On April 23rd we welcomed Lisa Talbot, Executive Director of the Kidsability Foundation and Linda Kenney, CEO of the Kidsability Centre. At this meeting President Gerry and Ami presented our speakers with a cheque for $40,000! Congratulations to all club members for making this possible!
Linda opened with a thank you to Rotary in general and our club specifically for the partnership we have had since the inception of their agency. Kidsability has deep ties to the residents of our community and that includes members of our club who have family members that are past or current clients of the agency.
Kidsability has 3 parts that all serve needy children in our region. The Kidsability Centre that Linda heads provides therapy and support services to children with complex special needs out of Cambridge, Fergus, Guelph, Kitchener and Waterloo locations. The Kidsability School provides half-day special education programs for junior kindergarten children with special needs out of Cambridge and Waterloo. The Kidsability Foundation that is run by Lisa provides financial resources to make it all happen and this is where our funds are directed.
Over the past year, almost 8,000 children were served with over 61,000 visits annually. Unfortunately, there are still 1335 needy children on the wait list for services. There are 13 Rotary Clubs that support Kidsability annually and 663 volunteers. Recently the agency has started to follow a hub model consolidating 3 locations into 1 in Cambridge and 2 locations into 1 in Guelph.
Programs are numerous but some notable ones are the “I Can Bike” program that teaches kids that sometimes have significant physical disabilities to ride a bike. Another is Firefly which focuses on developing the skills required to make good decisions and manage more independently in the community for both pre-teens and teens including social skills, basic things like riding a bus or making meals. Another is Camp Lit that focusses on needy children preparing to attend post secondary education.
Current issues include the provincial government change in funding treatment for children with autism. The government has defunded autism treatment and is replacing it with a direct to family model. This is the transitional year and the effects on the budget for Kidsability are significant. This will be a huge shift as they develop a fee for service model that previously did not exist. There are some significant drawbacks to the new model as funding is capped at $20,000/yr for a child under 6 ($5,000 for a child over 6) where Kidsability history shows that the historical cost of providing services had been $40,000/yr for a child under 6. The current list of autism clients includes 150 being provided services and another 750 on the wait list. The government initiative intends to eliminate the wait list completely, but it remains to be seen if this is possible and more time is needed to understand the impact of the net reduction in funding for children that had previously been receiving services.
Congratulations to all our club members as we heard that the total we have donated to Kidsability since 1998 is a grand total of $621,616! This funding has helped hundreds of kids by providing equipment and resources that give hope and encouragement to needy families!
Watch for the annual radiothon May 3rd at Conestoga Mall.