Toronto First Duty Phase 2, 2006-2008: Final research report

Description:

Toronto First Duty (TFD) began in 2001 as a demonstration project testing an ambitious model of service integration across early childhood programs of child care, kindergarten and family support in school-based hubs. Phase 1 of TFD, with implementation of the model in five community sites, concluded in 2005. Phase 2, covering the period 2006 to 2008, focused on knowledge mobilization, policy change, and further development of the TFD model in one of the original five sites.

The aspirations of the partners who came together to design and implement the TFD model were also transformational in two ways that go beyond many pilot or demonstration projects. The first aspiration was to design the project to lead to system change and improvement, not merely in the participating organizations and at the local Toronto level, but also at other levels, including provincial policy change. The second aspiration was to embed research and evaluation in the project and to mobilize the knowledge in several ways. One way was to feed back findings to the participating organizations and to the project sites to enable reflection and continuous improvement of the implemented program. A second way was to mobilize findings to support practice and policy change beyond the TFD project. This aspiration for knowledge building meant that the partners supported research and evaluation with funding for the university-based TFD research team and that they worked within their own organizations to contribute to and use the information and ideas for improvement- in the early years programs, their management, and their links to other programs. This report describes some of this knowledge building as it was carried out in a "community of practice" at the TFD Bruce Site, in the TFD organizational partners, and in Best Start: Toronto Vision for Children during the period 2006 to 2008.