Service providers are scrambling in the wake of a provincial announcement that Children’s Services funding would be changing as of March 31.
Children’s Services is cancelling about 450 grants and contracts with 300 organizations that run institutes like parent link centres, home visitation services, family resource centres and other preventative programming like parenting classes, early learning and developmental screening.
The Province hopes to reduce its $77 million expenditure on the prevention programs to about $65 million with its changes in funding.
Debbie Posey, community wellness manager for the Town of Okotoks, said the changes will definitely impact local residents, though the overall effect won’t be known until the new year.
“There were lots of things that have been cut that may potentially impact our community, but I’m not sure we will know about the impact until the new expression of interest is sorted out,” said Posey.
She said Children’s Services is moving to a hub-and-spoke model, wherein agencies or institutes can apply for funding as a hub that would organize and provide services to the community, a spoke, that would operate services, or as both a hub and a spoke.
The deadline to apply for funding is Jan. 20, she said, which has put agencies like the Town of Okotoks’ Family Resource Centre under a time crunch – especially with the Christmas break falling within that window.
“Every single Children’s Services-funded program is scrambling a little bit to understand the model and to put in their own expression of interest, whether they’re a hub and spoke, a hub, or a spoke,” said Posey.
She said it’s up to each agency to propose which type of service provider it is. At this point, the Town of Okotoks is still in discussion but Posey said it’s leaning toward becoming a hub-and-spoke.
“We would provide some services to Okotoks residents, and of course there would be some external ‘spoke’ services that Children’s Services would have formal agreements with, that would fall under the Okotoks hub,” said Posey.
Under this model, agencies in town would sign individual financial agreements with the Province and the Town would be responsible for collecting output and outcome data from each service and reporting to Children’s Services, she said.
She said it’s most important for the Town to maintain the Okotoks Family Resource Centre, which provides a number of services to residents. It falls under a slightly different funding model, which will help it continue to run smoothly, she said.
“It’s hosted by Alberta Health Services, who also provides some funding, and then the Town of Okotoks provides the legal oversight and day-to-day management, and then other funders and donors help support our family resource centre,” said Posey. “Those services are pretty critical, but thankfully are not wholly reliant on Children’s Services funding.”
However, the Town’s Parent Link Centre will not operate as-is after March 31, she said. The services offered by those centres will likely be picked up in other ways, but that means a little rethinking of program structures, she said.
“We need to look at can we provide those former Parent Link services internally, more efficiently and in a more responsive way for our families, or would we be better to request that those services continue to be provided from another provider,” said Posey.
Okotoks CAO Elaine Vincent said the change to Children’s Services funding is just one more example of impacts trickling out of the finer details of the provincial budget.
“We’re trying to do our best to understand the implications of the change and meet with those agencies to determine what impacts that will mean for our community, and we will continue to work that through,” said Vincent.
Susan Laurin, community services director for the Town of Okotoks, said it’s unclear whether a change in funding platform will mean a reduction in provincial dollars for the programs.
“If we do receive a decrease in funding, it could mean a reduction in supports that we give, it could mean a reduction in hours, or it could mean closure of the facility, depending on the degree of the funding cuts,” said Laurin. “We will also be exploring to see if there’s any alternative sources of funding we can receive, but we’re not sure on that.”
