Archive for the ‘Child & Family Debates’ Category
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From Scarborough women’s shelter to career path
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Apr 02 2010
Homeward Bound is a one of Toronto’s lesser-known miracles. The four-year program, developed by Woodgreen Community Services, offers the city’s most vulnerable women a chance to earn a college diploma, get a job with a future and become self-sufficient… The success rate so far: 100 per cent… Homeward Bound is not cheap. It costs $65,000 per participant. But four years of welfare for Dorsay and her daughter would have cost $48,240. And they’d still be living in poverty, they’d need social housing and they’d still feel like victims.
Tags: standard of living
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Premier promises action on youth superjail
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Mar 31 2010
“… I know you get just a few opportunities to turn young people around,” McGuinty said. “We want to have the best kinds of programming in there so that it improves them as people,” he said. “And we’re not accomplishing that right now.”…
The plan, released Wednesday, includes phasing in more staff training, anger-management programs for detainees and improving the assessment process that determines to what unit youths are directed on arrival.
Tags: corrections
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Jail for youth not safe, report says
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Mar 30 2010
Ontario’s newest superjail for youth is not safe for its teenage inmates, a report by the province’s children and youth advocate says.
…the root of the centre’s “crisis” as a fundamental disagreement between staff and managers about how to run the facility: Should it be the inmates-behind-bars approach or a more progressive model? The ministry says it’s committed to the latter.
Tags: corrections
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Staying home with the kids
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
March 24, 2010
Having children is a choice. Having several children, if one has trouble making ends meet with just one child, is also a choice. Putting one’s children in daycare at an early age is another choice. But asking the rest of society to support choices that may not be in children’s best interest is difficult to justify.
Tags: child care
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Daycare gets budget bailout
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
March 24, 2010
Insiders say Finance Minister Dwight Duncan will use Thursday’s budget to announce the Liberals will replace the federal funding that runs out on April 1. “This is very much a core value to us,” an official said, noting the government will also start the phase-in of all-day kindergarten for 4- and 5-year-olds this September and does not want to undermine that initiative by curbing daycare funding.
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The daycare funding gap
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
Mar 23 2010
Just as Ontario complains that Ottawa is shirking its responsibilities, Toronto is coping with ongoing shortfalls in provincial transfers for child care. And yet, despite Toronto’s own financial challenges, early this month the city’s budget committee found more than $1 million to prevent a crisis in 370 daycares. The province would do well to follow that example.
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Daycare system near collapse, advocates say
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
March 22, 2010
The loss of $63.5 million in federal child care cash next month and the fall launch of all-day kindergarten for 4- and 5-year olds is creating the “perfect storm” in Ontario’s child care system, advocates warn. If Queen’s Park doesn’t pick up the loss in Thursday’s budget, at least 7,600 child care subsidies will disappear, fees will rise and parents may not be able to work, they say.
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Young offenders get Ottawa’s spin [Sebastien’s Law]
Saturday, March 20th, 2010
Mar 20 2010
What Sébastien’s Law would do, though, is change the tone of our youth criminal justice system from rehabilitation and reintegration to punishment and public shaming…
If the government really wants to reduce youth crime, it needs to stop telling Canadians this can be done through the judicial system and start focusing on long-term social investments that deal with the underlying causes, ranging from poverty and broken homes to fetal alcohol syndrome and addictions.
Tags: crime prevention
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More men needed to fill the gap in daycare
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
March 13, 2010
Four decades later, child care remains the feminist movement’s number-one failure. Despite the constant talk about the vital first three years of development, Canada still has no national daycare program and what scraps of programming exist remain hot pink zones… Overwhelmingly, women raise our children…
Other pink professional ghettos, like nursing and stewardessing (remember that word?), became purple after they unionized, says Judy Rebick, former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Unions brought higher wages, which lured men.
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Politicians drop the daycare ball
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Mar 01 2010
In the current troubled economic situation, one would think the politicians would jump at the opportunity to target stimulus funding to a program that would create jobs for thousands of workers; free up others to upgrade their education; and help set young children on the path to success.
Unfortunately, our municipal, provincial and federal governments are shying away from a much-needed expansion of our child-care sector. Worse yet, all three levels seem poised to adopt budgets in the coming weeks that actually cut subsidized child-care spaces, lay off workers and drive up costs for full-fee parents.
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