By Tyler Marr

Feds announce $1.9M for at-risk youth family strengthening program in Prince Albert

Sep 11, 2018 | 2:00 PM

The federal government announced nearly $1.9 million to support a program aimed at strengthening family stability for high-risk youth in Prince Albert.

The Strengthening Families Program is an international training initiative focused on improving parenting skills and family relationships to reduce problematic behaviours, like aggression, delinquency and addiction in children. Funding from the National Crime Prevention Strategy will be used to help deliver the program.

Operated by Prince Albert Catholic Family Services (CFS), the program is expected to reach over 150 at-risk youth between the ages of six and 17 and their families over five years. Modules within the program will target coping mechanisms for dealing with grief, loss, anger management and family breakups, among others, according to federal minister Scott Brison. Improving educational outcomes and resisting negative peer pressure are further goals of the program.

“These investments for vulnerable families and vulnerable children, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are smart investments in terms of preventing people from getting into the criminal justice system in the first place,” Brison, who made the announcement in Prince Albert Tuesday morning, said. “Once someone is introduced into the criminal justice system, it is very tough to bring them back.”

The program is based heavily in research gathered from across the United States and Canada, according to facilitators at CFS, who noted mass quantitative and qualitative literature on the subject which has withstood rigorous testing. They hope to build on this with routine evaluations to monitor what activities are working and what risk factors need to be addressed. Brison stressed how the planned granular approach to result and delivery reportage will help his and future governments, regardless of political stripe, justify and defend more of these kinds of investments.

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“The nice thing about evidence it helps people on different parts of the spectrum to understand the impact,” he said.

With the country’s Indigenous population the youngest and fastest growing, but also some of the most vulnerable, Brison said it is important they have an opportunity to attain the skills they need to have a better future.

“A young population is a real economic advantage to Canada,” he said. “If they fall through the cracks, it is no longer an opportunity, but a real economic and social time bomb.”

It is important for non-Indigenous Canadian to recognize the vested interest in the success of Indigenous youth, he said, as the long-term social and economic cost of a large and fast-growing population being the most economically and socially disenfranchised and disadvantaged “is far greater than the cost of investing to prevent that from happening.”

“The investment we make in not just young Indigenous people, but in vulnerable peoples at large, are smart investments that will be good for all of us,” he said, noting many families are struggling with economic challenges, poverty, and addiction related to that.

CFS Executive Director Louise Zurowski said members of the organization have worked on the proposal since April 2015. They collaborated with numerous community agencies, such as the public school division, many of which identified the need for more extensive, sustained family counselling programs in the city. 

tyler.marr@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @JournoMarr