Accreditation Standards, Criteria, and Indicators for Early Learning and Child Care Centres and Family Child Care Homes, (April, 2007) are available to the child care community as a reference tool to help improve the quality of services they provide, and to help families identify the ingredients of a quality care environment.

The standards can help facilities evaluate strengths, quality enhancement needs, and to develop a quality enhancement plan. 

The accreditation standards were developed in 2007.    Since that time child care  care legislation and safety standards may have changed and the licensee should ensure compliance with current requirements or recommendations.   

The establishment of an accrediting agency for early learning and child care programs in Manitoba, where peer reviewers would conduct a site visit to assess conformity with the standards, and decide to confer or defer accreditation status remains a long term goal.

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Accreditation Standards, Criteria, and Indicators for Early Learning and Child Care Centres

Accreditation Standards, Criteria, and Indicators for Family Child Care Homes

How Can You Use The Accreditation Standards?

Early Learning and Child Care Programs can voluntarily adopt the standards as the benchmark of a high quality early learning and child care service, and use them to evaluate strengths, quality improvement needs, and to develop a quality enhancement plan. The establishment of an accrediting agency for early learning and child care programs in Manitoba , where peer reviewers would conduct a site visit to assess conformity with the standards, and decide to confer or defer accreditation status remains a long term goal.

What is Accreditation?

Accreditation is the process by which a child care centre or family child care home volunteers to demonstrate its high quality of care to an authorized, external agency of professional peers through an assessment of its program of services, personnel, facility, administration, governance, and community relations.  Accreditation standards are based on the most current research in early childhood care and education.  The standards exceed those of the licensing requirements set out by the provincial government, which are generally regarded as the basic minimum. 

My Program is Licensed, Isn't that Good Enough?

Licensed programs meet minimum standards and provide programs that fulfill the basic health, safety, and well being of children.  Accreditation is in addition to licensing, and provides a much higher level of quality assurance by:

• fostering the continuous development and improvement in the quality of services
• providing a system of evaluation in relation to organizational objectives and established service standards
• providing the consumer with an assurance of a high standard of service, beyond the basic minimum licensing requirements 

How Does Accreditation Work?

The child care program that volunteers for accreditation would follow a series of steps:

1. A period of self study and evaluation against established service standards to identify strengths and quality improvement needs.
2. The child care program would prepare and implement a quality enhancement plan for itself.
3. External peers would conduct a site review of the program to assess conformity with standards and progress on the quality enhancement plan.
4. External reviewers would prepare a report on the quality of care and enhancements.
5. The accrediting agency would use the report to make a decision to confer or defer accreditation status.
6. Periodic renewal of accreditation status by the agency, for example every 3-5 years.

History of the Feasibility Study on Voluntary Accreditation Project

The Manitoba Child Care Association and Canadian Child Care Federation partnered on a Feasibility Study on Voluntary Accreditation of Manitoba's Licensed Child Care Facilities in 2005-2006. There was an Advisory Committee to provide and insights to project team members. Representatives included:

Centre based child care            Francophone services

Family child care homes            Aboriginal services

Part time nursery schools         unionized services

Not for profit services               ECE training programs

Privately owned services         Appointee of Healthy Child Manitoba

Urban services                         Appointee of Child Day Care Manitoba

Rural and northern services

The feasibility study project was conducted in 6 parts:

Part 1. Briefing on the Alberta Child Care Accreditation Program. Learn more about the Alberta model at www.child.gov.ab.ca

Part 2. Environmental Scan of the Manitoba Child Care System: to produce a description, and analysis and readiness of the system into which accreditation might be introduced

Part 3. Review of Child Care Service Standards: to produce a set of sample service standards, appropriate to the Manitoba context for review and revision by participants in the consultation phase. For example, the Alberta standards were benchmarked against the CCCF's Partners in Quality series.

Part 4. Review of Accreditation Models: to produce a set of considerations in the design of an accreditation agency, appropriate to the Manitoba context, for review and revision by participants in the consultation phase

Part 5. Consultation on Accreditation with the Manitoba Child Care Community: to inform Manitoba stakeholders about accreditation purposes and processes and obtain opinions on readiness; standards; approaches. Consultations included 11 daylong focus group sessions and six one hour telephone seminars

Part 6. Feasibility Study Report and Recommendations: A summary report of each part was prepared and recommendations made to the Advisory Committee on the processes to develop and implement an accreditation system in Manitoba .

What Were the Findings of the Project?

At the conclusion of the first phase of the Feasibility Study in May, 2006, the Advisory Committee recognized that accreditation of licensed child care facilities in Manitoba is a long term goal and will require many incremental steps along the way. They recommended that the first next step should be to incorporate community feedback into the service standards.

In September 2006, The Manitoba Child Care Association received approval from the Manitoba Child Care Program to revise the standards and criteria to reflect discussion at the consultations, and to compare them to Manitoba Regulations to ensure no overlap exists and they build on licensing requirements.

The second phase of the project gave the child care community the opportunity to provide feedback on the indicators, which were then revised, discussed and approved by the Advisory Committee. The Manitoba Child Care Association will continue to work with our members, partners, and stakeholder groups to build on the outcomes of this project.

Who Worked on the Project?

The Advisory Committees:

Ron Blatz, Discovery Children's Centre, Winnipeg

Elizabeth Feere, Family Child Care Provider, Winnipeg

Maxine Balbon , Family Child Care Provider, Winnipeg

Jo-Anne Gray, Frere Jacques Nursery School , Lorette

Arla Sigfusson, Sigfusson Nursery School Ltd., Winnipeg

Fernanda Hodgson, Day Nursery Centre, Winnipeg

Kathy Menard, Teekinaken Daycare, Thompson

Caryn LaFleche, Les enfants precieux inc., Winnipeg

Brigitte Insull, Seven Oaks Child Day Care Centre, Winnipeg

Karen Ohlson, KIDS Inc., Winnipeg

Karen Yuriy, Peter Pan Day Nursery, Dauphin

Joan Kunderman, Red River College

Lynda Rosenstock , Manitoba Child Care Program

Wendy Church, Healthy Child Manitoba

Pat Wege, Manitoba Child Care Association and Anne Maxwell, Canadian Child Care Federation co-chaired the first phase of the project.

Our Project Consultants:

Sandra Beckman , Alberta Association for the Accreditation of Early Learning and Child Care Services

Lynn Cooper, Winnipeg , Manitoba

Gillian Doherty, Toronto , Ontario

Don Ogston, Ottawa , Ontario

Louise LaFleche

Janine Bertrand

Special recognition and thanks to Elin Ibrahim and Michele Grant for their leadership, professionalism, enthusiasm, organizational and facilitation skills that got the project off the ground, into the air, and produced a very high quality product!

Our appreciation is also extended to the members of Manitoba 's early learning and child care community that participated in focus groups and telephone seminars. Their valuable feedback, wise comments, and ideas that were very useful in producing quality set of accreditation standards we can all be proud of!

Learn more about this innovative project:

Frequently Asked Questions

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