Regrets:Alexis Green (Health Unit)

Best Start Network Meeting

Notes

May 8, 2014

UCDSB Office

1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Present:Harold Hess (co-chair), Marg Fancy (EKIOC), Margaret van Bears (Child Development Centre), Cindy Goodfellow (Language Express), Gwendy Lapp (Triple P), Pam Hudson (Libraries of Leeds and Grenville), Donna Vander Kloet (BDACI), Gillian Jackson (DSLG), Shannon Brown (UCLG), Maxine Weber (SE Autism Program, Renata Deyser (SE Autism Program), Jesscia DesChamp-Baird (DAC-UCLG), Jacqueline Hoogworf (UCDSB0-teacher), Sharon Chapman (F&CS), Diane Clark (Infant & Child Development Program), Lynda Earl (Recorder–Health Unit)

Regrets:Alexis Green (Health Unit)

1.0Welcome and Introductions (co-chairs)

Maxine introduced the committee to Renata Deyser, her replacement, as Maxine retiring in June.

2.0Approval of Agenda– approved.

New Business 5c) Marg VB – presentation on special needs strategy Ontario

3.0Actions Arising from April 10th

a)Marg to distribute final report on Parent Engagement when it is ready (completed).

Document is also posted on the website.

b)Margaret will contact Katarokwi Friendship Centre in Kingston about a possible speaker. Looking at fall presentation.

c)Alexis will connect with contact leads for Red Flags

4.0Business Arising

a)Priority Areas and Guiding Principles

i)Family Engagement – review of comments from last meeting. Distribution of final report.

ii)Summer Transition to K Programs – supporting West Leeds and CDSBEO Schools – Marg emailed out the report.

iii)Data - Health Nexus Survey – Awareness, Collaboration

Marg showed an example of a network map – shows how we work together as partners. We are able to build on some work that was done through HCP and also Lanark County Planning Council. Marg, Jessica and Gillian have met with representative from Health Nexus and has developed a survey. Jessica will put into survey monkey and send it out to the agency to the ED’s and front line staff. Sending out May 26-27th, goal is to have a data day in the fall.

We do have a base line survey from 3-4 years ago. This new survey will give up today information.

b)Service Agreement with Ministry Education (Margaret and Maxine)

Supervision for BSN falls under Ministry of Education; emphasing terms of goals for BSN is around service integration, how are we building on the work that we have already done, collecting data only once with an easy access.

5.0New Business

a)Data – children with special needs. What data are we collecting? How are we using data for our planning?

Concern that the children were identified with special needs – how do we use this data; how do we find out about kids with special needs; making sure we are not taking the data to the people with special needs, that everyone must be aware of the vulnerability of the children.
Jessica did a presentation – needs of the vulnerability are different; non special needs population has 16.2% vulnerability; vulnerability 63.2%; when combined it is 16.2%
Jesscia recommends that we show all the data together, and then show what she normally shows by vulnerability and non-vulnerability. We still need the individualized information; and the partners at the table need to know the needs of the vulnerability. Planning is the same for both groups.
Jessica suggested an information session about EDI and special needs data.
Jacqueline stated she and her school have used the data. There are funding grants available to the school to meet their needs. This data has made a huge impact on the students.
Jessica will email Marnie to see about getting this data into the schools.

b)Child and Family Centre – work being done at Lead Table

Discussion – criteria for a pilot

Identified as a goal for the next 24 months and next month – look at child and family centres in LG to look for a site for child & family centre.

Culture, Facilitators/Access, Activities/Components, System Navigation
Activities/Components - Added community integration/awareness

Group work – Marg will collate the responses to consideration for a site – group picked their 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice - Leadership, Demand, Readiness, Space, Underserved, Other (please describe)

Marg reviewed the Consideration for Child and Family Pilot site(s) from the lead table.

Group will take this information to develop guiding questions.

c)Margaret VanBeers - Ontario’s Special Needs Strategy – Spring 2014

With upcoming election we don’t know what will happen
Reviewed the Vision
FOUR Ministries working together – Min of Children & Youth Services, Ministry of Community & Social Services; Ministry of Education; Ministry of Health and long-term care
“Putting it all together – a strategy for special needs series that make sense for families”
Three key directions
Developmental Screen – a new, voluntary, standard developmental screen to identify developmental risks and introduce early supports as soon as possible – 0-6 yrs, would like to see it offered across the province
Provincial Consultation group – members will include representatives from public health, primary care,…
Coordinated Service Planning – a coordinated service planning process for children and youth with multiple or complex special needs will provide families with a service planning coordinator to help them with family supports
Implementation Process
Will be provincial guidelines
Will be building existing capacity
Will be asked as a community to develop a proposal to see this move forward
Community will be defined based on census divisions and child population into 34 service delivery areas in alignment with the child and youth mental health services delivery areas
Integrated delivery of rehabilitation services – integrated delivery of school and community-based rehabilitation services so that children have seamless services from birth to school exit
The ministry will distribute guidelines for the delivery of rehabilitation services
34 agencies will develop local proposals for the integration delivery
The integration delivery of rehabilitation services requires changes
Regional information sessions – later this spring, service provides will be invited to regional information sessions to learn more about the proposal development process for coordinated service planning and integrated delivery of rehabilitation services.
Invitations will be distributed to partners, planners
These sessions will provide more information about the process, including the guidelines for the proposals
Youth engagement process spring-summer 2014
Proposals development – May-Oct 2014
Community proposal submitted to gov’t – beginning fall 2014
Margaret VB will be taking the lead

d)Business Reports

Congratulations to Maxine with a special recognition from Girls Inc.

a)Report from MCYS

New MCYS contact from the regional office, Barb Landry.

b)Report from Ministry of Education (Rachelle Blanchette)

Bill 143 Day Nursery Act – died on the table, hope is new gov’t will bring back

Min Offices – keep things running with no changes, already passed and approved will go ahead

Budget wage enhancement for childcare workers – not passed

Questions on updates/resources

1)How Does Learning Happen? Ontario’s Pedagogy for the Early Years has been released:

2)How Does Learning Happen? Ontario’s Pedagogy for the Early Years has

been released: The Ministry is hosting a webcast on the document on May 13 from 1 to 3. Register at:

3) Proposed increases for OCB and frontline childcare workers

possible-start.html

4) Achieving Excellence: A Renewed Vision for Education in Ontario

Margaret VB suggested advocacy for legislation, wage enhancements for childcare workers – Marg will coordinate through the 4 chairs re: advocacy letter to the parties that are running in the upcoming election. Margaret VB suggested connection with the other planning tables to see what they are doing.

c)Coordinator’s Report

1)Triple P – meeting notes can be accessed at

There was agreement to recruit representatives from sectors identified in the community plan to help move the plan forward. A training/orientation day will be held on May 21st at the Standard Church to describe the plan and engage new members. Please let Tanis or Marg know if you or a staff member would have an interest in attending.

Orientation Meeting – 9 to 1 (lunch included) at Standard Church.

2)Transportation Accelerating Rural Transportation Solutions – Update

Thank you to all who completed surveys and attended the Focus Group on April 23rd. New committee members include: Loretta Corbeil, Sheena Earl (Edwardsburg Cardinal), Sue Dunfield (Rideau Lakes), Danika Wentzel (Health Unit) and John Bell (STEO).

3)Recruitment and Retention – On April 22ndthe Employment and Education Centre hosted the ECE at EEC information night. About 20 participants had an opportunity to learn about becoming a qualified ECE, jobs available to ECE’s and current employment opportunities in Leeds-Grenville from licensed childcare staff, UCDSB, and representatives from SLC and Loyalist College.

4)Website (message from Keith)

Please ensure that staff are aware of site. Keith is sending tweets from EKIOC blogs, your input is not only encouraged but critical to real collaboration; there is great potential in use of the tools section for staff in their day to day work.

5)WTK Meeting – Welcome to Kindergarten Committee – March 26th

Boards are looking at offering 2 ½ day summer programs for students entering JK.

6)Child and Family Centres – Lead Table members spent some time at their meeting on April 2nd defining components of a vision for child and Family Centres through the lens of a rural family. Results will be shared at BSN.

7)Working with Regional French BSN – in the interests of better communications and coordinated support for families our regional BSN coordinator will work more closely with the three coordinators in other regions.

8)Lunch and Learn Updates – all run from 12 noon to 1 pm

April 9th – Gananoque Topic: Mental Health (thanks Elizabeth Dorrington)

May 28th – North Grenville Public Library Topic: programs at Health Unit (thanks Kendra Valliquette)

May 28th – Brockville Public Library, Topic: Compassion Fatigue (thanks Sue Watts, Brandy Smith and Elinor Utting)

9)Meeting Dates

May 9 – Leadercast 9 to 4:30 Centennial Road Church

May 14 – Connect Youth Fair – South Grenville DHS

May 14 – Healthy Communities Partnership 1:30 Smiths Falls Health Unit

May 15 – Youth Justice Community Partners 9:30 RNJ

May 21 – Triple P Orientation 9 to 1 Centennial Church

May 21 – Youth Engagement Squad 3:30 EEC

May 22 – Meeting on Group Homes 1:30 to 3:30 UCDSB

May 23 – Recreation Advisory Committee noon CMHLG

May 28 – Lunch and Learn Brockville – noon to 1 Library

May 28 – Lunch and Learn Kemptville –noon to 1 NG Library

June 4 – Lead Table 9:30 UCDSB

d)Report from French Language Network (Cathy Gladu)

e)Sub Committee Reports

i)ECE Recruitment and Retention (Kim)

ii)Special Needs Reference Group – Meeting April 22nd (Maxine)

Met last week – reviewed Terms of Reference, advantages of the group, deciding what the goal is of the group; highlights – became a great place for school boards to trouble shoot and use the community partners to do that; full day kindergarten; shared how effective the day held by the UCDSB and learning resource teachers together so they could go to the different areas; looking at combine effort to reduce duplicate between boards; value was school boards and partners attend working directly with learning resource teachers; this is a success story as the Terms of Reference has been met, but how do we keep the conversations going?

Organize our connections around the burning issues!

iii)West Leeds Transition to Schools – (Margaret VB)

Report emailed out.

f)Developmental Screening Report (Shannon Brown)

Screening Clinic Update – May 2014 - Submitted by Shannon Brown

a)Professional Survey: Has been sent out electronically with a completion target date of May 16th. Shannon sent out link to 367 contacts and Marg F sent out via BSN.

b)Blitz: Group discussed the effectiveness of the plan for a package blitz. It was felt that the package project was too large and unmanageable. There was also a concern about impact effectiveness. Group discussed a revised plan that would target BSN members and those families that they currently support. This initiative would be focused on the dissemination of a quantity of endds.ca cards to all BSN members for those members to distribute to families via their existing programs/services. This new approach would be a reemphasis on the work already being done at most BSN agencies and a deliberate messaging regarding child development. The working group felt that this was doable and would not be perceived as yet another ‘ask’ for already busy professionals. The focus will be on the tips and activities to encourage your child’s development vs. screen your child for problems. It will focus on Family Engagement and the empowerment of parents.

c)Working group would like to present to BSN in September 2014 to outline the initiative, give out quantities of the cards, and provide suggestions for common language, social media messaging and ideas about connecting with families.

Sharing:

THRIVE – workshop in Smiths Falls may be cancelled due to lack of registration.

Gillian handed out the thrive info card, and poster

6.0Next Meeting Date

June 12, 2014; 1:30 p.m., UCDSB