A Symposium celebrating Child Care Month for early childhood educators, child care providers and parents. Featuring three presentations including: The Current State of Richmond’s Children; Increasing Resilience for Child Care Providers; and Nurturing and Responsive Relationships. Professional development certificates will be issued on completion.

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The Current State of Richmond’s Children:
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have wide-reaching impacts on the world and the impacts on children and families continue to evolve. The Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (CHEQ) administered by the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP), collected information on the impacts of COVID-19 on families in BC in 2021. This data, combined with data from the Early Development Instrument (EDI), provides insight into how the social, emotional, physical health and well-being, communication, language and cognitive development of children in BC is changing over time. These insights enable evidence-based decision making improve early child development outcomes.

Chris Duggan, Program Manager, Child Care and Youth for the City of Richmond will present information provided by The Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP). HELP is a collaborative, interdisciplinary research network, based at the University of British Columbia.

Increasing Resilience for Child Care Providers:
Between a global pandemic and worsening affects of the climate crisis, the last couple of years has seen some of the deadliest, costliest, and most complex emergencies in BC history. In this dynamic workshop tailored for child care providers, learn about current trends in emergencies, steps to preparedness, and critical thinking skills that will be valuable in any emergency. Feel confident in you’re ability to keep yourself, and those in your care, safe while you respond to any number of hazards.

Sarah Hunn is the Coordinator, ESS and Public Education with Richmond Fire-Rescue Emergency Programs where she is responsible for public outreach around emergency preparedness with a focus on everyday readiness to create disaster-resilient communities. Sarah has facilitated hundreds of preparedness workshops, trained staff and volunteers, and has responded to numerous events including wind storm, flooding, apartment fire, pandemic, and heat wave.

Nurturing & Responsive Relationships:
Social emotional health is enhanced when learning occurs in the context of responsive, reciprocal relationships. Children need stimulating relationships with their parents as well as positive, meaningful relationships with peers and adults who feel that they matter. These relationships establish the connections necessary for social emotional development and social emotional learning to occur. This workshop will help participants learn about the importance of relationships as well as provide strategies to build those relationships with the children they care for.

Virginia Chiu and Nancy Frappier are consultants with Richmond Supported Child Development.
Virginia has over 20 years of experience working with children in child care centres, elementary, secondary, and clinical settings in the Lower Mainland. Virginia has been an Assistant Behaviour Analyst for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and supports children of varying needs in inclusive childcare environments. Nancy has over 10 years of experience working with children and her passion has always and this has been her focus for the past 4 years. She has completed the Disability and Applied Behavior Analysis certificate and the Infant Development & Supported Child Development Diploma and is now working on her ECE certificate at UBC.