Impact of Your Support

Thanks to the generous support of all our funders, donors, partners, volunteers and staff, we accomplished great things this year!

2022-2023 Annual Report

From the CEO and Board Chair

Our 70th year has truly been a year of incredible growth!

The Centre served nearly 5,700 children, UP 44.4% from serving 4,000 children last year. That’s on top of last year’s 34% increase to just under 4,000 children!

The Centre started in 1953 with a small group of community minded parents who saw a need to help children with disabilities access the care they needed to reach their potential. They would be so proud to know how their legacy continues to be honoured!

We are grateful to the BC Government’s Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) which provided additional funding for supported child development enabling us to hire more staff and serve more children, substantially reducing our waitlists.

Nonetheless, there is much more to be done. In the ten years from 2011/12 to 2021/22 our clients increased by 93%, our intake team processed 112% more referrals, our early intervention occupational therapists’ case load increased 59% with new referrals up 92%. Our staff have worked hard to serve as many children as possible, especially in the all-important early years, but children’s needs far outstrip even our significant growth.

As we celebrate our 70th anniversary throughout 2023, we are mindful of not only how many more children need us, but how diverse their needs are. Our community is rich with many cultures and languages, including a large urban Indigenous population. We continue to work on improving the scope and benefit of services we can offer to children and families, and grow in knowledge and engagement with people from around the world. We work to understand and address the historic Indigenous specific racism that continues to pose barriers to service to this day. Our learning journey in collaboration with Indigenous Elders took an important step forward and taught us the significance of the Welcome House post we unveiled together with our partners, staff, and children. Our nearly 200 staff continue to learn and grow through training workshops to better understand and respond appropriately to the needs of Indigenous children and families.

In the years to come, we will continue to honour the spirit of our founding families to meet the needs of the children and families in our community. We know there will be more challenges to grow services to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population of the Fraser South region. We will continue to proactively evolve, adapt, and innovate together with our partners’ support.