Manitoba Government News Release–The governments of Canada and Manitoba have partnered with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) to create a model for early childhood educators to help detect and prevent child abuse in Canada, federal Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jenna Sudds and Manitoba Education and Early Childhood Learning Minister Nello Altomare announced today.
“Ensuring that our child-care professionals receive high-quality training is essential to building a Canada-wide early learning and child-care system that best supports children,” said Sudds. “Today’s announcement is not only an important investment to offer resources to child-care professionals, it is also a prime example of how an innovative partnership such as this one will allow more children to get the help they need.”
“Our goal is to equip every child-care worker in Manitoba with the necessary knowledge and tools to keep children safe from abuse,” said Altomare. “By making sure early childhood educators have the training, information, and support to recognize signs of abuse and how to report them, we can help make sure more children and families get the help they need.”
Beginning today the new initiative will provide in-depth training, policies and age-appropriate curriculum for safeguarding children in Canada. More than 7,500 staff from over 1,150 facilities including child-care centres and home-based child-care providers, as well as up to 750 students through eight post-secondary early childhood educator programs, will receive access to mandatory online training as well as a suite of supporting digital and print resources to identify possible child abuse in infants to 12-year-olds.
The training is funded under the Canada-Manitoba Early Learning and Child Care Agreement, a $98-million funding agreement over four years that aims to significantly improve early learning and child care for all children in Manitoba. A key focus area of the agreement is to provide quality early learning and child care through workforce development, training and educational opportunities. To support that key priority, the governments of Canada and Manitoba are providing $250,000 to the C3P to launch this initiative.
“This level of comprehensive investment from the Early Learning and Child Care agreement in early childhood education is unprecedented in Canada – we hope to see other provinces follow,” said Noni Classen, director of education, Canadian Centre for Child Protection. “Child-care providers have unique relationships with children and families and they have a key role in safeguarding children. This initiative will increase early childhood educators’ capacity to protect children by providing access to professional development opportunities and evidence-based resources to help keep the children in their care safe.”
In addition to the mandatory training, the suite of C3P supports available to child-care professionals includes:
• The Commit to Kids program kit, which helps facilities assess their programs, services and procedures to manage risk relative to their organizational culture, physical space and environment, hiring and supervision and confidentiality.
• Teatree Tells: A Child Abuse Prevention Kit, a printed child sexual abuse prevention program designed for children four to six years of age that teaches early childhood educators how to address the subject of child sexual abuse with families and children.
• Kids in the Know: kindergarten to Grade 6 Lessons, a national safety education program that engages students with interactive activities to help teach personal safety skills and reduce the risk of victimization online and offline.