The Ska:na Family Learning Centre will soon be able to offer Urban Indigenous Child Care, thanks to some $3-million in provincial funding.
The money passes through the municipality to providers and will go a long way to help alleviate a wait list that numbers in the thousands.
That’s according to Faith Hale, who is the Executive Director of the learning centre.
“The dream for us is to have that opportunity for our children and families to have that land based learning, it’s very important to our culture that people our understand our connection to the earth and I believe childcare and early years and our response to trauma in the early years, where people will feel they are part of the community begins in the early years,” says Hale. “We do know our first nations and we know where they are from and we’re doing well. But there are a number of folks living in Chatham-Kent who may be non status, Inuit or Metis or adopted out and that down’t have that connection. So having that urban programming that I believe that early years element is part of bringing people in.”
Right now the learning centre is looking for a location on a bus route that’s accessible for families.
