Understanding the Early Years in Saskatoon

The Understanding the Early Years Study examines the role of families and communities in the lives of Saskatoon children by measuring kindergarten children's "readiness to learn." The study then compares children's outcomes to the resources accessible in their communities and to their neighbourhoods' characteristics.

Saskatoon is one of 12 Canadian communities funded by Social Development Canada to carry out this study, with new projects starting in 21 more communities. The study tries to answer two central questions.

• Are our children doing better now than they were in 2001?
• Are we still changing as a community, so that children achieve better outcomes?

Information from this study will help communities and governments develop policies, programs, and services to best support children and families.

The Saskatoon study is a community-university partnership, led by Communities for Children, Saskatoon's Planning Council for a Child and Youth Friendly Community, and the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU) at the University of Saskatchewan (in association with Saskatoon Public Schools and Saskatoon Catholic Schools).

How this Research Is Making a Difference for Children
As part of this study, we have a strong knowledge mobilization program, fuelled by a wealth of data, a good community-university partnership, effective decision-making structures, and community interest.

We have already had some success in our quest to bring our research into identifiable policy. Both the Saskatoon public and separate school boards have based major initiatives (such as literacy programs and full-day, daily kindergarten pilot programs) on the study's research in the past two years. The study team is also advising the public board as they change one of their elementary schools into an integrated learning, care, and community centre.

The provincial government has funded additional speech and language pathologists to work with children, in part based on our findings. Saskatoon Public Library has put more book trailers into neighbourhoods where the study showed that people did not have easy access to libraries. They have also announced plans to build an inner-city branch to serve these neighbourhoods better.