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Past Projects

SpeciaLink works with a number of funders to advance the inclusion of children with special support needs in Canadian early learning programs. We thank these funders for sharing our vision for of an inclusive Canada that begins in the early years.

Projects:


Measuring Inclusion Quality

Our Measuring Inclusion Progress project, funded by Social Development Canada, has 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 helps child care centres to include children with special needs, builds pan-Canadian networks and alliances within the ECLC sector, and provides useful information to researchers, trainers, disability advocates, students, support agencies, and all levels of governments. 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 have completed The SpeciaLink Child Care Inclusion Practices Profile and the SpeciaLink Child Care Inclusion Principles Scale. These tools are uniquely positioned for use in monitoring child care inclusion. We have reshaped them into ECERS-R-like formats, adding a total of 247 indicators. Beta versions of the Principles and Practices are both now available on line. Response from governments, universities, colleges, support agencies, centres and related occupations has been more than encouraging. Clearly, our colleagues recognize a wide range of needs for tools to measure inclusion quality in child care.

SpeciaLink is pleased to provide 3-hour workshops on the Practices and Principles at a number of national, provincial and regional conferences. We encourage 2-day training sessions — with actual real-site observations — which we believe to be critical if high inter-rater reliability is to be established. Participants in our training are able to participate in our interactive chat room where reflections can be posted, questions answered, and peer-to-peer support offered. Please contact us for more information.

SpeciaLink Child Care Inclusion Practices Profile and Principles Scale
The SpeciaLink Inclusion Child Care Practices Profile and the SpeciaLink Child Care Inclusion Principles Scale are tools for assessing inclusion quality in child care centres. Used together, they provide a picture of sustainable and evolving inclusion quality — an emerging issue as more children with special needs attend community-based centres and as inclusion pioneers leave their centres and a new generation of directors and early childhood educators take on the challenge. These documents are available by request.

If you have not yet taken part in our inclusion training, please visit SpeciaLink on the Road, to find out where we are offering training next.


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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