Op Ed: Costs of cutting social services
The following is an excellent Op-Ed published couple weeks ago in the Victoria Times Colonist . Sadly the 2010 Provincial budget presented March 3 promises exactly the sort of short-sighted, "penny wise, pound foolish" cuts that Ms Charlesworth warned against.
Cutting social services won't pay benefits
Slashing government programs will push up health-care costs
By Jennifer Charlesworth, Special to Times Colonist
February 17, 2010
An economist with one of Canada's big banks commented to media last month that health-care spending is the budgetary equivalent of Pac-Man, "eating everything else in people's budgets."
In B.C., health-care spending has risen almost 50 per cent in the last eight years and accounts for more than 40 per cent of all provincial expenditures. In Canada, the $128 billion a year spent on health care consumes 12 per cent of the national GDP.
Is that simply the price we have to pay for good health?
In a word, no. For many years, researchers have studied the factors in a person's life that determine good health. They concluded long ago that a good health-care system is by no means the only requirement -- in fact, it's just a quarter of the story. Read more
Update on MCFD restructuring & budget
The Ministry for Children & Families, which now has responsibility for managing and funding all out-of-school services and supports for children and youth with special needs, faces significant challenges in the year ahead.
Despite promises to protect the budgets for special needs, senior Ministry staff have confirmed that unfunded new costs and rising demands will further strain existing services. On top of this, the Ministry is in the midst of another major restructuring, which includes integrating special needs services with other children's services in a new regional management framework.
MOMS was invited to a meeting on February 15 for an update on Ministry plans and challenges. Our unofficial report on the discussion can be found here . We will continue to share any further information or updates as they reach us and welcome first-hand reports from families about how the restructuring and budget challenges may be affecting them personally.
Leaked MCFD memo reveals planned cuts
Leaked MCFD documents obtained today by MOMS describe a process that has been underway since August 2009 to achieve "baseline funding reductions" for contracted agencies that deliver most of the Ministry's front-line services and supports - with a focus on cuts to community-based intervention and early intervention.
The "North Region STOB 80 Reduction Planning Process and Principals" (sic) document refers to a process for "cost recovery" for the current year and outlines planning, roles, principles and provincial direction guiding a second process that is also now underway to determine further reductions for 2010-11 in order to meet Ministry budget targets.
BC Children’s Budget debate
The BC Legislature debated the Ministry for Children & Family Development's revised 2009-10 budget on Nov 4-5. Below, an extract of Opposition Critic Maurine Karagianis questioning Minister Mary Polak about autism cuts:
"M. Karagianis: When we look at things like the EIBI program…. Let's talk about that very specifically — the financial implications, which the minister has said is really the sole issue here around why this program was cut. Why did the government not make an attempt to sit down with program providers and families and try and find a way to provide what is very admittedly an exceptional program with exceptional outcomes to more families, rather than saying, "Because we can only reach 70 families at a time, we're cutting the whole program," and rather than actually finding a way to make that very effective program available to, perhaps, more people?