{"id":236610,"date":"2019-11-04T22:58:34","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T03:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=236610"},"modified":"2019-11-04T22:58:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T03:58:34","slug":"ndp-joins-advocates-former-children-in-care-to-demand-ucp-reverse-cruel-budget-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/11\/04\/ndp-joins-advocates-former-children-in-care-to-demand-ucp-reverse-cruel-budget-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"NDP joins advocates, former children in care to demand UCP reverse cruel budget cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The UCP government has dropped the eligibility age for the program from 24 to 22, meaning 500 former foster children will see their support eliminated as early as next spring. (File Photo<\/a>: Jason Kenney\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

EDMONTON – The NDP Official Opposition, former children in care, advocates and members of the all-party endorsed Ministerial Panel on Child Intervention are calling on Jason Kenney and the UCP Government to immediately reverse their cruel cuts to the Support Financial Assistance Agreement program.<\/p>\n

The UCP government has dropped the eligibility age for the program from 24 to 22, meaning 500 former foster children will see their support eliminated as early as next spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just cruel. These are young people that are often without a support network, without parents to rely on, and now they have nowhere to turn,\u201d said Rakhi Pancholi, Official Opposition Critic for Children’s Services and MLA for Edmonton-Whitemud. \u201cThis is a government that is willingly giving over $4.7 billion to big corporations but can\u2019t bother to find the necessary funding to preserve supports for children in care that are trying to move their lives forward?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe UCP buried this cut in their budget and now that they\u2019ve been caught, they must immediately reverse this heartless decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shyannah Sinclair, 21, a former child in care and current participant in the Support Financial Assistance Agreement program, said she worries about the future for her and her daughter. Sinclair was informed last week that she would be removed from the SFAA program in 10 months as a result of the UCP\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really scared and upset and I don\u2019t really know what I\u2019m going to do,\u201d she said. \u201cMy goal is to be finished school by the time I\u2019m 24. This really impacts my future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallis Kendal, a longtime outreach worker, co-founder of the iHuman Youth Society and founder of the Moving the Mountains project to help at-risk Indigenous women, said the Kenney Government\u2019s cuts will cause serious harm to many young adults like Shyannah.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing that changes a youth\u2019s future is knowing they have a future,\u201d Kendal said. \u201cWhen Sandra Bromley and I found iHuman Youth Society for trauma-impacted youth we set the age range at 14 to 24 years because we knew that youth in care would need more years to reach their benchmark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Choate, who served on the Ministerial Panel on Child Intervention, which provided recommendations that were accepted by all Alberta political parties, including the UCP, also criticized the cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a former member of the Child Intervention Panel, I am deeply concerned about roll backs of supports for some of the most vulnerable youth,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they were eligible for PDD or AISH funding they would, in most cases, already be on it. This is a moment when we should step back and wonder if these changes should be reconsidered.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NDP Caucus will be putting forward a motion for an emergency debate in the Legislature Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t let this go,\u201d Pancholi said. \u201cThe UCP lied to Albertans. Nowhere in their platform did they say the gift to big corporations would result in cuts to supports for our most vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON – The NDP Official Opposition, former children in care, advocates and members of the all-party endorsed Ministerial Panel on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":232063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-albertas-ndp-caucus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236611,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236610\/revisions\/236611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}