Further exploring research that has shown that children born to adolescent mothers generally perform more poorly on school readiness assessments than their peers born to adult mothers, a broad-based study published in February of this year explores links between lower school readiness for the children and grandchildren of women who gave birth in their teens, demonstrating multi-generational effects.
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Healing Families, Helping Systems is a trauma-informed practice guide for working with children, youth and families, produced by the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development (2016). The guide, designed for use by system planners, leaders and practitioners in the field of children, youth, and families, aims to identify trauma-informed approaches, raise awareness of evidence-informed approaches to trauma-informed service delivery, and to increase capacity amongst service providers.
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The Public Health Agency of Canada has recently released a new chapter of the Family-Centred Maternity and Newborn Care: National Guidelines. Chapter 6: “Breastfeeding”
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Zero to Three have produced an online resource A Year of Play to encourage parents to browse and find fun seasonal activities that promote child development through interactive play.
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Kelty Mental Health have issued their second edition of the Healthy Living…It’s in Everyone toolkit. Available in seven languages, it is designed to provide a guide to healthy living for families who have a child or youth living with mental health challenges, and provides ideas for Healthy Eating, Being Active Together, Managing Stress, and Developing Healthy Sleep Habits.
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Designed to support the work you are already doing in your programs, the Resilience Guide offers supports for understanding the impacts and developmental effects of trauma and resettlement, along with strategies and tips to help strengthen families’ capacity for resilience.
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A BC Council for Families blog, by April Martin-Ko looks at the benefits of self-directed, self-chosen, imaginative play for children and outlines its impacts on child development.
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A new UBC study on Parental Awareness of Screen Time Recommendations for Children Less Than Two Years of Age looks at parents’ awareness of the Canadian Paediatric Society’s recommendations issued last year and real-life screen time usage by infants and toddlers.
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Lynn Lyons, in her blog on how to deal with anxiety as a family and managing anxiety in children, explains how parents can model the behaviours they would like to help their children develop and, in the doing so, teach process skills that will build children’s problem-solving capacity.
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Tanya Lieberman, host of the Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog, recently interviewed Penny Simkin about breastfeeding issues for mothers who are survivors of sexual abuse. In the interview, Penny talked about breastfeeding for survivors of early sexual abuse, including common feelings of survivors about breastfeeding and ways that breastfeeding support people can support survivors.
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Heart Mind Online have produced a three-minute emotional literacy video featuring an early childhood educator using books that express an emotional arc in order to help pre-school children learn to identify their feelings and relate to feelings in others.
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Understanding mothers experiencing homelessness: A gendered approach to finding solutions for family homelessness, a report produced for the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness Press, looks at the experiences of mothers and children in dealing with homelessness and makes recommendations for interventions based on trauma-informed care.
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The Public Health Agency of Canada and the BC Council for Families presented a webinar on March 23, 2017 to present an overview of the Growing Together: Supporting the mental health and wellness of young children, mothers, and their families Toolkit, designed to support service providers working with mothers with mental health, substance use, and other challenges, and their families.
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In this factsheet, “8 Things to Remember About Child Development”, featured in the From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts report, the Center on the Developing Child sets out a group of key issues around early child development.
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Alberta Family Wellness Initiative has released a working paper on the effects of stress on child and how negative experiences in childhood can impose large costs on brain health and development later in life development, as part of the their Brain Story project on brain development.
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