Minister impressed with Coaldale FCSS facility

Alberta’s Minister of Children’s Services came away impressed after a visit to Coaldale’s Family and Community Support Services facility.

On July 21, Minister Rebecca Schulz received a full rundown of all the services the local FCSS operation provides in the area.

Staff spent an hour breaking down the different services provided in southern Alberta.

“I have heard so much about the work that FCSS does in this community but also communities all around this area, and so I’m very grateful to be here and just see a little bit more about the integrated supports and what that looks like on the ground,” said Schulz.

“I have been really impressed by what I’ve heard so far.”

The visit served a dual purpose for the minister, who also sought feedback on the government’s new Family Resource Network model.

“The FCSS office here we work with closely because in addition to being FCSS, which falls under Community and Social Services, they are also one of our Family Resource Networks in Children’s Services,” said Schulz.

“That’s really more targeted, integrated supports for kids and families who may need it, and that’s in our prevention and early-intervention work that we do to support families.”

The Minister was also appreciative of the work being done locally by FCSS in other important areas.

“This specific FCSS also does a lot of programming that is culturally appropriate and supports Indigenous communities and other cultural communities in the local area, which is a hugely-important part of the Family Resource Network model,” she said. “Making sure that families have access to supports and services that are not only targeted at their individual needs but also all of the things that make them who they are, like language, culture, ceremony – all of the things that are really important to resiliency and wellbeing.”

Petra DeBow, FCSS Family Services manager, added the FRN model has produced some positives, particularly in the areas of supports for Indigenous and Low-German Mennonite families.

“With the FRN funding, we were able to hire another LGM worker, so that has benefitted this area for sure,” she said. “There are still some struggles and there could be more supports put in because of their unique situation and their unique difficulties just take time. Families do need a lot of intensive support, and you start with basic things like having a bank account set up, getting their taxes sent in and those kind of things, and then you’re moving forward with things to help build those resiliency skills for their families.”

DeBow added there is room for growth within the FRN model.

“Overall, in the rural areas, we need more family support,” she said. “We have very specific funding for things like Triple P, which is a parenting program but often there is a step before that where families need to have their basic needs met. We have that capacity for Indigenous families and low-German families but we don’t really have that funding through the FRN for family support work.”

The FRN model was introduced last year on April 1 and with that, Schulz added her government is seeking input on how things could be done a bit better.

Schulz said it is key for families to have an integrated network of supports available, no matter where they live in Alberta, with an interconnected group of organizations working together to provide wraparound services to support unique needs.

The Minister also added the FRN network was created, in part, to deal with an overlapping of services that some communities were experiencing.

“We had community resource centres, we had family resource centres and we had Parent Link centres,” said Schulz. “One of the things that was often identified was that sometimes in smaller, rural communities, there wasn’t quite as much access to some of those programs and supports. In some communities they were duplicating efforts and then in some there was also a real identification that in fact the age group of 6-14 was a huge gap in service.”

Schulz added the goal is to create supports that work for all youth.

“This was a way we could create an integrated system that some of our spokes are still very targeted from zero to six but as opposed to providing universal programming for kiddos zero to six, which may already exist in many communities in many different ways, we really want to target those early-intervention and prevention supports to those who need it in a way that spanned zero to 18, and supporting both kids and families,” she said.

The new approach has required some adjustments for FCSS.

“Through the FRN we are actually not getting any funding specific for zero to six – no universal programming for parents to come and play, so that is a huge shift,” said DeBow. “Our staff has shifted to more of a parent education, parent family support role, rather than early-childhood coaches.”

DeBow added FCSS has a few other concerns regarding the FRN model.

“The FRN model has the idea of having one central hub that does all the intakes and referrals, does not really work in the rural areas, because there are so many kilometres between each community,” she said.

“Having a central phone number, that has worked, but then the idea of people actually coming in to have that one-stop shop is not really ideal, so referrals and intakes are being taken in the communities where they live.”