Northumberland County Early Years Employment Initiative

By: Northumberland County

March 2025

OMSSA is featuring several 2024 Local Municipal Champion award recipients and their work in the Knowledge Exchange Blog. Please read this entry from Northumberland County below. 

The Early Years Employment Initiative (EYEI) is six-week course designed to introduce Ontario Works (OW) clients and students (grades 11 and 12) to the workforce skills relevant for starting/re-starting careers in the Early Years sector.

The program fosters a collaboration between the Early Years (EY) and OW Divisions at Northumberland County by encouraging workforce participation in an Early Years sector that is searching for ambitious ways to promote a thriving workforce and support increasing child care demands in Northumberland.

The goal is for participants to exit the six-week program toward:

• Jobs at child care centres or in the Early Years sector
• Further pursuits of education or other workforce opportunities
• Confidence and/or aspirations to achieve future workforce goals   

The EYEI program was piloted in 2022 and has since offered increased enrollments in 2023 and 2024. The critical components of the program are:

• Education
• Experience
• Opportunity
• Partnership
• Personal Successes

Where appropriate, details of these components are supplemented below by participant testimonials.

Education

The EYEI program is a six-week course that is divided into two weeks of in-class learning followed by four weeks of field experience.

The in-class sessions provide participants with opportunities to acquire certificates relevant to employment both within and outside of the Early Years sector. These include:

• WHIMIS
• Safe Food Handlers
• First-Aid/CPR
• Resume writing skills
• Occupational Health and Safety training
• Foundations to Play (How Does Learning Happen)
• Self-Regulation training (Merhit Centre)
• Duty to report and code of ethics
• Interview skills training

Experience

The four weeks of field experience are offered in local child care centres where participants offer support roles for child care staff.

These placement opportunities allow participants to observe different employment pathways in the child care sector, such as Dietary Staff, Early Childhood Assistants, and Early Childhood Educators.

The education and experience components of the EYEI program provided integral life skills for participants that helped them:

• Prepare for the Early Years workforce
• Realize a meaningful outlet for their personal skills in educating children
• Develop life stabilization

“We had to live with my grandparents for the past four years, Covid hit hard, and I didn’t know what to do. Now I am able to move out and live with my daughter on our own and support us – completely changed my life and I can’t picture myself doing anything else anymore” – 2023 participant who started working in a licensed child care setting after completing the EYEI program

Opportunity

The EYEI program fosters participation by offering above minimum wage pay across all six weeks and provides child care opportunities for participants with school-aged children. Offering the EYEI program in the summer months allows this flexibility for child care arrangements.

Several of the participants joined the EYEI program after many years of being at home with their own children. The program offered confidence in (re)entering the workforce by providing opportunities to:

• Gain workforce training and learn new skills
• Develop meaningful collaborations and social networks with like-minded colleagues
• Experience a sense of community belonging
• An opportunity to participate in higher level educational environments

“The opportunities completely changed my life. A single mom raising multiple children, you can lose yourself sometimes so finding something I actually enjoyed doing was amazing” – 2024 participant who started working in a licensed child care setting after completing the EYEI program

Partnership

The EYEI program received critical partnerships from Fleming College, Watton Employment Services, Northumberland YMCA, and Five Counties Children’s Centre. The program supports Northumberland’s Early Years Workforce Strategy for recruitment and retention.

“A transformative experience for many of our clients. Their dedication to empowering individuals to move forward is truly inspiring. Together, we’ve created a supportive environment that fosters growth and resilience. It has been amazing to see the lifechanging impact this program has had for so many of the participants. We are grateful for the partnership and excited to continue this impactful journey together.” – Beckie Huth on behalf of Watton Employment Services, Cobourg

“I was fortunate to be a part of the EYEI program as a Fleming facilitator. The sessions were designed to give participants tools to begin work in environments with children. We covered topics that offered an understanding of child development and building positive environments. The hope of the program was to allow participants to build skills, along with addressing an educator shortage by possibly increasing interest in the Early Years field. It was my pleasure to participate in such a wholesome project.” – Amanda Fredericks, RECE, Fleming College Facilitator

Personal Successes

A photo of this year's participants.

Over the last three years of running the EYEI Program, 50% of participants have accepted employment opportunities post-placement or chose to move on toward post-secondary College or University education in the Early Years Sector or Child Development.

Many of the participants expressed other personal successes by finding meaning in:

• Joining the workforce
• Socially engaging with children, families, and colleagues
• Building friendships and emerging from social isolation

“I was thinking about how far I’ve come thanks to the people who helped encourage me to try something new” – 2022 participant who afterwards enrolled in an ECE program

“Completely changed the trajectory of my life, dragged me out of a hole that I didn’t know how I was going to get out of” – 2022 participant who afterwards pursued university education in Child Development

About the Author

Located on the traditional territory of the Mississauga, Northumberland County is a thriving community just one hour east of Toronto along Highway 401, with easy access to urban centres to the north, east and west. As the upper tier level of municipal government for the region, Northumberland County’s vision is to bring together people, partnerships and possibilities for a strong and vibrant Northumberland. Our community includes seven distinct yet complementary municipalities, with County Council comprised of the Mayors of each of these member municipalities:

• Township of Alnwick/Haldimand

• Municipality of Brighton

• Town of Cobourg

• Township of Cramahe

• Township of Hamilton

• Municipality of Port Hope

• Municipality of Trent Hills