Summary:
In May 2017, federal Minister of Health Jane Philpott announced $3.6 million in federal funding for five projects “aimed at preventing and screening for alcohol use in pregnancy,” according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). But the funding is not new, nor is it an increase.
The Call to Action:
We call upon the federal, provincial and territorial governments to recognize as a high priority the need to address and prevent Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), and to develop, in collaboration with Aboriginal people, FASD preventative programs that can be delivered in a culturally appropriate manner.
Analysis:
In May 2017, then-federal Minister of Health Jane Philpott announced $3.6 million in federal funding for five projects “aimed at preventing and screening for alcohol use in pregnancy,” according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
But the funding was not new, nor is it an increase.
According to the PHAC, the funding will also be used to better identify “individual and population groups most in need of support.”
But it was the same $3,650,206 earmarked in 2016 to fund certain projects over a period of five years. It is also a decrease in funding, compared to the previous federal government.
From 2008 to 2014, also over a five year period, PHAC spent a total of $12.45 million on the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Initiative.
Furthermore, a 2014 federal review determined even the prior funding levels were “very limited” and made programming “challenging, given the allocated resources.”
Currently, different provinces offer varied levels of support and programming.
According to a federally-funded study cited on the Department of Justice website, “Despite the emerging evidence that individuals with FASD and [prenatal alcohol exposure] PAE may be overrepresented and vulnerable in the justice system, we have a limited understanding, based on the current evidence, of what types of supports might lead to better outcomes. There is no research to explore what forms of intervention may help or harm individuals involved in the system, which hinders our ability to train professionals who are eager to support positive outcomes for this group, or even what training messages and approaches are needed.”
The study was conducted by the Canada Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Research Network (CanFASD). CanFASD is funded in part by the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada.