Taking new directions instead of taking children

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/03/2024 (532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Growing up, our version of cops and robbers was us against the social workers,” one Manitoba First Nation’s chief told me during a forum on child welfare a few years back. With satiric wit, he relayed how he and his friends would run from the unlucky kid deemed “it” — the stand-in for child and family services — trying to catch them.

The chief was painting a stark picture of what it was like for so many families living in fear of the provincial welfare system. For context, Manitoba has some of the highest child apprehension rates in the world, and CFS has taken more children from families than residential schools ever did.

As families minister at the time, the chief’s words struck deep. I had the responsibility of garnering his trust, and that of so many others who had been traumatized by a broken social welfare system, asking once again for a willingness to work together to fix it.

When Police Chief Danny Smyth held a recent unprecedented news conference to call out the child-welfare system and highlight the number of youth living in group care embroiled in violent crime, it begged the question: Why? Why are these kids committing acts of violence, and more importantly, what can be done to stop it?

According to Smyth, the problem lies in a lack of resources within group care agencies. “They don’t have the resources or the tools to meet the needs of the youth in their care,” he said. “This means that the kids are left to themselves to go anywhere and do anything that they see fit.”

Sure, resources are part of a problem. That is why a $2.25-million program aimed to provide wraparound services to 45 troubled youth — 30 in Winnipeg and 15 in Thompson — was created in 2022. The intent of this program, called Zaagiwe Oshinawe Inaakonigewin (Love the Youth in Justice) and headed by Marymound’s elder-in-residence, Louise Lavallee, was to address the root causes of crime for these kids involved in the justice system, and in most cases, also the child welfare system.

Our former PC government, and undoubtedly the current NDP government, will establish and fund many, many initiatives to help troubled youth. When I came into government in 2016, there were variations of these programs already in place, and when I left, others had been established. Yes, resources matter. As does better group care and more wraparound supports. Yet it seems to me, and many others, it’s only treating a symptom, not the problem.

This leads us back to the wise words of that chief who took the time to educate me on what it was like growing up under a discriminatory system. The problem with tearing families apart is seen in the legacy these kids are living out. Child welfare, established decades ago with a mandate to protect children, has a long history of playing a “government knows best” role and often taking kids from parents where little protection issues exist, yet do so because of poverty, poor housing and not enough food in the cupboards.

Hundreds of kids — mostly Indigenous — have been taken over the years because of these circumstances. As a white, single mom who once lived in a messy, one-bedroom suite with my newborn baby and often had little food in my cupboard, I honestly believe the only thing separating me from many of those moms who had their kids taken is skin colour.

Today, the province is shifting its approach to child welfare, ending these historical unjust practices, and revising its role of “protector” through a series of legislative reform.

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Helping parents establish necessary tools, offering mentorship and respite, and ending the practice of apprehension when no protection issues exist, to name a few. It’s going to take time, but these measures will pay off with fewer kids in care and fewer troubled youth committing crimes like the ones highlighted in Smyth’s press conference.

More importantly, the implementation of federal legislation, originally tabled as C-92, an act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis youth and families, will create the seismic shift in child welfare.

This law will help repatriate Indigenous children to their communities and shift power away from the provincial system and all its historical baggage to place it with Indigenous governing bodies. Here, with more kids connected to a place called home, we can expect to see changes taken for granted by those of us who never had to live in fear of being taken away because our family had the wrong colour of skin.

Rochelle Squires is a recovering politician after serving 7 1/2 years in the Manitoba legislature. She is a political and social commentator whose column appears Tuesdays.

rochelle@rochellesquires.ca