1 Report : a string-bound and stapled paper publication with thin, heavyweight paper stock beige-coloured cover and thin, lightweight white paper, pp. 36 ; 28 x 21.5 cm. This report is string-bound and held together with two staples on the spine. The cover is made of a thin but heavier weight paper stock of a beige colour. The left-most third of the front cover has images stacked along the right-hand side including (from top to bottom) the United Way slogan and logo ("Building Community Together [in cursive] the United Way"), a drawing of a woman lifting up a baby besides a crib in a nursery room, a drawing of a woman and a man in a room with the woman hugging a child to her waist and another child holding both adults' hands, and a drawing of a man sitting on a park bench and reading to a child sitting next to him. The rest of the front cover includes printed text - at the top, "UNITED WAY OF THE LOWER MAINLAND", followed by the title, "Great Oaks from Little Acorns Grow"/ A Status Report on Early/ Childhood in the Lower Mainland". There is a thin double line immediately below the title that separates the above text from the text below, which reads, "A Background Paper for United Way of/ the Lower Mainland's Initiative:/ The Future of Our Community's Children". At the bottom right of the cover is the United Way Research Services' logo of a black and white graph in a mountain shape and next to it, the United Way's black and white logo of a hand cradling a person with raised arms underneath a rainbow.
Researched and written by the United Way Research Services and sponsored in part by a grant from Health Canada, this report was created in 1998 for the United Way of the Lower Mainland. As the title indicates, it assessed the current (at time of publication) status of early childhood in the Lower Mainland. The paper is divided into three main sections: (1) A look at late 1990s initiatives by United Ways across North America to foster increased community attention on children, youth, and especially the importance of early childhood; (2) an outline of two late 1990s streams of research on brain development and population health, respectively, that clarified how early childhood experiences have profound implications for the person that persist through life; and (3) analyses of various data sources (e.g., census, statistics, etc..) looking at factors and indicators of child, family, and community well-being. The third section essentially presents a profile of children in the Lower Mainland in the late 1990s. Langley is included in the "South Fraser Valley" region in analysis, and there are many data charts and tables that are relevant to readers interested in the topic. In each section, there are frequent "further reading" suggestions, and there is a reference bibliography at the end of the report.