After-school programming and anything to do with education. Our kids have to go to mainstream schools. I don't know what it's like across the country in other places, but here, the highest level you can go to in community is grade 6—there may be one or two first nation communities that have grade 8—and then they're going into mainstream school. One of the things we really want to develop is after-school programming so that the kids can come here.
Right now we have a head start program. I'm hoping that everybody's familiar with the aboriginal head start in urban and northern communities. That is a federally funded program that has been around for 27 years now. We have one. I think everybody should have one. The beauty of the head start program is that it embraces the entire family. It's not just about them dropping off the kids and going on their way. We embrace that whole family. That's what's really important around delivering programs and services to vulnerable populations.
The mainstream will take a child, and they are just going to deal with the child. We don't operate that way. That's why it's so significantly important. If you have a child with autism spectrum disorder, you have a family dealing with autism spectrum disorder. It's not just about the child.
These are the programs that we're working really hard to develop, but of course we're under-resourced. We don't have enough capacity to do that. We're working hard around being able to deliver some of these programs. I have a wish list that's 20 miles long of programs that I wish I could deliver.
The need is growing faster than we can provide the services, because the population is growing. We also have two universities here in the city of Fredericton, so we have indigenous people coming from across the country to attend university. They're bringing their families with them. Their first point of contact is often our friendship centre. They may have been familiar with a friendship centre wherever they came from, so the first place they hook up to is a friendship centre.
We're hoping that we can have more head starts. There's one in New Brunswick. I say that because somebody should be embarrassed and ashamed that there's only one head start in New Brunswick. There's only one in Nova Scotia. There's only one in Prince Edward Island. We have three in Newfoundland and Labrador.
These are early intervention programs because we embrace the whole family. That's the model that we try to use. It's not just about dividing people up into whatever they need, whether it's mental health or food security. It's a holistic approach to most of what we do.