Research drives the engine of Invest in Kids. It keeps us on the forefront of knowledge about Canadian parents, helps us identify and support best practices and gives us the ability to understand the attitudes, behaviours and needs of parents in caring for our youngest children.

The Parenting Partnership

With the Parenting Initiative, Invest in Kids is leading a large-scale project to develop and test The Parenting Partnership, an innovative prenatal and parenting program designed to ensure the best possible start in life for Canada's children by transforming the way we educate parents to acquire the skills they need for their most important role - raising a child. The goal is to assure the healthy social, emotional and intellectual development of children during their early years. To achieve this goal, The Parenting Partnership has three objectives:

1. to increase parents’ knowledge, skills and confidence in parenting and child development;
2. to promote sensitive, responsive and warm parent-child and parent-parent relationships, the kinds of relationships that best promote healthy development; and
3. to foster parents’ sense of support for their role.

Parent Education - What is Required to Build the Skills Parents Need to Raise Healthy Children

This report, prepared with support from The Lawson Foundation, distils what decades of study tell us about infants, parents and parent education programs that could assist parent educators in building effective programs for new parents.

It looks at what we know about infants, including their social, emotional and language development; what we know about parents, including paternal vs maternal behaviours, the marital relationship, and parental depression; and it identifies and evaluates parent education programs and defines the parameters for effective parent education programs. Parent Education - What is Required to Build the Skills Parents Need to Raise Healthy Children.

This is one of two reports that laid the foundation for The Parenting Partnership, Invest in Kids' new, comprehensive parenting program.

A National Survey of Parents of Young Children

In 1999, Invest in Kids commissioned a survey of 1,643 parents to better understand the context in which young children are being raised in Canada. The survey's key findings give us a core understanding of how parents behave toward their children, what they know about child development and parenting, their confidence in their parenting skills, their emotional well-being and the differences across key subgroups of parents. National Survey of Parents of Young Children.

This report, prepared with support from The Lawson Foundation, is one of two reports that laid the foundation for The Parenting Partnership, Invest in Kids' new, comprehensive parenting program.

It reveals that while Canada can be proud of its efforts to improve and protect the physical health of infants and young children, we still have a long way to go to ensure and equal level of promise for our children's social, emotional and intellectual development.

The report looks at what we know about today's children including child health and maltreatment; what we know about today's parents including socio-demographics, parenting knowledge, skills and confidence; and how parent education is delivered witha focus on current parent education sources. It also examines the controversies about the early years and highlights the interplay between heredity and environment. Download: Parenting in the Beginning Years - Priorities for Investment

The State of Knowledge About Prevention/Early Intervention

Invest in Kids commissioned a worldwide study to evaluate the scientific rigour of over 4,000 prevention and early intervention studies. This landmark review features the top 34 studies which meet high standards of quality. It is packaged with peer reviews and recommendations for a national approach to evaluating "what works" in intervention models and programs for Canadian families with young children. This document will be of particular interest to policymakers, researchers and program planners planning large-scale early childhood development initiatives. Review of Prevention/Early Intervention Research.