Funding cuts put young people in jeopardy

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Changes to Early Intervention funding could leave dozens of children and teens at the Kikino Metis Settlement and in Lac la Biche without a place to call their own.

Alberta's Child Services department announced late last year that the province has altered its focus on where early intervention dollars will be spent. The funds will now be directed toward helping children who are already at risk, rather than preventative programs like those offered at the youth centres in Lac la Biche and Kikino.

Close to 100 Aboriginal youngsters in both northeastern Alberta communities don't want to lose their facilities.

"We come here and stay out of trouble. We have some place safe to come to. We aren't out on the streets doing stupid things," said Lac la Biche's youth centre user Kristi Malofe.

The young users at both centres feel so strongly about the facilities that they have taken it upon themselves to plead their cases to the government.

In Lac la Biche, the teens at the Making A Difference Youth Centre are mounting a fight.

Hearing that the government had cut funding, the teens took it upon themselves to fight for their centre. They initiated a letter-writing campaign which put their feelings onto papers that made it to several child and family services offices, including Iris Evans, the minister of Children's Services.

"We told them that the centre keeps us out of trouble, that we wanted our funding and to leave the centre open," said "Tweety," one of 50 local teenagers who use Lac la Biche's youth centre.

And if the government thinks that a bunch of kids will eventually give up the fight, they haven't met these kids.

"We'll keep sending them letters until they realize these kids aren't going to leave them alone," Tweety continued.

In Kikino, children marched through the community, waving signs and banners that showed their displeasure about their facility facing closure.

According to Bob McManus, the spokesman for Region 12 of the Children's Services region that stretches from Lac la Biche to St. Paul, the early intervention funding criteria had to be changed to meet a growing number of children who are falling through the cracks.

"There needs to be more focus on children at risk rather than programs for the general population," said McManus, explaining that a funding application was received from Lac la Biche's youth centre, but it didn't meet the new criteria set out in a 51-page booklet issued in October.

"The criteria has changed."

Part of the reason for the change, McManus said, is the sharp increase in the early intervention cases the child services department has seen over the last few years.

At the Lac la Biche headquarters, child welfare cases have increased almost 20 per cent over the last two years.

Those increases have forced the province to put more focus on children who are already at risk.

To Denise White, the council vice-chairman at the Kikino Metis Settlement, and the president of the Kikino Family Circle Society, that logic doesn't make sense.

"This is prevention what we are doing here already. We give the kids somewhere to go and something to do. It has been working, so why do they want to change it now?"

According to settlement council member Floyd Thompson, the youth program in Kikino has kept crime and child welfare cases down.

"There are only four child welfare cases in our community," he said. "We must be doing something right."

And the community isn't ready to risk that just because the government wants to shuffle the deck.

"We are not going to quit here. I don't think the minister is doing the right thing," said Thompson, adding that the council will make this a political issue. "As elected leaders we are not doing our job if we allow them to put the wrecking-ball to the program."

He plans to write letters, make phone calls and meet with the minister to discuss the issue further.

"We need to stand up for our kids, because how hard can kids fight against this?"

Kikino's youth entre, which operated on a $100,000 budget, closed for business early in February as staff and settlement officials look for other funding options and lobby the province.

In Lac la Biche, where the centre needs $50,000 to operate, the funds will run out by the end of March.

So far, neither community has received a response from provincial officials.