Programs & Services > Growing Up Healthy Downtown > Ready for School Connects
Ready for School Connects
Children and instructors creating the "Ready for School Connects" banner
Project Description:
Ready for School Connects (RfSC) is a Growing Up Healthy Downtown (GUHD) initiative that has been delivering programs for newcomers since 2002. RfSC is funded by the United Way of Greater Toronto's "Success by Six" funding stream.
What we do:
RfSC is a school readiness project for newcomer families in downtown Toronto. The project supports children and parents to build skills that ease the transition to school in Canada.
Through partnerships with community organizations, the project recognizes immediate settlement issues that affect participants, such as acculturation, language, employment, housing, isolation, lack of knowledge of and access to resources.
RfSC recognizes and responds to the unique challenges that newcomer children and families face with regard to school participation. We believe that newcomer children deserve equal opportunities to achieve their full potential and increase their chances of success in school. We strive to connect families to the broader communities in which they live.
There are two main activity components to the RfSC project for newcomer families: the summer program and follow up.
The summer program is an intensive two week program offering school readiness activities for children focussed on building independence, communication and social skills. The summer program also offers a series of workshops for newcomer parents focussing on the education system in Canada, parenting, community resources and settlement services.
The follow up component provides support for families once they have started school and consists of phone check ins, workshops, information sharing, referrals and school visits.
RfSC is committed to sharing the learnings of our work and has created a toolkit for service providers to assist in enhancing, creating or expanding school readiness programs in other communities. The toolkit can be downloaded from www.rfsc.ca/toolkit.html
Summer Program Registration:
RfSC offers four summer sessions in different communities.
If you are interested in attending the program, would like to refer a family
or would like more information, please contact Rachel
McGarry, the Program
Manager at r.mcgarry@dpnc.ca
For more information about Ready for School Connect visit the website: www.rfsc.ca
