The Starbright Children’s Development Centre in Kelowna, B.C., has been providing support to children and their families for 57 years.
But after more than five decades, the centre is being forced to close for good.
“It’s incredibly devastating,” said Rhonda Nelson, Starbright’s executive director. “This past week has been one of the most heart-wrenching times trying to let our families know, but yet we don’t have a lot of information.”
The provincial government is changing the way support services are provided to children in B.C by creating Family Connection Centre (FCC) pilots.
ARC Programs was selected as the successful operator in the Central Okanagan, which means Starbright is losing its funding and has no choice but to shut the doors.
“It’s very sad, very sad and I am concerned,” said Sandra Kahle.
Kahle’s 27-month old daughter, Emily, has Down syndrome and has relied on services at Starbright since birth.
“She is getting physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech language pathology. She’s also learning ASL (American Sign Language) for sign language,” Kahle told Global News.
Kahle said she’s seen huge strides in her daughter thanks to all of the services provided at Starbright.
“It’s been fantastic because without the sign language, she wouldn’t be able to communicate with us. She’s got a couple random words but not enough to be able to communicate,” Kahle said.
“For her feeding, it was all by tube so Katie here, our occupational therapist, is the person who got Emily to eat orally.”
Kahle worries that the new model will not provide a support team all under one roof.
“How are you going to coordinate people from multiple different organizations in one location to all come together for a child that presumably they’re not going to have regular team meetings about. I do not see this as being a positive thing,” Kahle said. “Here she’s got everybody that covers everything that she needs.”
Starbright serves about a thousand children every year from birth until school-entry age.
“We had other community not for profits working with us that also provided services and we had a collaborative development process,” Nelson said.
Nelson said she and her team were shocked to learn that Starbright was not the successful contract bidder.
“We have the facilities, we have the background, we’ve got personnel,” she said.
“In one department, in our physiotherapy department, there’s over 100 years of experience based on the people within that department.”
Nelson added that making matters worse, no one from the government called Starbright to break the news.
Instead, she said, it was announced only on the government website.
“It was a shock to us, because we had had no communication around this announcement going out. No communication about implications for agency,” Nelson said.
“That lack of communication from government is the least helpful thing that can happen and I fail to understand how this could evolve to the point where we have to call a regional office person to find out.”
In an email to Global News, the Ministry for Children and Family Development said “to grow and expand service available to families, the Ministry undertook a selection process inviting service providers to submit proposals outlining how they could deliver services to families through Family Connection Centre pilots. ARC Programs was selected as the successful operator in the Central Okanagan.”
The email went on to say, “Any family currently accessing services through Starbright will have the option to access supports and services through ARC Programs, which will also offer new and expanded services for children and youth. We are focused on supporting families of children with support needs through these changes and will be in close contact with families and service providers in the coming days and months.”
It’s not known when exactly Starbright will be closing but Nelson said she believes sometime this spring.
“It is not an easy thing for families, who have children, who depend on a team approach, for services to start anew,” Nelson said. “I can’t imagine that the proposal that we have provided would not have been deemed very, very workable, very doable, and would have served the needs of the Central Okanagan in an extraordinary way.”