When Cathey Day gets stumped at work, she won’t likely crack a textbook to find the answer.
Working as a rural home economist in southwestern Manitoba for almost 10 years, Day said she often looks to her own experience growing up and now raising a farm family of her own.
If that doesn’t work, she falls back on four years of training in the faculty of human ecology at the University of Manitoba.
That’s why Day said she’s disturbed at the university’s plan to phase out the program.
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“We’re the only educational institution or faculty that focuses on the family,” she said. “Without that, even more families would slip through the cracks.”
The university said it will keep the four majors from human ecology, such as clothing and textiles, food and nutrition and family studies, but is considering splitting them into different departments, such as agriculture and psychology.
Day said that would be a mistake.
“The concern is that the faculty has a focus on the family and needs of the family in terms of food, clothing and shelter issues,” she said. “As soon as you split that up, the focus is gone.”
Moving the food and nutrition portion to the faculty of agriculture will create new problems, she said.
Now, the course deals mainly with consumer concerns and education. With the view that agriculture is closely tied to chemical companies, that will change.
“The skepticism about agriculture, and that the chemical companies affect all issues around that … if you tie that to nutrition and food safety, you get away from the unbiased consumer perspective that human ecology has always been quite proud of.”
As one of 17 home economists working for Manitoba Agriculture, Day said the team fills a void in rural communities. And because the ministry hires only graduates from the U of M’s human ecology faculty, cutting the program would change the level of service available to farm families.
Provincial home economists provide a balance between the government’s focus on business development in rural Manitoba, she said.
“It’s good to have this business emphasis, but as a department we strongly feel when a family is getting involved in business or starting something new, there’s a lot of family-related issues that need to be dealt with,” Day said.
“We want to emphasize the family side of business because nobody else does it.”
She has always wanted to work with rural families, said Day. Success in her job means taking a holistic approach to clients’ concerns and applying that to the bigger picture.
“They might come to us with financial issues but there’s usually other family issues that are contributing to the well-being of the family unit.”
