LISOM and Jim Eveleigh say they became licensed foster parents 18 months ago because there's a shortage of traditional First Nations foster homes.
Now they say they want nothing more to do with the child welfare system.
Jim Eveleigh, a former foster child and foster parent, wants no more to do with the system.
Last month, the couple had their licence revoked after a teenage foster child claimed Jim Eveleigh had touched her sexually.
Eveleigh denies the allegation and says he has been cleared by the Dakota Ojibway child welfare agency. The couple says the experience has left them bitter.
The teenager was immediately removed from their home, an accepted and necessary practice. The agency also removed a pair of siblings, ages three and six-and-a-half. The Eveleighs had been caring for those children for 11 months.
They're devastated they didn't get the chance to help the younger children adjust to a new home.
"Our hearts were broken," says Lisom Eveleigh. "We never had a chance to transition the kids. They came so traumatized. The healing process was just beginning."
She says she and her husband were left with "an overall malignant feeling" about the child welfare system.
The couple are well-versed in both foster care and the reforms in the system.
As a child, Jim Eveleigh went through 24 foster homes.
"It took me years to get over what happened to me," he says. Eveleigh, a large man with a shock of messy grey hair, rubs his forehead. "You get moved around and you never know when they're going to take you somewhere else. That isn't right."
Lisom Eveleigh's experiences go back to 1982, when she was one of the signatories of the tripartite master agreement that laid the foundation to establish child welfare agencies for aboriginal families provincewide. She says the intention of that agreement has been abandoned.
"We were supposed to have less kids in care," she says. "We had less than 1,000 kids in care. It's quadrupled now."
The couple ping-pong back and forth, their voices a chorus of concern, complaint and criticism. Jim Eveleigh says he's afraid his reputation has been stained forever.
"Do you know what that makes a man feel like?" he asks. "I don't know about other men but I feel lower than dirt."
But Lisom Eveleigh says the problems in the system are much larger than their personal discomfort. She says foster children travel from home to home, often with little more than their few belongings in a garbage bag. Medical histories are lost, prescriptions go unfilled and siblings are wrenched apart.
"We're being given minimal information," she says. "We can count on our fingers the number of times a worker came to our house. The fault comes down to dollars and cents."
She says she is concerned for the future of aboriginal children.
"They have a problem with trust, a lot of anger," she says. "Gangs become a sort of family because they never feel like they belong anywhere. We are replicating the legacy of residential schools."
lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca
PREVIOUS
