A program that has attempted to make a difference in the lives of children in Williams Lake since 2008 has had many successes.
Facilitator of Communities That Care, Clara Bullinger says they have seen some really positive shifts in the survey they did with youth in grades 6 to 12 last year, in comparison to 2009.
“We have overall more youth in our community have high levels of protection. So in 2009, it was 60% of youth and we’ve seen a 7% improvement. Also, we have fewer kids who are at risk.”
Bullinger says some other significant improvements include more youth are committed to attending school, as well as being successful in school.
She says also dropping is youth gang involvement which fell by more than 50% since 2009.
She says they have identified their priorities for the next youth survey coming up in 2020.
“Many of the priorities are the same, we have included some new ones. We are going to have a action planning meeting on April 7th to address the fact that lots of youth are reporting depressive symptoms. We’re not higher than the BC average, but it’s still of concern to us that 38% of youth have indicated that over the last year they experienced depressive symptoms. We really want to come up with a community approach to addressing that.”