Children's Services Policy

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Countless Alberta families can’t find or can’t afford the child care they need. We have a plan.

Albertans have spoken out with their child care concerns, indicating four key problems:

  • Long wait lists for child care spaces
  • The sector’s difficulty in retaining staff
  • Concerns about the quality of care and
  • Parents struggling to balance the demands of working and raising children.

An Alberta Liberal government will provide child care in this province based on a fundamental commitment to the QUAD principles developed by child care experts: quality, accessibility, universality, and developmental benefits for children in care.

We will have:

  • More high-quality and diverse child care spaces
  • A larger, more stable child care workforce
  • Better support to parents and caregivers

We will work with employers and industry to develop a set of best practices to improve conditions for employees with children, and to increase understanding between employers and parents who work with them.

  • The Alberta Liberal Caucus has, and will continue to, support a Child and Youth Advocate who reports directly to the Legislature, rather than to the Minister for increased accountability and transparency in the system.  The Advocate has to challenge the government, to point to the areas that the Children and Youth in the system have pointed to as insufficient, and this is best done from outside the department where one is not in fear of losing their own job for speaking out.
  • Our caucus is opposed to “outcome-based” supports – we want a system that not only provides adequate assistance to our children and youth in need, but also those professionals who have been involved in providing the assistance. We do not believe in a system that places those in trouble on a scale from ‘uncured’ to ‘cured’ with no flexibility in planning, or funding. 
  • We will address staffing issues within organizations and departments who work with troubled children and youth, and ensure that human services workers in the not-for-profit sector receive the same wages and benefits as their government counterparts. The design of Outcome Based Funding is not conducive to attracting new and well trained professionals to the industry.

 

Children's Services Responses & Questions

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25 October 2011

Children in Care/International Trade Representatives (October 24, 2011)

Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. An alarming number of the 50 children killed while in this government’s care in the past decade were First Nations; 67 per cent of the children currently in care have been taken from First Nations families.

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01 June 2011

Chase wants to stop needless child deaths in foster care

Calgary – Official Opposition Children and Youth Services Critic Harry Chase is deeply saddened by the death of yet another child who was in the care of the provincial government.

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11 May 2011

Daycare Accreditation (May 10, 2011)

Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In 2007 this government removed the 80-children cap on the maximum number of children that may be accommodated in a child care facility in this province. 

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10 May 2011

Protection of Children in Care (May 9, 2011)

Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Fourteen-month-old Eliza-beth Velasquez had already suffered two broken legs when her desperate grandparents contacted police and Alberta Children and Youth Services in March of last year. 

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27 April 2011

Protection of Children in Care (April 26, 2011)

Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the Easter weekend an adoptive father reported that his child had once again been apprehended. 

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13 April 2011

Daycare Accreditation (April 12)

Dr. Taft: Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Children and Youth Services. Last summer after an unaccredited daycare in Stony Plain was ordered closed because of concerns with force-feeding and mistreating toddlers, the minister said, and I quote: we should have accreditation at 100 per cent. End quote.

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13 April 2011

Mental Illness Treatment Services for Children (April 12)

Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On Monday of last week a 15-year-old girl refused to get back in her temporary caseworker’s car after she left her group home to go for a coffee.

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12 April 2011

Mental Illness Services for Children (April 11)

Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I met this morning with the father of a 15-year-old girl who has not only seen her share of hell but has made life hellish recently for those around her.

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