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Good News

February 24, 2010 permalink

Dufferin Children's Aid has trimmed the number of children in care since 2006. According to a Banner article, the cut is 30 percent, according to a published chart only 20 percent. Either way, it is a real improvement, and shows that Trish Keachie is curtailing the excesses of the Putman era. We wish her continued success in reducing unnecessary family intervention even more.

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Well-being report card released

Trish Keachie, Lori-Jane Harding, Sylvia Jones and Sue Snider
Launching DUCK:. Dufferin Coalition For Kids (DuCK) held its official launch Feb. 12 at Dufferin Child and Family Services. The coalition also unveiled three initiatives including The Well-Being of Children Ages Birth to Six: A Report Card for Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph; Dufferin Family Directory website (www.dufferinfamilydirectory.com) and the Positive Parenting Initiative. On hand for the event were (from left): DuCK co-chairs Trish Keachie and Lori-Jane Harding, Dufferin-Caledon MPP Sylvia Jones and Sue Snider, Dufferin County community services committee chair.
Adam Martin-Robbins

The number of children in protective services in Dufferin decreased by 30 per cent between 2006 and 2008. During that same time period, there was 40 a per cent drop in the rate of serious dental problems among children in Junior and Senior Kindergarten in the county.

Those are just two of the hundreds of statistics included in a new report released this month dubbed The Well-Being of Children Ages Birth to Six: A Report Card for Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph.

“What our hope is for the report card is that agencies and organizations will use it for planning purposes,” said Lori-Jane Harding, program manager for children’s services at Dufferin County, who helped write the report. “We hope local agencies will look at the data ... and start promoting changes.”

The report card was the result of a collaborative effort between a dozen agencies and organizations known collectively as the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Report Card Coalition. It aims to provide data on several factors that impact a child’s “well-being” including health, learning, development and happiness.

The data was drawn from numerous sources, explained data analysis co-ordinator Jane Hall, including Statistics Canada from 2001 and 2006 Census, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Kindergarten Parent Survey, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health Parenting Study from 2007 and Early Development Instrument (EDI) results from 2006.

Harding said while much of the data has been available for a few years now, this is the first time it has been compiled into a single document.

According to the report card, 34 per cent of parents in the county feel they need more parental support; up to 30 per cent of Dufferin’s five year olds may be overweight or at risk of obesity; while 31 per cent of Senior Kindergarten students may have difficulty meeting certain “task demands” in Grade 1.

Some of the data contained in the report is broken down by “neighbourhoods” including Orangeville north, Orangeville south, Orangeville east, Dufferin south (Orangeville west and East Garafraxa), Dufferin east (Mono and Mulmur) Dufferin west (Melancthon, Amaranth and East Luther Grand Valley) and Shelburne.

While it provides a comprehensive amount of information on a wide range of factors, the report card does not contain any recommendations for taking action to address areas that may be of concern, Harding said.

“The purpose of the report was to provide the data, but not provide the answers,” she said. “It’s a tool.”

Plans are in the works for two more report cards for children aged seven to 12 and 13 to 18. The first of those is slated to be completed by March 2011.

To view the current report card, visit www.wdgreportcard.com (local copy pdf).

Source: Orangeville Banner

From the report card:

children served by DCAFS

sequential