Officially begun in 1990, SpeciaLink has built a solid base in
the Canadian child care community. It has established a consensus
among child care practitioners that 1) the mainstream is the right
stream, and 2) mainstream child care must be inclusive, affordable,
accessible, and comprehensive. SpeciaLink has defined and tested
a set of principles for full mainstream child care, and created
a network of committed mainstream practitioners. Its video and
print resources have raised public awareness of mainstream issues.
It has presented at over 200 workshops and conferences, in all
provinces, on issues related to inclusion. 250 advocates from the
national SpeciaLink Symposium carried the mainstream message into
their workplaces and communities, and the SpeciaLink Search Conference
brought together 50 key people from related fields to search for
common ground on mainstreaming.
In 1994, SpeciaLink
expanded its program, offering e-mail and an 800 access number
for referrals and resources; a new initiative to identify,
test and promote innovative practices in children's mental health
within child care settings; and a further collaboration with
related
occupations
to better address the child care needs of children with special
needs and their families.
We are now known as the National Centre
for Child Care Inclusion, a title that reflects the complexity
of jobs SpeciaLink has
taken on. In addition to research, workshops, conferences,
networking,
individual consultations, student training and maintaining
the toll-free phone line, e-mail, and our website, SpeciaLink
has
developed an extraordinary program in partnership with the
Canadian Union
of Postal Workers (CUPW) devoted to families with children
who have special needs. The program delivers consultative
services, member-to-member information including the Member-to-Member
Connection
newsletter, and individualized assistance. Our research has
revealed needs, exposed serious work-and-family issues facing
those parenting
children with special needs, and is helping to make a real
difference in the lives of more than 290 children who have
special needs.
At the same time, SpeciaLink has been publishing
books. Many of the topics that would have been articles in the
SpeciaLink
Newsletter
have been fully developed into five books: The SpeciaLink
Book, Charting New Waters in Early Intervention, Integration
of Children
with Disabilities into Daycare and After school Care Programs,
In Our Way: Child Care Barriers to Full Workforce Participation
Experienced by Parents of Children with Special Needs,
and A Matter of Urgency: Including Children with Special Needs
in Child
Care
in Canada. These books, along with the SpeciaLink video,
The Mainstream is the Right Stream, have become essential
teaching
materials in
child care and school settings, as well as valuable aids
to people involved in policy development and child care
planning across
Canada. Current research includes a comparative study of
two
models of
inclusive child care in four provinces in Canada as well
as on-going consideration of work/family issues in families
that
include
a child with a special need.
Our Measuring Inclusion Progress project, funded by Social Development
Canada, helped us to develop, refine and test ways of "Measuring
Inclusion Progress" in child care centres. Research was
used to produce tools and training packages for practitioners,
trainers, advocates and parents for use at workshops or self-training
on-line, to help to create a common knowledge base for inclusion
on Early Childhood Learning & Care (ECLC) service provision
across Canada.
This project helped child care centres to include children with
special needs, builds pan-Canadian networks and alliances within
the ECLC sector, and provided useful information to researchers,
trainers, disability advocates, students, support agencies,
and all levels of governments. By 2007 over 2000 individuals
had taken part in our training which ranged from conference
workshops, presentations to classes, insertion in text books
used in ECE training programs, two day training seminars and
full week university courses. Across Canada, all these groups
are helping us to ‘test’ out the effectiveness of
these tools and their role in helping us to understand inclusion
quality. We welcome you to be a part of this action research
project as it unfolds across Canada.
We completed The SpeciaLink Child Care Inclusion Practices Profile
and the SpeciaLink Child Care Inclusion Principles Scale. These
tools were uniquely positioned for use in monitoring child care
inclusion. We reshaped them into ECERS-R-like formats, adding
a total of 247 indicators. Beta versions of the Principles and
Practices were made available on line and through dozens of
workshops between 2005-2007. Over 2000 people participated in
our training.
We also completed An Evaluation Based on the First Cohort of
Child Care Centres
This evaluation report described the initial offering of an
innovative approach, Partnerships for Inclusion - Nova Scotia
(PFI-NS) that combines assessment, on-site consultation, and
the provision of resources and personal support to directors
and lead educators (head teachers) in preschool rooms in licensed
child care centres.
In 2007 the Canadian Council on Learning funded our Assessing inclusion quality in early childhood learning and child care (ELCC) in Canada with the SpeciaLink Child Care Inclusion Practices and Principles Scales . The overall purpose of project is to complete the development of a statistically sound, valid, reliable, user-friendly and well-accepted assessment tool for assessing inclusion quality in early childhood learning and child care settings.
In 2007 we saw a major leadership change when after 17 years leading the organization she founded, Dr. Sharon Hope Irwin moved into the role of Senior Researcher for SpeciaLink. Debra Mayer assumed the role as Director of SpeciaLink as the organization completed its transition to its new home at the University of Winnipeg in downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba. Most recently, Debra served as SpeciaLink’s Project Manager, a role she filled while being mentored by Sharon, co-facilitating training in many parts of the country, and helping to promote the Practices and Principles.
SpeciaLink's commitment continues. Our fundamental goal is to bring Canadian child care closer to the reality of full inclusion by locating or developing and then sharing innovative strategies and tools that work with the field, with families, and with governments.ø
SpeciaLink: The National Centre for Child Care Inclusion
76 Cottage Road,
Sydney, NS B1P 2C7
Phone (902) 562-1662
FAX (902) 539-9117
Contact us by email
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