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Outlook is bleak for foster kids ‘aging out’ of the system
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
Jun 11 2011
Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario are not funded to provide foster care beyond age 18… Most of Ontario’s 9,000 Crown wards are never adopted. In 2009-10, just 993 were placed in permanent homes. The rest, like Krivickas, enter young adulthood without a “forever” family to provide stability, guidance and support. While roughly half of their peers between the ages of 18 and 24 are still living with their parents, youth “aging out” of foster care don’t have that option.
Tags: rights, standard of living, youth
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Not enough evidence for routine autism screening for autism: Canadian researchers
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
June 13, 2011
Not enough sound evidence exists for routine screening of all preschoolers to determine whether they have autism, researchers said Monday. In a paper published in the online edition of the journal Pediatrics, a team at McMaster University in Hamilton said that screening and diagnostic tools are still being developed and revised, and no therapies have a “curative outcome or well-established efficacy to change the course of the condition.”
Tags: disabilities, Health, mental Health
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Ontario creates online donor registry
Monday, June 13th, 2011
June 13, 2011
After five years and three official recommendations, the provincial government will allow Ontarians to register as organ donors online. The website, beadonor.ca, is up and running… By making it easier for people to consent, the province hopes to increase the number of donors.
Tags: Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Life in ‘Third City’: Nasty, brutish and short
Friday, June 10th, 2011
Jun 07 2011
… since the late 1980s we’ve embarked on a path that would make manifest in our urban fabric the social problems of inner-city America. We cut the social safety net; we’ve neglected the built environment of poor neighbourhoods; we’ve failed to regulate precarious employment and create “good jobs”; we’ve yet to solve high dropout rates and youth unemployment, disproportionately impacting racialized youth; and we’ve rolled back equity initiatives that acknowledged the ways socio-economic outcomes continue to be shaped by race.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, multiculturalism, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
The high price of being a trailblazer
Friday, June 10th, 2011
Jun 09 2011
Thousands of students with disabilities have to miss classes, drop courses and extend their years of university, taking on more debt than their nondisabled peers. In 2007, she launched a constitutional challenge, alleging that the Canada Student Loan Program violates the equality clause in the Charter of Rights… Simpson can’t afford to keep fighting… She earns a modest salary as a counsellor at the Canadian Hearing Society. But she refuses to buckle. This is no longer about her. It’s about all the young people with disabilities who are counting on her to be their trailblazer.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Faith and poverty: A reason to believe
Friday, June 10th, 2011
Jun 10 2011
Daily they ease suffering by offering food programs for the hungry and emergency shelters for the homeless. Now, they’ve decided to take on a more difficult task: reducing the need for those acts of compassion and generosity by getting Queen’s Park to live up to its commitment to reduce poverty… The faithful are a patient lot, but time’s up. The coalition, which includes leaders from the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist faiths, is marshalling its members to make sure poverty becomes — and remains — a key issue in next fall’s provincial election.
Tags: budget, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Ontario’s overlooked health crisis
Thursday, June 9th, 2011
Jun 07 2011
“Treatment for mental health and addiction issues right now is determined by your postal code,” says Mary Alberti, who heads the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario. She doesn’t think that’s right. She doesn’t think most Ontarians would tolerate this level of disparity, if they knew… That’s why the 10 provincial organizations that provide help for people with mental illness and addictions… have banded together for the first time… “We’re looking to make this a huge issue in the next election”…
Tags: Health, mental Health, rights, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Why I did it: Senate page explains her throne speech protest
Thursday, June 9th, 2011
Jun 08 2011
Our views are not represented by our political system. How else could we have a government that 60 per cent of the people voted against? A broken system is what has left us with a Conservative government ready to spend billions on fighter jets we don’t need, to pollute the environment we want protected, to degrade a health-care system we want improved, and to cut social programs and public sector jobs we value… Such a system leads us to feel isolated, powerless and hopeless — thousands of Canadians made that clear in their responses to my action.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Obesity: The next health challenge
Monday, June 6th, 2011
Jun 06 2011
Other countries, including Sweden, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands and France, have achieved significantly lower obesity rates than Ontario’s, ranging between 10 per cent and 11 per cent… What all of these countries share is an approach that looks beyond the health sector to engage other parts of society, and an emphasis on addressing the root causes of obesity rather than on treating the results.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, poverty
Posted in Health Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Welfare argument full of holes
Sunday, June 5th, 2011
Jun 04 2011
For the Conservatives, any dollar which helps the poor, the sick, the unemployed, or the children in our schools is one dollar too many. Investing in people interferes with corporate tax cuts. So where has this left us? We are now number 26 among 30 OECD nations in per-capita social spending, number 6 in the percentage of our population living in poverty, number 1 in the rate at which income disparity in increasing… We are number 20 in UNICEF’s index of maternal and infant health, dead last out of the 25 most developed nations in Save the Children’s study of child care and early childhood education.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
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