During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nobody’s Perfect parenting program (NPP) partners and master trainers worked to adapt NPP parent group sessions and NPP facilitator training to a virtual environment. Building on this significant work, we are supporting the next steps to further adapt the traditionally “in-person” facilitator training into a standard virtual facilitator training for new NPP facilitators. Collaboration and consultation are essential to this project; extensive national needs assessments guide every step we take. The standard virtual facilitator training will be pilot tested and evaluated.
The project is being managed and administered by Families Canada in collaboration with NPP partners and stakeholders.
In order to explore and better understand the connection between children’s rights to participation and protection, the International and Canadian Child Rights Partnership (ICCRP) was established following an international conference held at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) in October 2015. The ICCRP examines how intergenerational relationships can transcend current barriers to implementing children's rights, through intergenerational partnerships, in research, policy, and practice
As a partner, we contribute to the Partnership Advisory Committee and share findings and opportunities to participate in research with the Canadian family support sector.
Andrew Fleck Children’s Services, in collaboration with the Council on Aging of Ottawa and Families Canada, is leading a project to develop demonstration sites that will implement, document, and showcase best practices in intergenerational programming as a part of licensed early learning and care.
We are supporting the project by helping share best practices in intergenerational programming, sharing tools and resources that will help others replicate the demonstration sites’ success, and bringing in relevant stakeholders into the project.
It is estimated that more than half a million Canadians over the age of 65 are living with diagnosed dementia. Lack of awareness and stigma can result in barriers to care and support for those living with dementia and reduce participation in activities that support quality of life.
In this project, we worked with our valued partners Council on Aging of Ottawa, Andrew Fleck Children’s Services, and the Eastern Ontario Health Unit to reduce dementia stigma and increase the capacity of the family support sector to integrate dementia-inclusivity in intergenerational programming. The long-term outcome of this project is to integrate dementia awareness in intergenerational programs across Canada through the development of multimedia resources, capacity-building activities, and awareness campaigns.
AVA (Alliance against Violence and Adversity) is a health research training platform that is creating the capacity to transform community health and social services to promote health and wellness of girls and women at-risk or affected by violence and adversity over the life-cycle.
The AVA project is led by the University of Calgary. As a community partner on the project, we: participate in the project’s working group; contribute to strategy development, management, and evaluation, and provide mentorship and internship opportunities. Together with partners across the country, we are contributing to better health outcomes for women.
In the fall and winter, flu and other respiratory illnesses increased significantly. At the same time, the Canadian population was behind on routine vaccinations. To help Canadian families stay healthy, we provided family support practitioners with necessary tools and information to become vaccine promotors in their communities.
In partnership with Eastern Ontario Health Unit and Solutions for Kids in Pain we: 1) Identified culturally appropriate resources that improve vaccine literacy and promote positive messaging about vaccination to families, and 2) Educated community-based service providers, thereby improving their vaccine literacy to address vaccine hesitancy and barriers among the individuals they serve.
This project was funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
In this project, we are translating the Healthy Together program materials and facilitator training course into French, to develop a bilingual program delivery model. We will also be offering a limited number of free seats in the newly translated Healthy Together facilitator training course to bilingual/francophone staff in our memers’ centres. We look forward to expanding this incredible, evidence-based program to more family support centres in Canada!
Funded by the Government of Canada.
The SAFE Women (Safety and Financial Empowerment for Women) project addressed the need for trauma- and violence-informed approaches (TVIA) in financial literacy programming by developing the SAFE Women online course. This course helps financial literacy educators understand and apply trauma and violence-informed approaches when supporting women.
This project was funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada.
The aim of this project was to ensure that the evidence-based information contained within the Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development is accessible to vulnerable families, community-level organizations, and to service providers working directly with parents and children. There is no cookie-cutter solution to meet the early childhood needs of children and families. In partnership with Abilio (formerly: The Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development, we developed multilingual resources that are contextualized and appropriate for diverse target groups such as First Nations, Canadians living with disabilities, and newcomers. Amongst the resources developed, as a revamp of our popular Why Play? resources, which
This project was funded by the Government of Canada.
National research has shown that many existing financial literacy programs are not accessible for many women living on low incomes, especially women who have experienced trauma. Utilizing trauma- and violence-informed approaches in financial literacy programming will increase women’s sense of safety, control and resilience—as well as decrease the risk of unintentionally re-traumatizing program participants.
With support from CIBC, we are building relationships between selected family support centres and financial literacy educators who have completed our SAFE Women course. We are also supporting the centres and educators to host financial wellness seminars for women, to help women improve their financial literacy knowledge, skills and confidence—all of which leads to achieving financial wellbeing.
If you’d like more information on any of our projects, please contact us at info@familiescanada.ca.