Connections Early Years Family Centre

Connections Early Years Family Centre

Connections Early Years Family Centre is in Windsor-Essex County, and this year is celebrating 50 years of service. Connections has grown over the last half century from a small community program to a multi-service Early Years Family Centre that offers diverse programming and is widely recognized for the important role it plays in supporting families with young children ages 0-6 within Windsor-Essex.

Connections believes that supporting families builds a stronger, more connected community, which is why all of its programs and services are focused on not only young children but the entire family – helping them to play, grow, and discover together.

Connections services include an EarlyON Centre as well as early intervention services in speech and language, infant hearing, blind-low vision and autism services. These intervention services see over 6,500 families a year, providing strategies for parents to support their child’s development and helping them to navigate the financial and emotional implications of any diagnosis and access any other support they may need.

Connections prides itself on offering innovative and responsive programming for families with children ages 0-6 within its EarlyON Centre. It offers not only a play space with areas for creative materials, STEM activities, and sensory play, but an outdoor learning space, parenting information groups, a dad’s volunteer committee, and dedicated programming for parents of infants 0-18 months.

Connections also offers a Be Back Soon program, which removes barriers for parents and caregivers to support them as they build strong and stable family environments. It offers flexible, short-term unlicensed childcare for young children at no cost, providing qualifying parents or caregivers care for their children for short periods of time so they can attend appointments and access other services. Offering Be Back Soon is a point of pride at Connections, as in 2024 their Board committed to continue the service without dedicated, ongoing funding as they see every day the difference the service makes for the families who use it.

Barb Brown, its Executive Director, expects every staff member at Connections to be committed to mutual respect and kindness as the foundation of all interactions with families. One thing that is obvious when visiting is that every staff member is dedicated to supporting families with whatever they need in the moment.

Connections is based within a historical building, which comes with costly infrastructure issues. The last several years all of Connections fundraising efforts have been focused on maintaining the building and converting its spaces for better use for families and the staff. This year, Connections finished a major fundraising campaign to build a new accessible entryway that allows families to easily get in and out of the building without needing to use stairs. With the completion of this massive project, Connections is focusing its strategy for 2024-2028 inward, looking at building up its governance and operating policies and procedures, creating a sustainable fundraising infrastructure, and responding to the growing question of how technology is impacting service delivery and families.

Connections is deeply ingrained in the local community, providing many opportunities for parents who live within walking distance to visit the Centre, as well as welcoming parents from across the county as they access its services. Windsor-Essex has welcomed a large number of newcomer families in the last few years, and the local area where Connections is based has many economically vulnerable and disadvantaged families. Connections addresses these challenges through its programming and its partnerships. It regularly hosts different speakers at its drop-in play sessions in the EarlyON, and provides spaces for other agencies like the local Multicultural Council to use. It also provides information and warm hand-offs to other agencies across the county for everything from family services to ESL or job training.

 “Windsor has greatly benefitted from [Connections Early Years Family Centre’s] unwavering commitment to promoting the healthy development of families and their young children… the impact [Connections’] has made in nurturing children and helping them reach their full potential is invaluable…” 

– Brian Masse, Member of Parliament Windsor West

In the last 50 years, Connections has built itself into a resilient and respected Centre that supports families in Windsor-Essex with a wide breadth of services and programming. In the next 50 years, it looks forward to addressing new challenges and supporting the healthy development of families as they play, grow, and discover.