Open files to public scrutiny

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/09/2012 (5062 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE Hughes inquiry into the death of five-year-old Phoenix Sinclair in 2005 got underway this week — before legal wrangling suspended it until mid-October — with a reminder that this is about a little girl who was murdered in her own home, despite repeated contact with the child welfare system. The inquiry is to find how the system could fail the child in the most profound way. Tellingly, Phoenix was dead, buried hastily near a dump at Fisher River, for nine months before anyone knew she was missing.

All of the known facts — most of which were revealed through the trial that convicted her mother Samantha Kematch and Kematch’s boyfriend Karl McKay of first-degree murder — point to prolonged and debasing abuse in the home, treatment that bordered on systematic torture. Is it possible for a child’s life to be more tragic than her death?

It is, as inquiry counsel Sherry Walsh noted, important to keep in mind as the examinations of process, protocol, documentation, regulations and actions taken or duties neglected, to remember this is about a vulnerable pre-schooler and how she could, despite repeat official intervention, disappear so thoroughly without anyone outside her home twigging to the fact.

The harder truth for Manitobans is that while Phoenix’s story is unique, her death is not. Too many other children who were in the care of child welfare agencies in Manitoba have died tragically, unnaturally. Their stories are shocking, and symptomatic of a child welfare system in need of repair.

The deaths of all of the children who fell into the cracks were investigated. Recommendations were made to fix weaknesses. But this, in accordance with child welfare legislation, is done internally and with next to no public reporting. Hiding behind an abstraction of the need for confidentiality, the rule thwarts transparency and accountability for all agencies that may have been involved — provincial, federal, municipal or tribal.

Good research on medical errors, which can also have profound consequences, has shown that when people get hurt, it is usually a result of a series of mistakes that line up to produce tragic results. This may be true in child welfare, too.

But unlike the medical system, which is working with mixed results toward accountability to patients and the public, child welfare investigations of deaths in Manitoba — called Sec. 4 reviews — are compiled in secrecy and are not released to the public.

The public has no way to assess whether the problems unearthed explain the failings, if the fixes recommended are appropriate or adequate. This is true in Phoenix’s death as it was for the many others.

The secrecy is entirely unnecessary. In one exemplary case, the Sec. 4 review was released publicly by edict of the minister at the time, Gord Mackintosh. Edited where confidentiality demanded, the story behind toddler Gage Guimond’s preventable death was told.

There were dire shortcomings in the management of an agency that gave responsibility to an incompetent worker, who put Gage into the care of a great-aunt incapable of the job. She was convicted of abuse, but the agency and its board bore ultimate responsibility.

Phoenix Sinclair died seven years ago. This inquiry, in its early stages, will be an expensive, prolonged examination. Even before it got off the ground, the legitimate question was asked whether the money would be better spent improving the system. The inquiry is worth the expense. Manitobans still do not know how the child welfare system could lose track of a little girl in such peril. The evident truth remains, that explanation should have come long ago.

Commissioner Ted Hughes must examine all the Sec. 4 reports of the deaths of children in care, to find possible common threads.

Finally, he would do Manitobans a real service by recommending the reports be made public. That does not mean future inquiries won’t be necessary, but it would inject some badly needed transparency into a critical service Manitobans barely understand and rarely get to scrutinize.