JENNY DUNSFORD turned 18 on Monday. It was the birthday she'd been dreading.
The shy, quiet teenager has been in foster care her entire life. Child and Family Services seized her from her parents when she was a newborn. Other than brief, mandated family visits in Winnipeg hotels, Dunsford and her birth parents remain strangers.
But when the clock struck midnight on Monday, Dunsford faced two choices: she could either go live with her birth parents on Little Grand Rapids reserve or apply for social assistance in Winnipeg.
Southeast CFS would no longer pay to have her live with her foster mother, the woman who has raised Dunsford since she was a sickly five-month-old baby. If that seems fair because she is, by law, no longer a child, consider this:
If Dunsford moves from one system to another, unable to finish her schooling and unemployable, she will continue to cost the taxpayers money for the rest of her life.
If she and her foster mother convince CFS to extend support for another six months or a year, Dunsford's convinced she can get her high school equivalency and find work.
"Most teenagers are excited when they turn 18," she says, "but CFS is trying to send me back to my birth parents. It's just overwhelming because I hardly know them."
It's important to note that under the Family Service Act, there is a provision that allows support to continue past a person's 18th birthday. Dunsford's foster mother says she has been requesting the extension but has had no response.
The foster mother, who is reluctant to be named because she has other foster children, says there hasn't been an adequate transition period to prepare Dunsford for life on her own.
(Dunsford was willing to talk only because she is no longer a ward of CFS. As reporter Mia Rabson and I learned during a recent three-month investigation of CFS issues, fear rules the worlds of social workers and foster parents.)
Dunsford's situation is complicated by the fact that she suffers from fetal alcohol effect, a disorder that sometimes affects her impulse control. School was always a problem. At 14, she fell in with the wrong crowd and began drinking and using drugs. Things spiraled out of control.
She's now enrolled in a program at the Aboriginal Centre to obtain her Grade 12 and find work. She and her foster mother think she has a good chance of becoming a successful adult.
"I think Jenny is telling everyone loud and clear that she's not ready yet. She doesn't want to enter another system and I support her completely in that," her foster mother says.
In October 2006, the Department of Family Services and Housing issued a response to external reviews of the CFS system. One initiative was to improve services for children in care who are reaching the age of majority.
"Your role as a caregiver ends the day they reach the age of majority," says her foster mom, "but our culture doesn't allow that. We'll never let our family be put out in the cold. Jenny will have a home here.
"But when I look at the AJI (Aboriginal Justice Inquiry), there were pretty strong recommendations that the child should be supported. How do they determine if Jenny is ready to go out the door at 18? Nobody called Jenny. They just close her file and that's it."
I haven't raised a child yet who was capable of finding a job, an apartment and coping as an adult when she was 18. Thank goodness Jenny Dunsford has a foster mother who has stepped up to the plate.
Because if it was entirely up to the secret society that is CFS, we'd be adding one more teenager to the welfare rolls today.
This is not child welfare. This is child abandonment.
lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca
Lindor Reynolds blogs at
www.winnipegfreepress.com
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