From a medical perspective, 0 to 5 years old is the period when the brain is most rapidly developing. Many studies have shown that proper care, upbringing, and resources are important for a child’s development. The lack of such aspects during a child’s development affects his/her school preparedness and even long-term development.

KeySteps@JC is initiated by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, co-created by The University of Hong Kong, The Boys’ & Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Christian Service, under Poverty striving to reduce deficits of underprivileged young children and to build stronger foundation at critical early stage for better life outcomes. It adopts a multidisciplinary collaboration involving education, medical and welfare to develop a holistic intervention model in schools, family and community to help children and families with enhanced human and social capital.

The project has rolled out to 32 local kindergartens in two pilot districts (Tin Shui Wai and Sham Shui Po) and built the capacity of around 190 teachers a the pilot schools, covering around 6,000 children and their families.

Project scope and expected outcomes

• Child: Provide holistic support (health, emotion, social skills, cognitive and language development) to build stronger foundations for better life outcomes of the children
• Family: Enhance parent-child attachment and promote parent/grandparent/caregiver well-being to strengthen family functioning
• School: Enhance capacity building, enrich learning environment and school curriculum to create quality learning environment
• Community: Develop a child-focused community support model so to create community space to foster social connectedness
• Infrastructure: Develop the first cross-disciplinary one-stop web portal and child databank, as well as use evidence-based research to inform future policy design

For more information, please visit https://keysteps.hk.