Unbroken circle

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This article was published 18/12/2015 (3253 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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.”

Squeezed in around the log table with Peterson are a half-dozen other workers, including a co-ordinator from the counselling office, a family enhancement worker, a public health staffer and several others. Among them sits Matt’s granny and Maria’s mother, there to offer insight and help make a plan for the couple.

This meeting, called a circle of care, is meant to get all the departments co-ordinated and working together, instead of forcing parents in crisis such as Matt and Maria to visit a several offices separately, where the buck could be passed and responsibility for helping the couple could fracture. The family has one primary worker, the person they feel most comfortable with, but every department shares accountability for the family so no one can say, for example, the reason the parents failed to get their kids back is because counselling or CFS or housing didn’t do its job.

(The Free Press has changed the parents’ names and agreed not to report certain identifying details to protect their confidentiality.)

After a little needling, Maria told the circle her problem is housing. For years, Matt and Maria have been living with Matt’s granny, but that arrangement has broken down, in part because Matt drinks with his buddies, especially when granny is away.

“I want our own house, a safe environment so we don’t have to live with relatives,” Maria said quietly. “I would stay with (granny), but when she’s not there, I just don’t feel safe.”

One worker says she can help write a support letter to the band for Maria, to help her get priority for housing. But, with hundreds of people on the band’s waiting list, it’s often faster to get a house in Thompson, if Maria is willing to move there.

But that’s not the only issue, as a little more nudging from the circle soon uncovers.

“When you work, the first thing you do is go see your friends,” Maria told Matt with sudden force followed by a trickle of tears. “That’s not fair to me or my kids.”

“I don’t drink around my kids,” Matt said to the circle of workers as one fetches some paper towels for Maria’s tears. Matt said he quit his job so Maria could go to school, but then Maria quit school and disappeared for a few days, which prompted Matt to call the police.

“After I quit my job, she left me,” Matt told the circle.

“You need to listen to what she’s saying, though,” interjected Charlene Kobliski, the counselling services co-ordinator. “She’s talking about her safety… If your kids continue to see that anger and aggression and dislocation, that’s what they’re going to learn.”

“I know what it’s like,” says family enhancement worker Kim Spence to Maria. “You’re like, ‘He gets to go out, why can’t I? I’m home. I’m overwhelmed.’ I’ve been there.”

Maria offered a little nod and a tight smile.

But, Spence said later, Maria hasn’t been very receptive about attending the weekly parenting program offered by the wellness centre, despite much encouragement and repeated offers of a free babysitter.

Maria grew up in foster care, starting from when she was a toddler, and doesn’t trust anyone to look after her kids. But in September, she did something unusual in a province where suspicion of social workers runs deep. She asked CFS to take her children until she could get a place to live and her volatile relationship with Matt sorted out. For the last month, most of the couple’s children have been staying with granny, a familiar spot.

After a bit, the circle comes up with a list of to-dos for the couple. Matt will check out the drug and alcohol counselling available either at the Medicine Lodge down the road or through the local national native alcohol and drug abuse program. The couple will also see the wellness centre’s family therapist and think about whether to move back in with granny. And, Maria will likely be strongly encouraged to attend the centre’s parenting program.

Later, the workers say it’s unusual and encouraging to see such a young couple in the circle of care. If all goes well, Matt and Maria could win back their kids early in the new year.

“It’s a big step you guys are taking,” Kobliski told them before the circle wrapped up with a short prayer. “In a few years, you’re going to be like your granny. You’re going to be telling your kids, ‘This is what we did to get to where we’re at.’ ”

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca