Early Years & Family Support
Early Years & Family Support
Reimagining How we Support Families with Young Children
The earliest years influence everything that follows. RCY’s data shows a clear pattern: many teens who become known to our Office through crisis experienced family poverty, housing and food insecurity, and/or violence, and they and their families’ needs were consistently unseen and unmet long before school age.
When we talk about “vulnerability,” we mean children starting life at a disadvantage because the conditions around them haven’t supported their families to nurture their development. Too often the early supports that they and their families need are not available.
This includes gaps in housing, income, childcare and early supports. as the absence of supports lead to challenges in early learning and development, communication, emotional regulation, and social connection, which ripples out to behavioural and developmental challenges and difficulties in school.
Families, Indigenous leaders, advocates, and early years champions across BC have been calling for a shift away from a reactive, crisis-driven system toward a true child well-being model that starts early, meets basic needs, and keeps children connected to family, culture, and community.
Every child who experiences life should grow up to know love, and what it means. Every child who experiences life should grow up to know what love means for each of us: security, safety, connection and oneness.
– Chief Robert Joseph, Hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk People
What We're Hearing
RCY continues to learn from families, service providers, advocates, researcher and Indigenous leaders and Matriarchs in the early years area throughout BC.
They are telling us:
- Supports for young children are fragmented, inconsistent, and often culturally unsafe.
- “Prevention” is poorly defined; families and workers don’t know where it happens or who is responsible.
- Basic needs are the most significant barrier. Families cannot stabilize without housing, income, food security, childcare, and transportation.
- Many parents, predominantly Indigenous parents, fear seeking help because supports are tied too closely to child protection.
- Children with disabilities face significant service gaps. Supports are hard to access, highly diagnosis-driven, and rarely matched to real needs.
The message is blunt: British Columbia does not yet have a coherent early years and family support system.
Responding only when young people are already in crisis is too late. Children and families need early, coherent, relational supports that prevent crises before they take hold.
– Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth,
Representative for Children and Youth
What We're Doing
The Don’t Look Away report spoke extensively about shifting mindsets and practices that wait for crisis before responding, to providing families and children with timely early help, especially in the early formative years to prevent crisis in the first place and enhance child well-being in the short and long term. Our focus includes:
Backing up the bus
- Advocating for early, coordinated investment that supports all families and targets inequities where they are greatest.
Clarifying prevention
- Calling for clear roles and definitions so voluntary family supports are truly distinct from child protection.
Promoting needs-based, culturally grounded supports
- Highlighting Indigenous-led programs, wraparound models that meet basic needs, kinship and peer supports, and disability services based on functional need, not just diagnosis.
Centring Indigenous rights and relational practice
- Pushing systems to build belonging, cultural connection, and trust, grounded in Indigenous frameworks and the TRC Calls to Action.
Continuing research and engagement
- Partnering with families, community leaders, and early years organizations to strengthen the early years system.
By the Numbers
in
Children in B.C. are vulnerable by kindergarten, struggling with development, emotional well-being, or school readiness, and the rate is rising. Human Early Learning Partnership at the University of British Columbia.
– Human Early Learning Partnership
to
Two decades ago, 22 neighbourhoods had low vulnerability rates. Today, only two do. Children in almost every community are starting life at a disadvantage.
– First Call Child and Youth Advocacy Society
Up to
children and youth with disabilities in B.C. receive no support services, leaving many without essential therapies, equipment, or inclusive support.
– RCY Report, “Still Left Out”
out of 4
families of children with support needs have little or no confidence their child will receive the help they need in the next one to three years.
– RCY Report, “Too Many Left Behind”
Reports and Resources
Early Years Disrupted: EDI Data Trends Webinar, 2025
Building on 25 years of promoting the importance of early childhood development, HELP is pleased to present this webinar tracking the developmental health of kindergarten children in BC and beyond.
Don't Look Away, 2024
A call to stop patching a broken system and instead make bold, collective changes so children and families are safe, connected and able to thrive.
Child Poverty Report Card, 2024
On the 35th anniversary of the passing of the unanimous all-party federal resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000, it is disappointing to see child poverty in BC and the country rebounding upward again…
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