Furman – partnerships

We were very fortunate to move into the SSCY Facility, which stands for Specialized Services for Children and Youth. SSCY is incredibly unique facility. We don’t have anything like it in all of Canada and we haven’t found anything like it in all of North America. So 14 organizations which in some capacity work with children with additional support needs have decided to co-locate with one another. Some of the other organizations are the Rehab Centre for Children, Society for Manitobans with Disabilities, child development clinics, several OTs and physiotherapists and speech pathologists have moved in from Children’s Hospital. And as well as some government agencies such as Children’s Disability Services and Family Services. 

So they wanted a child care program to co-locate with them. And so we, we moved in just over a year ago and we have very unique partnerships with all of the other agencies. For approximately four years we met every two weeks and decided together about different kinds 

of policies and procedures and how we were all going to co-locate with one another. So I continue to sit on those committees which are site management, intersectoral working group committee, safety committee, research and evaluation committee. And so we still meet regularly to continue to build upon and live the vision for the SSCY Centre.  

Child Development Clinic was a component part of Children’s Hospital and they’re the ones, they’re the paediatric – the developmental paediatricians that diagnose children in our community with, say, autism on the ADS scale. And so one of the pieces that were sort of missing from them, being in the hospital compared to being here at SSCY, was they weren’t able to see children in sort of natural environments, weren’t able to see how those children socialize with other children or how they do with transitions. And so we had many meetings with them previous to opening, and they actually purchased two days a week with us, and every four weeks we get two children that come in and they’re part of our one to eight preschool ratio, and if need be the Child Development Clinic will bring in other educators to assist if they find that the child might need a bit more supports than we can offer. And it’s been a very successful partnership. They have told us that it’s made a huge difference in their diagnosing children, and it benefits us too. 

The children get to have exposure to kids with different abilities and often it will lead to a family request on our wait list-so future enrolment. But we really are always looking at different ways to partnership with all the co-locating organizations. The other thing that we also offer here is the drop-in program. So for instance SSCY services all of Manitoba, parts of Saskatchewan and parts of Ontario-and so when, for instance, if a family has come down from up north, they used to spend over a week within our city going to the various organizations for their child, various appointments. And we have found out through our Research and Evaluation Committee that we’ve actually shaved two to three days off their time here in the city, which is – has a profound impact for the family. Less time spent in hotels, on transportation, on you know, purchasing food. And so what we wanted to offer, if we have space, if we know a child is away sick or on vacation, the family can bring that child or other siblings to come to our program, sometimes even just for napping or for lunch, spend a few hours with us as the other child is attending the various appointments within the building. So that’s another way – and we don’t charge for that fee. So that’s just something that we’ve built into our program and our philosophy that we have 

with being in this building with everybody else.