Dr Clyde Hertzman, the Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at UBC died very unexpectedly earlier this month.
We offer our condolences to his loved ones at the untimely passing of this vibrant, intelligent and witty man.
Kids First has long critiqued Dr Hertzman’s work promoting preferential funding for non-parental care, in particular daycare centres and all day kindergarten.
Such policies have diverted billions of dollars ear-marked for children away from financial support for families and into the education, daycare, and research industries. We seek a reversal of this policy trend.
We have repeatedly drawn attention to the “junk science” and “gross misrepresentation” of evidence that Hertzman/HELP has employed to successfully promote these policies across Canada.
We have also made formal complaints about Hertzman/HELP’s lead role in the mass collection and linkage of private data, its use of “passive consent” in doing this, and its circumvention of informed parental consent in its conduct of the Early Development Instrument (EDI).
The EDI is a social science research project involving almost all kindergarten children in BC and thousands more across Canada. It is conducted in February.
Read about HELP’s data collection and privacy issues (link to current issues page – data collection section)
Here is HELP articles on wordpress
Read about HELP and all day kindergarten (link to current issues page – all day kindergarden section)
kidsfirstcanada.org 