By Chad Klassen

Local Kamloops agency that supports families to be eliminated with funding cuts

Sep 27, 2018 | 5:47 PM

KAMLOOPS — For the last 16 years, Make Children First has provided support for families in Kamloops, working with early childhood professionals in the city to develop programming for all ages.

But come March, the local non-profit will cease to exist after the province cut all its funding.

“This is funding that fully supports the work and the salaries of anyone paid by Make Children First, and we’ve had this funding in our community since 2002 and it essentially means we will cease to be a funded initiative,” said the Kamloops manager of Make Children First Sue Lissel. 

Lissel says the cuts amount to $220,000 in lost funding and she will be out of a job at the end of March. More importantly, she feels this will have a major impact on families in Kamloops. 

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“I think the families that don’t identify as needing extra help [will be impacted the most]. I think there’s a lot of support for families who need extra support and that is a wonderful thing that we’ve had a great influence over,” said Lissel. “All families with children have questions, all families with children at some point are doing this for the first time. Parenting little ones is really emotionally difficult and there are lots of questions and it’s very overwhelming at times. We work to try and put in place support and resources to answer some of those questions.”

Lissel has been notified the funding will be redirected by the Ministry of Children and Family Development, which says it is not cutting funding in Kamloops and is instead moving away from coordination and putting money towards actual programs. 

“This change is about putting more money into the direct programs and services that families have told us they want and need,” said Emily Horton from the Ministry of Children and Family Development. “That’s things like family resource programs, drop-in programs, access to developmental experts in communities. What the ministry learned from talking with families and agencies is we were putting a lot of money into community coordination, people talking about services. What we’re doing now is putting our money into the actual services.”

The funding changes, however, have already have an immediate impact locally, eliminating a literacy coordinator, Maureen Doll, who now works for the Kamloops YMCA and has transferred some of her previous duties. 

“There was no funding for a KELLI [Kamloops Early Language and Literacy Initiative] coordinator, so we did the best we could to find a way to continue with the programming, specificially the Parent-Child Mother Goose program. We run over 60 programs a year,” said Doll, who’s the Director of Family Services at the Kamloops YMCA. 

The YMCA has been able to hire a part-time coordinator for the Mother Goose program. But literacy programs in Kamloops are in serious doubt moving forward, including the annual ABC Family Literacy Day. 

“We do have funding for the next year, and so that is great and we’ll move forward with that, and honestly it’s a really big question mark,” noted Doll. “I can’t say with much certainty that we’ll be able to sustain the amount of programming that we have right now.”

Some children and literacy advocates spoke in front of the province’s finance committee in Kamloops on Tuesday evening, voicing their concerns with funding. Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Peter Milobar, who’s on the committee, says he’s concerned about the long-term implications of the funding changes. 

“I think the broader concern, both locally as well in the smaller communities outside of Kamloops, the Make Children First, the Success By Six funding, those changes, it’s still unclear what that will actually mean,” said Milobar. “Is it going to a broader age group? Same amount of money, so less funding for more kids? Who will actually have access to this? So there’s a whole lot of uncertainty out of there and that’s breeding a lot of confusion. It seems like the Minister has made this announcement without any clear direction of next steps.” 

WATCH: Local MLA Peter Milobar addresses the funding changes for children’s programs

Lissel feels the cutbacks will hurt the coordinating efforts between local agencies working towards the same goals of making life better for children and families, even though the MCFD wants to eliminate that very coordination. 

“Our fear is that people are going to start to compete for some funding if the Ministry decides to give it out, say, in a Request For Proposal format or there is a granting process, instead of us sitting around a table and working together,” said Lissel. “Everybody’s going to start applying for these little bits of money, which is a fractured system as opposed to partnership-based.”

As the local representative, Milobar says he’ll keep in touch with local agencies and push for Kamloops to get the funding back. 

“If it’s a program with a slightly different name but same delivery or same outcomes that can be achieved, that’s great,” he said. “A lot of smaller communities get very nervous about the cards in the same deck being shuffled, no new money coming in by the minister, just re-arranging programs, a lot of times when that happens you see the larger centres wind up getting that money and the smaller centres are left at the wayside, so those are the things we’re going to keep our eye out for.”