Looking through the lens: a photovoice study examining access to services for newcomer children.

PURPOSE: Canadian new immigrant families (also known as newcomers) encounter challenges navigating systems when trying to access programmes critical for their children's healthy development. The purpose of this study is to understand how newcomer families find and use early childhood programmes and services from the perspective of families and early childhood educators (ECEs) working within a settlement organization. METHODS: Using photovoice methodology, newcomer family members (n = 8) with young children and ECEs (n = 6) participated in a series of virtual workshops to share photos and reflect on their experiences. RESULTS: Participants discussed the systemic barriers that obstructed newcomer families' access to services for young newcomer children. Financial challenges due to unemployment/underemployment, language and cultural differences were emphasized. Despite these barriers and challenges, participants shared how culturally responsive programmes enhanced their connections to programmes and services. Both groups of participants discussed the critical role of social networks in supporting newcomers to use programmes by helping families become aware of available services and assistance with various processes such as registration. CONCLUSIONS: This research illustrates the lived experiences of newcomer families and identifies opportunities to address inequities, improve early childhood programmes, and enhance families' access to programmes and services.

Community Engagement in a Time of Confinement.

This article examines the significant constraints on, the necessity for, and the opportunities around community engagement in a time of confinement. We consider the compounded challenges faced by marginalized communities in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, and we follow this with reflections on the triumphs and tensions of emergent engagement practices. We then describe four exercises that we conducted before the onset of the pandemic in a research project exploring public engagement from the ground up in relation to policy-making, and we suggest how the lessons learned may be applied to contemporary decision making. Our overall goal is to illustrate how and why community engagement is particularly pressing in the current crisis, as pandemic restrictions have added new dimensions to long-standing practices of containment. We argue that although these most recent forms of engagement are contested and complex, they are essential to ensuring that policy-making is built on processes of equity, access, and inclusion.

Nous nous penchons sur les contraintes importantes auxquelles sont soumis l'impératif de mobilisation collective et les possibilités qui s'y greffent, en période de confinement. Nous nous intéressons aux difficultés que les collectivités marginalisées doivent affronter, exacerbées par leur situation, dans le contexte de la pandémie de maladie à coronavirus 2019 ; nous poursuivons avec des réflexions sur les succès et les tensions associés aux pratiques émergentes en matière de mobilisation. Nous décrivons ensuite quatre exercices réalisés avant le début de la pandémie dans le cadre d'un projet de recherche visant à analyser la mobilisation citoyenne à partir de la base en relation avec l'élaboration de politiques, et nous suggérons comment appliquer les leçons qui en sont tirées aux processus décisionnels contemporains. Notre objectif global est d'illustrer en quoi et pourquoi la mobilisation collective est particulièrement cruciale dans la crise actuelle, les restrictions de la pandémie ayant ajouté de nouvelles dimensions aux pratiques de confinement de longue date. Selon nous, bien que ces formes très récentes de mobilisation soient contestées et complexes, elles sont essentielles pour faire en sorte que l'élaboration de politiques repose sur des principes d'équité, d'accès et d'inclusion.