Winter 2011
Anne Didio-Crawford

Click HERE to view the Winter directive. Directive is now in printable, PDF format.

Spring 2011
Marian Alexander, Diocesan Education and Health Chairperson

Greetings to all Education and Health Chairpersons,

Spring is here and it's time to get out of hibernation mode and back into action.

Education

The Ontario Provincial Education Network is a new website of the Ministry of Education where information about new initiatives are available and comments can be posted and responded to by Ministry personnel. According to their website, they are the ministry that administers the system of publicly funded elementary and secondary school education in Ontario. The ministry's plan to promote a strong, vibrant, publicly funded education system is focused on three goals:  high levels of student achievement; reduced gaps in student achievement; high levels of public confidence in public education. If you have questions, use the site and e-mail the minister. You may access the site by entering "Ontario Provincial Education Network" into your search engine.

The Catholic Curriculum Corporation is another good site to visit if you are concerned about how matters affect the Catholic school boards. On their website they explain their organization as such:

"The CCC is a consortium of seventeen Catholic school boards across central and western Ontario. As an important partner in Catholic education we recognize that Catholic education exists to provide a holistic formation of people as living witnesses of faith. We demonstrate our missin when we engage with, and support our member boards in sustained, substantive school improvement and student growth that is reflective of a Catholic professional learning community."

They have some very good resources that are available for downloading as well. Check it out at www.catholiccurriculumcorp.org.

Check it out. You might find some interesting reading. Just google Health Canada and you can get to their website. It's a lot easier than trying to remember www.hc-sc.gc.ca.

Genetics

The Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute has a new flyer out promoting their program "For the People in the Pews (FRIP)". It is a parish based program that can be held in your parish hall as an Advent or Lenten event. Recommended length is 8 hours which would be one evening a week for four weeks. If you are interested in bioethics, if you are a priest, deacon, physician, nurse, politician, pastoral care worker, caregiver, in business, a teacher, an interested lay person, young or old -- this program is for you! Their website is www.ccbi-utoronto.ca.

Collaborative Mental Health Care has available on their website, www.shared-care.ca , a Child and Youth Mental Health Toolkit. This kit is depicted as a flower and on each petal is a link to information on a mental health issue for a child. One in five children suffer from at least one mental health disorder and this kit was designed to increase awareness for parents and healthcare professionals.

The Government of Canada has put out a handy pamphlet entitled "Safe Food Handling for adults 60+". I have ordered a number of these which should be available for you at the convention. Even though it is targeted to those over 60, most of the points apply to all ages.