Helping Hands

More Than Child’s Play (MTCP) is a non-profit Charitable Family Resource Centre. For the past 27 years, we have been providing many needed services to the parents, caregivers and children in the Parkdale area. MTCP strives to meet the diverse needs of parents and children in the local community by providing support services and information resources to parents and caregivers. MTCP encourages optimal social, emotional, and physical development of children in an environment of equality, security, and harmony.

We believe in providing a space for parents, caregiver and children where every person is treated in a fair and respectful way. We believe that every family has the right to participate in programs offered by MTCP without discrimination. We are committed to providing programming that is culturally appropriate and racially sensitive. The content of all programs and services reflects the diversity of our communities, their cultures, experiences and challenges.

Some services that we offer include:

Parenting workshops - These workshops include managing stress, relaxation exercises and basic first aid. The Centre also delivers workshops on child development; nobody's perfect parenting class, and early literacy. The centre also provides cooking classes, art workshops and computer skills.

Clothing exchange -The program provides families, in the local area, who are facing financial difficulties with an opportunity to obtain new clothing.

Parent relief - Parents can participate in this program by signing up for respite care for their children twice in each month. The parent relief helps to reduce the isolation and frustration that parents can face when dealing with infants and young children under the age of 6.

During the summer months MTCP organizes group field trips to places such as Wild Water Kingdom, a farm for strawberry picking and Canada’s Wonderland. On average the centre goes on 10 trips per year. The centre organizes many fundraising events throughout the year to generate funds for these trips.

Gym - Children are provided with a range of activities and toys to encourage their physical development. These include bicycles, peddle cars, playing hockey and basketball.

Book and Toy Lending Library - The Centre has a library of books, toys and videos that users can borrow every week. The Centre promotes early literacy by giving away free books to participants that use the Book Lending Library.

Children's early learning activities – To encourage early learning, we provide children with the ability to express themselves through creative arts, sensory, music. We also have reading circles to encourage literacy and provide dramatic play areas to develop their gross motor play skills. Children are also provide access to a computer to development their hand and eye co-ordination and other such skills. Our infant area is separated from the rest of our play room to allow infants to crawl, mirror play and bond with their parent or caregiver with the age appropriate toys.

Nutritional snack - Everyday we offer a snack to encourage children to sit together in a group, try new foods, learn good table manners, eating habits and socialize.

We would like to launch a new program, “Helping Hands”. This new program will allow parents to have 2 hours of uninterrupted time to spend as they wish while a caregiver from our centre watches their children. This time can be used for appointments, grocery shopping, or alone time for themselves.

This program will also allow parents to:

have access to a translator at many important appointments (i.e. subsidy appointments, social assistance and child appointments to speech and language, doctors and other developmental issues);.

feel less stress with their lives as a staff can be there to help alleviate the pressure of dealing with their children, house chores and everyday life;

learn about programs available to them within the community.