At-risk kids in north in more danger amid shift in child welfare

Foster parents and those advocating for at-risk children say there’s a dire lack of emergency placements and supports in northern Manitoba — a situation that’s 10 times worse than in Winnipeg — as the province moves to decolonize the child-welfare system.

“The alarm bells have been sounding for years, and the outcomes seem to be getting worse,” Sherry Gott, the provincial advocate for children and youth, said in an email.

“We’re seeing children who are moved from placement to placement upward of 10 times over their life span. We are seeing children die, and that is simply inexcusable.”

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said it will take time to turn things around so children are not brought into the system in the first place and families have the resources they need to stay together.

“Of course there are issues within the system,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “My priority is to decolonize the system.”

That system removed Indigenous children from their families and placed them in residential schools. The schools eventually closed, but tens of thousands of children continued to be apprehended by child-welfare authorities.

In 2024, 91 per cent of the 8,919 Manitoba children in care were Indigenous.

“This is a system that has been in place for generations and so, of course, it’s going to take a while to fully decolonize a system that’s so complex,” Fontaine said.

The Manitoba Foster Parents Association supports keeping children with their families, said president Jamie Pfau. “What we don’t support is on a Tuesday, the children being taken out of the school, the only school they’ve ever known and the only placement they’ve ever known for 10 years, and being sent to live with an uncle that they’ve never met in a community they’ve never been to,” the longtime foster parent said.

Such placements usually fail, resulting in more trauma for the children, she said.

“That’s going on, over and over and over,” said Pfau, who has run unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Manitoba Liberals and works for the caucus. Her “biggest frustration” is Fontaine’s response to child-welfare concerns.

“It’s just the same answer over and over: ‘We’re decolonizing child welfare.’ What does that mean? What is the plan? In the last, almost two years, has child welfare improved by decolonizing? We just keep hearing that blanket statement over and over and over again.”

Pfau said she met with Fontaine once, in January 2024, and she was dismissed as a “colonizer” and a “white saviour.”

“I was told that I have no place in helping or advocating… that I have no place in the foster care world except to be a foster parent and to kind of know my place.”

Fontaine denied making those remarks to Pfau.

The minister — who spent time in foster care — said she has great respect for the role of foster parents as the system evolves.

“Most Manitobans and Canadians would agree the No. 1 priority should be keeping children with their families,” Fontaine said.

The decolonization has begun, she said, adding the number of “customary care and kinship” agreements increased from 37 to 80 in the spring.

“The whole concept of a customary and kinship care agreement is so that children are with their extended family or their kin in their communities, with their people, on their land, but that there’s actual legitimate oversight to ensure the best interest and care of the children,” Fontaine said.

Gott said that while kinship care is being pitched as a solution to placement issues, “there are unfortunate incidents where young people experience further harm when placed in unknown homes or unknown communities.”

“It is imperative that young people have a say in their placements, and that their concerns are heard,” Gott said.

A longtime foster parent in Thompson said she’s attended six funerals in the past year for children and young adults connected to the child-welfare system. “There are so many children that are left in unsafe situations in Manitoba,” said the mom who asked not to be named so that the children in her care aren’t identified.

She recalled a young boy who was receiving “absolutely no parenting at all,” from a parent who was using crack cocaine. After dozens of reports to child-welfare authorities, he was apprehended only after a police drug bust in the home.

In another case, she said three children who hadn’t seen their mother in 18 months were sent to her remote community without a reunification plan after their last visit with her ended in physical and emotional abuse.

The kids, who were over the age of 12, were not asked by child-welfare workers how they felt about going to live with their mother.

A child-welfare worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity said there’s been “a huge provincial shift” to relying on family and community members. It’s the right move, but “kids, sometimes, still need somewhere to go when they’re at risk,” the worker said.

“Every day when kids are found to be at serious risk in their family home, workers are told ‘there’s nothing (that can be done),’” she said. The children may end up being left with their parents “because the system can’t do better.”

“Parents who haven’t been parented themselves need a lot of support and guidance,” the worker said. “We really thought having an Indigenous minister of families and an Indigenous premier would mean more for the kids and families we work with.”

Gott said her office has been in contact with the First Nations of Northern Manitoba Child and Family Services Authority about the “urgent need for systemic action” on problems that have been reported in Winnipeg but are “tenfold in the north.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca