The province is in the middle of a review on child and youth well-being as it comes out of the pandemic.
Children’s Services Minister Rebecca Schulz says she’s been meeting with different groups and people around the province to hear about how the pandemic has impacted young people, and even met with the Peace River School Division earlier this week.
“We knew that there have been impacts based on not only what we’ve heard from parents and kids, but also from some research that was coming out from across Canada and the world, we knew that there was impacts on learning, there was impacts to early learning and development of young children and obviously the mental health and well-being and the physical health of young people.”
Schulz was on the Trending 55 Hot Seat and says one of the big things they want to improve is making supports and programs more accessible in rural Alberta.
“One of the most important things we’re hearing is that they have to be developed and offered where young people are accessing them. We could develop the most perfect programs, but if young people aren’t connecting with them and accessing them, that’s really not great for anybody. It’s not only what is missing, what’s working well and how can we expand on those things, we know that in some Northern communities, there are some unique challenges.”
We also talked with the Minister about the Province’s work on getting more affordable child care in Alberta, you can listen to the full conversation below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
