Thank you to all who attended the meeting via Zoom on Saturday October 26th, 2024. We are happy to confirm we have a full slate on our Board of Directors for the coming year.
Below are three of the reports submitted at the meeting.
As presented by Shari Monsma, President F4CRR
President’s Update on Activities for 2023-2024 Fiscal Year
Board of Director’s Activities
From September 2023 to April 2024 Shari as President and Gail as Vice President co-sponsored a research project with UBC Social Work Mastery students and the Ministry of Children and Family Development. This was the first time that MCFD had ever co-sponsored with a non-profit. This entailed bi-weekly meetings with the Mastery students as they went through every stage of their eight-month Research course. In April the students presented their findings in a report entitled, “Examining Support Needs for Children, Youth and Caregivers in Kinship/Out-of-Care Arrangements“ by Grace Pegg, Geraldo Palomino, & Angel Thomas. This report is now posted to our website and Gail shared it with our partners at First Call last month. It was a very important step for our growth to be part of the research community.
This research project and the mentorship and guidance of Dr. Barbara Lee of UBC has led to many more opportunities for Fairness, such as a secondary research report. This will be based on the input from over 30 of our members in 2022 who provided their opinions on the MCFD Child and Family Legislative review. Barbara assisted us in applying for a Community Engagement Grant with UBC which has enabled us to fund this report as well as providing funding for videotaping some of our members stories. We were able to do this videotaping at the Gathering in June and have been also given the opportunity to share these videos at a live screening in Vancouver in February 2025. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who participated. This grant is also funding the creation of an Advocacy Strategic plan that will propel us forward.
We are also working with Barbara on two other joint projects, one is a Practice and Research Together (PART) talk. Where we will share our experiences with the research with Social Workers across Canada. The other upcoming opportunity is a Podcast with UBC which will once again provide more exposure for Fairness.
The Board has worked diligently throughout the year on writing grant proposals, producing grant reports, planning and delivering of townhalls on important issues, organizing and delivering our annual Gathering, meeting monthly with MCFD to gather information and share concerns, developing connections with like organizations, providing membership updates and being involved in all advocacy campaigns.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our Board members for all of their hard work. I would also like to recognize and thank Mary Scheidegger our Web Master for everything she does to maintain and upgrade our website.
I would now like to hand it over to Gail Moilliet your Vice President…
As presented by Gail Moilliet, Vice President F4CRR
As part of the research conducted by and presented by students at UBC, it was found that isolation is a big part of the kinship caregivers experience.
Fairness has been hosting annual face-to-face gatherings with kinship caregivers which has been a great success every year.
The research also highlighted the financial constraints and needs for respite for kin caregivers, we provide this safe place for no or minimum monetary cost to them. This year, at the Embracing our Diversity Gathering, on June 8th in Abbotsford BC. kinship caregivers from across the province gathered to network. It was a weekend full of sharing their stories and learning about Trauma Aware Communications during a fantastic workshop led by Kate Toy, Self-Compassion Coach. Through lots of tears and some laughs, within a group, who are also going through similar, grief and trauma their families are experiencing.
Minister Lore, BC Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) sent us a video to share with our members to thank them directly for what they do, as well as show her support for Fairness and the Gathering., Having our kinship caregivers being validated and thanked is important not only from the minister but from others in the community, and extended family members.
This past year Fairness worked on providing our members, during the gathering, with easy-to-understand breakdown of the various MCFD/Out of Care (OOC) programs available to kinship caregivers. Strange as this sounds it was the first time a lot of the caregivers had seen this type of document even though many had been on an OOC plan for many years. These documents are available on our website.
Our gatherings are extremely important for the kinship caregivers and will continue to be a vital part of what we do.
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As presented by Mandy Dodgshon, Director of Advocacy F4CRR
Fairness Advocacy team has had an extremely busy year!
Beginning in October 2023 with our MP letter campaign addressing the problems with kinship Caregivers being over 65 years and still having dependants at home. Asking our Federal MPs to address this issue within income tax etc. We teamed up with Audrey Hobbs from the Canadian Federation of University Women to accomplish this task. The mass mail-out of member letters was sent on November 21st 2023.
As we continued to meet with MCFD (Ministry of Children and Family Development) Strategic Initiatives team monthly we were able to keep track of how many CIHR (Child in Home of Relative) families had registered for the affordability yearly payment. Upon realizing the numbers were minimal we felt strongly that we needed to revisit the mail-out to make it more user-friendly while also recognizing that many kinship caregivers may not have internet or up-to-date computer skills. Instead, we requested self-addressed and stamped envelopes for our CIHR families. We also planned and created a Town Hall style Zoom meeting for Nov 15th, 2023 as a result of those efforts the number of families applying for top-up rose significantly.
In December, we presented to Surrounded by Cedars (an allocated MCFD Indigenous Agency). This presentation was adopted to be our presentation for the many MLAs, Shadow Ministers and House Leaders who requested over the next months.
In January 2024, our Advocacy Group met again to organize and create our annual MLA letter campaign. We preceded this campaign with an introductory separate letter from the Director of Advocacy. The response was excellent with presentations requested from many MLAs between February and May 2024. In fact during the time that the legislature was in session April 9th we were able to present to 4-6 ministers ( most being shadow ministers at that time)
Also, in early 2024 all of our Fairness members were sent a letter created by the Advocacy Team to which they could add their personal stories and send to the MLA in their riding. In January, Grace Lore was appointed to replace Mitzi Dean as MCFD minister. Very quickly Minister Lore established contact with Fairness for Children Raised by Relatives by offering an introductory phone call to our president Shari Monsma which was deeply appreciated.
The Spring of 2024 brought yet another Town Hall Zoom meeting with members. On March 13th we held a Tuition Fee Waiver information session.
Meetings with Extended Benefits (EOOC) Eric Hallman MCFD, Foster Parents Support Dan Malone, Canadian College of University Women (CFUW) and Representative for Child and Youth (RCY) were also accomplished.
Later on in Spring, it was announced that RCY would be conducting a systemic overview of MCFD and a request was made for Fairness input as part of that overview. As a result, the gut-wrenching document “Don’t Look Away” was released in June along with many recommendations for change within MCFD.
We held our 3rd Gathering in Abbotsford during June 7th-9th where connections were made and nurtured, education on the differences between each Kinship Care Program were discussed and distributed and a Trauma Workshop was conducted by Kate Toye.
We were also gifted with a supportive video from Minister Lore to enrich our content at Gathering.
As we debriefed that Gathering we realized that we would like to include more members, possibly offer childcare, and hire more experts to deliver much-needed education and coping skills: for our Kinship Caregivers. This will require more funding and the need to apply for more grants so our focus has been there over summer 2024.
During our September 2024 MCFD meeting, while looking into Kinship Care program 54/54.01 ( our main focus for this year) some confusing wording gave 2 options for interpretation. After much back and forth it was sadly confirmed that children entering this Kinship Care Agreement before the age of 12yrs do NOT receive aging out benefits (SAJE-Strengthening Abilities and Journeys to Empowerment) causing yet another barrier for these families.
On Sunday September 8th Parent Support Services hosted their annual Grandparents Picnic and our President Shari Monsma created a table for Fairness information there.
Throughout our last year we have continued to meet monthly with MCFD and plan to extend this to 2025 and beyond if necessary.
We are now preparing for yet another MLA campaign as a Provincial Election looms in BCs future.
Our Goals for 2024-2025 are:
- Financial inequities with permanent guardianship MCFD (54) vs other MCFD support programs -not being recognized as parents by CRA due to clawback of CHILD BENEFIT by MCFD, ineligibility for SAJE (aging out supports) of children whom entered 54 agreements before the age of 12yrs and how this impacts many other provincial and even municipal programs and benefits, costing these families thousands of dollars annually.
MCFD TO DIRECT THESE FUNDS TO 54 FAMILIES RATHER THAN PROVIDING TOP-UPS FOR THE INDIVIDUAL BENEFITS BEING AFFECTED - Inequities for kinship families vs fostering (respite, guardian education and supports for children, especially children with disabilities.
CONSISTENCY FOR ALL SUPPORT PROGRAMS AND A RIGHTS DOCUMENT WITH MCFD.
Here are the approved minutes from the 2023 AGM
