Archive for the ‘Child & Family’ Category

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Why can’t we die at home? Expanding home care could reduce the financial and environmental cost of dying in hospital

Wednesday, November 20th, 2024

Primary-care teams can act as informal managers of home care through facilitating the medical, social and comfort components of care. All of this would still add up to far less than the financial and environmental cost of hospitalization. At a time when we’re pressured to cut costs and reduce harm to the environment, and when we know dying patients would rather be at home, why can’t we help?

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How to quell the sharp rise in youth violence in Canada

Friday, November 8th, 2024

Major risk factors for violence include limited access to economic opportunities, family instability and neighbourhood disadvantage. Without interventions that address these risks, vulnerable youth and adults are more likely to engage in criminal behaviour or reoffend. A key vital component of violence prevention is trauma-informed case management… community-based programs… can more holistically support the needs of youth leading to better choices and coping mechanisms.

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The rise and fall of co-op housing in Ontario

Tuesday, November 5th, 2024

Toward the end of the last century, the construction of co-operative housing — and social housing more broadly — garnered substantial federal and provincial investments: thousands of co-operative units were built every year for a span of nearly three decades. But a nexus of political, economic, and social factors in the late 1990s ground the breakneck pace of construction to a crawl. Today, units in co-operative buildings are coveted by those looking for affordable-housing options in an increasingly unaffordable market.

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Ontario cannot allow a few for-profit child care owners to run roughshod over the $10-a-day child care plan

Monday, October 28th, 2024

The problem with [the cheque-in-the-mail approach or as they like to put it “fund the families directly” with a government tax credit or voucher] as a child-care plan is it’s one that works for for-profit child care owners — and absolutely nobody else. It doesn’t lower parents’ fees. Its value is almost immediately swallowed up when owners raise their fees (and then raise them again). It doesn’t improve wages for hard-working educators. It doesn’t build new child-care spaces… we must not let a small group of owners put their private interests ahead of those of our children, families and communities.

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Ontario launches review following Ford criticism of children’s aid societies

Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024

… deficits are continuing to rise and the audit will examine the underlying issues and possible solutions… Ontario began an overhaul of the child welfare system four years ago, with a focus on keeping more families together and strengthening prevention and early intervention supports, but the unions representing CAS workers said there is little to show for it… “We need to end the for-profit models in all residential care facilities, and introduce province-wide licensing of group homes, to ensure our services place children at the centre of care,”

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… How Ontario is failing kids who are ‘too complex’ for care

Thursday, October 3rd, 2024

Last-resort placements are painting a picture of a situation where Ontario’s most vulnerable children are the least likely to get help… The costs of these emergency placements can range upward from $200,000 annually per child… Often, the children are getting no treatment… Increasingly, child welfare leaders say unlicensed spaces are being used as last-resort measures because there are no treatment or residential placement options for these children

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Ontario’s closure of youth detention facilities has not resulted in more support for young people

Sunday, September 29th, 2024

The move to shift youth in the justice system away from confinement and towards community is a positive one. However, without investment in community-based service providers to support youth being transitioned out of custodial settings, it is unlikely that youth will thrive. Such failures are likely to increase acute mental health crises and demands on ambulatory care within general medicine and psychiatric hospitals… [and] increase the number of youth who will come into conflict with the criminal legal system as adults.

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Ontario reduces child-care fees, introduces new operator funding formula

Sunday, August 18th, 2024

The new funding structure, which will come into effect January 1, also comes with an announcement that as of the same day the fees parents pay will be further reduced. They have already come down about 50 per cent to an average of $23 a day and next year will fall to an average of $19, and capped at $22. Those will be cut further to an average of $10 a day by March 2026, a date pushed back from an earlier pledge of September 2025.

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Paramedics treating patients’ palliative needs at home benefits everyone

Monday, August 12th, 2024

… paramedics, with some extra training, can provide patient-centred care in the homes of people living with cancer and other life-limiting conditions. It is intended to make patients as comfortable as possible as they spend their last days at home, which is where most Canadians say they’d prefer to die… evidence clearly shows that enabling paramedics to provide home-based palliative care when appropriate creates a substantial benefit for everyone involved — classic win-win-win for patients, health-care providers and health-care systems.

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Take it from a retired judge, Premier Ford — here’s what you don’t get about our judicial system

Wednesday, August 7th, 2024

Every case needs to be judged on its own facts and circumstances. Every accused person has a right (not a privilege) to be heard. I believe the key truth you are missing, Premier, is the cornerstone of our system — the presumption of innocence… They are innocent until the moment a judge or jury is satisfied that the state has proven their guilt. Would you change that?

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