OMSSA is featuring several 2024 Local Municipal Champion award recipients and their work in the Knowledge Exchange Blog. Please read this entry from the City of Windsor below.
Across Ontario, the recruitment and retention of high-quality professionals in the child care and early years sector has become a challenge. Since 2022, the province has taken important steps to address this issue by funding locally developed community initiatives aimed at sustaining the current workforce, improving access to professional development, and attracting new recruits to the field.
In Windsor-Essex, we embraced this opportunity by implementing a comprehensive, community-driven strategy designed to achieve long-term impact and meet the evolving needs of our region.
Building a Sustainable Framework
From the inception, sustainability was a core consideration in developing the Windsor-Essex workforce strategy. Knowing that initial funding levels would not be permanent, our focus was on creating initiatives that could be sustained beyond the life of the funding. What made this possible was our strong network of community partnerships.
These partnerships—established and strengthened throughout the process—included local colleges, school boards, special needs resource agencies, early years organizations, Indigenous and Francophone partners, and workforce agencies. Together, we co-created a strategy tailored to our region’s strengths and challenges.
Collaborative Implementation and Community Innovation
Led by the City of Windsor, Children’s Services, this strategy combined both Ministry of Education-mandated initiatives such as paid professional development as well as locally inspired programs. Collaboration across the child care and early years sector allowed Windsor-Essex to deliver targeted initiatives that reflected our community’s unique needs.
Branding Our Commitment
As with any initiative, we knew it was essential to establish a strong and consistent brand. A unified identity helped build community recognition and ongoing engagement. The WERECE (Windsor-Essex Registered Early Childhood Educators) campaign was born out of this vision. The name was developed by Connections Early Years Family Centre, and the City of Windsor partnered with a graphic designer to bring the logo to life—an example of community collaboration in action.
Key Initiatives
Advertising and Recruitment Campaigns
The WERECE campaign raised the visibility and highlighted the value of the ECE profession in our community through:
- Branded apparel and promotional merchandise.
- A bilingual media campaign across TV, radio, cinema, and community events.
- Billboards, bus wraps, banners, and signage across Windsor-Essex.
- Common signage outside all licensed child care centres and EarlyON Child and Family Centres promote the theme of “Their Future is in our hands” promoting the field of early childhood education.
- Social media is a cost-effective advertising medium that has a broad reach with a younger audience. We use Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for ongoing promotion.
- We continue to find creative ways for ongoing advertising to build on the momentum that has been created. We are exploring partnerships with students from the University of Windsor to continue to build on this campaign.
WERECE Ambassadors and Community Outreach
A team of WERECE Ambassadors actively promotes the profession of Registered Early Childhood Educators. Through our partnerships with school boards, community colleges, and employment agencies, the WERECE Ambassadors present to high school students on a regular basis as part of a careers course. They host tables at job fairs to provide information about the various pathways of becoming a Registered Early Childhood Educator as well as hosting tables at college open houses to jointly promote the ECE program with the college faculty. Francophone secondary schools were reached through a targeted outreach program led by Collège Boréal staff. To date, this initiative has reached more than 4,700 individuals.
Professional Learning Opportunities
Paid professional learning has long been a priority in Windsor-Essex. With increased funding, we were able to expand access. This allowed a higher number of early years professionals to participate in a variety of professional learning opportunities and be compensated for their time and learning. Each year participation has grown with more than 650 early learning professionals attending our largest in person paid professional learning event in 2024.
Mentorship Programs
Mentorship is a cornerstone of retention and professional growth. Windsor-Essex developed several mentorship models, including:
- Mentorship Program – Connections Early Years Child and Family Centre oversees a six-month structured program connecting mentors and mentees, now entering its fourth cycle with continued strong participation. This program combines individual mentorship as well as communities of practice. As the fourth cycle begins, a total of 334 early learning professionals have committed to mentorship.
- Mentorship Hub – A resource centre located at Connections, supports educators participating in the mentorship program with tools and assistance, including guidance for completing their CPL (Continuous Professional Learning) portfolios. The mentorship hub continues to be a valuable resource with equipment and resources being accessed more than 1,200 times.
- Summer Mentorship – John McGivney Children’s Centre and Children First provided paid learning opportunities for ECE students to gain experience working with children with special needs. This program has been paused due to reduced funding.
- Circle of Security Sessions – Delivered by Children First in child care and EarlyON settings, to encourage a uniform philosophy. Circle of Security promotes positive interactions and a shared approach across the system.
Partnerships with Local Colleges
To help increase the number of ECE students, the City of Windsor collaborated with St. Clair College and Collège Boréal. Together there was a common goal of increasing enrollment as well as increasing the number of students that graduated from the ECE program and secured employment in the field of child care and early years.
The following are some of the initiatives that we partnered on:
- Offered one year of paid tuition for qualifying ECE students.
- Collaborative classrooms or co-labs were created in partnership with local school boards, and child care centres to provide ECE students with hands-on learning experiences in child care and kindergarten environments. These innovative classrooms offer shared spaces for ECE students, educators, and child care professionals to learn and grow together through real-time practice and feedback. These co-labs continue to be used for ongoing learning and equipping.
- Resource bags with essential tools like books, art materials, and outdoor play items. These resources equipped the students with the necessary tools to be successful on placement without the students having to experience a financial impact for these additional supplies.
- A lending library with textbooks, teaching aids, and toys for student use during placements. These lending libraries are still accessible to students. Funding used to purchase sets of textbooks for the entire class to use on a loan basis alleviates financial impacts on the students.
More that 300 Early Childhood Education students benefitted from these initiatives in the first 2 years of the program.
ECE Connect and Resume Repository
- ECE Connect – A community event showcasing best practices was held. This event was also used to gather input from early learning professionals in our community. This information was used to shape future workforce strategies. There were 110 individuals that attended this event and provided feedback.
- Resume Repository (wereceresumes.ca) – Developed in partnership with Workforce WindsorEssex, this online tool allows early learning professionals to share resumes with local child care and EarlyON Child and Family Centre operators. This portal is still in place and continues to be a source of information for the early learning community.
Key Takeaways
The pinnacle of the workforce strategy is achieving the goal of increasing the number of RECEs working in child care and early years programs in Windsor-Essex. At the start of the WERECE campaign (Jan 1, 2022) there were 1,166 RECEs in Windsor-Essex with 52.1% of them working in child care and early years programs. As of December 31, 2024 there are 1,651 RECEs working in Windsor-Essex with 54.7% of them working in child care and early years programs.
The Windsor-Essex model demonstrates that a multi-faceted strategy—built on strong community partnerships and aligned with local needs—can make a measurable impact on early years workforce recruitment and retention. Key components such as mentorship, accessible professional development, hands-on training, and targeted marketing are all adaptable to other communities.
By continuing to invest in the people who care for and educate our youngest citizens, we are building a stronger, more resilient early years sector—one that will support children and families for generations to come.
