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Memorandum of Understanding the first step to supporting children and families in the region

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Red Deer, February 8, 2018 – Leaders from Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre (CACAC)
and Red Deer College (RDC) gathered today to sign a Memorandum of Understanding, committing the two organizations to exploring opportunities for how they could best work together to serve children and families in central Alberta.

The Memorandum of Understanding continues the discussions already undertaken between CACAC and RDC. The organizations will continue to research and explore the possibility of two main goals: 1) building a comprehensive child advocacy centre on RDC’s main campus, and 2) working together to explore the development of training, professional development, credit and non-credit education programs and research opportunities related to child advocacy services and education.

For CACAC, which has been collaborating with its partners since first opening its doors on November 29, 2017, discussions with RDC represent another potential partnership opportunity.

“The Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre has a model of integrative, trauma-informed practice, carried out by our key partners and trained professionals. This model will be the centre of change in how our community deals with child abuse,” says Mark Jones, CEO, Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre. “Our goal is to become a centre of excellence offering opportunities for advanced education students to be able to learn and develop skills that will help them moving forward in their education and professional careers. Potential collaborations with Red Deer College will provide a promising future in education and demonstrate the role students play in making our society a better place.”

The impact of the work of a child advocacy centre is demonstrated at the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre, located on the University of Calgary campus. Kennedy is supportive of creating a centre in the central Alberta region.

“I see firsthand the need for support, counselling and guidance a Child Advocacy Centre can offer to children, youths and families impacted by child abuse in a community,” says Kennedy, Lead Director of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre. “I believe the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre will, over time, set a new standard for responding to child abuse. This Memorandum of Understanding with Red Deer College will be the initial step in paving the way to becoming a Centre of excellence.”

“From the preliminary discussions between CACAC and RDC, it’s clear there are many areas of shared values and priorities between our two organizations, and we look forward to exploring the opportunities that could come out of these,” says Joel Ward, RDC President &CEO. “Through our potential collaborations, we could support children and families in the region, and we could also provide new opportunities for our students to learn in this important field of child advocacy. While there are still many steps we have to take to plan for and achieve these ultimate goals, we’re excited to work with CACAC to determine what the future could hold.”

 

About Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre: The Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre is a not for profit organization that works in an integrative partnership with the Central Region Child Services, Alberta Health Services, Alberta Justice, Alberta Education and the RCMP to better service children, youth and families impacted by sexual abuse and the most serious/complex cases of physical abuse and neglect. Working collaboratively in a culturally relevant and trauma-informed system, we achieve greater results than any partner could on their own. It blends investigation, treatment, prevention, education and research with expertise to provide an integrated practice approach wrapping around children and always working in the best interests of the child.

About RDC: For over 50 years RDC has been proudly serving our learners and our communities. RDC offers more than 100 different programs (including full degrees, certificates, diplomas and skilled trades programs) to 7,500 full- and part-time credit students and more than 36,000 youth and adult learners in the School of Continuing Education each year. Named by Alberta Venture magazine as one of Alberta’s most innovative organizations for the Centre for Innovation in Manufacturing, RDC is a key location for applied and industry-led research. Our main campus is strategically situated on 290 acres of Alberta’s natural landscape along Queen Elizabeth II Highway. We have also expanded our learning and performing arts space into the heart of downtown Red Deer through our Welikoklad Event Centre and the Donald School of Business.

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SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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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)

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Addictions

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

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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.

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