When I talk about flexible funding, I'm referring to some of the gaps that we encounter, for example, being able to provide more services to youth. With our current funding we're not allowed to pay for skills development training or things of that nature for anyone under the age of 18 or who hasn't been out of school for a year. That automatically poses a gap for a lot of our community members who want to access education prior to that.
It's almost like we're having to constantly just be reactive rather than taking a proactive approach and trying to provide more services for young people before they're in a devastating situation where they've dropped out of school and now they have no money, and at times are single moms or single dads of young children and do not have access to child care. All of those things accumulate and make it difficult. That's one gap. Having more flexibility of the funding for that purpose would be great.
We're always challenging that five-year mark. We're always worried about whether or not funding's going to be renewed for the next five years so planning ahead further past that time constantly is a challenge, because that first year you're getting things back on track and getting going and then the last year again, you're worried and you're planning for the new funding.
There are a few years in the middle where things work really great. In the past it seems that some other programs changed or shifted, so then you have to go back and re-strategize with your plan, as well as different funding pots that are around that sort of come and go.
Thank you.