Multiple Challenge Index/The EDI in Ottawa/Socio-demographic Data

History

In 1999, the Government of Ontario initiated the Ontario Early Years
Demonstration Projects in five (5) communities across the province, namely:
York Region, Bruce/Grey Counties, London, Nipissing/Parry Sound and Ottawa.
The Demonstration Projects were designed as community development
initiatives to test and evaluate approaches to supporting early child development
and parenting as outlined in the Early Years Study9. All five (5) projects were
required to complete a number of specific tasks that would:

• establish unique leadership models that represented all sectors of the community;
• increase community awareness around the importance of early child development and parenting;
• assess how well children were doing as they entered the school system;
• secure commitments from local businesses, service clubs and voluntary sectors and;
• develop inventories and maps of existing early child development and parenting programs within the community.

In order to assess how well children were doing as they entered the school
system, all Demonstration Projects implemented the EDI with senior
kindergarten students.

In the 1999-2000 school year the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB)
was the first board in Ottawa to implement the EDI across all of its schools. It
continued to implement the EDI every school year and in 2002-2003 the Ottawa-
Carleton Catholic School Board (OCCSB) also completed the EDI across all of its
schools.

In 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 the EDI was not completed by any school board in
Ottawa. In 2005-2006 all four Ottawa school boards (Conseil des écoles
catholiques de langue française du Centre-Est, Conseil des écoles publiques de
l'Est de l'Ontario, Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board, Ottawa-Carleton
District School Board) completed the EDI across all of their schools.

2005-2006

The EDI was completed during the period of mid-February 2006 to mid-April
2006 for all senior kindergarten students attending one of the four Ottawa school
boards. Approximately two weeks prior to implementation, senior kindergarten
teachers attended a training session on the EDI offered by the Ottawa Data
Analysis Coordinators. The training session included information on the history
of the EDI, details on how to interpret and complete the EDI questionnaire, and a
special information session on the Ontario Early Years Initiative.

In Ottawa, a total of 8182 EDI surveys were completed and sent to the Offord
Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University for data entry and analysis. Of
the 8182 EDI surveys submitted for analysis, 7578 questionnaires were valid and
thus included in the analysis for children without special needs and 285 were
valid and analyzed for children with special needs.

The following report includes the results of the analyses performed by the Offord
Centre. All of the EDI data presented in the following report were taken directly
from EDI reports provided by the Offord Centre and no additional analysis or
interpretation has been performed by the authors.

The Offord Centre analysis was completed both city-wide and by individual
neighbourhood. The neighbourhoods used were the 50 planning
neighbourhoods identified by the City of Ottawa. The 50 neighbourhoods are:

-Alta Vista
-Barrhaven/Longfields
-Beaconhill
-Beaverbrook/Marchwood
-Bells Corners
-Blackburn Hamlet
-Blossom Park/Windsor Park
-Bridlewood
-Carleton Heights
-Carlington
-Centre Town
-Clementine
-Convent Glen
-Copeland
-Cumberland
-Cyrville
-Dalhousie
-Glebe
-Glen Cairn
-Goulbourn
-Hawthorne
-Hunt Club East
-Hunt Club West
-Katimavik/Hazeldean
-Lower Town
-Mer Bleue
-Nepean Central
-Nepean East
-Nepean North
-Nepean West
-New Edinburgh
-Orleans East
-Orleans South
-Osgoode
-Ottawa East
-Ottawa North East
-Ottawa South
-Ottawa South East
-Ottawa West
-Overbrook
-Pinecrest/Queensway
-Rideau
-Riverside Park
-Riverview/Hawthorne
-Rockcliffe Park
-Sandy Hill
-South March
-Vanier
-West Carleton
-Westboro

A map of each neighbourhood can be found at:

http://ottawa.ca/city_services/statistics/census/index_en.shtml

Multiple Challenge Index/The EDI in Ottawa/Socio-demographic Data