Message from the Director

Building promising futures for children at risk

Today, one out of every five children in North America shows signs of an emotional or behavioural problem. Many of these children have more than one problem, including poor school performance, learning disabilities, increased school dropout rates, substance abuse and aggressive behaviour. The consequences of these problems can last a lifetime. They exact an enormous emotional toll on the individual, the family and society, and the economic cost of providing social services, special education, clinical treatments and legal services can be considerable.

Sadly, many of these children go untreated. For every six children with a mental health problem, only one will come to the attention of a mental health professional. Those who do are often diagnosed quite late, when the disorder is entrenched and the opportunity for prevention or early intervention has been lost.

How is it that some young people are able to overcome enormous obstacles and grow up to be well-adjusted and productive adults while others are not? How do we ensure that promising, cost-effective treatments are developed and made available early enough to prevent destructive emotional and behavioural problems in our children and youth? How do we ensure that very young children are ready to enter school? How do we influence governments to support services and interventions that are based on what we know about healthy child development and for which there is scientific evidence that they make a difference? These are among the questions we are seeking to answer at the Offord Centre for Child Studies, Canada’s only research centre solely dedicated to improving the life quality and life opportunities of children and youth by focusing on the biological factors and life circumstances that influence healthy child development.

We all have an opinion about what’s wrong with kids today. Some say it’s the breakdown in the family; parents don’t care about their children nowadays. Others think kids today are too self-absorbed, they’re spoiled, or they watch too much TV. Still others lay the blame on schools; they’re not teaching children the three Rs anymore or there’s not enough discipline.

At the Offord Centre, we believe our kids deserve better than mere opinions. Our researchers are leaders in the scientific study of children’s emotional, social and cognitive development. They are highly regarded in Canada and throughout the world. Our experience has taught us that there is a science to childhood development, a science to what causes mental health problems and how they can be solved. The solution lies in knowledge and the wider dissemination of that knowledge out into the community.

The Offord Centre is dedicated to creating new knowledge that addresses the problems children and families face in the context of all the changes that society is going through. We also work hard to share that knowledge so that parents, clinicians and policy makers have the information they need to develop programs and policies that will make a long-lasting difference.

Through our work, we seek to develop ways of diagnosing problems earlier, of having better methods of treatment that are less expensive and more effective, of finding ways to prevent the mental health problems that children face. We are also committed to training future generations of scientists to tackle the issues that have an impact on children’s mental health and development. We have developed a comprehensive training program that brings together the best and brightest of our young scientists from a variety of disciplines and teaches them how to conduct research that has immediate clinical relevance and is of the highest scientific standards.

Finally, we are determined to find better ways of sharing the knowledge we already have and the new knowledge that is being generated. Much of our current knowledge around children’s mental health is contained in journals that are not accessible to the public. That information needs to be translated into a language that can be understood by everyone and that can be implemented in the community. Parents, policy makers, doctors and other professionals want information they can use, information that tells them how to identify problems before they become chronic and entrenched, how to prevent problems such as child abuse, how to improve the school performance of children entering kindergarten, how to treat common mental health problems of childhood and how to develop communities that have enough resources to ensure the healthy growth and development of all children, whatever their vulnerabilities.

At the Offord Centre, we believe – as our founding director Dan Offord did – that every person is part of the solution, every person has a role to play in helping our children grow into healthy and happy adults. We’re working to make it easier by closing the gap between what we know and don’t know, and using that knowledge to devise practical solutions that will help every child, whatever their background and however unstable their start in life, have an equal chance at living life to the fullest.
Meeting these challenging goals will require generous support – from foundations, corporations, and individuals like you. I invite you to join us in working towards creating promising futures for all children in Canada and around the world. Come visit us at the Offord Centre for Child Studies and discover how you can play a part in changing young lives for the better.

Peter Szatmari

Read more about Peter Szatmari and his vision for the Offord Centre