Funding Agreements for EarlyON Child and Family Centre Providers

The City of Hamilton has funding agreements with local service providers for the delivery of EarlyON Child and Family Centre programs and services to ensure that:

• EarlyON Centre service providers are in compliance with Municipal and Provincial guidelines and legislation. 
• The City has quality early years programs and services for Hamilton families.

Requirements and Expectations

All EarlyON Centre service providers in a funding agreement with the City must meet these requirements and expectations:

• required to provide consistent, high quality early years programs and services at no fee to participants. 
• expected to use How Does Learning Happen? Ontario's Ontario’s Pedagogy for the Early Years and Hamilton’s Parent and Children’s Charters of Rights to guide the development, delivery and evaluation of these programs.
• expected to consider the needs and perspectives of diverse children and families including access barriers they may experience when seeking appropriate and welcoming early years programs and services that reflect their unique needs.
• required to notify the City on any significant program downsizing, site openings/closures, or changes to the hours of operation at each site, and must participate in the annual service contract and budget review.
  • Annual service contract review is used to ensure that operators are meeting their annual contractual obligations with the City of Hamilton.
  • EarlyON Centre service providers are subject to random auditing to ensure compliance.
• expected to participate in the Hamilton Early Years Quality Program that ensures continuous quality assurance for organizations providing early years programs in the city of Hamilton.

New Funding Agreements

For the first 6 months of 2018 there will be no changes to existing programs and services. At this time the City of Hamilton is not entering into new funding agreements.