KidSport, Jumpstart programs offer financial help to get kids into sports

Stretching a dollar through budgeting and bargain-hunting is good but sometimes families need a bit of help to get little Johnny or Janet on the ice or the basketball court.

“It’s one of those things about sports in Canada that, when you get down to your budget, some sports have equipment needs that are prohibitive and affect families,” said Scott Gray, director of athletics and recreation at Saint Mary’s University.

“You see a lot of kids moving to the avenue of school sports because they’re covered (by provincial education budgets) and so are a little more accessible,” he said.

Enter the KidSport and Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart programs.

A national program, KidSport has branches in each of the four Atlantic Canadian provinces to help those families most in need sign their children up for sports programs. But pay attention. Each province where KidSport operates has slightly different rules to the others in terms of how much financial assistance is provided and what the criteria are to qualify.

In Nova Scotia, KidSport coughs up to $300 per child, including a maximum of $200 for sports equipment and $100 for registration fees. Once a family’s application is approved, the organization sends a voucher for the equipment costs to a sporting goods store to allow the child to get that gear. And any parent who wants to cut costs by buying used equipment is welcome to do so and provide the receipt for the gear to KidSport Nova Scotia.

“If a parent does have an ability to buy the equipment, either new or used, as long as they have a receipt for it and it is for an eligible sport, we can reimburse that,” said Colin Gillis, coordinator for KidSport Nova Scotia.

While the Nova Scotia KidSport program determines financial need on a sliding scale of family income and size, though, the Prince Edward Island chapter of the program had to limit applications last year by setting an annual income cut-off of $25,000 irrespective of the size of the family.

“Unfortunately, we just aren’t receiving enough money to help everybody,” said Gemma Koughan, executive director of Sport PEI which administers the KidSport program in that province.

In New Brunswick, eligibility for the KidSport program is based on a point system that examines such things as the number of years the child has played the sport, the parents’ income, the children’s age, and the number of years they have already received funding from the organization.

Another program widely used by families in need looking to get their children into sports and recreational programs is Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart.

It provides financial support to families for registration fees and the cost of equipment and transportation for children aged four to 18 years of age looking to take part at the house league level of 70 different activities, including hockey, soccer and swimming, martial arts and ringette.

That program determines financial need by looking to Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-offs which look at the number of people in the family and where they live.

In a bigger city like Halifax, for example, the low-income cut-off for a single parent with one child is a higher income than in a sparsely populated, rural area away from towns and villages. Similarly, two parents with a family of five children would qualify with a higher income than a single-parent family.

According to Canadian Tire’s website, families in need can apply for financial assistance for all of their children but there is a maximum of $300 over successive seasons for each activity the child is in. The annual maximum offered by the program is $600, subject to the discretion of each local chapter of the program.

Beyond these two national programs, there is help at the local level.

Saint Mary’s University, for example, rents out its recreational facilities to local school programs at a reduced rate to keep the cost of sports down, said Gray.

The university also works with families who attend sports camps and have a tough time covering the costs of those programs, which usually run about $150 for a week.