INNISFAIL — Town council has approved more than $112,000 worth of funding recommendations by the community’s Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) advisory board to support local programs and services for the young and elderly.
Karen Bradbury, the community and social development coordinator for the Town of Innisfail, presented the board’s funding recommendations to council at its regular meeting last month.
Bradbury told council the FCSS advisory board met on Nov. 17 and Dec. 6 to discuss recommendations for the distribution of $134,000 in FCSS grant funding for 2022.
Council was told the municipality will receive about $207,592 from the province in FCSS funding for 2022. Bradbury said the town utilizes a portion of the funds for internal FCSS programs and operations, and distributes the balance to selected local organizations.
The FCSS board recommended $63,287 — more than half of the total $112,000 earmarked for outside disbursements — to student programming at the Chinook’s Edge School Division. Council was also told $20,000 is being directed to the Innisfail Senior Drop-In Society. The Innisfail Public Library is receiving $7,000.
The board chose Standing Stones Counselling Grief & Loss Support for Youth grades 5 to 8 for a grant of $2,400, while the Innisfail YES Program, a regional youth mental health preventative initiative, is receiving $20,000.
The Youth Empowerment & Support (YES) program has successfully supported thousands of young people in Central Alberta communities since 2007. It was new to the community in 2021, and an application to launch it in Innisfail was received back in April. The program was originally slated to start in local schools in 2020 but there was a “last minute” decision by the province to cancel funding,” said Bradbury in response to a query from Mayor Jean Barclay.
She told council that the funds will be dispersed in January to all of the successful grant applicants.
The FCSS board also recommended that an additional $21,313 be set aside from the $134,000 for contingency funding to allow for the ongoing identification of gaps and trends in services in the community. These funds will be allocated later in 2022 in response to identified community needs, said Bradbury.
Coun. Janice Wing asked Bradbury if there was any organization in town that is focused on the homeless in the community. She wanted to know if the municipality is looking for support from Red Deer County or the City of Red Deer, and whether homelessness is an issue that might require the town's future attention.
“It certainly seems to me from what I am reading in other places, it (homelessness) is becoming more and more of an issue here,” said Wing.
Bradbury said homelessness is one of four key priorities identified by FCSS, along with poverty reduction, mental health and domestic violence. She told Wing there are “pots of funding” Innisfail FCSS can access to get a “real good assessment” of what the level of need in the community is on the issue of homelessness.
“We do know there are individuals in the community who are struggling, who are homeless or at risk of being homelessness. We do continue as a community conversation to keep those issues at the forefront,” she said.
“We are looking at ways of how do we get that information to the residents about programs that are available. Right now, I have to say the programs are minimal.”
