Assembly hears early childhood learning needs more front line resources
- Katie Doke Sawatzky | July 27, 2017
Even though new federal funding is making its way to early childhood learning programs, support workers on reserves still say they aren’t receiving the resources needed to support children with high needs.
Denise Cote is a specialized support facilitator with the Early Childhood Intervention Program in Regina. She helps First Nations families on reserve access resources they need to support children, 6 to 17 year olds, with high needs like autism or FASD.
“Money is good, but is it going to trickle down to where the need is? Because, again, it seems to go towards to the top, which is the professional therapists, the counsellors. We do need that, but we need therapists that are going to be there, not one day out of a month, which usually ends up happening if they’re lucky,” said Cote.
Cote attended the dialogue session on early child learning and child care (ELCC) on the third and last day of the Assembly of First Nations Annual General Assembly on July 27. After a presentation from the AFN National Expert Working Group on First Nations Early Learning and Child, the floor was opened for questions.
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Cote spoke about her work on Cowessess First Nation, which is two hours east of Regina. The community has 22 children with high needs. She said the children with behavioural issues often act out because they are grieving separation from their parents. Her solution is to have alternative therapies, like music therapy or equine-assisted therapy on reserves, programs that have been successful for ECIP with kids 6 and under.
“If (the children) don’t resolve their grief, it’ll eventually escalate and that’s where the suicidal stats come in. So that’s why I’m thinking if we could get them…at the early learning stage and start working with them with these various therapies, then it will prevent a lot of it,” said Cote.
Donnie Garrow, a policy analyst and also part of the AFN working group, encouraged Cote to access the Jordan’s Principle funding that’s now available.
“One of the challenges we’ve had is getting that information out, the broad understanding of what Jordan’s principle actually means in terms of being operationalized on the ground,” said Garrow.
While Cote recognizes the federal government’s $382 million commitment to implement the Jordan’s principle for equal access to health care and social services for First Nations children, she said there’s still a gap. Funding needs to go towards training community members, not paying the travel budgets of speech therapists from Regina and Saskatoon who, she said, come for five minutes every two weeks to work with a child.
“We need to focus, get our children educated to become speech pathologists, to become clinical therapists, our own professionals to come back to the communities,” she said.
The AFN working group will present a report to the assembly with recommendations for a First Nations ELCC framework by January 31, 2018.