Mary Polak, minister, Children and Family Development
****************************Oh Mary, Mary, Mary, the spin machine can't help you explain this away. There isn't a soul alive in BC who isn't aware of the "leadership" the BC Liberals have demonstrated re: the best interests of the province's children, who are firmly in the parties' cold, dead hearts, of course.
Success isn't exactly the way most of us would describe it and maybe before you start throwing around words like "irresponsible" and accusing stakeholders of not telling the truth about the adequacy of funding you better find out what the truth is, or stand accused yourself. So soon into your new post and you're already doing your own credibility and integrity a disservice, you don't even need the DM for that, although I'm sure she'll be there help.
Let's review some of the "successes," shall we, I know it's hard to get up to speed when you take on a new portfolio, especially when you have the likes of what you have to work with in MCFD doing the briefing. Seems a bit of a political career killer that gig, just ask your predecessors.
BC has led child poverty for 6 years in a row in all of Canada. And guess what, that probably doesn't even capture all of the Aboriginal children who live in third world conditions on BC's reserves.
Under BC Liberal leadership and the cluster bomb that is Community Living BC, thousands and thousands of developmentally disabled, adults and their families have been hung out to dry and forced to sit on waitlists for services they desperately need.
As the Representative for Children & Youth found in one of her reports, BC's foster children, a la BC Liberals, are more likely to graduate to jail than graduate from high school. Way to go.
Kids, Crime and Care: Youth Justice Experiences and Outcomes.
In BC, children and youth with mental health issues, including children, yes children who are suicidal and those who have been sexually abused, raped, had incest committed against them,
will often wait months and months for any type of counseling, if they ever even receive it. Now that is leadership.
Housing, Help and Hope: A Better Path for Struggling Families.
A struggling young family needed short-term housing assistance so their baby could be safe, but instead the child was taken into government care. A Representative for Children and Youth investigation into a First Nations baby’s critical injury finds that many of the systemic factors that played a major role in the infant’s removal from his parents still exist today.
Child care has not fared better under this administration, the one that introduced such a complicated child care subsidy form it was more complex than applying for a passport.
UBC prof gives four reasons B.C. isn’t delivering childcare
BC Government makes cuts to child care - TAKE ACTION!
BC government should heed its own report on childcare
Early Childhood Learning Agency
Cuts to scholarship awards to BC's hardworking young people AFTER they've applied and worked their butts off. Classy. NOT. Who cares, they don't vote yet anyways, eh?
A sleazy attack on some of B.C.'s best kids
Paul Willcocks, Paying Attention.*****
Children best investment for future
With respect to the Trafalgar daycare, important details have been overlooked. Prior to the eviction notice given to Trafalgar by the Vancouver School Board for seismic upgrades, the ministry provided Trafalgar with $500,000 in major capital funding to create new childcare spaces within their neighbourhood.
Read more here if you can stomach it.
Children best investment for future
Vancouver Courier
Published: Friday, August 14, 2009To the editor:
Thank you Tom Sandborn for outlining the current crisis in the lives of some of the most vulnerable families in this city and Strathcona area.
The combined bureaucratic responses from both Premier Gordon Campbell, coupled with the denial by Mary Polak, minister of Children and Family Development, that the dropping of three early childhood development workers from the Ray Cam Community Co-operative staff does not constitute a cut in service, are nothing short of disgraceful.
Noel Herron,
Vancouver
© Vancouver Courier 2009
*******************************BC Government makes cuts to child care - TAKE ACTION!
Coalition of Childcare Advocates of BC. August 2009
The provincial government once again signaled its lack of support
for parents who need child care in order to hold jobs and go to school.
The August 2009 cut comes to the small grants that child care centres use
for basic safety and quality repairs. It is one more example of a provincial
government that seems determined to dismantle and destabilize already
fragile daycare in BC.
Without these Minor Capital Grants, child care centres will have no choice
but to raise parent fees again - just to cover the costs of meeting
provincial licensing requirements for health, safety and quality standards.
With no warning, the small, but significant repair grants, were cut from a
maximum of $5,000 a year to $2,000 a year.
TAKE ACTION!
We encourage you to email Premier Campbell at premier@gov.bc.ca to say his government must invest in a child care system - and to start by reversing this cut.
E-mail Minister Mary Polak and let her know the truth about leadership of her government for BC's kids: mary.polak.mla@leg.bc.ca
Phone: 604 514-8206 or 250 387-9699
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