Special Report
-
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. <Continued>
-
Resource centre to help families
By Mia Rabson MANITOBA'S child welfare system took a step towards a new way of doing things Thursday with the opening of a new family resource centre in St. Boniface. <Continued> -
CFS understaffing intentional
By Mia Rabson A front-line social worker in rural Manitoba says her employer regularly keeps social worker jobs vacant in an effort to save money and not run a deficit. <Continued> -
Teenager abandoned after 18th birthday
Lindor Reynolds JENNY DUNSFORD turned 18 on Monday. It was the birthday she'd been dreading. <Continued> -
Mackintosh defends devolution
By Mia Rabson FAMILY Services Minister Gord Mackintosh said Monday his government is committed to improving the child protection system with more staff and better tracking of how the system is working. <Continued> -
Failing Our Children: Part III
By Lindor Reynolds GEORGE Lohnes is a Manitoba foster care system success story.
Sometimes, it turns out beautifully
"Honestly, for me, being in foster care made my life better," says Lohnes, now 35.
"The path I was going on I could have seen myself in jail. I was stealing cars. I was stabbed twice. I don't think I really had a future.
"I left home when I was 13. I was in major trouble. I was in gangs and stuff like that."
■ Prevention better than intervention
■ This disgrace must not be endured
<Continued> -
Failing Our Children, Part II:
Lindor Reynolds CHILD and Family Services has returned Gage Guimond's three-year-old sister to the Selkirk foster home where she lived happily for a year before the agency decided she and Gage would be better off with blood relatives.
And they call this care
■ It was chaos - then it got worse
■ Fed up, they're out
■ 'She was such a happy girl'
■ A sad history
■ The same old question whenever a child dies
■ Here's what's happening in other places
■ Ottawa slow with funding, Flette says
<Continued> -
'We're going down.
By Lindor Reynolds IN January, Sally Oxford left her job as an intake worker with Winnipeg Child and Family Services.
Children are going to die'
She still hasn't been replaced.
Oxford (not her real name) is a 19-year veteran of the system. She was so committed to the care of children that, even after a heart attack brought on by the stress of her job, she was determined to return to the trenches.
In child welfare, no one dares say R-word
Defence of devolution
<Continued>
