Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our belief in the critical need for action on early childhood development has become well known to this Assembly. It is good to see things getting underway, but we need to start off right.
The basis of ECD is brain and body development which begins before birth and is most critical through to the age of about six to eight. There are two stages. From prenatal to age three, the focus needs to be on establishment of physical and mental health and resilience through development of secure and consistent relationships with caring adults. Programs to support that development such as nutrition, healthy baby and family, recreation and play, parenting skills and parental understanding of the importance of ECD are shown to produce the greatest positive results. Once a solid foundation is laid in the early years, transition to an educational focus begins, again accompanied by continuing family and community support for the physical and mental health of the child.
Healthy development in the early years, especially birth to age three, depends on healthy relationships. All children from birth need at least one continuous caring relationship with an adult who will respond when the child is distressed and provide the security a child needs to explore her environment. It is critical to understand this connection between healthy relationships and healthy development, and to make sure policies and programs give families the support they need to provide children with stable, nurturing relationships in the first years of life.
In order to raise healthy children, we must help parents and caregivers to be healthy and free from undue stress. These need to fall within the services of our Health and Social Services department and with the family support side of ECE. From the very beginning of this work, we need to ensure a shared and cooperative approach across our Education and Health departments, with the leads at different stages clearly identified. We can’t disconnect the zero to three years programming from the efforts starting at age four or leave school staff designing programs for the early years of childhood development.
We are blessed with the wealth of public expertise and the NGO sector with such experts as the NWT Literacy Council and at the community level where family support centres such as in Hay River, Tulita and Yellowknife and child centres such as in Tulita are already delivering an array of early years ECD services. Based on the experience of now so many other jurisdictions, opportunities are huge and exciting. Let’s get all our best minds, government and public, to the table and begin cooperative work. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
