Engagement and Partnerships

We all have a role to play in creating supportive environments for families and young children enroled in our province’s early learning and child care spaces. To facilitate and action the key strategic initiatives, New Brunswick will engage its partners in critical dialogue to strengthen collective actions towards this common goal.

The results of the ongoing engagement will provide guidance on the transformation of the early learning and child care sector in New Brunswick to better meet the needs of children and their families.

EECD will be engaging with parents, employers, the early learning and childcare sector, partners, key stakeholders, and Indigenous government and communities until Fall 2022. The engagement strategy aims to identify innovative ideas, better understand the needs of New Brunswick families, and guide the transformation of the early learning and child care system to be responsive to these needs.

Through a three-tiered approach, EECD will begin with a general engagement phase where the public will be invited to actively contribute. Following this phase, the Department will assess key findings to create a framework for more specific themes to be discussed with key stakeholders, partners, impacted groups, and Indigenous government and communities. This second phase will help refine essential elements that need to be included in New Brunswick’s early learning and child care system.

The third phase will focus on developing an innovative response to ensure a high-quality early learning and child care sector that families can rely on and where every child can thrive and reach their full potential.

The implementation of the 2021-2023 Action Plan is already under way and key initiatives are beginning to take shape. EECD is committed to engaging families, operators, educators, partners, key stakeholders, and Indigenous government and communities to help build programs and services to meet the needs of New Brunswick families.

The engagement activities for this objective will be aimed at collaborating, validating, consulting, and contributing to specific initiatives and projects. 

We invite you to read the 2021-2023 Canada-New Brunswick Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Action Plan (PDF) and to submit a formal written presentation of your ideas and suggestions with supporting evidence, no longer than 10 pages on the following:

What is New Brunswick’s path forward to:

1. Create affordable, inclusive, high-quality early learning and child care spaces throughout the province?
2. Ensure families have easy access to excellent early learning and child care services they can rely on?
3. Ensure children receive high quality early childhood education to enable them to reach their fullest potential?

Please submit your written presentation to
[email protected] 
by June 30, 2022

The Department wishes to create a Table of Operators as an ongoing forum to ensure the engagement of Operators in critical dialogue necessary for the transformation of the early learning and childcare system in New Brunswick. 

The intent is to ensure a representation of all types of facilities in the province such as: designated preschool; designated preschool with school age program; after-school only; designated home and non-designated home. Further to this, we want to ensure that we have representation from urban and rural areas, commercial and not for profit facilities.

To know more about the terms of Reference of the Operator Engagement Table, please click on Terms of Reference.

The application period has ended on Monday June 13^th 2022. EECD is presently assessing applications and will provide results over the next week. Everyone who has applied will receive that results of their application.