Children who live in the Bowl and South Fort George area have some of the worst developmental outcomes in the province, a mapping project has found.
The first round of developmental mapping from the University of B.C.'s Human Early Learning Partnership found 56 per cent of those Prince George children start kindergarten in a delayed state, said Prince George Child Development Centre executive director Darrell Roze.
"Over one in two children are hitting kindergarten in a developmentally vulnerable state," Roze said, a substantial jump from the 10 per cent of people who are expected to have biologically necessary delays.
Those outcomes are tied to underfunding and are an exacerbation of a provincial problem, which sees about 32 per cent of children entering kindergarten with those same delays, he said.
"This contrasts dramatically with the strategic plan that the province put in place in 2009, where they were looking to have those delays reduced to 15 per cent. At the time that that plan was put into place, delays in the province were sitting at 29 per cent, so we've gone in the wrong direction," he said.
"The failure of the province to make meaningful, or any, improvement in this area has to do with resourcing."
Roze was one of a dozen presentations from local organizations to the B.C. Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services on Tuesday night as it nears the end of its province-wide consultations with groups, each asking for funding consideration.
The CDC's ask added up to almost $1.2 million for its two major contracts: $631,230 for its therapy program and $568,104 to increase the supported childhood development program, which is available to children who could not otherwise attend daycares, preschools and after-school care programs.
"Those numbers seem large, but they are actually a few thousand dollars per child that we're looking at, and they provide substantial downstream savings," said Roze, which adds up to a 50 per cent increase to those programs. "This would not bring us up to full funding. This would allow us to plug a critical gap in demand."
The charitable organization is contracted by the province to offer programming and is bound by provincial contracts with employee unions. That seems to be a major source of its pressures as well as cost increases over the last 15 years with its building, administration and through inflation that haven't received corresponding compensation in provincial funding. Last year, a provincially negotiated wage increase pulled $85,000 from its budget.
The last time the CDC made a "meaningful increase" in staffing was 24 years ago. That means reduced services to children.
While the CDC tries not to leave anyone on its waitlist, Roze said they've offered creative solutions where they offer services for three weeks and then train the parents to act as "therapy aids" to support their child over the next three months.
"But as the child develops, then those services become less and less relevant to those children," he said.
The public has until Oct. 14 to complete a survey as part of the consultations. That's available online at www.leg.bc.ca.
