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Awasis director forced aside

Child welfare agency probed

By: Mary Agnes Welch

5/12/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 7

Another child welfare agency boss has been suspended pending a review of his agency.

David Monias, the longtime executive director of the Awasis Agency, was placed on administrative leave a week ago by the Northern Authority, which is more than a year into a systemic review of how the child welfare agency serves kids in care.

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"This is done while a quality assurance review of the agency is underway," said Rachel Morgan, a spokeswoman for Family Services Minister Gord Mackintosh. "The Northern Authority wanted to ensure the review was unbiased."

The Northern Authority, the umbrella office that overseas several child welfare agencies like Awasis, appointed its own administrator under provisions of provincial legislation. Those provisions allow the Northern Authority to suspend an executive director if he is not properly carrying out his responsibilities or if the health and safety of children are threatened.

Despite five calls to the Northern Authority, chief executive officer Marie Lands could not be reached, so it's unclear exactly why Monias has been placed on leave.

Monias has been the agency's head for nine years.

Awasis is one of the province's biggest aboriginal child welfare agencies, serving a dozen of the poorest and most remote communities, including Shamattawa, Cross Lake, Nelson House, Oxford House and Split Lake.

In the last year, Awasis has been plagued by a series of child deaths.

Last November, 13-month-old Cameron Ouskan died while in foster care in Gillam. His foster father is charged with second-degree murder. Earlier that fall, Rephanniah Redhead, 14, committed suicide in Shamattawa and five-year-old Farron Miles drowned about two kilometres from his foster home on Cross Lake First Nation.

The troubles at Awasis date back even further. A 2004 inquest into the abuse, sexual assault and suicide of a Shamattawa teen came down hard on the agency for sending her back into the care of a stepfather just released from jail for sexually abusing her.

More than a year ago, the province launched a "quality assurance" review of Awasis. Normally, reviews are triggered by a child death or management misdeeds, but the province also started systematic quality assurance reviews of each of the aboriginal agencies to find problems before they exploded. Awasis was first on the list. The report was due last month.

As of the end of March, Awasis had 604 children in care.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca

 

Child welfare reviews 

The province and its two aboriginal authorities are in the midst of a series of reviews of child welfare agencies. Some were spawned by child deaths or allegations of misspending and mismanagement. Others are more routine, part of a new plan to systematically review each agency on a regular basis. They usually involve checking over each child's case file, interviewing staff and foster parents, reviewing hiring practices, testing board oversight and auditing the books. Here's an update.

 

Cree Nation Child and Family Caring Agency

Based in The Pas, Cree Nation has become the poster child for badly run agencies rife with nepotism and wasteful spending, but it's also been the most scrutinized. The first review of the agency confirmed that nepotism and misspending were rampant, and a bigger financial review released earlier this fall pegged total spending on the executive director and board members at $1.5 million over a four-year period. Now a forensic audit is underway.

 

Southeast Child and Family Services Agency

 The review, which began more than two years ago, was triggered by the inquest into the suicide of 14-year-old Tracia Owen, who had spent her entire life in and out of foster care. It was also launched to look at the cosy relationship between the agency and the Southeast Tribal Council, which shared bank accounts and case information. The agency's director is on administrative leave. The operational review was slated for completion last year, but has taken longer than planned because all 1,150 case files are being reviewed, plus experts are looking carefully at the issue of remote communities like Pauingassi and Poplar River, which are served by Southeast. The review was due this fall.

 

Peguis

The apparent suicide of 14-year-old Roanna Meagan Fontaine, along with questions about hiring practices and operations, triggered the review that began in October 2007. The review was due this fall.

 

Anishnaabe Child and Family Services

This is a quality assurance review and it wasn't triggered by a child death. The Southern Authority was targeting this fall to release the study, but setting up the agency's board of directors has taken more time than expected. The agency's executive director and one other person were put on leave and an administrator was brought in to manage it.

 

 

 

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 5, 2009 A4

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7 Commentscomment icon

I have fostered children from this agency and found the agency efficient and in-touch whenever I needed them regardless of the distance. Keep up the good work.

this could happen to anyone who is trying to direct social services, kids are damaged the minute CFS intervenes and kids are damaged when they don't...it is a lose-lose situation... We need to protect our children but what are we protecting them from when our process/system is abusive (punishing) You should read April Raintree to figure it out

Listen to "cog" on this one. He/she knows.

You've got some good points Cog, but what if someone just doesn't have the wherewithall between the ears to absorb your rationale? Your mentioning that kids being too healthy isn't a problem, reminds me of an incident a couple of years back... even if it is off on a tangent. A teaching colleague and her husband were looking after their two year-old grandson [I'm not aware of any CFS association]. The grandson had some sort of learning disability. Granny's explanation was that the mother [i.e. her daughter] had been a university student during the pregnancy, and had to walk outside from class to class. The excessive exercise and fresh air had caused brain damage in the fetus. [I kid you not!!!]

The simple solution to all of this is hire better trained people...especially front line workers...not social workers...the ones that actually work with the kids. they'll get the job done. Enough with the politics...come on now.

avatar

to all the parents thinkin bout offering their 2 cents on this:

since there is so much criticism being leveled at first nation cfs organizations, maybe we need to ask ourselves "why are they knocking on my door?" and then experiencing what appears to be sub-par service. why are we choosing booze & drugs over the well-being of our kids? to me it's a no-brainer, you bring a child into this world you look after him or her, you don't continue partying and drinking and drugging and then bringin more kids into the world with all different dads. no wonder our kids are having huge identity crisis' left right n center. this applies to all red, white, black and yellow people. no one should put their kids second to partying and crap like that because that is the main reason workers visit homes. i'm a worker on the rez, i dont go to homes cuz a kid goes to school too much or is too healthy at the clinic or anything like that. i go to homes because a parent or parents have left their children home alone so they could party or they are passed out on the floor while their kids fend for themselves or because someone in the home looks at children in a sick way and hurts them. parenting is'nt a right or a privilege, it's an honor to be given god's greatest gift and we need to treat it that way, not just as another $250 of monthly child tax benefit to drink up. wake up people, look in the mirror and ask why we need cfs then work at working us out of jobs. miigwetch.

all my relations.

The article is chock full of phrases like: systemic review...quality assurance review...ensure the review was unbiased...checking board oversight...auditing...operational review...lookng carefully. With all this scritiny... how did we get to where we are? Maybe the qualifications of the "experts that are looking carefully" should be checked. I'm not associated with CFS or any FN-CFS, but have seen, with little more than a casual glance, lots of incompetence and mismanagement. So, "experts" should really come up with something! ... unless it's akin to the police investigating the police!

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