Lauren Kennedy, Kara Koteles, Janice McCue, and Tracy Graham take part in a panel dialogue concerning the well being impacts of low incomes. (Photograph: Will Pearson)
You’re studying the July 30, 2024 version of the Peterborough Currents electronic mail publication. To obtain our electronic mail newsletters straight to your inbox, enroll right here.
Hi there there, and welcome to the Peterborough Currents publication, the place we share our newest tales and catch you up on native information.
This week:
Native Youngsters’s Support Society blames province over job cuts
“All roads to health lead through income,” says medical officer of well being
Kawartha Land Belief protects two new properties
Metropolis opens, then closes, a brand new non permanent homeless shelter
Let’s get to it!
Youngsters’s help layoffs will put native youngsters at “serious risk,” union rep says
The Kawartha Haliburton Youngsters’s Support Society says it’s shedding 25 employees because of rising prices and insufficient provincial funding. (Photograph: Will Pearson)
“How are we going to keep kids safe?”
That query has been on the thoughts of kid safety employee Ruby Taylor since she discovered this month that Peterborough’s native baby welfare company is shedding 25 employees.
The Kawartha Haliburton Youngsters’s Support Society faces a deficit of greater than $2.6 million that it says is the results of rising prices and “years of funding reductions” by the provincial authorities. With no extra cash coming from the province, “staffing reductions are inevitable,” in accordance with the company.
The layoffs will imply fewer employees accessible to test on the protection of youngsters who may be in peril, Taylor stated.
“We are worried that kids are gonna get hurt and ultimately we’re really concerned that a child’s gonna die,” stated Taylor, who can also be president of Ontario Public Service Workers Union Native 334, which represents native kids’s help society employees.
In an announcement to Currents, the Ministry of Youngsters, Group and Social Providers deflected blame for the job cuts, saying that kids’s help societies are unbiased organizations which can be “responsible for their own staffing decisions.”
The ministry additionally insisted that the Ford authorities has elevated funding for baby safety providers throughout the province. However baby welfare businesses say the funding has not been sufficient to maintain up with rising prices.
Many provincially-funded kids’s help societies throughout Ontario are dealing with deficits. Job cuts are additionally coming for baby welfare staff in London and Ottawa.
The phrase “crisis” has been thrown round various occasions to explain the present scenario in Ontario’s baby welfare system, together with by Irwin Elman, Ontario’s former baby and youth advocate.
In keeping with Elman, reforms the Ford authorities has made to the kid welfare system have “brought on the hollowing out of every support system serving vulnerable children and families.”
For extra on the strains on the kid welfare system in Peterborough, try my full story on our web site.
“All roads to health lead through income”: United Manner hosts daylong symposium on wholesome incomes
By Will Pearson
Thomas Piggott speaks on the United Manner’s neighborhood symposium on wholesome incomes on July 18. (Photograph: Will Pearson)
About 100 individuals attended a neighborhood symposium exploring the connection between revenue and well being on July 18, 2024. The occasion was organized by the native chapter of the United Manner as a followup to its launch of The Hole, a report on the prevalence of insufficient incomes in Peterborough.
“All roads to health lead through income,” Peterborough’s medical officer of well being Thomas Piggott informed attendees of the occasion. Piggott defined that low incomes depart many individuals in Peterborough with out the cash wanted to make wholesome selections for themselves. And typically, a scarcity of revenue means individuals can’t afford to entry satisfactory healthcare, Piggott added.
Piggott stated the present affordability disaster can have “tremendous long term health consequences” and create “costly health conditions that we will pay for later.” However he additionally expressed optimism. “There is materially enough to go around to keep us healthy if it’s fairly distributed,” he stated. “Poverty is solvable.”
Later, panelists mentioned methods for preventing poverty in Peterborough, together with instituting a primary revenue and advocating for habitable wages.
Lauren Kennedy, a registered dietician with Peterborough Public Well being, supplied a critique of the meals financial institution mannequin of responding to poverty. She stated emergency meals banks don’t tackle the basis reason behind meals insecurity: low incomes.
“We need to shift the focus from only emergency band aids to longterm solutions,” Kennedy stated. “And food insecurity is actually an income problem … So we need income solutions to an income problem.”
Kennedy talked about primary revenue as one among these options. She stated nearly all of individuals in Ontario’s aborted primary revenue pilot skipped fewer meals and ate extra vegatables and fruits whereas they had been in receipt of primary revenue.
She added that revenue options permit individuals “to make choices about what they need” fairly than having a authorities or charity make these selections for them. “One of the amazing things about income solutions to some of these problems is that it is a dignified response,” she stated.
Different tales to look at
KAWARTHA LAND TRUST PROTECTS MORE PROPERTIES
The Kawartha Land Belief introduced final week that it has protected two new properties totalling greater than 100 acres. In Selwyn Township, an 83-acre property made up of hardwood forests and farmland has been protected via a brand new conservation easement, in accordance with a press launch from KLT. Moreover, a brand new 22-acre property was protected after cottagers got here collectively to donate it to the KLT, the press launch acknowledged, noting that the cottagers requested the location’s location not be made public. Neither web site is open to the general public. These two new properties carry KLT’s variety of protected properties to 41, comprising 7,350 acres, in accordance with the press launch.
HOUSING STARTS INCREASE
New house development within the Metropolis of Peterborough elevated 71 % within the first half of 2024, in comparison with the identical interval final yr, in accordance with information launched by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Company this month. Town counted 70 housing begins between January and June 2024, up from 41 throughout the identical interval in 2023. Nearly all of the brand new houses below development are duplexes and row homes.
HATE CRIME INVESTIGATION IN EAST CITY
Peterborough police are investigating an incident the place a person’s turban was knocked off his head and stepped on final Thursday as a hate crime, in accordance with a media launch. Simply after midnight on July 25, officers had been referred to as to the world of Hunter Avenue and Mark Avenue in East Metropolis, the place a person alleged he was spat on whereas strolling previous a bunch of 4 younger individuals. One of many people knocked the person’s turban to the bottom and stepped on it after he confronted them. The person was additionally struck within the head with pop cans throughout the incident, as was one other man who tried to intervene, in accordance with police.
CITY OPENS, THEN CLOSES, NEW SHELTER AS ENCAMPMENT EVICTIONS CONTINUE
Residents of a tent encampment close to the Wolfe Avenue modular housing neighborhood had been evicted from their campsites final Tuesday, the Ontario Chronicle reported. A crew of safety guards, law enforcement officials, paramedics, social staff and public works crews arrived round 8 a.m. to clear the location, which was occupied by about 15 individuals, town’s spokesperson reportedly informed the Examiner.
Additionally final week, town opened a brand new non permanent homeless shelter within the Morrow constructing on Lansdowne Avenue. However after nobody used the shelter all week, it was closed on Friday as had been beforehand deliberate, the Examiner reported.
Thanks for studying this week’s publication!
Do you worth our journalism? Do you need to guarantee our complete neighborhood continues to have entry to Peterborough Currents?
Please enroll as a month-to-month supporter. We want viewers assist to proceed producing our journalism — and to maintain it paywall-free!
Thanks for contemplating and take care,
Brett Throop
Reporter
Peterborough Currents
Thanks for studying the Peterborough Currents electronic mail publication! Right here’s the place you’ll be able to signal as much as have these despatched straight to your inbox.
