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Kanaweyimik expands programming in Battleford

Kanaweyimik Child and Family Services is expanding across the street in Battleford. The organization, currently located south of Town Hall, purchased the former school board office across the street (and west of 1st Avenue) from Town Hall.

Kanaweyimik Child and Family Services is expanding across the street in Battleford.

The organization, currently located south of Town Hall, purchased the former school board office across the street (and west of 1st Avenue) from Town Hall. The acquired building was needed, Executive Director Marlene Bugler said during Monday’s council meeting, for additional office space and space for group sessions. The organization is also hiring more staff.

In a presentation, Bugler outlined the organization. Kanaweyimik provides services for children and families to improve “their social well-being in areas of child development, parenting and healing.”

Funding is provided by Indigenous Services Canada, formerly known as INAC.

In 2017, Bugler said, the organization began an intergenerational trauma program. The intergenerational trauma program explores how the upbringing of those in the program “affected their parenting skills,” in order to show “what they're doing is repeating a cycle,” Bugler said.

“Our hope is we’re going to stop or slow down that cycle,” Bugler said, “to the point where our people are well enough to parent properly and the children don’t have to come into care.”

The program is designed not only to address isolated problems, but life experiences beginning in childhood.

Lawyer Mike Riou, who was also in attendance, said the “apprehension of children to place them in safer homes” was previously more frequent.

Riou said the province has experienced “reduced children in care” in past years due to doing more preventative, intergenerational and educational work, “instead of taking one little problem out of a whole sequence.”

Practices of “scooping” children have attracted condemnation. The provincial government recently announced Premier Scott Moe is to apologize in January for the Sixties Scoop.

Municipal tax was the main reason Bugler and Riou were before council.

Bugler said Kanaweyimik paid municipal taxes until 2005, when Kanaweyimik “challenged the doubling of our taxes by the town.” A court had determined, Bugler said, the organization was exempt under the Municipalities Act.

Council didn’t make a decision Monday night.

Mayor Ames Leslie said council “will need to balance” the tax exemption “with the great things Kanaweyimik does for the community.”

Leslie say there are “drawbacks to tax exemptions because then they’re not paying for the services that the town provides.”

Bugler said the acquired building isn’t going to be a detox centre. The intergenerational trauma program is a step after detox.

The nearest detox centres, Bugler said, are Saskatoon, Lloydminster and Meadow Lake.

The Battlefords “very badly” need a detox centre, Leslie said, and that the hospital and what’s referred to as the drunk tank aren’t enough.