Child-welfare system in peril: advocates, First Nations agree with police chief By: Carol Sanders Posted: 7:08 PM CDT Friday, Mar. 15, 2024 Last Modified: 7:36 PM CDT Friday, Mar. 15, 2024 Updates

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Winnipeg’s police chief has received support — from unlikely sources — for sounding the alarm about street violence committed by young wards of the province.

Winnipeg Police Service Chief Danny Smyth’s Thursday news conference calling out the failures of the system meant to protect youth in care was “shocking,” but the jolt Manitobans needed to hear, said Jamie Pfau, president of the Manitoba Foster Parents Association.

“To be honest, I’m happy that Chief Smyth said this and is shining a light on it,” she said.

Smyth called the recent spate of violence “remarkable,” with youths “indiscriminately” wielding machetes. There were four random attacks last week, including a machete assault on a woman waiting at a bus stop. A 13-year-old was arrested Wednesday with a machete in his possession, police said. The teen was also linked to a robbery at gunpoint earlier in the week.

The police chief said all of the suspects were living in group or foster homes, where caregivers don’t have the means to give them a stable life.

The Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth was “not particularly surprised” by the incidents involving machete-wielding youths. “We hear about situations like these time and again,” Sherry Gott said in an email Friday. “What we need is investment in resources and supports for foster families and group homes who care for our most vulnerable children and youth.

While youth need to take responsibility for their actions, their crimes need to be seen as a result of a larger systemic failure, Gott said.

“While we cannot comment on the realities for these specific youth, what we often see with children involved in the child-welfare system are the impacts of unstable upbringings, untreated trauma, frequent placement changes and a general lack of adequate supports.”

Gott stressed there needs to be preventative measures to help youth cope with the impacts of trauma and resources that provide structure for their day-to-day lives, including mental health supports and strategies to keep them in school.

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The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs — that called for Smyth’s resignation in 2022 for refusing to search the Prairie Green Landfill outside Winnipeg where the bodies of missing Indigenous women are believed to be buried — acknowledged Friday an increase in violence involving youth in care.

“The existing system is plagued by a chronic lack of resources and support for caregivers, leaving vulnerable youth without the stability and guidance necessary for healthy development,” the AMC and the First Nations Family Advocate Office said in a joint news release. “This neglect often traps them in a cycle of justice system involvement, leading to homelessness and substance abuse.”

A youth advisory group of First Nations young people who’ve experienced both the child welfare and justice system is being established to get a deeper insight into the connection between the two. Its findings will help shape recommendations for systemic change that includes decolonizing the child-welfare system, the release said.

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine, who was in New York at the United Nations this week, was not available for an interview to respond to Smyth’s concerns.

“Everybody involved in the child-welfare system is struggling, and is not supported.”–Jamie Pfau

In a statement late Friday, the minister said youth coming into conflict with the law “speaks to larger societal issues and a lack of action on addressing the root causes of crime.” It said the NDP government is working toward decolonizing the child-welfare system and taking a “whole-of-government approach” to keep children out of the justice system. The statement did not commit to increased funding.

“Everybody involved in the child-welfare system is struggling, and is not supported,” said Pfau, who noted Manitoba has the lowest basic maintenance rate for kids in care in Canada and ranks far behind neighbouring Saskatchewan.

Specific funding for recreation — to play a sport, learn an instrument or language, participate in a chess club, for instance — was pulled back in 2019 when the province moved to block funding for child welfare agencies, said Pfau. Foster families also lost respite care.

“Now we’re seeing the the results of being, first of all, unsupported and then having what little support we have pulled back even more, and then going through a global pandemic. These children are traumatized and there’s no supports in place.”

Pfau, who’s fostered as many as four youth at a time, said one of their foster children waited a year to be approved and for an appointment to see a psychologist. She and her husband offered to pay out of pocket to get an appointment sooner but were told they could not.

While other provinces and territories mandate foster parents to participate in pre-service training prior to being able to obtain their foster parent licence, Manitoba does not, Pfau said.

“When we became foster parents, I was 27 and my husband was 24. We had no training, no experience, no understanding of the history… and we had two boys placed in our home with extensive needs. Everyone was set up to fail.”

New foster parents need to understand attachment and development theories, trauma and the history and effects of colonization, said Pfau, who has a master’s degree in social work and is working on a doctorate.

“It is something many agencies have been calling for, but the province has not committed to anything.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.