Hate won't help kids who were failed

REPORTER Mia Rabson and I spent three months researching Manitoba's child welfare system. We knew what the reaction of Free Press readers would be to the series we were writing.

Children have died and we exposed some of the reasons these tragedies happened. We expected your shock, horror, anger and deep sadness.

Those were the emotions we felt as we navigated our way through the inquest reports of babies, spoke to grieving foster parents, interviewed social workers and attempted to get answers from bureaucrats.

We were heartsick that Manitoba children die in CFS care; broken-hearted to hear more children are going to lose their lives to violence if the system isn't fixed.

The description of Gage Guimond's fatal injuries was enough to make many of you weep. It made us weep.

We heard from anonymous social workers who haven't been given the training or the time to care for all the children in their caseloads. They're afraid to give their names, knowing their jobs would be at risk.

We found the provincial government is determined to stay the course of devolution. The resulting chaos was nothing more than growing pains, we were told.

We sat in the kitchens of families who have turned their kids over (usually involuntarily) to CFS and we listened to their stories. No matter how imperfect a parent you have been, the death of a child cuts just as deeply.

We expected to hear all of this. What we didn't expect was the raw hatred.

We told you stories of broken families and damaged children. We told you that the pell-mell rush into devolution saw untrained workers thrust into positions for which they were unprepared. We showed how the number of kids in care has increased since 2003.

This wasn't finger-pointing. This was fact-gathering.

And then the hateful reaction came -- not from the majority of you, of course, but from enough to make me wonder if Rabson and I needed to use smaller words and shorter sentences to make our point.

Here are a few samples from my blog and in-box:

"If someone makes the choice to have a baby then they BETTER WAKE UP to what responsibilities lies (sic) ahead. If they find themselves god-smacked (sic) as to what it means to be responsible parent & how to raise a child, then they better do all they can to educate and prepare themselves so that they can provide for their kids.

"WHERE WERE THE PARENTS of those children who were murdered with in the care for a CFS agency or some other person?"

And this blog comment:

"It is inhumane (according to our laws) to sterilize these people. The same ones having baby after baby. Drinking, using drugs and blaming society for all their problems."

And this e-mail:

"We need mandatory abortions or sterilizations! If they can't stop having babies (ie aren't ready to be parents) then we should just take away the choice. Why is it society's fault? Why do you try to make me feel guilty?"

These people. Mandatory abortions and sterilizations. Blaming society for all of their problems.

Here's what I think:

Children who were entrusted to the government of Manitoba for care, protection and nurture have been battered to death, buried in the woods, shot with BB guns and left to starve like dogs. I don't care who their parents were or what sort of wretched choices they made.

Many of the parents are never going to be able to care for their children. That's why CFS stepped in and made a promise to all of us that these children would be safe.

They have failed. They continue to fail.

It may be some cold comfort to talk about "those people" and blame alcohol, drugs, welfare and the culture into which someone was born, but that's just muddying the waters.

The parents couldn't do the job. The system claimed it could.

These kids were failed twice, some of them to death.

Hate their parents if you must. It doesn't bring those babies back to life.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca

Lindor Reynolds blogs at www.winnipegfreepress.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 21, 2007