Children’s advocate sounds off at hearing

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This article was published 18/01/2018 (2491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Foster care must be the last resort, not the default position when dealing with the child-welfare system, Manitoba children’s advocate Daphne Penrose declared Friday.

Children need to be listened to when they talk about their mental health needs, youth addicted to methamphetamine need a detox facility and cuts to services for vulnerable children must be avoided, Penrose told a legislature committee.

Penrose has found a location in Thompson to open the north’s first children’s advocate’s office.

“Certainly, we are moving to hire an Indigenous deputy advocate. It’s important for the city, it’s important for the youth and community up there,” she said.

But although all three political parties in the house have unanimously passed the Advocate for Children and Youth Act, which puts into law 13 recommendations from the Hughes inquiry into the 2005 death of five-year-old Phoenix Sinclair, the government of Premier Brian Pallister so far has not proclaimed the act.

“Certainly, we are limited in scope until the legislation passes,” Penrose told reporters.

Families Minister Scott Fielding was vague about the delay and when the act could come into effect, then abruptly left the meeting 15 minutes before it was over, avoiding the subsequent media scrum.

The legislative affairs committee was technically considering the children’s advocate report for the two fiscal years immediately preceding Penrose being hired last April, but talks ranged all over the map.

“I realize what I say may be politically unpopular, but if it benefits children, I will say it,” Penrose said. “Every cut has an impact on people — the people who feel the cuts most drastically are children.”

The new legislation will expand her role from dealing with children in care or who have an open Child and Family Services file, or anyone who’s been in care during the past 12 months, to any child in Manitoba seeking help, she said. “This has been one of the biggest barriers to the mandate, and the most frustrating.”

Too often, she said, CFS and social workers are expected to provide help to children other agencies should be handling. They’re expected to search for children with drug addictions who run away, then “provide a place to sleep when they surface from a binge that’s lasted days.”

“Sadly, we have to tell them there isn’t a detox centre for them,” Penrose said. But for adults, “Still, we see addictions beds empty. Families are devastated and asking why no one has figured out how to help a child.”

The legislation will give her authority to hold accountable a broad ranges of services and organizations with whom children are involved, and will allow youth not in care but receiving other services to come to her to have their rights protected, Penrose said.

She said it’s time to stop blaming and finger-pointing. “This is not good enough. We need to be better — our children deserve it.”

Taking youth into care is the default position of the child-welfare system, though it should be the last resort, she said. “Apprehension is a very scary thing for a child. The first option cannot be foster care — it must be the last.”

Penrose said she and her staff were very unhappy to learn a mental health task force has not consulted young people suffering mental health problems.

“It’s critically important to allow those consultations to occur. The voices of children and youth must not be ignored,” she said.

Penrose said the funding for the fiscal year ending March 31 is sufficient under the ongoing authority of her office, but won’t cover a Thompson office and the expanded role and duties the legislation will bring.

She wouldn’t speculate on how much more her office needs.

“Our mandate is expanding significantly,” she said. “These changes have been a long time coming. Phoenix Sinclair would have been turning 18 this year.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca