About Us

Why is there KeySteps@JC?

Launched in 2017, KeySteps@JC (“The Project”) is striving to bridge the developmental gaps of young children aged 3-6 and to build stronger foundation at critical early stage for their better life outcomes. It adopts a multidisciplinary collaboration approach involving education, health and welfare to strengthen family functioning and enhance teaching effectiveness in schools, while converging community resources through the community connector, KeySteps@JC Hubs, to provide holistic support to young children. The project completed its first phase and has entered into a new phase in August 2022.

Our Vision and Mission

Vision:

Develop a holistic approach to build stronger foundation for better life outcome for children

Mission:

To strengthen the social infrastructures for child development by providing systemic integrated interventions to children and their significant adults with interagency collaboration between early years services in five pilot districts

Project model

Child-centred, Multidisciplinary, Data-informed

Continued to be funded and steered by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the Project Phase Two has partnered with three local academia and four non-governmental organisations to adopt a health-education-welfare collaborative model in providing holistic intervention to children, targeting 70,000 children in five districts.

Services in the Project are designed for the best interest of children, with multidisciplinary involvement in operation and periodical review of data to inform and refine services delivery.

Phase One

With a small-scale trial in two chosen districts, namely Sham Shui Po and Yuen Long (Tin Shui Wai), covering 32 kindergartens, KeySteps@JC Phase One had brought positive impact to the children as well as their significant surroundings.

100%

98%

Phase Two

districts

teachers

children & their families

kindergartens

districts

teachers

children & their families

kindergartens

Riding on the encouraging results of its first phase, KeySteps@JC Phase Two aims to scale up the proven interventions to cover three more districts with KeySteps@JC Hub as the major setting, aiming to establish a significant community connector pulling in district resources with synergy of the multidisciplinary project team to provide holistic support to children and their families, schools and the community.

The Project Phase Two is expected to directly benefit 70,000 children and their families, as well as some 650 teachers in over 280 kindergartens in five districts.

Key project components:

Through parent and teacher workshops and foundational health support to children, promote awareness and practice on healthy lifestyle, so as to narrow the health gap of children from different family background
Through introduction of international early education benchmark and related teacher training, improve school environment and teaching quality, so as to enhance early education effectiveness
Through establishing KeySteps@JC Hubs as the community connector, provide a quality play space for children, a resource place for parenting support and a co-learning platform for teachers, so as to enhance family functioning and increase social capital