Archive for the ‘Child & Family’ Category

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The push for a national caregiving strategy

Thursday, January 9th, 2025

A fundamental goal of a national caregiving strategy must be to change the narrative about care work and fully articulate the value it provides society and what we stand to lose in economic and human terms if we don’t support carers. A fundamental part of this work involves acknowledging and addressing the outsized burden of care carried by women and racialized people… a national caregiving strategy will make the issue of care politically and socially unignorable and will drive recognition that care work is skilled, dignified, necessary, and worthy of proper compensation.

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New child care fees take effect in Ontario on Jan. 1: Here’s what families need to know 

Friday, January 3rd, 2025

As of Jan. 1, 2025, fees are capped at $22 per day for children under the age of six — but only if your licensed child care provider is enrolled with the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care system… According to a Statistics Canada report, parents in 2023 paid an average of $7,557 annually for the main full-time (30 or more hours per week) child care arrangement for their child five years of age and younger… an average of $630 per month for full-time child care, or $30 per day.

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Canada-wide child care: It’s now less expensive, but finding it is more difficult

Friday, December 27th, 2024

All provinces and territories have met their affordability targets. Parent costs were reduced by 50 per cent by the 2022 deadline… some jurisdictions are not using the federal funding available to them. Governments have added just over $4.5 billion to their child-care spending since 2020, well below the $15 billion available to date through CWELCC. If concerns about funding is pressing provincial and territorial governments could, of course, add their own funding, but few have done so. Relying on federal funds is now the norm.

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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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