Cracks in the System – Winnipeg Free Press

Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press
'Dorothy' received help from the wellness centre is now back in her home with her children.

Unique model ensures agency collaborates to help families

By Mary Agnes Welch 6 minute read Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015

NISICHAWAYASIHK CREE NATION — Matt and Maria didn’t bother taking off their parkas and spent most of the meeting staring into their Styrofoam cups of tea.

The young parents have been on the verge of breaking up, partly over Matt’s binge drinking. Maria recently moved out of Matt’s granny’s house and, after weeks of conflict and couch surfing, allowed the couple’s children to be apprehended.

Now, looking forlorn, they were the guests of honour at a meeting that felt very much like a gentle gang-up by a small battalion of surrogate aunties and grannies, all trying to talk some sense into the couple and find out what they need to get their kids back. The women nudged. They encouraged. They nagged a little. They read between the lines and test out solutions. But instead of grannies and aunties doing the prodding, it’s a circle of workers from nearly every department at Nelson House’s wellness centre.

“We want to hear from Matt and Maria how we can help them,” said the couple’s primary CFS worker, Melanie Peterson, as she straightened her pile of lined paper and started the meeting. “We don’t want to see your kids in care. Your kids need you while they’re young.”

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After losing care of sons, mom turned life around

By Mary Agnes Welch 5 minute read Preview

After losing care of sons, mom turned life around

By Mary Agnes Welch 5 minute read Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015

NISICHAWAYASIHK CREE NATION — When Shirley Swanson talks about her five boys, she does so with a possessive.

“My Silus” — the second-youngest, too shy to be in a family photo.

“My Phillip” — the middle child, who goes his own way and isn’t crazy about school.

“My Zacheus” — the baby of the family.

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Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015

Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press
Shirley Swanson, who at one time had her kids apprehended is now a inspiration to other mothers in the community after getting her life back on track and her kids back.

If it’s the parents who are the problem, why seize the children?

By Mary Agnes Welch 8 minute read Preview

If it’s the parents who are the problem, why seize the children?

By Mary Agnes Welch 8 minute read Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015

NISICHAWAYASIHK CREE NATION — More than a decade ago, shortly after Felix Walker was hired to manage the wellness centre in Nelson House, he got a gentle chiding from elders about the way Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation was running child welfare.

“It kind of felt like I was in court,” laughed Walker of the meeting in the wellness centre’s busy, log cabin-style lounge, where the always-full coffee pot draws a crowd. “One elder, it was Joshua Flett, said, ‘The children aren’t the problem. You need to start leaving the children at home. Move the supports into the home and remove the parents.’ ”

At the time, apprehensions of children were so common that parents would have their kids waiting with packed bags when CFS arrived, as though apprehension was an inevitability to be met passively. As with generations of children lost to residential schools, Walker said that epidemic of apprehensions damaged the spiritual core of the community, whose traditional social structure is built with children at the centre of the circle. The exodus of children to far-away foster homes left the same kind of open wounds for parents as residential schools, said Walker.

“If there was a kid in need of protection, it was apprehend, apprehend, apprehend. We said, ‘This is crazy. There has to be a better way,’ ” said Walker, the CEO of the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation Family and Community Wellness Centre. (Nisichawayasihk was formerly Nelson House First Nation.)

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Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015

Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press
Kids use scrap sheets of plastic to slide down a hill next to their home.

Challenges hinder province’s plan to keep families intact

By Mary Agnes Welch 5 minute read Preview

Challenges hinder province’s plan to keep families intact

By Mary Agnes Welch 5 minute read Friday, Dec. 18, 2015

It's been five years since Manitoba's child-welfare system started spending more to prevent family breakdown instead of apprehending children, but the province can't say how many families are being helped by the new approach.

Critics say child welfare's focus on reducing the number of children in care by catching problems early has waned.

In 2010, the province earmarked $29 million a year for what's called family enhancement -- a stream of child-welfare cases in which social workers help struggling families with everything from housing to respite to parenting classes before any abuse or neglect forces CFS to apprehend a child.

Five years ago, that money was budgeted based on the assumption it would help 3,000 families and hire as many as 150 special caseworkers. The province says that target has not yet been reached. But it cannot say how many family-enhancement cases there are, how many case workers have been hired or how the figures have changed in the last five years. That's in part because its central database makes it difficult to track the numbers and because each of the 23 front-line agencies has a different definition of family enhancement.

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Friday, Dec. 18, 2015

Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press
Cora Morgan

Federal initiative starting to show positive outcomes

By Mia Rabson 5 minute read Preview

Federal initiative starting to show positive outcomes

By Mia Rabson 5 minute read Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015

OTTAWA -- A federal initiative designed to reduce the number of on-reserve First Nations children from being taken into the child-welfare system has signs of success, a review of the five-year program shows.

But numbers suggest it hasn't had a major effect in Manitoba.

In 2010, Manitoba became the sixth province to sign onto the enhanced prevention-focused approach, which allowed Ottawa to funnel more cash directly to First Nations so child-welfare agencies could develop prevention strategies to help families before their kids had to be taken away.

Under the initiative, 15 First Nations child-welfare agencies in the province were to share $177 million over five years. Prevention could include everything from respite care to addictions support, family camps, sharing circles, parenting classes and emergency financial assistance.

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Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015

John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press FILES
Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett says child welfare is on her radar.

No accountability for killings

By Mary Agnes Welch 6 minute read Preview

No accountability for killings

By Mary Agnes Welch 6 minute read Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015

In the summer of 2008, when the province's child-welfare system was making headlines nearly every day, an extraordinary thing happened in the back boardroom of a Portage Avenue office building.

It was the day the Southern Authority released its review into the death of Gage Guimond. Along with Phoenix Sinclair, Gage became emblematic of a system in such turmoil it could not protect toddlers from harm at the hands of those meant to love them.

The review was fast, coming a year after Gage died. It was heavily censored to protect privacy rights, but damning even so. It laid out all the ways Sagkeeng Child and Family Services fell short, how the agency was rife with nepotism and incompetence and failed to perform basic safety and criminal checks on the homes Gage was left in, including the one where he was killed. But also memorable was that Sagkeeng's chief and the agency's appointed board members were on hand to answer for what went wrong. In that ugly back boardroom at the Southern Authority's cramped office, with the review in hand, reporters one-by-one sat with then-chief Donovan Fontaine and a collection of glum board members and grilled them about the review's findings. Presiding over this at the head of the table was Elsie Flette, then the Southern Authority's tough-as-nails CEO and the architect of a system of accountability that's shrivelled since she left in the fall of 2013.

It was a reckoning, one of the only times I can recall First Nations leadership, instead of the white Family Services minister, answering for the failures of an agency First Nations theoretically controlled.

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Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015

A review of how Intertribal CFS handled the death of Kierra Elektra Star Williams is secret.

Building relationships first step

By Mary Agnes Welch 4 minute read Preview

Building relationships first step

By Mary Agnes Welch 4 minute read Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015

The province's new point woman on child welfare says the government's often fractious relationship with chiefs is on the mend, but righting the system will take time.

"I think relationships, whether they be personal or professional, have their ups and downs, their growing pains. There's times of incredible strength and there's times that are very challenging," said Diane Kelly, the new assistant deputy minister in charge of child welfare. "I'm a big one for relationships, building trust, and I think we're getting to that point."

Kelly, a lawyer and former grand chief of Ontario's Treaty 3, which includes bands in southeast Manitoba, is widely seen as the province's pick to rescue devolution -- the troubled process of handing more control over child welfare to First Nations.

In recent years, devolution has lurched from crisis to crisis, including child deaths, an avalanche of reviews, investigations and inquiries as well as controversies over the number of children languishing in hotels and too-high rates of aboriginal children in care. Behind the scenes, though, the province has quietly reclaimed control over the First Nations system.

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Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press
Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross (left) with Diane Kelly, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Manitoba Family Services prior to the provincial announcement of changes to the Child and Family Services Act that will greatly increase community involvement in caring for children through customary care. The event was held at Thunderbird House Wednesday.

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Key recommendations from Phoenix Sinclair inquiry yet to be implemented

Mary Agnes Welch 4 minute read Preview

Key recommendations from Phoenix Sinclair inquiry yet to be implemented

Mary Agnes Welch 4 minute read Sunday, Dec. 13, 2015

The province is making slow progress on some of the biggest — and most expensive — child-welfare reforms recommended by the Phoenix Sinclair inquiry, nearly two years after it was released.

Little tangible change has been made to reform a complex funding model that still encourages Manitoba Child and Family Services workers to apprehend children instead of preventing family breakdown. There has been no legislative change allowing child welfare to extend services and funding to foster children until they are 25 years old.

It’s unclear whether any progress has been made to ensure a child in care has just one worker, instead of many. And average caseloads are still well above the 20-case cap recommended by commissioner Ted Hughes, who headed up the inquiry into Phoenix’s death and the state of Manitoba’s child-welfare system.

The province has introduced legislation to bolster the role of the children’s advocate, though the changes fell short of Hughes’ recommendations. And the province essentially rejected at least one of Hughes’ proposals — that anyone practising social work be registered with the Manitoba College of Social Workers, the profession’s new regulatory body. Instead, the province decreed only employees with the words “social worker” in their title need register.

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Sunday, Dec. 13, 2015

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press files
Two years after Justice Ted Hughes released his report of the inquiry into the death of Phoenix Sinclair, the province has made little progress on its recommendations.

Voices of experience: Former CFS wards open up on the legacy of care they received

Mary Agnes Welch 12 minute read Preview

Voices of experience: Former CFS wards open up on the legacy of care they received

Mary Agnes Welch 12 minute read Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015

Cheryl BruceHome: Winnipeg and Poplar River First NationIn care: At age four. Placed for six years with a loving foster mother, but then returned to her birth parents. In and out of foster care after that due to her parents’ addictions and ongoing physical abuse. Also suffered from sexual abuse.Number of homes: Twenty, and 15 different schools.Number of workers: Ten.Siblings: Four.Now: Twenty-three years old; preparing to finish high school courses and attend university; part of Voices! Manitoba’s Youth in Care Network.On coming into care:

“I was staying with my grandparents and all I know is my parents were facing their addictions and having some issues of domestic violence... There used to be five of us and I think I was the third-youngest one. There’s only four of us now... When I got into care, I guess I was traumatized, I was neglected. I was really sick at the time. I was (malnourished)... There are so many answers I want to know... The last thing I remember is I was sitting in the back of a police car and they were taking me to the CFS building and they were telling me, yeah, I wasn’t really looking too good at the time.”

On her relationship with her mother:

“She got her other kids back except me. I have no idea why. I guess it’s all the abuse my mom did to me. I always want to ask her questions about it, why this happened to me. I keep trying to reach out to my community to see what I can (find) out, but no one’s stepping up... She just kept abusing me... The only reason why is maybe I was too cheeky or something. I don’t know what triggered her to come after me, but I just kept going in and out of care after that... My mom finally gave up on me, I think I was 15 at the time. I just got away from her the best I can. Nobody was taking it serious and I don’t know why they kept putting me back at that home.”

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Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015

Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press
Cheryl Bruce watched her parents struggle with addictions. She started drinking as a teen because that's all she saw growing up.

The dissolution of devolution

By Mary Agnes Welch 21 minute read Preview

The dissolution of devolution

By Mary Agnes Welch 21 minute read Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015

Is devolution dead?

After years of lurching from crisis to crisis — the murder of children, spending scandals, damning inquiries and kids housed in hotels — it may be time to acknowledge what many in the child-welfare system, from high-level posts to the front lines, believe.

“Devolution is a ship that’s listing, and there’s no safe shore to go to,” said one former high-level provincial official.

“It’s stuttering” said a First Nations leader who helped oversee an aboriginal authority.

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Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015

Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press
The office door for the minister of family services in the Manitoba legislature. One senior provincial official says it is the worst job in government.

Indigenous control of family agencies a myth

By Mary Agnes Welch 5 minute read Preview

Indigenous control of family agencies a myth

By Mary Agnes Welch 5 minute read Friday, Dec. 11, 2015

Devolution has been touted as the model for Manitoba's child-welfare system -- the minister pledged last week new legislation to increase aboriginal control over their children -- but the reality in the depths of the system is far different.

The Free Press has learned three First Nations agencies -- serving 15 bands and 2,150 kids -- are being overseen by appointed administrators instead of indigenous leaders, and have been, in two cases, for years.

In fact, the foundation of devolution, first laid 12 years ago as the only way to strengthen child welfare, has crumbled.

Aboriginal leaders say indigenous control of child welfare is a mirage, little more than "a white system" micromanaged by the Family Services ministry, strangled by rules most band-based agencies can never meet and still intent on taking children out of First Nations families.

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Friday, Dec. 11, 2015

Timeline: CFS: A troubling history

1 minute read Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015

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