First Call is pleased to join with other organizations and our own Living Wage for Families BC Program in calling on Premier John Horgan and the BC government to bring in a 10-day sick pay program that is seamless, applies to all workers, replaces full wages and ensures sick workers MORE
The BC Government’s 2022 budget consultations are underway and First Call has developed an overview of our key priorities for your reference. First Call’s submission reminds government that we have a long way to go in ending child poverty with 1 in 5 BC children still growing up poor and MORE
HealthLinkBC released a list of resources about COVID-19 available in a variety of languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Hindi, Korean, Punjabi, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The resource explains what COVID-19 is, how to detect and prevent the virus, and answers frequently asked questions surrounding the virus. It also shares other websites and MORE
Future Bright is a free Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver (EFry) program that helps families access up to $3,200 for a child’s education through the Canada Learning Bond and BC Training and Education Savings Grant. EFry will work with families to secure these funds and you can contact EFry for more information.
In case you missed it, the Heart of Touch Community released a short film educating about the benefits of skin-to-skin. In the healthy newborn, skin-to-skin refers to holding the newborn immediately after birth, on the mother or caretaker’s bare chest in an upright position. The practice should be uninterrupted for several hours. For complicated MORE
The Research to Practice Network is a collection of academics and researchers working in collaborative partnership with The Federation of Community Social Services of BC to provide practitioners with insight into emerging research in the field of child and family practice. They recently released an article by Patty Ranahan from Concordia University to discuss MORE
The Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies 2020 conference is hosted by Perinatal Services BC, a part of the Provincial Health Services Authority. The conference is an opportunity for health care professionals interested in the care of pregnant and postpartum women and their newborns to be updated on new research and innovative clinical MORE
The big news for families with children is that starting in October 2020 a new B.C. Child Opportunity Benefit will replace the Early Childhood Tax benefit. In our annual Child Poverty Report Card we have been calling for improvements to this benefit for years. BC is the only province MORE
The Canadian Psychological Association and the Psychology Foundation of Canada have collaboratively released a report on the topic of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (2015) report. The task force was created in order to develop concrete, action-oriented recommendations to improve the field’s service to the First Nations, Métis, MORE
Alberta-based scholars Dr. Peter Choate and Gabrielle Lindstrom describe how parenting capacity assessments in Canada have been and continue to be used to extend the colonial position of child protection in relation to First Nations populations. They explain that the methods to decide if a parent is “good enough” to MORE
The Early Childhood Education Report has been released every three years since 2011. The 2017 report was released last week, which evaluates the quality of provincial and territorial early years services by looking at details of each jurisdiction. Nineteen benchmarks, organized into five equally weighted categories, evaluate governance structures, funding levels, access, MORE
CBC News: Human rights complaint filed against Neufeld and the school board Global News: Chilliwack trustee Barry Neufeld faces call from parents’ group to resign Province: Chilliwack teachers say education board has created ‘toxic’ environment Global News: Union files human rights complaint against trustee Barry Neufeld and Chilliwack school board Abbotsford News: Chilliwack board of MORE
Vancouver’s City Council has recently approved Vancouver: A City For All Women, Women’s Equity Strategy 2018-2028 this month. The strategy aims to make Vancouver a place where “all women have full access to the resources provided in the city and have opportunities to fully participate in the political, economic, cultural and social MORE
The holidays can be a very stressful time for families. With the cost of gifts high and the expectations of children through the roof, not to mention the holiday juggle, the challenges of family dynamics and the pressure to ‘get it all right’, the holidays can be more stressful than MORE
A BC family has issued a desperate call for more supports for their mentally ill child and their family, highlighting research and a recent call to action issued by BC’s Representative for Children and Youth, called Missing Pieces: Joshua’s Story. The Potma family has cried foul about a lack of support services for MORE