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We know that children experience more positive outcomes when they are raised by a family unit and not by a system, which is why one of our strategic priority areas is strengthening families so they can stay together. As a national charity, Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada is happy to be able to support programming from coast to coast to coast, including a number of programs in British Columbia that are focused on preventing children from coming into care.
The following programs are made possible through grants provided by an anonymous British Columbia-based bequest:
The Pacific Community Resources Society and Broadway Youth Resource Centre run a Family Wraparound Program, providing a number of supports for children, youth, and families to address unresolved barriers such as poverty, physical and mental health issues, housing instability, and unsupported disabilities, while promoting self-advocacy, growth, and resiliency in youth.
Elizabeth Fry Society’s Growing Great Kids out of Homelessness initiative is designed to support families who have been or are currently experiencing homelessness to help enhance secure attachment, keep families together, improve child development, and improve parenting skills for parents who have experience childhood adversity and trauma themselves. In the first two years of the program, families were seen to experience positive increases in the areas of child well-being, family interactions, self-sufficiency, mental health and well-being, having basic needs such as housing met, and ability to access community and social supports.
Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of British Columbia program called Through an Aboriginal Lens was designed to support at-risk Indigenous youth who have been referred to the Asante Centre’s Youth Justice Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Program. By supporting families before, during, and after an FASD assessment, they seek to reduce the number of young people entering into care or into the criminal justice system. They seek to help youth reconnect with their birth families, communities, and cultures, providing holistic support rooted in an Indigenous worldview, values, and teachings.
