Head to the fieldhouse at the Westlock Rotary Spirit Centre on any given Tuesday or Wednesday morning and you’ll hear slightly different sounds than you would normally expect.
Gone is the thud, thud, thud of a basketball game, or the thock, thock, thock of racket sports, and their associated cheers and jeers.
The sounds you’ll hear between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. on a Tuesday or Wednesday are squeals of delight, joyful laughter and even the odd tantrum.
They come from pre-school-aged children taking part in a Parent Link run playgroup and it’s just one of a number of services offered by the early childhood health and wellbeing service.
Parent Link’s services are locally based and coordinated, and as well as the playgroup, they include parent education classes and links to other child-health professionals, like audiologists, speech pathologists and occupational therapists.
Those services come together to create a range of programs that don’t just assist in the healthy development of kids, but also provide parents with the tools they need to support their children.
Importantly, anyone can access these services, when they need them, and they are essentially free.
Erin Chapotelle is the Westlock Parent Link coordinator and as her job title would suggest, she’s responsible for the delivery of the Parent Link services in the Westlock area.
“Part of our mandate is low cost, or no cost,” she said. “We try very hard to offer all of these things to everyone and make it accessible to everyone.”
Away from the Spirit Centre you’ll find Parent Link’s offices on the second floor of a retail/commercial building on 106 Street.
As you head up the flight of stairs to get to the main entrance, it’s not uncommon to hear those same sounds from the field house.
Kids playing, giggling, generally being kids. There’s no mistaking that this is a place where children are happy.
The Parent Link office is just like any other. They are clean and neat, and if it weren’t for the ambient soundtrack of the clientele, you could be at an accountant’s office.
When she’s not at the fieldhouse, or any of the many other places you’ll catch her about town, Chapotelle is at her desk.
“Our philosophy is to give the information to people and then they can make their choices to what works best for them,” she said.
“We’re looking at strengthening families and resilience within families, which also strengthens the community.”
The playgroup at the Spirit Centre is one of ways Parent Link delivers on that philosophy.
There is a strong and ever growing body of research and evidence showing that the things kids get out of a playgroup, set them up for life.
It turns out the pathways in the brain that allow people learn, help with emotional intelligence and be robust human beings are pretty much set before they’re five years old.
“Playgroups give children opportunities to experience new things that they may not be able to experience at home,” Chapotelle said. “So we try and do things like have a water table, or a sand table, or put out finger paining and shaving cream.
“We try to offer lots of different experiences for kids while keeping in the back of our mind that we’re looking at developing their skills. Things like fine motor skills and gross motor skills and social skills.”
But Parent Link’s ongoing use of the Spirit Centre to provide those opportunities is under threat.
As the Town of Westlock moves to reduce the subsidy it provides to the Spirit Centre, the playgroup has been forced to look for other avenues for funding so it can keep using the space.
Previously the town has provided the playgroup with an in-kind donation that covered the over $9,000 a year it costs to use the field house and nearby rooms, but that support is now unsustainable.
The town has had to reduce its support to a third of last year’s level and Parent Link is seeking to make up the shortfall.
Westlock County has donated $3,000 and Servus Credit Union $500, while a bottle drive and other fundraising activities run by supporters have added a bit more money.
Yet the group still needs to find about $3,000 by the middle of the year or it will be forced to move.
Back at the fieldhouse, that outcome is something that parent and playgroup user Nissa Kneller doesn’t want to consider.
Kneller has two children that take part in the playgroup and rates the facility and socialization aspect as important to her and her kids.
“Look at the space they get to run around in, it’s just so valuable,” she said.
“People just welcome you so much here, there’s always someone to hold a child, or someone to take your kid to the bathroom. You can just relax and socialize as parents.”
The things kids, and parents, get out a playgroup aren’t just positive during the pre-school phase of their life, they carry on into the school years.
Margaret LeBlanc is a Kindergarten teacher at Westlock Elementary School and she said it’s easy to spot the children that have been through some kind of pre-school activity, like Parent Link’s playgroup.
“They typically are less self-centered,” she said. “Their skill negotiating with others, and sharing, there are so many things that are pretty obvious as soon as you get them into our class room in September.
“It’s a pretty scary time for these little ones little ones to come into kindergarten especially if they haven’t had those practicing times.”
Regardless of what the money outcome is for Parent Link and its playgroup, those practicing times will continue to be provided for area kids.
Whether is can stay at the field house, has to move to a new location, or returns to where it all began up those stairs at the Parent Link office on 106 St., Chapotelle said the service will continue.
“The show will go on, definitely. It wouldn’t shut us down completely,” she said.
“Will things look different? Yes, absolutely they will. In the room we had here, maximum 20 people, so approximately eight parents and 12 kids.”
