posted Jan 2, 2012 6:21 AM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
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| No Frill's owner Brian Macdonald with Sophie Davies-Hales, mom Dana and their newly certified Autism Services Dog Crosby |
Meet Sophie. She has a riot of dark brown curls, cheeks as
round as apples, a little brother who likes to play dressup and a big
sister. Sophie also has a whole host of largely invisible special needs,
and now an autism service dog that shadows her every move. Sophie was
adopted as a baby by Mom Dana Davies-Hales and Tony Hales. She was three
when she was diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Neurological Developmental
disorder ( a condition that falls under the umbrella term of fetal
alcohol spectrum disorder, caused by prenatal alcohol exposure, and
PDD-NOS ( pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified -
on the autism spectrum). She runs, is impulsive, lags developmentally,
has significant sensory issues, and generally isn't aware of danger.
Before her diagnosis, Mom and Dad began researching ways to better help
their child be safe and grow to become independent in the world and they
kept coming back to the idea of a service dog. Tonight they met with No
Frill's owner Brian Macdonald to thank him for their contributions to
President's Choice Children's Charities. The charity supports children
with disabilities and Macdonald noted often that means helping to give
families funds to modify their vehicle for a wheelchair. The charity
gave $10,000 towards the extensive training involved in getting Crosby
ready to help Sophie. Macdonald said he doesn't have a lot of
opportunities to meet with the people their charity helps and it was
great to see the impact their fundraising can have in person.
There are many ways to access a service dog, but a lot of them can be
very expensive because of the training involved. Dana and Tony
discovered Autism Dog Services ( http://www.autismdogservices.ca/)
They are local to southwestern Ontario. "We just wanted to do the best
thing for Sophie," Dana said. "Sophie has many meltdowns because of
overstimulation, noises, sounds, lights. A service dog will help keep
her calm and grounded. Before a service dog it was hard to take Sophie
out in public because she would have many melt downs. She still
sometimes has a hard time but is able to stay out longer because of
having a service dog." Wade Beattie is the founder and
director of ADS. He began his career as a guide dog trainer/instructor
at Canine Vision Canada and for the past 13 years, has worked with
children with autism and their families. He has collaborated with some
of the world’s leading guide and service dog trainers and was a pioneer
in bringing autism service dogs to Canada. Crosby comes with a price tag
of $18,000 and the Davies-Hales family has been actively raising money
for well over one year. They've done barbecues and craft sales,
collected pop cans and raffled off Westjet tickets. Needless to say the
$10,000 contribution made by President's Choice goes a long way. The
store constantly runs fundraisers in store. Customers can contribute at
checkout or during specific campaigns. Autism
Dog Services is a non profit organization. They are not funded by
government, but rather the support of the community and their donations,
as well as fundraisers from the community and the wait list families. To
date the family has raised $13,000. They are still hoping to raise the
remainder - about $5,000 by the end of the year through donations and
various fundraisers.
"Crosby offically became a
certified service dog a few weeks ago when he passed the public access
test. We couldn't be happier," said Dana. In
time Crosby is expected to help Sophie become more independent and
simply calm her down when she begins to bolt or have a meltdown. Service
dogs are beginning to be used with a wider range of disabilities than
they once were. Children with FASD and/or autism have been shown to
benefit often from the relationship, the grounding effect the dog has
and the simple fact that the animal can help improve socialization
skills. As well service dogs can help bridge the gap between children
with Autism and society.
The costs of a service dog broken down are:
♥ purchase cost of the dog ♥ dog food ♥ veterinary care until the dog is transitioned into the new family's home (approx. 18 mths to 2 years) ♥ training for parents in the care and handling of the dog ♥ training the child and dog together as a team ♥ equipment and identification ♥ ongoing support as required for the working life of the dog Or about $650 a month to train, foster and provide equipment, food and veterinary care.
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posted Feb 22, 2011 9:31 AM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
By Paula Schuck
Cofounder the Canadian Coalition of
Adoptive Families
Hi and welcome to the Canadian
Coalition of Adoptive Families site
A little bit about us...
We are adoptive parents seeking to
support other adoptive families.
Near the end of 2010 we had an
incredibly busy time advocating politically at the provincial and
federal levels of government. More than ever before, the coalition is
seeing a genuine momentum and political desire to reach out to
adoptive families and the greater community of the adoption triad and
solicit ideas on how to better support families formed by adoption
and how to improve the lives of Canada’s children.
In late November 2010, the Standing
Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the
Status of Persons with Disabilities, otherwise known as HUMA began
calling witnesses to testify to the parliamentary committee about
federal support measures for adoptive parents. For several weeks the
committee, expected to report back to the Canadian government some
time this year, heard from adoptees, youth in care, aboriginal youth,
adoptive parents, adoptive parent support groups, adoption agencies
and advocacy groups such as the ACC and AdoptOntario. Laura
Eggertson, a CCAF member and board member of the Adoption Council of
Canada spoke to many issues needed across Canada, not the least of
which is accurate
data on numbers of children in care.
Canada doesn’t currently maintain this information. Lee-Ann
Sleegers and Paula Schuck, both CCAF members, spoke to the need for
equitable
employment insurance benefits
for adoptive parents (currently adoptive families receive 15 weeks
less paid leave than families formed in the typical fashion.) Which
means our children, who often need more time to bond, attach and
heal, get less time and our families are at a financial disadvantage
from the start. The CCAF also noted the need for a national Fetal
Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) strategy to
support families raising children with this disability.
For the first time ever, the Canadian
Coalition of Adoptive Families was called to present in person and in
written form to the Ontario government during their budget hearings
in Toronto. Our appeal was centred on post-adoption supports
and standardized subsidies that follow children once they are
adopted into their forever homes. As well we noted again the need for
supports for FASD.
Towards the end of 2010, various
adoption advocacy and child welfare groups throughout Canada came
together to form a new national advocacy working group to drive
change forward for Canada’s children. The National Adoption Action
Network is a group that draws members from all the provinces and
includes as stakeholders: The Adoption Council of Canada, The
Adoption Council of Ontario, The Canadian Coalition of Adoptive
Families, the Adoption Support Centre of Saskatchewan, adoptive
parents, birth parents and adoptees. We at the CCAF are working hard
on committees to further the unemployment insurance and maternity
leave benefits issue and the need to make FASD a disability that is
prevented when able, and understood, accurately diagnosed and
supported.
Cofounder Wendy Conforzi also continues
to work on the NACAC board bringing her views and perspective as a
foster parent of over 30 years and an adoptive parent.
We are seeing more families using
animal assisted therapies as a means to help children heal and to aid
those with trauma, attachment disorders and neurological conditions
like FASD. We at the CCAF continue to attend national and
international conferences to bring our families more information
about these types of therapies.
These are just a few of the successes
of 2010. We are all volunteers here at the CCAF and I want to thank
our board members for their sacrifices this year. We log long hours
on these issues, often spending our grocery money to travel and
advocate so that other families will not have to.
If you can offer any support, we are in
need of:
Volunteers to help with letter
writing campaigns and other tasks as needed. An accountant that can
help us at year’s end is also very much needed.
Funds to help us do what we do.
A graphic artist to help us
design a logo for the CCAF.
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posted Jan 26, 2011 1:00 PM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
The Star
2010/12/31 00:01:00
LAURA EGGERTSON
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
My daughter Miranda was 8 years old the first time she called me “Mommy.”
Children who spend time in foster care, as Miranda did, usually
have many Moms. By the time I adopted her, at least six women in her
life, including her birth mother, had filled the mother role. She called
many of them, including Evelyn, her last foster mother, Mom. It was an
easy way to blend in with the other kids in the household.
When she came to live with me, Miranda called me “Mom” almost right
away. Even as a novice parent, as excited as I was, I knew it was far
more significant to me than her. She confirmed that, later, during the
abysmally horrible teenage years, when she told me I was just another in
a long line of mothers.
But “Mommy” — that's something else. “Mommy” means your child has
let down her guard. She's feeling vulnerable, and at the same time
trusting enough to creep closer. Saying “Mommy” is like saying “home.”
My first “Mommy” moment came in a phone call. It was near the end of a workday at the Toronto Star's Parliament Hill bureau, some weeks after Miranda had bravely jettisoned the life she knew and arrived to live with me.
I've long since forgotten why she called. A question about when I
would pick her up from her after-school program, or the need for a
permission form the next day.
What I remember is answering the phone in my busy reporter's voice. I heard this little voice say, “Mommy?”
It took a moment to register. Then I realized, with part shock and
part thrill, that she was talking to me. That I really was a mother —
and my identity (and my life) had forever changed.
Other friends who have adopted older children have had similar experiences.
Jim joined my friend Kim and Buddy's family in Boston when he was
15. He called them Mom and Dad right away, Kim says — “but it sounded a
lot more like ‘Hey' and ‘Hey you'.”
It wasn't until Jim was 18 and had behaved in a way he expected
would get him thrown out of the house that the meaning behind the names
he called his parents finally sunk in. Instead of disowning him, Kim and
Buddy stood by him. They asked how they could help.
“That was when I knew they really were my Mom and Dad and I called them that as a connection, not just a name,” Jim said later.
Kim's two daughters, Tanya and Christine, did not begin to call her
Mommy until they had gone through illness and trauma, respectively, as
young adults.
“As adults, both of them call me Mommy all the time,” says Kim.
My friend Joy's foster daughter used every version of Mom, Mommy,
Mama and Mother to preface endless questions. The constant demands for
attention nearly drove Joy crazy.
One day, Joy was about to ask her to stop, when her daughter said, “Do you know how good it feels to have someone to call Mom?”
Today, my daughter Miranda is a mother herself. We're both
anxiously awaiting her first daughter's first word — and that first
“Mommy.”
I'm also waiting for the day Miranda will call me Mom again — or maybe even Mommy.
At 17, Miranda reunited with her birth mother, who has since died.
The struggles with divided loyalties that plague many children adopted
when they are older resurfaced. Miranda felt disloyal, I think, as if
she was rejecting her birth family when she called me by a title that
both of the women close to her heart had shared.
Now she calls me by my first name. It sounds awkward to me, and
perhaps to her. I understand that the point is to create distance
between us, especially when she feels on the verge of getting too close.
She can't quite bring herself to acknowledge our relationship directly.
But I have learned, most days, to look past the words, and to wait when I get pushed away.
From Kim and Joy, I know these names our children call us — so
fraught for these kids — are tied to both attachment and the
trustworthiness we parents have to demonstrate.
You never know when a child bruised by life and passed from family to family will finally attach.
And I have had my Mommy moments. I still hear it, occasionally,
from my second daughter, when she forgets she is too old for the more
childish diminutive, or needs comfort.
As Miranda grows into motherhood herself, and hears “Mommy” on her
daughter's lips for the first time, she will experience the power of the
word.
I hope she will one day understand that you can have more than one mother, and love and honour them both.
Laura Eggertson is a freelance writer and editor in Ottawa. |
posted Dec 20, 2010 12:23 PM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
JUSTINE HUNTER
VICTORIA—
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010 1:17PM EST
Last updated Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010 1:20PM EST
The B.C. government has radically cut back on internal audits meant
to ensure child protection work is being properly carried out. The
audits, designed to monitor how quickly and how thoroughly social
workers investigate child welfare complaints, have declined this year to
roughly 200 reviews on more than 30,000 calls.
That’s an alarming decline, the province’s watchdog for children and youth said. “The
number is so low as to be insignificant as any meaningful measure,”
said Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the Representative for Children and
Youth. In 2006, when Ms. Turpel-Lafond’s office was created, the
province conducted more than 1,100 audits. She said the public cannot
have confidence that the province is serving vulnerable children well
when those reviews are not taking place. “They are the only reliable, valid, accepted tool to tell you how your system is doing,” Ms. Turpel-Lafond said in an interview. The
provincial government has set a pattern with the child protection
audits, typically embracing the practice only when it is in the
spotlight. Audits were phased out in 1983, and then brought back
15 years ago, after Mr. Justice Thomas Gove delivered an indictment of
the province’s system of child protection. Judge Gove investigated the
death of Mathew Vaudreuil, a horrendously abused and neglected little
boy who was killed by his mother despite numerous contacts with social
services. The Gove inquiry demanded, among other things, that
government reinstate its audits to monitor the quality of services
delivered by child welfare workers. A decade later, retired judge
Ted Hughes was appointed to investigate another tragic failure of the
child protection system, the death of 19-month-old Sherry Charlie. His
2006 report found the system of audits had once again petered out. He
stressed the need for effective audits to monitor the child welfare
system to promote “continuous improvement of policy, standards and
practice.” Mary Polak, the Minister for Children and Family
Development, said the government has found other ways to achieve the
same results. “There is no lessening of oversight just because
there is a reduction in the number of audits being conducted,” she said
in an interview. “The audit is only one mechanism for tracking and
reviewing the way in which child welfare operates in British Columbia.” Asked
why the government has cut back on its audits, she said: “It really
comes down to professional judgment with respect to how cases ought best
be dealt with.” She said the ministry is working to change to a
broader reporting system, expected to be rolled out next spring. It is
supposed to go beyond reviewing paper files by involving parents, youth
and front-line workers. She added that the ministry is also
reporting to the watchdog, with monthly and quarterly meetings to share
information on critical injuries and deaths. “There is much closer collaboration between the two offices,” she said. But
that collaboration has been questioned by Mr. Hughes himself, who has
repeatedly offered mediation to improve what he describes as a
dysfunctional relationship between the ministry and its watchdog. Last
week, Ms. Polak sat down with Mr. Hughes. She said the meeting was
positive, but maintained that her ministry has a good day-to-day working
rapport with the Representative for Children and Youth. Ms.
Turpel-Lafond, however, said she has been frustrated by the ministry’s
promise of “transformation” when she cannot see a concrete plan to
replace the audit system with something better. “When I review
injuries and deaths, I see real frailties in the system,” she said. If
complaints are not investigated quickly, she said, risks to children can
escalate. “What’s key for me is evidence-based reporting –
actually demonstrating outcomes through regular, accurate information.
It’s the key to restoring public confidence in this field.”
|
posted Dec 20, 2010 12:21 PM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
Treatment of inmates with mental illness comes under fire
By JANICE TIBBETTS, Postmedia News
December 15, 2010 Canadian
prisons should not be "serving as hospitals by default," says a House
of Commons committee report that recommends the government make a
significant investment to help mentally ill and drug-addicted inmates. Opposition
members of the public safety committee, in a study released yesterday,
make 71 recommendations on how the prison system can improve the lives
of mentally ill inmates, ranging from cash infusions to curtailing
double bunking and segregation, and simply building more cells with
windows to let the light in. Conservative members of the
committee issued a dissenting report, asserting that the government has
taken significant steps to help drug-addicted and mentally ill
inmates. The 97-page report, the outcome of months of public
hearings in which the committee heard from dozens of witnesses, notes
that about 80 per cent of offenders serving sentences of two years or
more in Canada's 57 federal penitentiaries have problems with drugs or
alcohol. One in 10 male inmates and one in five female inmates suffer from serious mental disorders upon admission to prison. "Correctional
institutions should not be serving as hospitals by default," says the
report. "This is a public safety issue because offenders who fail to
receive appropriate treatment while in custody are more likely to
reoffend after release, thus threatening the security of all
Canadians." The report recommends, "immediate allocation of
additional financial resources," better training of police officers to
recognize mental health problems, expansion of sweat lodges and other
aboriginal healing methods, adding substance abuse counsellors and
psychiatric nurses at every institution, restoring the recently axed
prison farm program, and allowing more family and friend visits. The
government should "provide toilets and windows in every cell with
access to sunlight and fresh air where possible," the report said. The
committee began the study following the death of Ashley Smith, a
mentally ill New Brunswick teenager who killed herself while in custody
in 2007. © Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette |
posted Dec 20, 2010 12:18 PM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
Dec 17, 2010 2:40:00 PM
BELLEVILLE, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Dec. 17, 2010)
- Daryl Kramp, Member of Parliament for Prince Edward-Hastings, on
behalf of the Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M. P. for
Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada,
today announced funding to support youth with mental health and
substance abuse issues who have come into conflict with the law. "Our
Government is proud of the innovative work done with our partners to
help rehabilitate youth in conflict with the law who have unique needs,"
said Mr. Kramp. "Supporting these programs helps keep our communities
safe by working with youth and addressing mental health and substance
abuse issues in very direct ways."
Speaking at the open house for the new location of the John Howard Society of Belleville, Mr. Kramp announced $454,200 from the Youth Justice Fund
toward its LifePlan and Coaching program. This program is aimed at
helping youth with cognitive disabilities such as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum
Disorder (FASD), mental health issues or substance abuse problems, who
are involved in the criminal justice system. Through the creation of
individualized plans, LifePlan works with the youth to develop
individual goals related to education and training, employment, health
and community contribution to assist in their reintegration into the
community. The Youth Justice Fund provides $5
million annually in grants and contributions to projects that encourage a
more effective youth justice system, respond to emerging youth justice
issues and enable greater citizen and community participation in the
youth justice system. Current priorities include addressing
youth involved with gangs, guns and drugs; illicit drug abuse (under the
National Anti-Drug Strategy); and youth in conflict with the law who
are affected by FASD or mental health conditions. To learn more about the Youth Justice Fund, please visit our Web site at www.justice.gc.ca/youth. (Version francaise disponible) Backgrounder: Youth Justice Fund The Youth Justice Fund
provides grants and contributions to projects that encourage a more
effective youth justice system, respond to emerging youth justice issues
and enable greater citizen and community participation in the youth
justice system. The Youth Justice Fund has three components: -- Youth Justice Main Fund;
-- Drug Treatment; and
-- Guns, Gangs and Drugs.
Projects must meet at least one of the following objectives: -- Establish special measures for violent young offenders;
-- Improve the system's ability to rehabilitate and reintegrate young
offenders;
-- Increase the use of measures, outside the formal court process, that are
often more effective in addressing some types of less serious offending;
-- Establish a more targeted approach to the use of custody for young
people; and
-- Increase the use of community-based sentences for less serious
offending.
The Fund supports the development, implementation, and
evaluation of pilot projects that provide programming and services for
youth in conflict with the law. It supports professional development
activities, such as training and conferences, for justice professionals
and youth service providers. Additionally, it funds research on the
youth justice system and related issues. Projects must target
youth who are between the ages of 12 and 17 and currently in conflict
with the law, or justice professionals and/or service providers who work
with these youth. To learn more about the Youth Justice Fund, please visit our Web site at www.canada.justice.gc.ca/youth FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Office of the Minister of Justice
Pamela Stephens
Press Secretary
613-992-4621
Department of Justice Canada
Media Relations
613-957-4207
www.canada.justice.gc.ca
Source: Department of Justice Canada
----------------------------------------------
Office of the Minister of Justice
Pamela Stephens
Press Secretary
613-992-4621
Department of Justice Canada
Media Relations
613-957-4207
www.canada.justice.gc.ca
|
posted Oct 2, 2010 6:08 PM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
Facts & Arguments Essay
Ian McLatchie
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Sep. 30, 2010 6:19PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Sep. 30, 2010 6:49PM EDT
My relationship with my birth father Mike was like a small animal that comes quickly into the world, finds its feet at once and moves intensely through its short life.
Within minutes of receiving my birth records I had discovered not only that my father was a writer and filmmaker whose work I knew, but that he lived almost within eyeshot of my home.
Time doesn't heal all wounds
We soon met and developed an immediate rapport. After that, everything followed a similar, accelerated pace. A year after our first contact he was dead, and I was left with a sense of loss far greater than the limited stock of memories on which it could feed.
It was a relationship many years in the making. I was born in Edmonton and grew up in a loving family in Calgary. I was told I was adopted at an early age. But it was not until my late teens that I began to understand how deeply rooted my cautiousness and insecurity were in the fact that I was adopted, and some time more before I felt the need to learn about my origins.
In my early 20s, I applied for information on my birth and was mailed documents that provided the basic circumstances (father 16, mother 18, unmarried), a few vital statistics, mother's surname and grandfathers' occupations. Not much, but enough to begin searching for my birth parents.
That's something I thought of doing many times, but never acted upon, even when Alberta instituted a policy of full disclosure of adoption records. Only after my wife and I retired from our teaching careers to her childhood home on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia did I finally apply.
It's difficult to explain why it took me almost 35 years to take that final step, but it's something many adoptees will understand. The list of reasons not to begin a search was a lengthy catalogue of fears – fear of showing disloyalty to my adoptive family, of being rejected by my birth parents, of discovering nothing at all. And what if I made contact only to discover they were people I disliked or had nothing in common with? How could I break off relations with someone I had encouraged to be part of my life?
My decision to initiate a search had little to do with such seemingly obvious factors as wanting to learn my family history or discover if I had siblings. Apart from curiosity about any medical conditions to which my son or I might be susceptible, I had two primary motives: to hear my birth parents' story of why they gave me away, and to show them through my presence that, whatever hardships my birth caused them, I hoped I helped make it seem worthwhile by being the person I am today.
The birth record arrived last year within weeks of my application. It was an enormous file of medical and legal documents dating from a few months before and after my birth. The shock of discovering, a few pages in, that I had been conceived only miles from where I stood was indescribable, but nothing compared to learning that my father was the person I had heard interviewed on CBC Radio just days before. A Google search produced a detailed autobiographical sketch and a photo, and a glance at the phone book gave me an address. A process I had expected to take months was completed in under an hour.
The shock and exhilaration I felt over the next few days were predictable. But I was not prepared for the growing sense of resentment that I was dependent on this person to help me find the mother who, I quickly realized, had been almost the sole object of my search. My father, after all, was only 16 at the time of my birth.
How does one idealize a 16-year-old father? Had he been permanently affected by fathering a child at such an early age? Quite possibly, but probably not as deeply as a teenaged girl who underwent the pain and humiliation of an out-of-wedlock birth in the early 1950s. It was her I wished to contact, and he was the gatekeeper.
I waited another three weeks to send a letter to Mike. Within hours of its arrival I received a long, warm e-mail response. Two days later we were sitting in a café telling each other our life stories. To my surprise, he and my mother had married and had another three children. The couple divorced many years ago. She never remarried and had died just a few months earlier. Within weeks I had met Mike's second wife, my three siblings and two uncles – all extraordinarily warm and generous people who welcomed me as family.
I had no reference point by which to judge my relationship with Mike; neither, I suspect, did he. We both had full and satisfying lives, but making contact had unquestionably filled an absence we both felt. Particularly because of the small difference in our ages, it felt less like a father-son relationship than a reuniting of long-lost friends. We took pleasure in each other's company and pride in one another's accomplishments.
In December, 2009, Mike was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The treatments went well and it seemed that the disease was in remission, until a catastrophic series of complications kept him in hospital for weeks at a time. In July, word came that the cancer had hopelessly metastasized and Mike had come home to die.
I visited him twice in his last days. By the second visit he was semi-conscious, but on the first he was alert and coherent, although in obvious pain. He seemed genuinely unafraid to die and comforted me and everyone around him. I held his hand and we talked – a bit about death, but mostly about the ordinary things we always talked about. I told him I was proud to have been part of his life and how grateful I was for our year together.
“So am I,” he said. “I think we really made the most of it, didn't we?”
“Yes, we did.”
Ian McLatchie lives in Sechelt, B.C.
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posted Aug 30, 2010 6:18 PM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
August 27, 2010
Alberta Recognizes International Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Awareness Day
Edmonton...
September 9 is International Fetal Alcohol Spectrum
Disorder (FASD) Awareness Day. Each year on the ninth day of the ninth
month, this day acts as a reminder to people around the world that
during the nine months of pregnancy, a woman should abstain from
alcohol.
“Exposure to any amount of alcohol during pregnancy can have
devastating consequences for the baby that will last a lifetime,” said
Alberta Children and Youth Services Minister Yvonne Fritz. “FASD Day is
an excellent opportunity to remind your family and friends about the
importance of abstaining from drinking alcohol during their nine months
of pregnancy.”
Over 23,000 Albertans are affected by FASD, which includes a complex
range of brain injuries and developmental, physical, learning and
behavioural conditions that can result from drinking alcohol during
pregnancy. Through a 10-year plan to deliver community-led programs and
services, the Alberta government is committed to reducing the
incidence and improving the quality of life for those living with FASD.
Supports and services available in Alberta include:
- 12 FASD Service Networks that promote prevention of FASD and
provide people affected by FASD and their caregivers with comprehensive
supports that encourage them to reach their full potential at home,
school, work and in their communities;
- 20 FASD assessment and diagnostic clinics, available in hospitals and other medical centres;
- videoconference learning opportunities for families, caregivers,
professionals and organizations in communities across Alberta, with new
sessions beginning September 29; and
- resources for Albertans to assist with increasing public
awareness and education in their communities including; posters, fact
sheets, booklets, postcards and the latest Taking Action on FASD newsletter.
For more information about FASD in Alberta, the FASD Service
Network nearest you, FASD prevention tools, and to register for the
videoconference learning series, visit www.fasd-cmc.alberta.ca.
-30-
Media inquiries may be directed to:
Tom Olsen
Children and Youth Services Communications
780-427-4801
tom.olsen@gov.ab.ca
To call toll free within Alberta dial 310-0000.
|
posted Jul 19, 2010 11:05 AM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
by Susan Harris
Staff Writer
Published: Jul 17,
2010
Autism
Society of America launches sensory friendly films with AMC Theaters.
Sensory friendly films
are part of a new program by AMC and Autism Society of America. AMC
Theaters will provide the sensory friendly films setting for the Autism
Society. Tickets are $4-6 to watch the films.
AMC Theaters will
provide a more comfortable setting for this unique audience. The theater
lighting will be brought up and the sound will be turned down. The
families will be allowed to bring in their own gluten-free, casein-free snacks, and no
previews or advertisements will be shown before the movie.
Additionally,
audience members are welcome to get up and dance, walk, shout or sing.
AMC's "Silence is Golden®" policy will not be enforced, unless the safety of the audience
is questioned. Tickets are $4-6 depending on location and can be
purchased on the day of the event.
Autism is a complex
developmental disability that typically appears during the first three
years of life. It affects a person's ability to communicate and interact
with others. Autism is defined by a certain set of behaviors and is a
"spectrum disorder" that affects individuals differently and to varying
degrees.
|
posted Jun 11, 2010 7:15 AM by Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
[
updated Jun 17, 2010 11:59 AM
]
News Release
Moratorium imposed on adoptions from Nepal
Ottawa, June 4, 2010 – Canadian adoptions from
Nepal have been suspended due to concerns about fraud and child
trafficking.
A recent
report by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (PDF format, 93 kb) revealed that there is strong evidence
that documents are being falsified on a regular basis and false
statements are regularly made about a child's origins, age and status –
and whether they have been abandoned.
Based on this evidence, and the recommendations of Citizenship and
Immigration Canada (CIC)
and with the support of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC),
the provinces and territories have agreed to suspend adoptions from
Nepal.
Provinces and territories are responsible for approving adoptions. CIC is responsible
for granting the adopted child citizenship or allowing them to
immigrate as a permanent resident. HRSDC’s role is to encourage
communications and co-operation with provincial and territorial,
federal, and foreign government counterparts in the adoption community.
“We know how disheartening this must be for the parents concerned,
but several authoritative sources, such as The Hague Conference and UNICEF,
have raised serious concerns about the use of fraudulent documents and
the prevalence of child trafficking in Nepal,” said Jason Kenney,
Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. “It is
important to get a reformed system in place in Nepal before
proceeding with adoptions.”
Proceeding with adoption cases from Nepal could violate Canada’s
obligations under The Hague Convention on Protection of Children
and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoptions. Both CIC and HRSDC
work in close coordination with provincial and territorial adoption
authorities and are monitoring the situation in Nepal.
“There are a number of Canadian parents seeking to adopt children
from Nepal who are understandably anxious but our priorities remain the
best interests of the child and the prevention of child trafficking,”
added Minister Kenney.
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For further information (media only), please contact:
Alykhan Velshi
Minister’s Office
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
Media Relations
Communications Branch
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
613-952-1650
CIC-Media-Relations@cic.gc.ca |
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