Child welfare unequal to the job

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/09/2015 (3431 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Did Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross hear her own words when she tried to explain the remarkable rate — record rates in Canada — of missing persons, most of whom ran from a child-welfare place of safety? It’s not the care, Ms. Irvin-Ross said, but the problems the child is facing.

Well, why are Manitoba children so much more troubled than those in Saskatchewan, for example, which has roughly the same demographic profile as this province?

Saskatchewan takes in many fewer children, and puts many fewer in emergency shelters, which is what group homes are meant to be. By comparison, Manitoba has Canada’s highest number of reports of missing young people, nearly twice the per capita rate of Saskatchewan.

Of the 2,179 missing-person reports filed with the Winnipeg Police Service from April to June of this year, 82 per cent involved kids running from a CFS facility. And 1,329 reports (61 per cent) involved a group home.

Most of the missing were girls, and most were repeat runners.

The data graphically illustrate the scope of the problem Winnipeg faces in protecting vulnerable young people who fall to the worst of the streets, exploited, abused and too often murdered — all of that after being seized for their “own good” by CFS.

Yet, the Family Services Department, which says it tracks missing kids, has never published a similar report. So while Ms. Irvin-Ross is correct in stating these children in care, some 90 per cent of whom are aboriginal, are dealing with trauma from very young ages, she fell short in showing how the care the state delivers is equal to the challenge. The province has had repeat reports on how the shelters cannot meet the demand, with staff poorly trained to meet the need.

While the WPS report, compiled for the police board, is not entirely surprising in its broad revelations, it gives some context to the tragic last days of Tina Fontaine, the 15-year-old whose body was pulled a year ago from the Red River. She had walked away from her “emergency placement” in a downtown hotel room. Tina had been picked up by police in a traffic stop days earlier and released, despite being identified to them as at risk and on the run.

She was one of many. Police regularly issue public alerts when youth at risk of being exploited go missing, but do not make those alerts in every case. There was no such release in June for the 17-year-old chronic runaway, a CFS ward, who escaped the Furby Street apartment where Tina also spent some of her last days. Four people were charged with sex-trafficking the 17-year-old.

The numbers show, however, that if police issued alerts for every missing Winnipeg youth, the public would probably turn off, out of “alert fatigue.”

In some specific cases, the public’s attention can help. But fundamentally, this is not the public’s job, nor should police be tasked to plug gaping holes in social services.

This is the job of Family Services, and other provincial government resources that should be designed to step in to assist families, and children, before they fall to crisis and tragedy.

Staunching the flow of aboriginal children into care requires pouring resources into the homes, for the parents (and parents-to-be) at risk. For too long, Manitoba’s child-welfare workers have been given the near-impossible task of rescuing children and fixing the profound damage. There’s ample evidence, backed by data, that taking kids into care does not help them succeed in life.

Ms. Irvin-Ross should tell us what is her government’s plan to prevent family breakdown, damage and neglect of children so Manitoba’s rate of apprehending kids falls, at least to levels seen elsewhere in Canada.