Welfare of our kids still needs work
Kelowna Capital News
By Alistair Waters
November 20, 2009

The second annual Central Okanagan State of the Child progress report, issued by Community Action Toward Children’s Health, says while the community is making progress in many areas affecting the welfare of children, more needs to be done.

According to local Interior Health medical health officer Dr. Paul Hasselback, who presented the report Friday, there are still “challenges” including the proportion of children in poverty, a difficulty for many parents to find affordable child care and the cost of affordable housing here.

“What really stands out for me is that we are making progress but what’s not so exciting is that there are still some serious challenges,” said Hasselback.

The brief report, which outlines several statistics about local issues concerning children, says while 848 child care spaces have opened up here in the last five years, a 23 per cent increase, only 48 per cent of parents report successfully finding child care compared with 67 per cent five years ago.

And the fees they have to pay have jumped $200 per month in the last three years.

The average family now pays nearly $900 per month to have a toddler looked after during the day, according to the report….

In the last six months, the average monthly food bill has jumped 10 per cent to $774 for a family of four.

Annually, for the past four years, more than 9,000 children have been helped by the Kelowna Community Food Bank.

Hasselback said a good gauge of how a society is doing is by how it treats its children…

The report’s author, Amanda Turner, said while it appears children have been dropped from the current political agenda as the country and the province recover from the recent economical downturn, it is crucial for that to change.

She said it has been shown that the first six years of a child’s life are critical for their future development and more needs to be done to support them during that time.

Calling today’s children a “lost generation,” she said the future belongs to those who prepare for it today and that preparation needs to start with our kids.