Sign of Hope aims at a $2.32M target

Extra funds needed to fund Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Marc Barylo

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

The Sign of Hope Campaign is hoping to raise more than $2.32 million this year, partly to support a program for adolescents with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

Funding for the new McDaniel Youth Program, which will provide mentorship support for youth with FASD, is about $375,000 per year.

The Sign of Hope campaign — Catholic Social Services’ largest annual fundraising appeal — runs from Oct. 23 to mid-December. Maureen Cush, an Edmonton chartered accountant and longtime CSS volunteer, will lead the drive.

“This campaign provides funds to the hundred plus programs of Catholic Social Services and we are hoping to exceed our goal in order to provide additional funds to the McDaniel Youth Program,” Cush said at the campaign kickoff Oct. 23.

“We are facing economic uncertainty but we have always exceeded our goal in the past and with the generosity of Edmontonians, we hope that we will be able to do that again.”

The McDaniel Youth program will target youth from the ages of 14 to 19 who have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), CSS spokesperson Marc Barylo said during the kickoff event.

FASD is an umbrella term describing the range of effects that can occur in an individual whose mother drank alcohol during pregnancy. These effects include physical, mental, behavioural, and/or learning disabilities with possible lifelong implications.

According to Barylo, about one per cent of all children born in Alberta have FASD. As well, about 30 per cent of the more than 9,000 adolescents in Alberta’s child welfare system have FASD.

The cost of supporting a child born with FASD over a lifetime is $6.2 million. The figure includes the cost of providing group care, medical support services, social support services and education.

Costly issue

“It’s very, very costly per individual, so our agency back in 1999 saw that this was a big issue that wasn’t being dealt with by the government and with support from the McDaniel Foundation we started a program, the First Step Program, to deal with women at high risk of birthing a child with FASD,” Barylo said.

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“That was the genesis of our FASD work.”

Over the years, CSS developed other programs dealing with FASD, including one for mothers whose children have FASD and another that supports foster parents who have adopted children with FASD.

In addition to providing one-to-one mentorship support to young people with FASD for a three-year period, the new McDaniel Youth Program will work in collaboration with the families of the youth to develop appropriate decision-making skills, basic life skills and to reduce their risky behaviours.

Successful transition

The goal of the program is to help youth with FASD to make a more successful transition into adulthood, said Dorothy Henneveld, the FASD programs manager for CSS.

“We want to help them live normal and productive lives and become contributing members of society.”

CSS has already hired three mentors for the program and is looking for a fourth. Each mentor will have a caseload of seven to nine youth with FASD. Currently 21 youth are receiving services. The program is designed to handle about 35 youth a year.

The McDaniel Family Foundation, the provincial government’s cross-ministry committee on FASD, the Edmonton Fetal Alcohol Network and the Sign of Hope Campaign currently fund the program.

Through community partnerships with the University of Alberta and the Glenrose Hospital, a treatment model for youth with FASD is been produced which can be used across Canada.

In addition to providing funding for the McDaniel Youth Program, the Sign of Hope campaign supports programs such as Kairos House for persons living with HIV/AIDS, Safe House for street youth, counselling services for families and support programs for abused seniors.

CSS programs — more than 100 in all — serve more than 60,000 people a year.

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