Correspondence E.Ames_MLA Yamamoto

Dear Elinor,
Thank you for this clarification. I appreciate hearing your views, and your concerns for the IDP program with the changes being made.
I will review this, to Minister of Children and Family Development Mary Polak.
Regards,
Naomi

(North Vancouver-Lonsdale)
#303 -126 East 15th Street
I believe, however that I must not have stated clearly my concerns about the IDP closure. I was completely aware that there would be no cuts to direct services in the field. Rather, my concern was that IDP Consultants in the field will now have absolutely no back-up.


I believe that the IDP Provincial Office is an ESSENTIAL part of the IDP program, not just an intermediary between the ministry and service providers, or another "level of bureaucracy". This is not some fly-by-night trendy program. It has a worldwide reputation, and a Provincial Advisor whose 34 years of work in establishing and building the program has earned her an honourary doctorate from UBC. It has always been designed to work over a large area, but with central and regional support.

Among other things, the Office maintains a unique specialized library of material on various disabilities and diseases of children and assessment/ intervention/treatment programs for young disabled children and their parents. This provides direct services to families who call for information and to professionals who need the latest evidence on childhood intervention techniques.

In my opinion, the Provincial Advisor also has more valuable worldwide contacts with people in early childhood intervention than does a y. The Office hires new IDP Consultants, and trains them in techniques of infant assessment and parent counseling. All Consultants are kept up to date on best practices by means of inservice workshops and summer institutes arranged by the Provincial Advisor. She also advises on difficult individual cases, like the example I presented in my original e-mail to you (below), one in which a child has an extremely rare genetic disorder about which little is known in Canada, much less in any small town in B.C.. Who will perform these services now?

The more than 190 IDP Consultants in the field (if they are not newl re are some current job listings on the IDP website) may be able to get along all right for several months without support. But after that, the lack of support will greatly erode the service that they can give. I understand the government's need to save money in hard times, but surely the Provincial Office's budget might be downsized rather than abolished. It is my complete and honest belief that without any support quality of service will inevitably decline and there WILL be children who end up in life-long specialized foster care instead of living with their families.

I strongly urge you to loo ;www.idpofbc.ca to decide for yourself whether this is a program that can be maintained without a central office.

Thank you again for your willingness to consider this issue.