Multicultural Family Support
with Children with Disabilities
(MFSCD)

Launched in 2005, this program was launched in 2005 in collaboration with FSCD and Inclusion Alberta under the leadership of the Regional Director of FSCD at that time. It was to create an impactful model for ensuring families and children who are “underserved” are supported by levelling the playing field for their optimal wellbeing. The MFSCD program assists the ethnocultural families with children with disabilities fully access government (FSCD) funding and relevant services and support within the disability sector and beyond.

The families with disabled children feel isolated and often feeling hopeless.  They may not fully understand the conditions of their children and the support available for their children’s potential optimal growth and development. And professionals and service providers within the disability sectors and essential services often do not fully understanding the pre- and post-migration realities of these families and the children.  There are often a “gap”in mutual understanding and lack of relationship between families and professionals/service providers

Serving ethnocultural families with children with disabilities under 18 years of age, this program is available in more than 20 languages.

Included in the program are:

• Liason with FSCD
• Professionals and services providers within the disability sectors as well as essential services of education and health through cultural brokering (bridging language and cultural distances, and mediating misunderstandings between families and other service providers.)
• Parenting groups – including workshops, field trips, and children’s activities.

For more information about this program, please contact MCHB at 780-423-1973.

Our Stories tell it all…

“A single mom has a global development delay boy. At the beginning, mom was depressed and frustrated with the family situation. After she contacted MCHB, the broker immediately introduced her to the parents group and supported her to access other resources and government funded programs which the family needed. Gradually the mom opened herself to make friends with peer’s families, actively participated all activities and learned from the professionals and other parents to educate her son. Now she is an active volunteer in the community to help other families who were suffered as she used to and encourage other moms be brave and walk from dark into the bright life.”

This program is funded by Disability Services Alberta