Ready to tackle challenges ‘head-on’

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This article was published 13/04/2017 (3128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Daphne Penrose’s first public service job put her on the front lines, working with incarcerated teenagers. It was that job — listening to young people’s life stories as a juvenile counsellor — that made her want to not just work with children, but help them.

After all, so many of the teenagers she met in custody shared a similar history: they’d been involved with the child welfare system.

“You could see some of that trauma had led them to where they were,” Penrose said Thursday, in one of her first interviews since being named Manitoba’s new children’s advocate.

“That was one of the things that really made me want to go into this field.”

Penrose was named children’s advocate with very little notice. Tuesday was former advocate Darlene MacDonald’s last day after serving the maximum two terms. Wednesday, Penrose’s appointment was approved by the legislative assembly and confirmed by the Lieutenant Governor in council. On Thursday she was meeting her new staff of 30, flitting between office meetings and media interviews, sucking on lozenges for a pesky cold.

In nearly three decades of public service work, Penrose has had plenty of interactions with the Office of the Children’s Advocate. Now, after wrapping up her most recent job as acting chief executive officer with the Winnipeg Child and Family Services, she’ll head it.

“It’s an important time in child welfare and I’m excited to take on this role,” Penrose said.

There’s no shortage of important, deep-seated issues for her to tackle.

Indigenous children continue to be overrepresented in the child welfare system, which has frequently been referred to as the modern-day equivalent of Canada’s residential school system, which wrenched children away from their families and communities with horrific results.

“I hope to see the system continue to work towards trying to find family placements each and every time a child comes into care and searching for family for that child,” Penrose said.

Safe foster care, she said, should be the backup, not the go-to. Similarly, she hopes to address ongoing access issues faced by indigenous families living in remote and rural communities.

The Office of the Children’s Advocate will also keep an eye on the refugees fleeing over the U.S. border and into Manitoba, she said, as youth making the trek alone need support and guardians.

Knowing that change is possible is what continues to propel Penrose forward, she said. She’s worked on the front lines as a service worker and an abuse worker and also has experience as a supervisor, a regional director and an intersectoral director with the Child Protection Branch, among other jobs.

She is, unsurprisingly, in favour of provincial legislation introduced last month that seeks to widen the reach of the advocate’s office. Bill 9 would allow Penrose’s office to advocate on behalf of even more children and youth, while also giving her the ability to release reports into child deaths and review deaths and serious injuries.

It’s important to balance a family’s right to privacy, Penrose said, in particular “making sure any publication… is not going put any child at risk or make any child unsafe.” However, she said, “we feel very strongly that (the legislation) needs to be passed because the public does need to advocate with us to make sure that children and youth get the services they need.”

Penrose has the long weekend to beat her cold and then it’s back to the office and straight to work.

“I’m sure there are going to be challenges,” she said. “I will meet those challenges head-on and do the very best job I can to ensure that the work of this office moves forward and that we advocate for children and ensure their voices are heard.”

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca