Exposing stigmas around FASD in Prince Albert

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Barb Hunter stands next to the display made at the PA Early Years Family Resource Centre. (Image Credit: paNOW Staff/Nick Nielsen)

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Another organization that works closely with the FRC is Family Futures, and they’ve taken their FASD awareness campaign directly into schools during the first week of the year. Anna Stene, a prenatal outreach worker with Family Futures, ran a poster colouring contest with 25 different Grade 6 and Grade 7 classes around the city.  

Afterwards, Stene and her fellow outreach worker Charnelle Redwood collected the top 20 posters, and they will all be displayed around Prince Albert over the coming weeks. 

“We all picked the winner and our winner was from Princess Margaret, Megan Markowski’s grade six class, and we did send over pizza with them,” said Stene. 

Right now the winning posters are at the Gateway Mall, but will be on display next week at the South Hill Mall, and finally at the Victoria Hospital for one final week. 

Both initiatives were aimed at removing stigmas around people with FASD and the parents that raised them.  

The winning classroom at Princess Margaret’s School. (Image Credit: Photo submitted/Anna Stene)

For Stene, she said that when they first came into the schools, there was some teasing and jokes made about ‘kids that might have it’, but after taking the time to explain how serious the disorder can be, the kids quickly understood. 

“We hit a really good grade, Grade 6 and Grade 7, because they’re at that point where they’re starting to mature a little bit more and they have a better understanding. So we were trying to hit them a little bit younger just so that when they do grow up and if there’s something that happens where they’re exposed to this, at least they’ll have those tools to help support whoever it may be or support themselves, however that looks.” 

In working with the kids at the FRC, Hunter has seen amazing things from them. With each case of FASD being so different, she said she has seen kids who look like they are paying attention to instructions but can’t remember them right away, and the exact opposite, where a kid doesn’t look like they’re paying attention but has retained every piece of information told to them. At the end of the day, Hunter believes that a FASD child’s success depends on the support they receive. 

“Children with FASD are extremely wonderful kids. One key point we want to raise awareness of is that all kids have a superpower. So FASD kids may not have a diagnosis, but it may be suspected or you don’t know, but FASD kids are extremely friendly; they’re caring, often they’re very creative. So they have a lot of gifts to bring.” 

Hunter believes the misconceptions about FASD also pertain to the parents of those children. Hunter said it’s unfair to consider them negligent without understanding their full story.

“I’ve heard comments like, ‘Well, it’s preventable… don’t people know?’ No, actually, not all people know. We make that assumption that all people know that no amount of alcohol is safe, but there’s a lot of other factors that come into play with that. One being a woman may not know she’s pregnant and alcohol may be part of her life. No judgment there, but she may not know she’s pregnant till much later in her pregnancy.” 

Hunter added that many FASD cases come from parents who weren’t planning to have kids, but found out they were having a kid long enough into the pregnancy that it was already too late to adjust their lifestyles in time. 

For Stene, she has already approached some of the schools in Prince Albert to bring more FASD awareness programming into their curriculum later this year.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com