Poon – factors affecting communities, families, and children

So in the systems maps, for example, communities were telling us about isolated families, newcomer families, and how difficult it is to connect with services and supports and with other families when they’re new to a community. We also have the idea of you know, access to green space comes out is, “Do children, have safe places to play?” I mentioned one community before had focused upon outdoor play and revamping all of their playgrounds, which they viewed as unsafe and outdated. So are there those kinds of accessible play spaces around? Housing. Communities saying it’s a real crisis. And in some, in terms of families being able to have, you know, stable housing. Food security, another factor, you know, families in need of a food bank, there are food banks available, but there’s stigma associated with that. So there’s the consistency and stability of the home environment,  what influences that. And then also the consistency and the stability of the child care environment as well. Communities are telling us about turnover and how they’re not able to retain their early childhood professionals within their communities. They’re feeling that that lack of consistency also has an impact on creating stresses for the child and not having that consistent group of people to turn to. We also see the idea of trained professionals. So wanting to look at the system of professionals, professional development for having enough early childhood education professionals, but also thinking about standards and what kinds of consistency we need to have in terms of all the children that are providing supports for children, young children, and their families. Is there consistency in that way? And could the community work towards developing some of those standards? We hear about waitlists, so there are children that are sort of in the gray area where they may not have the diagnosis in place yet. Their need hasn’t been identified. So, without a need being identified, sometimes they’re not able to secure sort of access to support services or intervention, early intervention. So then, the idea for communities feeling like they know these families are out there, but you know, what can they do to support them in the interim? And sometimes that hasn’t happened. And communities are then driving hundreds of kilometers to try and get to the next service provider in another community or go to an area that’s more urban or more populated where they feel they can get specialized supports because that’s also a huge gap, unable to get specialized support services within smaller communities. So, I think we’re seeing that there’s just an interconnected system of factors that are affecting the whole community, that are affecting the family in terms of stability. And then we have the outer layer of an environment of providers that are also feeling different levels of stability as well.