Firefly Teams Up With KPDSB On New Initiatives

Firefly is continuing to build on its relationship with the Keewatin-Patricia District School Board.
CEO Karen Ingebritson says they have a number of projects in the works that will eventually be implemented in local schools.
She says one of them is the ASIS program, which stands applied suicide intervention skills and says it’s like first aid for children’s mental health.
Other projects include walk-in counseling services and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder classrooms.
She says they hope to have the FASD classrooms up and running by the start of this fall, and the beginning phase of the walk-in counseling services to be started by June.
The FASD classrooms would be located in schools and Dryden and Sioux Lookout.
However Ingebritson says they are working on having these types of programs in all area schools.
Another focus of these programs is to get the families heavily involved.
Ingebritson says if they can target the students while they’re younger, it will prevent them from becoming at-risk.
She notes that they will be bringing in experts from the Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto.