Saskatchewan’s Advocate for Children and Youth is glad the provincial budget has new funding for at-risk children.
Bob Pringle is referring to $7.7 million in this year’s budget to address the critical needs of at-risk children, youth and families.
The funding is for initiatives that include foster care, extended family care, assisted adoption and prevention services.
But Pringle is disappointed that there are no new resources for FASD services, especially in light of some recent high-profile cases of child deaths.
“We released a report called ‘Two Tragedies’ about 10 months ago and what was pretty significant in that report is the young fellow identified with having significant FASD challenges. And for the second year in a row, no additional FASD services. Clearly, with FASD and autism, there are many families who are totally desperate — and it just really baffles me. Our report was pretty high-profile around the need for FASD services.”
Pringle says he is also concerned that the province is due to receive recommendations from an advisory committee for an anti-poverty strategy in the next couple of months — and some supports for vulnerable children three to four years of age that he would expect to be in there are not getting funding or extra funding this year.