Changes to Manitoba’s Child and Family Services will allow agencies to place kids in care with extended family or people within their home community, rather than someone the child’s family doesn’t know.
The new changes, outlined in a law passed by the former Progressive Conservative government last year, came into effect Oct. 1, and are aimed at keeping more families together, Nahanni Fontaine, the province’s families minister, said at a Friday news conference.
“If a child comes in, [an] agency now has the legislative tools to be able to look at grandma, auntie … folks that are in community, that are in the same cultural group, that can take this child,” Fontaine said.
“And more importantly, there are financial supports now for these agreements.”
More than 80 per cent of kids in care in Manitoba are Indigenous, but the changes are expected to reduce the number of Indigenous children in the system, the minister said.
Parents retain guardianship
Under the changes, CFS agencies can now explore family support, kinship care, customary care and voluntary care agreements when considering a child’s placement.
Parents will retain guardianship of their children during those placements, and will have access to additional supports. The province is also putting up $10 million to support families and community members caring for children under these new arrangements.
Under the previous rules, a child who entered CFS care was often placed in foster care or a group home, and their parents lost guardianship.
Fontaine said that was an outcome parents didn’t want.
“I don’t think that if you were to ask any family that has experience in respect of child welfare that they would say, ‘Yes, I wanted the court to take away my parental rights,'” she said.
“Parents, communities and nations want their children. We deserve to be able to have our children.”
She said once parents become aware of the changes, “they will be reaching out to CFS agencies to ask for those agreements.”
‘I just needed a little bit of support’
Cynthia Broadfoot, a member of Norway House Cree Nation, said she wishes these options were available in the mid-1990s.
She was struggling with depression when she went to CFS for help. The agency responded by taking away her kids, and she didn’t get them back.
“I thought I would get my kids back in a year, two years, five years, 10 years — it still didn’t happen. And yet I had individuals, people in power and professionals who had confidence in my parenting. I just needed a little bit of support,” she said at Friday’s news conference.
Broadfoot said if the supports in place under the new legislation were available in her case, her kids would have been able to return to her home in a year or two.
“This is a really good day. It’s also a healing day for me, and also a hope for others … the younger generation,” she said tearfully, after recalling her “horrible” experience with the child welfare system.
Fontaine said the new amendments to the Child and Family Services Act addresses recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to reduce the number of Indigenous children in care, and affirm the right of Indigenous governments to establish and maintain their own child welfare agencies.