society by reducing theneed for social assistance, they provide negligible bene-fit to children’s development (see table 5).
Finally, programs targeted on low-income families donot even reach their intended clientele. Only two initia-tives have developed estimates of the extent to whichthey reach their target population. Manitoba’s FamiliesFirst reports that it serves 64 percent of eligible women,that 22 percent decline and that 14 percent are notserved for other reasons (Mariette Chartier, HealthyChild Manitoba, personal communication, September25, 2007). Quebec’s SIPPE estimates that it serves 56percent of its target population (Louise Therrien, Quebec,Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux, personalcommunication, September 12, 2007). Both of these ini-tiatives are parent-focused programs that do not providedirect programming for children. In 2001, the mostrecent date for which information is available, 415,655children under age six were living in poverty (CanadianCouncil on Social Development 2007, table A-1). In theintervening period, child poverty levels have only beenreduced consistently in each year in Quebec, whereas inother jurisdictions change has been variable or povertyrates have increased (Campaign 2000 2006, 2). The par-ticipant statistics provided in table 7 indicate thatapproximately 23,000 children under age five across thewhole of Canada received child-focused targeted groupprograms.
The realities of child care in CanadaChild care plays a significant role in the lives andthus the development of many Canadian childrenunder age five. In 2005, 52 percent of children underage three and 54 percent of those between age fourand five regularly received some form of nonparentalcare while their parents engaged in paid work or fur-thered their education; they spent, on average, 27hours a week in that care (Bushnik 2006). Yet, 38 per-cent of children who receive regular nonparental carein Canada receive it in unregulated settings that donot have to meet even basic health and safety stan-dards (Bushnik 2006). This reflects the reality that, in2006, there were regulated child care spaces for only21 percent of children under age five (Friendly et al.in press). While participating in regulated child careprotects health and safety, only about a third of suchprograms provide the type and amount of program-
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women worked full time and, increasingly, a grand-mother is not available to provide care. In fact, thelabour force participation of women aged 55 to 64has sharply increased since the mid-1970s from 32 to51 percent (Marshall and Ferrao 2007, 6). Therefore,many parents must find reliable nonrelative care.
The second factor to consider is how best to meetthe needs of both child and family. Young childrenthrive when they experience stable relationshipswith a minimal number of transitions from place toplace during the course of a day and are engaged ina daily program of interesting activities that stimu-late their linguistic and cognitive development.Working parents’ primary needs are affordability, aconvenient location and a service that operates forthe hours required to cover the time the parent isout of the home. Access to government-funded part-or full-day prekindergarten programs for three- andfour-year-olds would lessen the cost of alternativecare for employed parents and, being located in thelocal school, such programs would probably be con-venient. However, parents who work full timerequire alternative care for longer than the tradi-tional 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. school day. Currently inCanada, the need for care beyond the traditionalschool hours is addressed by “wrap-around” childcare provided before and after the prekindergartenprogram either in another room in the school or in anearby location, with the child being transportedback and forth. In this situation, the child experi-ences one set of adults providing “care” and anotherset providing “education” and several transitions todifferent physical locations within the course of theday. Other countries have adopted the philosophythat care and education are indivisible for youngchildren and should be provided by the same groupof adults in a program that blends educational andcare activities throughout. Following this philoso-phy, several European countries provide universalECEC programs operating for 10 hours a day thatincorporate play-based learning activities through-out the whole day delivered by adults with three orfour years of specialized post-secondary training toequip them to implement the underlying philosophy(Cameron 2004). This level of training is consistentwith the pan-Canadian requirement, except inPrince Edward Island,9 that kindergarten teachers,whether working with four- or five-year-olds, havea four-year B.Ed. or a three-year BA and one year ofspecific teacher training (Doherty, Friendly andBeach 2003).
all children’s development regardless of their socio-economic background or the extent to which theirparents engage in developmental activities with them(Howes 1990; Peisner-Feinberg and Burchinal 1997;Vandell and Corasaniti 1990).
Given the large number of children under age fiveregularly participating in child care, Canada cannotcontinue to treat this service as simply a safe placefor children to stay while their parents work. It mustbe recognized as a developmental opportunity forchildren and an investment in Canada’s future pro-ductivity. Doing so would require higher regulatorystandards, especially in the area of staff training, andmuch higher levels of public funding than currentlyprovided outside of Quebec to enable the sort of com-pensation that encourages people to complete therequired level of training and remain in the field.
What needs to be done?Addressing the current high levels of lack of school-readiness in an effective fashion requires: 1. accepting that vulnerability to poor developmental
outcomes occurs across all income levels and, as aresult, interventions must be universal since thereis no easily observable neighbourhood marker toidentify all vulnerable children;
2. developing a nontargeted, evidence-based, cost-effective strategy; and
3. providing the level of government fundingrequired and other resources for the strategy to beeffective. This is a tall order but doable, although it will take
time, and it is affordable.
Factors to considerWhen considering the type of group ECEC programthat would be the most effective, attention must bepaid to: (1) the high workforce participation bywomen who have a child under age five; (2) theapproach that would work best for the child and fam-ily; (3) the need for complementary services such asdevelopmental screening prior to entry into kinder-garten; and (4) the provision of additional supportsfor those with unique needs.
The percentage of women in the paid workforcewho have at least one child under age five hasincreased each year since 1976. By 2006, 64.3 percentof women whose youngest child was under age threeengaged in paid employment, as did 69.4 percent ofthose whose youngest child was age three to five(Statistics Canada 2007, table 5). Most of these
An example of what might be doneThe recent follow-up to the 1999 Early Years Studyproposes a universal system of early child developmentand parenting centres that would be affordable andwidely available to pregnant women and families witha child under age six (McCain, Mustard and Shanker2007). Each centre would incorporate pre- and postna-tal supports, parenting education, developmentalscreening, child care and kindergarten and report to asingle local authority that would be administrativelyresponsible for the group of centres. Ontario’s BestStart Initiative, announced in 2004, is already movingin this direction. Three pilot projects in three very dif-ferent parts of the province are developing communityhubs through formal coordination and collaborationamong existing organizations so that families have asingle entry point to a continuum of ECEC services andother services such as developmental screening.Currently, there are 24 such hubs (Ontario, Ministry ofChildren and Youth Services 2007a). Best Start’s ulti-mate goal is full integration of child care and kinder-garten into a single ECEC service that works in closepartnership with the local public health unit and othercommunity organizations to provide all their servicesin a single location. As noted by the province, achiev-ing this goal will require a transformation of the wayin which services are planned, funded, managed anddelivered. A detailed timetable including 15 measurablegoals, each with its own set of tasks and target dates,has been developed to guide the transformation(Ontario, Ministry of Children and Youth Services2007b). Meanwhile, Ontario is addressing the immedi-ate need to improve the quality of regulated child care.
The bottom line What would it cost the public purse to do what needsto be done? Is the cost affordable? Taking into accountthe services that already exist and are publicly funded,McCain and her colleagues estimate that their suggest-ed model would require about $8 billion in new spend-ing (McCain, Mustard and Shanker 2007, 142). Thisincludes improved workforce training and compensa-tion, both of which should also improve program quali-ty and thus child outcomes, and the assumption thatparents would contribute to the cost through feesgeared to income. As noted in tables 9 and 10, theAmerican experience indicates that the benefit of ECECprograms to the public purse outweighs their cost. InCanada, approximately 40 percent of the cost ofQuebec’s seven-dollar-a-day child care program isbeing recovered through additional income tax revenue
Early identification and remediation of visual orhearing impairments or speech impediments enhancesthe child’s chances for optimal development.Currently, in some parts of Canada, the first universalopportunity to participate in developmental screeningafter infancy occurs when the child enters kinder-garten. At that point, undetected hearing and visualimpairments or mild speech impediments may alreadyhave had a negative effect on the child’s development.
Finally, the provision of universally availableECEC does not necessarily mean equal funding perchild; the Canadian health system is universal butalso recognizes that some citizens have unique needsthat require additional services (Brownell et al. 2006).A case can be made that the principle of additionalsupports for those with unique needs may apply totwo specific groups of young children — those livingin Aboriginal families and those whose home lan-guage is not that of the local school.
British Columbia’s province-wide EDI study reportsthat 40 percent of Aboriginal children obtain scoresindicating a lack of school-readiness on one or morescales, with the lowest scores being obtained on thelanguage/cognitive development and general knowl-edge/communication skills scales (Jennifer Lloyd,Human Early Learning Partnership, personal commu-nication, October 30, 2006).
A Toronto study found that when a group of low-income five-year-olds, 71 percent of whom had ahome language other than English, were assessed bythe EDI, just over half of the children obtained scoressuggesting a lack of school-readiness in one or moreof the social competence, language and cognitivedevelopment, or communication skills/general knowl-edge scales, a much higher average than found in thepopulation as a whole (Yau 2005, 2).
The adjustment to and later success in school ofboth these groups of children might be enhanced notonly by early exposure to the language used in thelocal school but also by assistance in understandingand adapting to its norms and experiences that pro-mote early literacy and numeracy skills. The provi-sion of additional services might include additionalgovernment financial support to ECEC programsoperating in neighbourhoods with a high proportionof families whose home language is neither Englishnor French or of Aboriginal families, so that the pro-grams can operate with fewer children per adult andthe staff receive specific training related to address-ing each group’s unique needs.
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to Canada of spending 1 percent of its GDP for ECECfor children under age six would be about $10 billion(McCain, Mustard and Shanker 2007, 142). UniversalECEC provides greater benefits to society than it costsin public expenditures. Canada can afford this expen-diture; Canada cannot afford the inevitable conse-quences for its future prosperity of failing toimplement a universal ECEC system.
from increased maternal engagement in the paidworkforce (Baker, Gruber and Milligan 2006). Thesteady decline in child poverty associated withincreased maternal employment has also meant asteady decrease in the use of social assistance inQuebec (Campaign 2000 2006). Thus Quebec isalready receiving significant benefits from its ECECexpenditures and stands to recoup more of its invest-ment in the future through increased rates of highschool completion and a workforce that is better ableto compete successfully in the global economy.
Conclusion
C anada’s future prosperity depends upon itsability to develop the knowledge and skills ofwhat will be a smaller workforce in the com-
ing decades (Brownell et al. 2006; Dodge 2003; Fortin2006; Lefebvre and Merrigan 2003). The research isclear: the foundation for school success and adultwell-being and competency is laid down during theyears prior to school entry (McCain, Mustard andShanker 2007). The implication is also clear: Canadamust do all it can to ensure the optimal developmentof every child. While the incidence of children vul-nerable to developmental problems is highest in thelowest socio-economic group, the largest number ofchildren overall live in middle- and upper-middlesocio-economic families and this is the group wheremost vulnerable children are found (McCain, Mustardand Shanker 2007). Restricting early intervention ini-tiatives to low-income neighbourhoods misses themajority of vulnerable children. Failing to address thereality that over 50 percent of children under agefour regularly receive out-of-home child care, mostof which provides insufficient activities to supporttheir development, puts many children at risk for vul-nerability who might not be so otherwise. It is time torecognize that supporting the development of all chil-dren requires a system of high-quality ECEC that isavailable and affordable to all families wishing to useit and to act on this recognition.
The OECD suggests that 1 percent of the grossdomestic product (GDP) is the minimum requirementfor an ECEC system of sufficiently high quality toenhance children’s development and be affordableand available to all families who wish to use it.Currently Canada’s annual expenditures on ECEC areabout 0.3 percent of its GDP ((2006, 105).10 The cost
6 Four studies measured school-readiness with the EarlyDevelopment Instrument (EDI) which was developed by aconsortium of Canadian researchers and early childhoodexperts in the late 1990s and has subsequently been val-idated (Janus and Offord 2007). The fifth study used thePeabody Picture Vocabulary Test — Revised as its meas-ure (Dunn and Dunn 1981).
7 The EDI measures five components of school-readiness:physical health and well-being; social knowledge andcompetence; emotional maturity and ability to self-regu-late; language and cognitive development; and generalknowledge and communication skills.
8 ECEC quality was measured by trained observers whilethe child was in his or her ECE program using the EarlyChildhood Environment Rating Scale — Revised (Harms,Clifford and Cryer 1998) and the Caregiver InteractionScale (Arnett 1989). A further discussion of what ismeant by “quality” is provided later in this section.
9 Prince Edward Island is an exception. In that province,practitioners with a two-year college ECEC credential arepermitted to work in either child care or kindergartenand some child care centres deliver the kindergarten cur-riculum to age-eligible children as part of their childcare program (Friendly et al. in press).
10 The expenditure on ECEC calculated for each of the 14countries compared was derived from information provid-ed by each country. Given the strong provincial/territorialrole in child care in Canada, and the role of municipalitiesin Ontario, the information provided to the OECD presum-ably included funds from all three levels of government.
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Notes1 Quebec agrees with the objectives of the National
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2 Research consistently shows that how the parent inter-acts with the child has a strong influence on the child’sdevelopment and later school career. Warm, responsiveand supportive parents who set clear behavioural limitsbut allow children to have a voice in what happens areassociated with positive school outcomes; in contrast,children who experience highly controlling and harshparenting are less likely to do well in school. Children’sdevelopment is also associated with the extent and typeof verbal and other stimulation, such as opportunitiesto play with manipulative toys, available in the home.Parent-focused programs encourage parents to bewarm, supportive and consistent with their childrenand provide them with information about how to sup-port and stimulate their child’s development.
3 A quasi-experimental evaluation involves comparingthe outcomes of two groups of people, one that partici-pates in an intervention and the other that does not,matched with each other on salient characteristics suchas age and socio-economic status. The intent is toreduce the extent to which differences in outcomesbetween the two groups reflect differences betweenthem other than whether or not they received theintervention.
4 A randomized trial is one in which individuals fromthe same population pool, such as all eligible appli-cants for a targeted intervention program, are random-ly assigned to the intervention or noninterventiongroup. This is considered to be the “gold standard” forany intervention evaluation, since it minimizes thepossibility that differences in outcome will reflectsomething other than the effect of the intervention.
5 This design compares two groups of children whoseapplication was accepted by the program by using theage cut-off for enrolment eligibility to define thegroups, one that had recently completed prekinder-garten and the other a group of children about tobegin the program at the same time. The concept maybe easier to understand by taking the extreme case,that of two children who differ only in that one wasborn the day before the date of cut-off and the otherborn the day after. When both are about to turn agefive, the slightly younger child will be about to enterprekindergarten while the other child will be about toenter kindergarten. If the two children’s achievementscores are assessed on the same day, their closeness inage will mean that their maturation levels are virtuallythe same with the result that any differences inachievement scores reflect the effect of the prekinder-garten program. In practice, the approach is applied toa wider age range around the cut-off.
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Investing in Our ChildrenInvestir dans nos enfants
Études publiées / Studies Published
“Measuring Up: Family Benefits in British Columbia andAlberta in International Perspective”Paul KershawIRPP Choices Vol. 13. no. 2 (March 2007)
“Is the Class Half Empty? A Population-Based Perspectiveon Socioeconomic Status and Educational Outcomes”Marni Brownell, Noralou Roos, Randy Fransoo et al.IRPP Choices Vol. 12, no. 5. (October 2006)
« La qualité ça compte ! Résultats de l’Étude longitudi-nale du développement des enfants du Québec concer-nant la qualité des services de garde »Christa Japel, Sylvana Côté et Richard E. TremblayChoix IRPP Vol. 11, n° 4 (Octobre 2005)
“Quality Counts! Assessing the Quality of DaycareServices Based on the Quebec Longitudinal Study ofChild Development”Christa Japel, Sylvana Côté and Richard E. TremblayIRPP Choices Vol. 11, no. 5 (December 2005)
“Meeting the Need: A New Architecture for Canada’sStudent Financial Aid System”Ross Finnie, Alex Usher and Hans VossensteynIRPP Policy Matters Vol. 5, no. 7 (August 2004)
“Assessing Family Policy in Canada: A New Deal forFamilies and Children”Pierre Lefebvre and Philip MerriganIRPP Choices Vol. 9, no. 5 (June 2003)
« Mémoire soumis à la Commission des affaires sociales àpropos du Projet de loi no 140 » Sarah Fortin (IRPP) et Carole VincentRapport spécial (Septembre 2000)
“Taxing Canadian Families: What’s Fair, What’s Not”Carole Vincent and Frances WoolleyChoices Vol. 6, no. 5 (July 2000)
“Quebec Family Policy: Impact and Options”Robert Baril, Pierre Lefebvre and Philip MerriganChoices Vol. 6, no. 1 (January 2000)
Related Publications
Work-Life BalanceÉquilibre vie-travail
Études publiées / Studies Published
« Le temps dans tous ses états : temps de travail, tempsde loisir et temps pour la famille à l’aube du XXIe siècle »Gilles PronovostEnjeux publics IRPP Vol. 8, n° 1 (Février 2007)
“The Use of Family Friendly Workplace Practices inCanada” Ana Ferrer and Lynda GagnéIRPP Working Paper (September 2006)
“Toward Squaring the Circle: Work-Life Balance and theImplications for Individuals, Firms and Public Policy” Richard ChaykowskiIRPP Choices Vol. 12, no. 3 (June 2006)
“Working for Working Parents: The Evolution ofMaternity and Parental Benefits in Canada”Shelley PhippsIRPP Choices Vol. 12, no. 2 (May 2006)
Other Research ProgramAutre programme de rechercheA Canadian Priorities Agenda: Policy Choices to ImproveEconomic and Social Well-BeingEdited by Jeremy Leonard, Christopher Ragan andFrance St-HilaireIRPP 2007 (ISBN 88645-203-2)
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grammes sert au financement d’initiatives qui ont uneincidence négligeable sur le développement des enfants.
L’auteure examine ensuite les données internationalessur les avantages d’une approche universelle pour aider lesenfants vulnérables. Elle conclut que, malgré son coût ini-tial plus élevé, l’approche universelle est plus prometteuseque l’approche ciblée pour deux grandes raisons.
Premièrement, elle permet de rejoindre un plus grandnombre d’enfants vulnérables. Doherty rappelle que si lerisque de connaître des problèmes de développement est plusélevé chez les enfants vivant dans les familles les plus dému-nies, de récentes enquêtes ont révélé qu’il existe des enfantsvulnérables dans tous les groupes socio-économiques et queplus de 70 p. 100 des enfants vulnérables au Canada sont enfait issus de familles qui ne vivent pas dans la pauvreté. Cecisignifie que les programmes ciblés sur les enfants issus desfamilles les plus pauvres revient à priver de soutien lamajorité des enfants qui éprouvent des difficultés. L’expé-rience de plusieurs pays montre que des programmes d’édu-cation pour la petite enfance abordables et accessiblessuscitent une forte participation ce qui, du même coup, per-met de rejoindre un plus grand nombre d’enfants qui nevivent pas dans des familles pauvres.
Deuxièmement, les données internationales indiquentque la maturité scolaire des enfants de tous les milieuxsocio-économiques et leurs chances de réussite à longterme se trouvent améliorés par des programmes universelsde qualité, que ce soit en prématernelle ou en garderie. Elleexamine finalement les analyses coût-bénéfices des initia-tives ciblées et des programmes universels, pour en con-clure que les deux approches peuvent produire pour lasociété des avantages supérieurs à leurs coûts.
En terminant, l’auteure analyse les implications de cesrésultats pour les politiques canadiennes en matière depetite enfance. Puisque qu’environ 25 p. 100 des enfantscanadiens de cinq ans manquent de maturité scolaire, queles programmes ciblés sont relativement inefficaces et quel’accès et la qualité des services de garde à l’échelle du payssont présentement fort limités, elle estime qu’il nous fautreconnaître que (1) le risque de connaître des problème dedéveloppement s’observe dans les familles de tous lesniveaux de revenu ; (2) aucun repère observable n’est infail-lible pour ce qui est d’identifier tous les enfants vulnérables.Aussi, recommandent-elles que les services de garde etd’éducation de la petite enfance doivent être universelle-ment accessibles à toutes les familles qui désirent en pro-fiter. À son avis, il est impératif d’adopter une stratégieefficace, non ciblée, fondée sur les résultats de la rechercheet qui dispose des ressources et du financement publicsnécessaires à sa réussite.
D ans le cadre du débat sur la nécessité d’adopter unsystème de services de garde et d’éducation de lapetite enfance, on avance souvent qu’il faut
plutôt affecter les ressources disponibles aux enfants quien ont le plus besoin. Or nous en savons très peu sur l’ef-ficacité des initiatives ciblées actuellement en place auCanada et auxquelles sont alloués plus de 260 millions dedollars par année. Dans cette étude, Gillian Dohertyanalyse les effets de ces programmes et se demande s’ilsproduisent le rendement social escompté par rapport auxinvestissements publics qui leur sont consacrés. Ce quil’amène à s’interroger plus généralement sur la meilleuredes deux approches, universelle ou ciblée, pour assureraux enfants le meilleur départ possible dans la vie.
Elle passe tout d’abord en revue les programmes d’inter-vention précoce destinés aux enfants vulnérables susceptiblesde vivre des problèmes de développement et ce que noussavons de leur incidence sur le développement des enfants.Elle examine 13 initiatives canadiennes de trois types : cen-trées sur les parents, sur les enfants et sur les deux généra-tions. Elle analyse pour chacune la population cible, lesservices fournis, la durée de l’intervention, le nombre d’en-fants/familles bénéficiaires, la formation du personnel, demême que les sommes investis par les gouvernements.
Elle examine également l’efficacité relative de ces pro-grammes en ce qui concerne le développement desenfants et, à la lumière des résultats tirés de recherchemenées au Canada et aux États-Unis, elle conclut que :• Les initiatives qui ciblent directement les enfants et qui
sont offerts en institution avec un programme struc-turé produisent les effets les plus positifs sur ledéveloppement des enfants vulnérables.
• Bien que les interventions centrées sur les parents avecl’objectif d’améliorer les aptitudes parentales, la forma-tion ou l’employabilité puissent profiter aux parents,notamment en raffermissant leur confiance en soi, ils ontdes effets négligeables sur le développement des enfants.
• L’efficacité des programmes pour enfants dépend deleur qualité, c’est-à-dire qu’il sont donné par un per-sonnel bien formé et dispose d’une programmation etd’un ratio éducateur/enfant adéquats.
• L’efficacité des programmes dépend également de leurdurée.L’auteure note que les programmes de soutien aux
enfants vulnérables sont peu nombreux au Canada etqu’ils ne touchent qu’un petit nombre des enfants visés.En fait, comme la plupart de ces programmes ne font l’ob-jet d’aucune évaluation ou suivi, il est impossible d’établirdans quelle mesure ils atteignent leur clientèle cible. Quiplus est, 60 p. 100 des sommes investies dans ces pro-
RésuméEnsuring the Best Start in Life Targeting versus Universality in Early Childhood Development
by Gillian Doherty
50
since most programs are neither monitored nor evaluated,it is not even possible to determine whether they are reach-ing their intended clientele.
The author then examines the international evidence onthe benefits of adopting a universal approach to assistingvulnerable children. She concludes that while the initial costsinvolved are higher than those for targeted programs, a uni-versal approach is an attractive alternative for two reasons.
First, it would reach a higher proportion of vulnerablechildren. Doherty notes that while the incidence of vulnera-bility to poor developmental outcomes is highest amongchildren living in the poorest families, recent researchshows that children from all socio-economic groups can bevulnerable. Indeed, more than 70 percent of vulnerable chil-dren in Canada do not live in poor families. This means thatprograms for vulnerable children that are restricted to thelowest-income group fail to provide support to the majorityof children experiencing difficulties. Experience in severalcountries shows that having affordable, widely availableearly childhood education programs results in high partici-pation rates, which ensures that a higher proportion of vul-nerable children not living in poverty are reached.
Second, the international evidence suggests that par-ticipation in nontargeted, high-quality ECEC, whether itis prekindergarten or ordinary child care, enhances theschool-readiness of children from all socio-economicbackgrounds and their subsequent academic success. Theauthor also examines benefit/cost ratio estimates associ-ated with targeted initiatives, universal prekindergartenand universal child care, and concludes that both targetedand universal ECEC initiatives can provide greater bene-fits to society than they cost.
Finally, Doherty assesses the implications of these resultsfor Canada’s policy on early childhood education. Given thelack of school-readiness of approximately 25 percent offive-year-olds, the relative ineffectiveness of targeted ECECprograms and the limited availability of high-quality childcare services, she concludes that we need a change of strate-gy. In her view, we need to acknowledge that: (a) vulnerabil-ity to poor developmental outcomes occurs across allincome levels, and that (b) there are no easily observablemarkers to identify all vulnerable children. Therefore, if thegoal is to reach as many vulnerable children as possible,then ECEC programs must be universally available to allfamilies who wish to use them. What is required is a nontar-geted, evidence-based, cost-effective strategy and the neces-sary government funding and resources to make it work.
I n the ongoing debate about the need for a pan-Canadian early childhood education and care (ECEC)system, one of the arguments often raised is that
available public resources should instead be targeted tochildren most in need. Yet we know very little about theeffectiveness of the targeted initiatives currently in place,which receive more than $260 million per year. In thispaper Gillian Doherty looks at the impact of these pro-grams and whether they provide the highest social returnin terms of public investment. This discussion leads to thelarger question of whether a universal or targetedapproach in ECEC is the best way to ensure that all chil-dren have the best possible start in life.
The author begins by reviewing Canadian early-interven-tion programs for children vulnerable to poor developmentaloutcomes and what we know about their impact on chil-dren’s development. She reviews 13 initiatives, includingparent-focused, child-focused and two-generation programs.For each, she examines the target population, services pro-vided, duration of intervention, number of children/familiesreceiving assistance and approach to staffing, as well as fed-eral and provincial/territorial funding. She also assesses therelative effectiveness of these programs in terms of childdevelopment.
Based on her review of the research and evidence fromCanada and the United States related to targeted programs,the author concludes that:• Initiatives that target children directly with structured
and centre-based programs have the most positiveeffect on vulnerable children’s development.
• Although parent/family-focused interventions thatattempt to improve parenting skills, education and/oremployability may benefit parents by, for example,increasing their self-confidence, their effect on chil-dren’s development is generally negligible.
• The effectiveness of group programs depends on theirquality — that is, having well-trained staff, effectiveprogramming and appropriate staff-child ratios.
• The effectiveness of group programs also depends onthe duration of intervention.More generally, the study indicates that programs
designed to assist vulnerable children are relatively few innumber, and that they reach only a small number of chil-dren. Moreover, of the money invested in targeted pro-grams, 60 percent is spent on initiatives that do notprovide developmental programming and therefore have anegligible impact on the development of the children. And
Summary Ensuring the Best Start in Life Targeting versus Universality in Early Childhood Development
by Gillian Doherty