A funding boost for the Children’s Treatment Centre of Chatham-Kent.
The province has announced $60-million in annual funding for rehabilitation services for children and youth, including $843,525 for the local treatment centre.
Executive Director Donna Litwin-Makey calls it a historic investment.
“It can be several years between any instances, and we’re always trying to do what we can with a flat amount of money which erodes with different costs,” Litwin-Makey says. “It’s never happened before to have this much investment in Children’s Treatment Centres across the province and for our Centre.”
The funds will help build extra service capacity, increase access to preschool speech and language programs, and support community and school-based rehabilitation services.
Litwin-Makey says COVID has increased wait times, especially for those accessing school-based programs.
“It’s to get services (and) therapies as early as possible to families. We’re also meant to review services and make them as efficient as possible, sometimes that will mean doing different types of assessments to get to a family’s needs earlier.”
Litwin-Makey says they’ve also been given guidance about community participation and inclusion, focusing on the overall wellbeing of families in the long-term.
The CTC-CK serves roughly 4500 clients each year, or one in five children in Chatham-Kent, with specialized services for children and youth, from birth through to 21 years, with physical, developmental or communication needs.
