Last week, Literacy Alberta gathered leaders in literacy, learning, and essential skills together to determine how these important issues could be incorporated into the Social Policy Framework (SPF). The SPF was created by Government of Alberta Human Services to “guide the future of Alberta’s social policies and programs things like childcare, employment, housing, and poverty. Issues that affect all Albertans, like you.”
This is a big step in participatory governance for the province, and an important step in treating people like citizens, rather than clients. It is not just lip service, either: the Vision of the Social Policy has already changed twice (that I have seen) to incorporate feedback from the public. While each of the policies and programs mentioned by Human Services are important, we should avoid silo solutions for interconnected issues.
Literacy is a cross-cutting theme that permeates all aspects of society, and if we neglect it, we hand it off to future generations. As the adage goes: an ounce of medicine is worth a pound of cure, and the same rings true for literacy.
For the full story visit LiteracyAlberta.ca