Connect with us

Community

Child Advocacy Centre to have a beautiful home and a central focus on RDC Campus

Published

3 minute read

From the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre

CACAC has a home and an ‘educational’ strategy… Centre for Excellence to instruct child care workers from all over North America.

A new Centre of Excellence opening in Red Deer will enhance services for young people, increase students’ learning opportunities and create jobs in the region.

Improving supports for youth in central Alberta

Barb Miller, MLA for Red Deer-South celebrates with Red Deer College and Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre as they enter a new agreement to improve supports in central Alberta.

The Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre (CACAC) and Red Deer College are working together to create a comprehensive child advocacy centre on the college campus. CACAC will construct and operate a Centre of Excellence, expanding victim support services and increasing programs for vulnerable individuals and children, youth and families closer to home.

Red Deer College students will have access to improved training and tools to assist victims of child abuse and their families. The centre’s specialized focus on training, research, community awareness and education will help build a stronger and more resilient community.”

Marlin Schmidt, Minister of Advanced Education

“Our children, youth, and families in need deserve the best possible supports no matter where they live in Alberta. CACAC does amazing work helping kids in central Alberta lead healthy and happy lives, and expanding their services will be a big win for families and the community.”

Danielle Larivee, Minister of Children’s Services

“Government support of this important partnership is a major milestone in establishing a Centre of Excellence at RDC supporting child advocacy. Students at RDC will learn the latest and best practices in supporting children and families through practicums and internships. Our new university will benefit tremendously through partnerships like this and it aligns with our vision to provide applied learning experiences.”

Joel Ward, president & CEO, Red Deer College

“The Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre is proud to announce our official partnership with Red Deer College, made possible by the support of the Government of Alberta. As an organization, we are ecstatic to take another step forward in becoming a Centre of Excellence, specializing in leading practices, training research, community awareness, advancement in education and integrated practice. The new location of the CACAC on Red Deer College campus land will enable a tremendous shift in our community’s future as we continue to push boundaries and champion leading practices. We look forward to working and collaborating with the RDC students – tomorrow’s leaders – in creating a healthy future for our children and community.”

Mark Jones, CEO, Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre

CACAC will receive a plot of land through a lease agreement with Red Deer College to support the construction of the new facility.

 

The Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre is a not for profit organization rooted in the protection and recovery of today’s most innocent and vulnerable – our children. The Centre is comprised of a collective that is driven by the courage to support children, youth, and their families affected by abuse, enabling them to build enduring strength and overcome adversity. We work in a collaborative partnership with the Central Region Children's Services, Alberta Health Services, Alberta Justice, Alberta Education, the Central Alberta Sexual Assault Support Centre and the RCMP. Together we harness our collective courage to provide children with supported recovery. It takes courage and bravery for a child to share their story of abuse, for families to bring their children forward, to believe, to listen without judgement, and to seek justice. Supporting the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre today is an investment in the promise and possibility of a healthy future for our children and our community.

Follow Author

Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

Published on

Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

Continue Reading

Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

Published on

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

Continue Reading

Trending

X