Grey Bruce Children's Alliance
What Have We done?
Together We Do More
In 2004, leaders from 25 organizations in Grey and Bruce signed a Memorandum of Understanding to create the Grey Bruce Children’s Alliance.
The creation of the Alliance was an important milestone in our continuing efforts to improve the physical health, nutrition, safety, emotional well-being, education and optimal development of all children and youth in Grey and Bruce Counties.
Our intent is to provide the glue to connect the variety of service provider organizations in our two Counties so that collectively we can offer a more seamless, integrated system of supports to young people and their families.
What do we do for children, youth and families in Grey Bruce?
Together we promote equity in the distribution of resources and local access to services.
Advocating on behalf of our rural communities has meant seeking equity of services in communities with small numbers of people. Transportation, poverty and distance to services are key considerations that remain at the forefront of planning advocacy.
The Alliance has actively engaged the Ontario government to be part of the planning process of programs such as Preschool Speech and Language, Rural Child Care, Child Welfare Transformation, CWT Parenting Capacity Initiative, Full-Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program, Special Needs Strategy and Local Child & Youth Mental Health Community Planning.
Together we collect data to identify and publish trends to advocate for better services.
In 2010, we completed a 2 year project on Child, Youth and Family Health and Wellbeing that surveyed agencies, parents and the community. The work laid the foundation for measuring and planning for children’s health in Grey Bruce with the release of Measuring and Planning for Child Health Report in 2008 and A Profile of Child, Youth and Family Health in Grey and Bruce Counties: A Technical Report 2010.
In partnership with 211, we have developed a Grey Bruce Children & Youth Services & Resources database with search capacity.
In 2014, the Alliance identified the need to access vital local rural data and information to better inform our work. The Alliance initiated the creation of an open-data portal called Bruce Grey Data and Information Sharing Collaborative (BGDISC.ca). BGDISC is a collective of not-for-profit, social service, government, health and education organizations who share local data that impacts our communities and assist in strategic planning.
Together we strengthen linkages and integrate planning with other Grey Bruce networks and groups.
Working together to improve the lives of children living in poverty, the Alliance has supported a “community of practice” in a ‘Bridges Out of Poverty’© approach. Since 2008, the Alliance has facilitated the certification of trainers across more than 25 agencies and held Annual Poverty Forums to engage all sectors – social services, education, business, health, policy makers and poverty advocates – to apply the Bridges approach in Grey Bruce.
We supported over 200 people with lived experience to graduate from the Getting Ahead program and to be advocates in our community.
In partnership with the United Way of Bruce Grey the Alliance supports the Coordination of the Bruce Grey Poverty Task Force. The Poverty Task Force consists of over 92+ social agencies, research institutions and community members. Poverty-related Grey Bruce Resources can be found at: https://povertytaskforce.com/publications/