Dear Revelstoke Parents and Caregivers,

I hope everyone had a nice winter break and is feeling rested and ready for 2026.  We are excited to start the Parent & Caregiver Series again this winter.  You can find a link to the information here.  The first session will be on January 28th will Hilla Shlomi from Revelstoke Child and Youth Mental Health (CYMH). We will send out more information, including a location, soon. There are many fabulous online supports and resources in BC for parents and caregivers.   This newsletter will highlight a few of them for you.

Take care and we hope to see many of you at the Parent & Caregiver series on January 28th,

Jodi Wallach – District Principal of Indigenous Education and K-12 Well-Being

Family Smart

Click here to read the January newsletter with links and information about:

Family Peer support: workers are parents who understand the intense emotional struggle of parenting a child with a mental health and/or substance use challenge.

Free Online events in January: Connecting With Our Kids When Anxiety Leads to Social Isolation, and Supporting Safety at Home When Your Child Has a Mental Health Crisis. (Links to register are included in the newsletter linked above)

Interior Health

Handwashing Tips

When done properly, good hand hygiene is the best way to prevent the transmission of disease. This hand hygiene article offers reminders for proper hand washing and hand sanitizer use, including when it is best to use soap and water and when to use alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Parents and caregivers can also find illustrations to help them teach their child how to properly wash their hands. To learn more, please visit www.aboutkidshealth.ca/handwashing

New Colour-Coded Weather Alerts

Canadians know how quickly the weather can change—and how important it is to be prepared for when it does. That’s why Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has introduced new colour-coded weather alerts. Under this new system all weather alerts—Warnings, Advisories, and Watches—are now colour-coded, moving from yellow, to orange, to red as the potential risk increases. ECCC’s forecasters choose the colours based on how confident they are that the weather will happen, and the possible impacts that weather may have. By giving alert colours meaning, Canadians are now able to get at-a-glance information about the potential risk a weather hazard poses to them. For more information on what the colours mean click here.

 

 

Protecting Youth Online

Violent online groups are targeting children and teens through social media and gaming platforms, coercing them into harmful acts and spreading extremist ideologies. Parents and caregivers should watch for warning signs like secretive app use, sudden interest in violent content, or withdrawal. Learn more and get prevention tips: Read the RCMP report.

Kelty Mental Health

Foundry

The newly redeveloped foundrybc.ca website includes updated Topic pages with featured resources and a new Resource Library to house tools, apps, information and supports. These resources, developed by BC Children’s Hospital in partnership with Foundry, reflect our team’s work to improve access to mental health and wellness information for BC youth and young adults.

Multi-Language Videos for Families

The newly redeveloped Kelty Mental Health Resource Centre and Health Bridge, in partnership with Our Kids’ Health, have released two videos to help parents recognize and talk about self-harm with their children and youth. These videos on self-harm and other topics related to mental health are available in multiple languages to help share culturally-relevant and evidence-based information with more families.