Exclusive: UCP adds more mental health and COVID supports for students in upcoming budget
Posted Feb 22, 2022 11:11 am.
Last Updated Feb 22, 2022 1:20 pm.
According to the education minister, the upcoming budget will focus on moving forward from the pandemic and include mental health and wellbeing as well as COVID-related supports for students.
“We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to move things forward in a positive direction,” Education Minister Adrianna LaGrange said in an exclusive interview with CityNews.
“The budget will be focused on ensuring that our students are able to recover from this pandemic,” LaGrange said.
LaGrange says she’s excited for the budget to be brought forward on Thursday, and that from an education standpoint, it’ll focus on helping students with both mental and academic health.
“We know that there have been issues with anxiety and mental health and wellness as a whole, increasing over the course of the pandemic,” she added.
“We’re really looking to address the needs that have arisen and make sure that our young people are supported through this challenging time, and it has been a challenging tough time for our kids and for our teachers.”
She notes the government allocated over $53 million for mental health and wellness last year for the whole province.
“Within our schools, we certainly have a lot of specialized learning supports funding in place, I added an additional $40 million last year. We also added, last year, $43 million in learning supports for grades 1-3,” she said.
“There are many supports we’ve added and we’re going to continue to make sure that we are addressing, besides the mental health and wellness supports and health of our students, also their academic health.”
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LaGrange’s comments come as some Alberta psychiatrists have been sounding alarms over the mental health of youth throughout the pandemic. She says, “We know that there have been issues with anxiety and mental health and wellness as a whole, increasing over the course of the pandemic. That was evident through the child and youth wellbeing panel recommendations that came forward.”
She also says the budget will see more projects and new schools.
“I’m looking forward to announcing some new schools and some major modernizations throughout the province.”
