Child Help and Support Room (Proposed)

 Parents, especially newcomers, mostly face trouble with their kids when they need to go out to any office or work. They don't have anyone to keep their children, and they don't know how to access the childcare facilities. So, they had to take their children with them to the organization. Children usually don't like seeing their parents engaging with officer workers, so they start panicking. The whole office faces trouble handling the children. I have planned a child help and support room to solve this problem. It's unlike Childcare, where parents had to book the room first. It's for walk-in children to take care of, give support to, and educate the parents about childcare.

The project:

There will be a room in the organization or children's help and support. This room will keep children when their parents are busy with a counsellor or language test. Every month, the space will arrange a workshop on Canadian childcare information.

 

Clients:

Clients who have brought their children with them can keep them (The children) in the Child Help and Support Room while attending a counsellor or taking any test. The visitor could be any client. Mostly, the newcomers don't know how to keep their children in Childcare.

 

Agency Partner:

Non-profit organizations that work with newcomers.

 

Details about the Project:

In the Immigration Service Department, there are opportunities to give language tests, people can join language learning programs, get help from counsellors, etc. People need 2 to 3 hours to take the test and hours with the counsellors to discuss their problems and support. The children who come with them sometimes become bored, and they cry, scream, or try to run to grab their parent's attention. The parent faces trouble keeping the children calm, working with counsellors, or giving language tests.

 

Sometimes, counsellors inform the management how they face trouble with the children and parents.

 

The counsellors and other staff in the organization felt trouble handling these situations. Sometimes, the counsellors had to keep the baby so the parent could do their tests.

 

In the Child Help and Support Room, a parent can bring their children with their counsellors or receptionist. After their work, test, or counselling, they will come with the counsellor and pick up their child. They will learn about monthly workshops on Canadian Childcare and Community help from the room.

 

Each month, the Child Help and Support Room will arrange a workshop on the Canadian Childcare system, how they can keep their children in Childcare, get government support, seek help from the community to take care of their child, etc.

 

This workshop will be in person, via Zoom (participants can join and interact) and stream on YouTube directly. Some people may not be good at Zoom; they can watch from YouTube.

 

Agency Description:

 

The Child Help and Support Room project will benefit the newcomers and the Organization,  The Immigration Service department will benefit primarily. Then, parents from their department can quickly attend the test and counselling without any interference from their children. The children won't go through any tough times. They will enjoy their time in the Child Help and Support Room with toys or other activities. The newcomers will benefit from getting their support quickly and will get information about the Childcare System and Community help. In the future, when they need to work or join in any activities, they can keep their child in the daycare and get help from the community.

 

Project Description:

 

The clients who visit the organization can keep their children in a separate safe space and get information and support about Childcare in Toronto. And they can attend any test, class or counsellor without any interference from their children.

 

The project will be to help walk-in clients, and there won't be any booking system. The organization will appoint a professional childcare person with two job placement students to work in the room. Each month, they will arrange a workshop to give information about Toronto ChildCare facilities, how parents could keep their child in Childcare, how to get government subsidies, etc.

 

The organization will use one of their available room, and the new cost will be once to set up the room, like carpet/foam, cushions, toys, and some accessories and to appoint a Child Care facilitator and pay their wages. But it will benefit all: the clients, organization workers and placement students. All will be able to work in peace of mind. Moreover, the clients and students will be able to learn about the Childcare system in Ontario.

 

Setup may take one week, and we will continue the project on trial for one year. If we find the task helpful, we can extend it for more years. To understand the project's success, we will take the clients' verbal opinions about the service each time they took it and the organization staff monthly. Then, we will check the success rate. We will continue extending the project life if it is more than 80%.

 

FINAL Needs Assessment:

 

When a client comes to the organization with their children, there is no extra space where the children can stay busy. Naturally, the children won't like to sit in a chair with their parents. They run inside the office, try to touch everything and play with it, and sometimes scream to get the parent's attention. To improve this situation, we need this "Child Help and Support Room."

 

Community-Based Assets & Community Partners:

 

-          Ministry of Education and Child Care: We will contact them for funds.

-          The city of Toronto: for funding

-          Value Village: We will ask to donate toys, dresses, and other necessary items for the room. We may buy some from them if needed.

-          Dollarama: We may need to buy toys and other necessary items.

-          Walmart: To buy cheap furniture, diapers, and all other necessary items.

-          Manager of the YMCA Greater Toronto (Milner, Scarborough): Needs his permission and help in funding.

-          Security Company of the Building: Contact them and make a policy if any child goes missing.

 

 

Conclusion & Outcomes:

 

This " Child Help and Support Room" project will help run all programs smoothly for the parents with the children in the organization. And parents will be able to learn and get support in the Child Care System. In the long run, parents will prefer to take support from this organization because they can bring their children without worrying about them during their work.

Pitch about a “Children’s Room”

 Hello. I am Shahana Shafiuddin, a student in the Community Worker Program at George Brown College. I propose a plan to reduce organizational issues when a parent brings children to the office.

When parents, especially newcomers, come to Non-profit organizations and look for services or help, they sometimes must bring their children because they don’t know any other place to keep them. While the parent is filling out a form, taking counselling services, giving a test, or waiting for their appointment, it can be difficult for a child to sit quietly without making sounds or running in the open space, which can be annoying for other clients, office staff, or their parents.

I plan to create a children’s room where parents can leave their children for a couple of hours while working in the organization. They can also learn about the childcare system in Canada.

This will help parents, other clients, and office employees to work without any stress about the children. So, everyone will be happy to work better, and clients will be pleased to come to the organization to get help and suggest it to others. These steps may encourage other organizations to provide better services to parents.

The court should ensure that children get proper mental health support.

 I met a boy named Skylar when he was 6 years old. I found a very happy, smart, overweight, fun-loving boy who always smiles and plays with his friends. Most of the time, I have seen him come to school and any program with his grandfather (maternal).

One day, I joined his birthday party and met with his mother. Now I know from where he got all these good qualities. I and her mother had a very good time. We jumped on trampling (she paid for everything), joined the party and grand pa dropped us at home. I heard that Skylar's parents got divorced. In his birthday party, his mom was saying we have to save some cake for his father. I assumed they had a good, friendly relationship. Which is very necessary for every kid.

I saw his father come with his new girlfriend to a school program. I understand that divorce was a must. He was so obsessed with his girlfriend that most of the time, they were having personal intimacy time while the boy was playing with other kids.

Then Covid-19 time came. All classes moved to online. I found Skylar became silent in the class, and slowly, he was getting away from everyone. I asked his friend what happened. They told me his mother got married. No, he is living with his grandfather. He started saying he had no one in his life. No father and no mother!

I tried to make his friends talk with him and make him socialize. But failed. Then he disappears totally.

I think, when a court declares any divorce, they must ensure the kids get proper mental health support. Every year, they should be checked by professionals to ensure that they are OK.

Biography 188: to avoid ghosts

I used to read books (Non-academic) from very childhood. In those days, I read some old traditional fiction books, like "Thakurmar's Jhuli," "And Thakur Dadar Jhuli." Most of those stories are about Kings or princesses. There are some ghost stories too.

In one story, it said, there were ghosts everywhere in the village. One person gets out from there somehow by saying this:

 "ভুত আমার পুত/ bhut amar put , 

শাকচুন্নি ঝি/ Shakchunni jhee, 

বুকে আছে রাম লক্ষন/ Buke achhe ram lokkhon,

করবি আমার কি./ Korbi amar ki"

In Bangla, it is called, "Mantra" to avoid ghosts. I was in grade 2. I believed it. I memorized it as a solution to get rid of ghosts. Never used it. Among many, this was a misbelieve from my childhood.

Biography 63: An airplane

Shafeen has made this toy

 In Saudi Arabia, mostly I did is babysitting my youngest sister. I like kids. I always enjoy time with them. So, I enjoyed my time with my baby sister. She was with me like this for more than one year. Other than babysitting I also helped mom in swiping rooms, cleaning rice and lentils (Daal). On those days, we had to clean them before cooking. 

My parents didn't buy me any toys. They did buy toys but didn't open the packet, they wanted to bring everything in Bangladesh intact. So, I took mom's empty perfume bottles, empty beautiful boxes or packets and turned them into toys. I had a small mirror too. But I didn't look at it much, as I was never a  conscious girl about beautification.

Before we finally returned to Bangladesh, one day my parents took me to a toy store and asked me to pick any toy. They told me that they wanted to give me a gift as I did a good job of babysitting. I wasn't ready. But an airplane gets my attention. I picked an airplane. It runs with batteries. Then it stopped and the glass of the plane opened to get down a fighter. It was a fighter plane. It made a noise like a fighter plane too. it was about one foot or more than one foot long. On those days it was an expensive one and my parents bought me that happily.

We brought that plane to Bangladesh. It was with me for a long time. Everybody played with it. My sister's son Tamim played with it too. But then I don't know why he broke it into pieces. Everybody laughed, he was just a kid. But actually, he broke my heart into pieces. What can I say to a kid. Later I throw it out.

Child death in the Indian sub-continent

In the Indian subcontinent, early child death was very high. We have heard our grandmothers use to give birth 11 to 13 (sometimes 18) kids in their life. Now we may get shaken, but this was very natural scenario of this continent. Because they get married in early age (mostly in childhood) and then started giving birth of kids. But finally they had 4 to 5 (sometimes 8) kids alive. Rest of them became dead in their childhood. There are many reasons behind it. First, mom didn't have time and energy to take care of the kid, lack of nutrition, lack of knowledge (how to raise them properly), no health care etc.

Then our mom’s generation came. In this generation we see, moms use to take 4/5 kids in their life. Reason was, they got married after 18, they are educated enough to raise their kid. Though, they also faced problem to raise kids because of time and energy. Some of them were also working woman. And if we ask them we will see they also had lost 1 or 2 kids. Main reason they faced, is less availability of vaccines and work pressure.

Now if we see our generation, many moms from towns take only 1 or 2 baby. Because moms now work outside, the living cost is very high to raise more kids and moms want to take care of the baby most, so they don’t want to take more kids that she might not be able to give more attention to them. The child death rate is very low in towns. Because mostly the awareness in the moms. They are now literate, so they know when she had to take her kid for vaccine, can give proper food for nutrition, she give most attention to her kid than any other work.

In rural area still child death rate is still high. The main reasons are illiteracy of moms (so she don’t or couldn't take the right decision for her and kids, like proper food, vaccines etc), vaccines not available in nearby place (in some area), moms don’t take her kid to the doctor in right time (reasons: lack of knowledge, doctors not available in nearby place, family don’t support her etc), mom don’t have time (she is busy to take care of her  in laws first) take proper care etc, don’t have facility to give proper delivery of the child.

To solve this problem, we need to aware all. Like the husbands, moms, elders etc. That they should take good care of mom and the child, they have to take them to the doctor in proper time. They have to give vaccine; they have to provide good and proper food for mom and kid etc. We have to start taking care of a child before it gets birth.

Fence for child

A mom who needs to work alone, sometimes fall in very difficult to keep an eye on the child and do other works. I think in that case they can use this (shown in the picture) kind of fence for child. Your child can play inside the barrier nicely and you don’t have to worry that your child might have gone anywhere and doing something which can be harmful for them.

Here Shafeen was 1 year and 4 months old. He was playing in “Salt Grill” a food court in Bashundhara city complex. Now a day they changed a lot in decoration. I didn’t visit for a long time. We liked “Capricorn” more now.