Hon. James McCrae (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, I wish to obtain the unanimous consent of the House to vary the Estimates sequence established under subrule 71(9) and tabled in this House on March 24, 1998, when the Estimates of the Department of Northern Affairs have been completed by setting aside the Estimates of the Department of Health to consider the Estimates of the Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism.
Madam Speaker, this change would apply until further notice.
Madam Speaker: Is there unanimous consent of the House that when the Estimates of the Department of Northern and Native Affairs have been completed by setting aside the Estimates of the Department of Health to consider the Estimates of the Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism until further notice? [agreed]
As previously agreed, we will resume in Committee of Supply.
(Concurrent Sections)
FAMILY SERVICES
When the committee last sat, it had been considering item 9.4. Child and Family Services (a) Child and Family Support, page 56 of the Estimates book. Shall this item pass?
Mr. Doug Martindale (Burrows): Do we have unanimous consent to go back to Community Living for a few minutes?
Mr. Chairperson: Is there unanimous consent to revert to Community Living? Would the honourable member be able to indicate what line you want to revert to?
Mr. Martindale: Would Adult Services be the right line?
Mr. Chairperson: Okay, is there unanimous consent of the committee to revert to item 9.3.(b) Adult Services? [agreed]
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Mr. Tim Sale (Crescentwood): I would like to thank the minister for agreeing to revert back. I gave her a copy of a letter that I received just this morning, although I note that it is dated April 8. I do not know why I just received it, but she may have just received it as well. It refers to a program that is called Network South Enterprises located in the honourable member for Osborne's (Ms. McGifford) riding, but the parents of the adult in question live in my riding.
I really am simply wanting to ask the minister if she would undertake to examine the issue carefully and as urgently as she can raised by Norman D. Magnusson of 6 Windemere Bay. Essentially they are saying that they value this program enormously because it provides a much higher quality of life for their dependent child, adult really, than would be available in a facility-based program. The program has a loss of about $70,000 a year, which the parents have tried to raise, but as she says in her letter: Currently our program serves 13 individuals, which results in a net loss of $70,000 annually. We are engaged in fundraising, but we have not been able to come close to reaching this figure. The parents who are on our board are exhausted by their efforts.
I have had, over the years, some experience with similar programs, and with the level of energy and effort that parents and advocates put into them and the degree of burnout that happens after some time, mainly from striving to close the gap between funding that is available from government and the true costs of the program.
I wonder if the minister could indicate whether any action has been taken to provide additional support to this specific program and whether she would be able to undertake to review the problems involved in this program and to see whether it is possible to find a way for the program to survive because obviously the parents and those involved in it benefit greatly from it. I do appreciate her agreeing to allow this to be raised in the Estimates today.
Hon. Bonnie Mitchelson (Minister of Family Services): I thank my honourable friend for raising the issue here through the Estimates process. Network South Enterprises Inc., I understand, is an offshoot of Sturgeon Creek Enterprises, where they wanted to provide support to individuals in other parts of the city.
I want to indicate that there has been a slight increase in their funding this year. It is a 1 percent increase, but, nonetheless, the letter does indicate an issue around a net loss of $70,000 in the program. I certainly will undertake to have staff meet with the individuals involved in the program and see what the issues are and whether there is any resolve that can be found.
Mr. Sale: I appreciate the minister's response, and I am sure the family will be very grateful to be able to meet and to discuss how to ensure this program can survive and that the board and those supporting it do not burn out in the process. So I thank the minister.
Mr. Chairperson: We will now revert to Section 9.4. Child and Family Services (a) Child and Family Support (1) Child, Family and Community Development (a) Salaries and Employee Benefits, since the section (b) Adult Services had been passed previously. (a) Salaries and Employee Benefits $2,899,800.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, I think we were talking about hotels before we adjourned at noon and I had some questions about numbers, and maybe the minister has some statistics for us now.
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I think there is only one new person at the table, and that is Dale Robinson. He is responsible for Agency Relations.
The question, I think, that was asked before was the average number of children in hotels per night for the last few months. We do not have March's figures yet, but for February the average was 19 in hotels. I think I had indicated earlier around 15, but it was 19 actually in February, and the number in four-bed units was 58.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, so it seems that there are fewer children in hotels. Actually according to the numbers, there are fewer children in hotels, but there are many more children in--well, not necessarily, there are many children in four-bed units. According to figures I have from a year ago February, the numbers are actually quite similar, but it concerns me that these children are still not in a foster home or have any kind of permanency. So the problem remains the same, it just does not look as bad because they are not in hotels.
I believe it was in either the Operational Review or the Environmental Scan, perhaps in both, concerns were raised that now Child and Family Services was operating like a housing agency. I am wondering if any progress is being made in moving children out of these kinds of placements, which are certainly temporary and perhaps even emergency type placements, into some sort of permanency for these children.
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I think the first and foremost priority for the agency was to reduce the hotel placements, and as we can see by the numbers, they have made a significant impact in reduction in those numbers. I do know that they have undertaken very proactively a foster home recruitment process, which appears to have been successful. My figures from last May, I guess, in the four-bed units were 66, down to 58 in February of 1998, a slight decrease, but not a significant decrease.
I do not think you can fix a system that has been running a certain way overnight. I think they place their priorities in the right place on the hotel units, and there certainly is more work to do in trying to find solutions for the short-term placements in four-bed units. So I look forward, through their strategic planning and their foster parent recruitment process, to seeing those numbers continue to decline.
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Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, well, I am a little disappointed in the minister's answer because some of these documents are starting to get old now. For example, the Operational Review: Briefing to Executive Management that I have--well, first of all we have the Environmental Scan dated August 28, 1996. Then we have the Operational Review: Briefing to Executive Management dated September 9, 1996. We have an Operational Review: Final Report, dated March 26, 1997, and yet the minister cannot give me concrete examples of what is being done in response to my question. I suppose maybe no progress is being made in spite of the fact that some of these observations and comments and findings are quite pointed.
For example, in the Operational Review dated March 26, 1997, the executive summary, one of the main findings says: No. 3, the foster care and emergency housing systems, including residential care, are failing and forcing the agency to rely on expensive alternatives such as hotels and residential care.
So the minister has had over a year and the Winnipeg Child and Family Services has had over a year, and I would like to know what progress is being made on finding more appropriate alternatives for these children.
Mrs. Mitchelson: I think we need to review the activities in the Winnipeg agency since the final report, which was received I guess on March 26, 1997. That was just over a year ago now, and there were several recommendations on strategies that needed to be undertaken. I think my honourable friend is aware that the CEO of the Winnipeg agency had indicated at the time of the Operational Review that he was retiring and they were in the process of recruitment of a new CEO for the Winnipeg agency. So that was the first priority, to get a new CEO in place, and I believe he was hired in August of 1997.
Within a month, the steering committee met with the new CEO to identify some of the main priority recommendations that needed to be acted on, and there was a joint process with the department and the agency that resulted in six priority areas to be looked at. Number one was the operating budget, and I have indicated that we have worked through the process of the budget and they have identified line by line where efficiencies might be found. One of the other priority areas was review of the special rates, acquisition of computer hardware, emergency capacity, foster care resources and transfer of jurisdictional responsibility for the rural component. Those were the six areas of high-priority agreement that work needed to be done, and all of those areas are being looked at.
I tend to disagree with my honourable friend when he says nothing has been done. If you look at numbers last year that indicate that an average daily occupancy of hotel beds was 48 and we were down to 19 in February, that is a significant decrease. I do not call that no progress. When I look at the active foster home recruitment activity that has been undertaken, I do not call that no action. I have indicated clearly that, you know, we have a system that needs significant improvement and significant change and some refocus. I have to say that I think with the recruitment of a new CEO and sort of his learning curve and getting up to speed on what the issues are in the Winnipeg agency and what needs to be done that we are moving in the right direction. I have every confidence that we will see significant improvements.
But you do not take a system that has been running in one direction for many, many years and think that you are going to have an overnight turnabout. I would love to see changes tomorrow that would see no kids in hotels and no kids that needed support through our child welfare agency. That is not reality, that is not going to happen, and it is not a system that you move overnight.
I think we have to monitor year by year what progress we make and how we can work together. There are no easy answers in this business. I would not agree with my honourable friend when he says there has been no improvement. I believe there has been. I believe we will continue to see changes in the system that will better manage our resources, will recruit new resources, and will look at new ways of delivering services.
Mr. Martindale: I would like to go through some of the main findings, one at a time, because they raise many very serious concerns.
The first one says systemic and sustained increases in the number of children at risk, which are expected for the next 10 to 15 years barring any change in the economic condition of aboriginal residents of the city. This is in reference to why costs are escalating.
This finding ties in with other research that has been done. For example, another review looked at the risk factors that cause children to come into care and identified them as poverty, single-parent status and being aboriginal. I have been told that if you look at socioeconomic data for inner city neighbourhoods, that if you know how many single parents there are, how many of them are aboriginal and their income, one can predict fairly accurately how many children are going to come into care.
In several of these reports and in several places, it is pointed out to the government, not just to Winnipeg Child and Family Services--in fact, I would not be very critical of Winnipeg Child and Family Services. Their mandate is to provide protection for children. There are a lot of external forces that they have no control over, such as the rate of poverty, such as children being more medically complex coming into care and fiscal restraints imposed by governments, both federal and provincial, and these reports point out that when there are contractions in service in the health system, in the education system and in family services through other parts of this department, it often means more pressure and even more children coming into care by Winnipeg Child and Family Services. That is something that, as I said, the agency does not have a lot of control over, but this minister and this government do.
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I am wondering if the minister understands and if she is encouraging her government and her cabinet colleagues to stop withdrawing resources to children, so that more children do not come into care, or to replace those resources so that fewer children come into care.
I wonder if the minister understands these recommendations and observations and their implications for her department, her government.
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I do not think that any of the comments or many of the comments that my honourable friend has put on the record certainly are fair comment.
I do not think anyone disagrees that the whole issue of an urban aboriginal strategy that goes above and beyond Child and Family Services is due. That is exactly what my colleague the Minister of Native Affairs (Mr. Newman) has been working on, and I think very shortly we are going to see the results of the committee that was struck to look at an urban aboriginal strategy. We are going to see the results of that report and the recommendations that will be made to address some of the issues that have been identified. So we are very aware of the need to have a co-ordinated strategy around aboriginal issues in Winnipeg.
I do want to indicate that we have not been standing still. We know the statistics. There are many reports that have indicated the statistics about the large numbers of aboriginal people who are coming to the city of Winnipeg, the large numbers of aboriginal people who live in poverty, the large number of aboriginal young single parents there are who may need the supports or the use of our child welfare system. We do know that 70 percent of the children in care in the city of Winnipeg are aboriginal, and yet they certainly are not 70 percent of the population in the city of Winnipeg.
So it is a significant issue, and it is not an issue that we can address in isolation of the aboriginal community. That is why we have just announced and set up--and it was as a result of the consultations around The Child and Family Services Act and recommendations that we look at an urban aboriginal child welfare strategy that a committee has been struck involving the Winnipeg agency and, of course, my department, along with the Manitoba Metis Federation, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the urban Aboriginal Council, Ma Mawi, the Social Planning Council, the Child and Youth Secretariat and the Native Affairs Secretariat. That committee has been struck to look at what some of the options might be in dealing with aboriginal child welfare in the city of Winnipeg.
I must say to you on a personal note, and these are my personal feelings, that the solutions are going to be found in conjunction with the aboriginal community but specifically with aboriginal women. I honestly believe that they are the people who are going to help us find the solutions to some of the issues, not only dealing with child welfare but with issues around families and aboriginal families in Winnipeg. There is a strength that is developing, and it cannot be an us-and-them solution unless we work together.
I am committed and prepared to work as aggressively as possible with aboriginal people, but specifically with aboriginal women, because I believe that in the traditional aboriginal culture that women do have very much a responsibility for family issues and family matters, and they are going to be the ones that are going to help us find those solutions. I know they are, so I am prepared and committed. And the issues are different in Winnipeg. You know, a lot of aboriginal people that are in Winnipeg have left the reserve for a very number of reasons, and some of them are as a result of some of the untenable situations on reserves that have brought them to Winnipeg. You know, the community is different, the culture is different, but the reality is they do not necessarily want their home bands to be making the decisions on what their personal solutions are as they have moved and made Winnipeg their home.
So I know that from personal dialogue with many individuals, and I am committed to find a solution. No easy answers to this one, but we have to find the answers and the right answers. You know, I would say to my honourable friend, this is not about politics in any way, this is about all of us putting our heads together and making suggestions and giving us concrete ideas on how we find solutions in this area.
So I believe that when we see 70 percent of the children in care in our Winnipeg agency that we need more appropriate, trained aboriginal people working to find the solutions in the system. I am not sure what the answer will be, and I am not sure that a separate aboriginal agency is the right answer in Winnipeg either. I am not convinced, because again I do not know how you would ever set that up and how you would ever manage that and where the first place of referral would be, but I am interested in hearing what those that are involved in the committee have to say and how we can move forward from here.
So that committee is working, and hopefully we will get some recommendations on how to address some of the issues. But I do know that there are some positive things happening in some of the programming that is taking place, and I know a lot of it is community driven and neighbour driven, and both the federal government and provincial governments are putting resources into some of that programming.
I know aboriginal head start programs have been quite successful in some instances. I do know that the new programs that we are announcing right now, the BabyFirst and the Earlystart programs, I know my honourable friend has some familiarity with north-end ministries where one of our BabyFirst projects is running. Although it is not absolutely, completely aboriginal focused, I think it will meet the needs of a lot of aboriginal families in that neighbourhood, in that community. So that is one program that we have introduced. Another one, of course, is the Earlystart program, and that is working with children to get them from the ages of two to five to prepare them for school.
I know that many of those projects are run through child care centres, many in areas where there is a high aboriginal concentration population. I believe that they will be very positive programs. These are working with families and mentors and child care providers who have some experience and expertise in early childhood development, but it is also bringing the parents into the programming, so we are hopeful that some of these early intervention strategies will have a positive impact. It is not going to deal with the kids that are necessarily in the system or entrenched in the system today, but hopefully it is going to have some impact in the future on children coming into the child welfare system and hopefully prevent the need for some of the intervention that needs to be provided through child welfare, because we get to them and create healthier families before they get to that point.
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We also know, too, and I will be making an announcement very shortly, on adolescent pregnancy. We have talked about fetal alcohol syndrome and Stop FAS, the program that was announced, and I think very positively received by the whole community that will try to prevent the birth of a fetal alcohol child. We know that very often those children create significant problems in our education system and need the services in a significant way from our child welfare system. So if we can stop those kinds of births from happening and try to ensure that children are born healthy, you know, all of these things that do not have an impact right today on the system as it exists, but we hope that they will have a positive impact on what happens and what comes into the system into the future.
Mr. Mervin Tweed, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
I will be shortly making an announcement around adolescent pregnancy, and also an announcement around nutrition programming, so these are all initiatives that we know, and based on research, should have a significant impact on healthier, better-adjusted families and less need for child welfare in the future. Unless we put our money in at that level, at that entry point, we are going to continue to see the growing need for more resources in our child welfare system. There is no easy answer, and there is no quick-fix solution to this.
I have made a commitment to work with the aboriginal community in Winnipeg to see where the solutions are, and we are including very much the community organizations that deal in areas where there is a high concentration of aboriginal people in Winnipeg to see where the answers are. When the community identifies the need, I think it is our responsibility to be there to support with programming dollars the activities that they believe will make a difference.
Mr. Martindale: Since the minister is supportive of leadership by aboriginal women, perhaps she would like to go to two dinners tonight and attend the fundraising dinner called Seven Homes for Seven Families at the friendship centre. However, I think the minister probably has another commitment tonight.
Mrs. Mitchelson: If I could just respond to that, we, through the department, have got a table, and staff will be attending. I would have loved to have been there. There are several conflicts tonight, but, anyway, we are supporting and we will be interested in hearing any suggestions or ideas that come forward in dialogue.
Mr. Martindale: Then we both hope they have a successful dinner tonight. It is good to see both parties supporting this fundraising effort.
The minister tries to imply that these solutions are not about politics. I think that was the expression that she used: it is not about politics. However, everything is political in this building, and budgets are about political choices. While the minister's rhetoric is nice and fine, talking about all the good things that her department, her government is doing for aboriginal people, at the same time, her government is cutting funding to students to make it much, much harder, impossible for most, to go to the Winnipeg Education Centre, an affirmative action post-secondary university education program, cut funding to access programs, cut funding to New Careers.
So there are many choices that this government has already made that adversely affect aboriginal people. In her own department there used to be a SOSAR program. It is gone. So people on social assistance, single parents can no longer be funded to attend university. The minister wants to brag about their urban aboriginal strategy, but it took 10 years of being in government and it still is not announced. We still do not know what their urban aboriginal strategy is yet. So this government has a long way to go when it comes to dealing fairly with aboriginal people in Winnipeg and in Manitoba.
It involves far more departments than just aboriginal and Northern Affairs. For example, the second main finding in the executive summary says: as key institutions in the education, health, and social services sector retreat to their core mandates because of fewer options and increasing demand, Winnipeg Child and Family Services finds itself with less scope to assist children.
So it is going to require the co-operation of all departments to see that the lives of children are enhanced so that fewer children come into care, because we know, as these reports tell us, that when you cut funding in Health and Education and other departments and in Income Assistance, it has an impact on the caseload for Winnipeg Child and Family Services, which is one of the reasons for their budget going up every year, because these main findings all relate to the reasons that costs have escalated.
So I wonder if the minister understands, and what is she doing to see that there are not cuts by other government departments that adversely affect her department, especially funding for Winnipeg Child and Family Services, which, as these reports point out, causes their costs to go up?
For example, in the original report, it also says on page 34: changes in one element of the human service sector have immediate and direct consequences for other elements. For example, a reduced scope in the health care system has a profound effect on the child welfare system. We know that there are effects from government cutbacks in other departments on this department and on Winnipeg Child and Family Services.
I do not have the Postl report on children in front of me today, but this minister is quite familiar with it, because I have quoted from it, and it talks about poverty, child poverty, and makes recommendations that the funding level actually be increased for food allowances for children. I am just going by memory, and I would be quite happy to get the Postl report during the break, because it is a government report and it has excellent recommendations and we are still waiting for this government to implement some of them. Dr. Postl and many people in the community, myself included, believe that, if some of these things were implemented, it would have a positive effect on children in Manitoba and in Winnipeg, but I am not convinced that this minister understands that.
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I am really glad my honourable friend has raised the Postl report because I just received an update from the Child and Youth Secretariat on how we are doing on implementation of recommendations from the Postl report, and I think my honourable friend might be very pleasantly surprised to see how those recommendations and the implementation of those look. I know it is up on my desk, and we can have a discussion here or we can have a discussion under the Estimates of the Child and Youth Secretariat, but quite frankly, I think we have made significant process on that report.
I do want to correct on the record, before I get into any other further comments, that the SASAR program is--[interjection]
The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Tweed): Do we want to put this through the Chair and perhaps put it on the record?
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, referring to these programs with acronyms is difficult sometimes. I thought there were two. One was SOSAR and one was SASAR. My understanding was that SOSAR was for single parents to fund their post-secondary education, and I can remember fighting on behalf of some individuals who were studying; one, I remember, a student from The Maples who was studying nursing, and we had to fight to get her funding grandfathered because the program was terminated. I fought successfully on her behalf to get her funding continued so that she could continue to attend university. It was my understanding that that is no longer true, that single parents on social assistance cannot get university education funded anymore. If I am wrong, I would be happy to be corrected.
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The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Tweed): Just for the Chair's clarification, what did you perceive SESAR to be? [interjection] Okay, so you are not aware of that program?
Mr. Martindale: No.
The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Tweed): Okay.
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I would just like to correct for the record that there are presently some 93 income assistance clients currently participating in the SASAR program, which is a program for Study Assistance for Social Allowance Recipients. So we have had 35 new clients enter the program since August of 1997, and we have had students access the Access program since August to pursue career options and opportunities too. So I am not sure, I think what I am doing is correcting the record and indicating to my honourable friend that these programs have not been discontinued.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, I am happy to be corrected. This has to be one of the best-kept secrets in government, but we will make sure that it is publicized and you will get lots of applicants. I will put it in my householder the next time, and we will see what happens.
I guess I would like to repeat my original question: does the minister understand these recommendations and observations in these reports about the effects of government cutbacks on the caseload in Winnipeg Child and Family Services?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Well, Mr. Chairperson, I think I just want to indicate that we are not a government that is standing still. I mean, many of the training opportunities for single parents certainly involve single parents, many of whom might be aboriginal. If you just look to the Taking Charge! program, I think you will probably see a lot of aboriginal women accessing that kind of program. We have more money for training opportunities on a year-by-year basis. So there is not restriction.
A lot of our training opportunities--and I make no apologies for this--are focused on where employment opportunities exist. We no longer do training for the sake of training, but training very much with a focus to employment orientation. Again, I say that I think that is the best use of our tax resources when, in fact, we can see people moving off the cycle of poverty on welfare into paying jobs that increase their income and provide a better life for their children. I no longer--and one of the reasons that we changed our policy on single parents and tried to ensure that we considered single parents whose children are six years old or in school full time as employable was that we did not ever want to leave the impression that a life of poverty on welfare was all the expectation we had for single parents.
We wanted them to know that we cared enough to try to put in place some options and opportunities for them to move off of welfare and into the workforce. We know that it is certainly a much more positive alternative to the cycle of welfare and the commitment to a life of poverty that existed with the old policy. So I am extremely confident, based on the economic activity and the number of new jobs that are available in the province of Manitoba that we will be able to work with more individuals to try to help them develop their personal job plans, the direction they want to go, and then put the supports in place to make that happen.
I can only just again state some of the things we have done as a result of our redirection of dollars through the National Child Benefit, and that is, you know, another $5 million into the child care system to ensure that people that are in training or moving into the workforce have the opportunity to access quality, affordable child care so that they can work and they can train and they can upgrade themselves.
Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
I know that through Taking Charge! we have seen, once the program got up and running, significant numbers of individuals who are now moving into the workforce through that program. Training and Education has, and I cannot get into their specific programs here, I think it would be more appropriate to ask the Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh), but I know that we have allocated on a year-by-year basis more money into making welfare-work initiatives, where we have partnered with the private sector. So I believe that we are doing some very positive things to help break the cycle of poverty and give people the ability to work, to feel good about themselves, to be positive role models for their children and ultimately to try to ensure that the opportunities are there.
We are working with people to focus on what their job plans and what their life plans might be. I know we are moving in the right direction. My honourable friend may not think it is fast enough, but we also do know that when you have a policy that commits people to a life of poverty on welfare and you change direction and change focus and look at the supports that need to be put in place on an individual basis for people, you do not work miracles overnight.
In fact, we are putting the supports in place. We are working with individual women, and it is a one-on-one type of situation. We do know that our single-parent caseloads have dropped considerably, about 1,800, I think, since May of 1996 when we implemented Employment First and welfare reform, that are now off of welfare and into the workforce. We know significantly more individuals are claiming some earned income than ever have in the past. I think it is up by about 40 percent.
So people are moving even if they do need some support from social assistance, are obtaining some income earnings, which I think is positive, is a move in the right direction.
But you have to think for every single parent that moves off of welfare and into the workforce that the lives of at least one child, for every one of those single parents, has improved considerably, and in many instances it is significantly more than one child. So not only are you impacting the lives of the individuals who are working, but you are having a positive impact on the lives of their children.
So we will continue to work in that direction, and we will continue to ensure that if moms are at home with children under the age of six that we are putting the support programs in place, the early intervention programs like the BabyFirst and the Earlystart. I know that the federal government, through the Healthy Start for Mom and Me program that they implemented through CAPC, is working with parents.
The key for us in the whole child welfare system is to try to ensure that we do not work with kids in isolation of the families that surround them but that we bring parents into the picture and make sure that the positive things that are happening with children when we take them outside of the home into child care facilities or whatever are being translated into positive supports in the hours when they are not getting that formal instruction.
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Parental involvement is critical and all of the programs that we are looking at do have parental involvement. They also do all have a nutritional component, whether it be learning how to prepare and serve nutritious meals, whether it be in the BabyFirst program, the whole issue of lactation and breastfeeding as a positive option for parents with their children to get their children off to a good nutritional start. There are components of that in all of the programs we are looking at on the early intervention side.
Our focus is a positive, wellness focus. Hopefully, as we measure the outcomes of the programs, we will determine, because we know that the programs that we are implementing have had a lot of research behind them and we have seen them work successfully in other jurisdictions.
When the Earlystart program is taken from the Hawaii Healthy Start program, which has had great success, when outcomes have been measured in the health status and the wellness status of children who enter the school system as a result of that program--oh, pardon me, the BabyFirst program is the Hawaii Healthy Start. No? Earlystart. I sometimes get my BabyFirst and Earlystart programs mixed up. Yes, the Earlystart program is the Perry preschool program that I think we all had an opportunity to hear about, and the BabyFirst is the Hawaii Healthy Start model. Those are tried and proven programs that should have a significant impact on our ability to prevent before we have the need for the child welfare system. So small starts, but certainly steps in the right direction.
Mr. Martindale: I now have The Health of Manitoba's Children, known as the Postl report in front of me, and I would be interested in knowing if the minister knows how many of the 116 recommendations her government has implemented, and I am quite sure that No. 32, that food allowance within the social assistance programs be increased to allow for adequate nutrition of infants as reflected in formula costs, has not been implemented; No. 42, that food supplements be considered for prenatal women who are living in poverty as a means of reducing the incidence of low-birthweight babies; and No. 46, that the food support within the welfare system be adequate to support childhood needs.
As far as I know, none of those recommendations have been acted on by this government. Is that correct?
Mrs. Mitchelson: I have a report that was compiled by the Children and Youth Secretariat that indicates that we have implemented, or implemented and ongoing, 75 of the recommendations, 21 are in process, 18 are being worked on in specific departments and another one under consideration. There is one that there has been no action taken on, and that is to do with the Child Protection Centre, and I think there are still some outstanding issues that need to be resolved. As far as the rest go, I can go through one by one the recommendations now, if my honourable friend would like, and indicate to him what the status is of each one.
Mr. Martindale: I would like to move on to No. 3. The minister did not answer my question because the ones that I named in the Postl report have not been implemented and they are within her department.
Number three of the executive summary--
Mrs. Mitchelson: Those that have been referred to my department are probably under consideration or in process and will have to await the final results of the response to the recommendation through announcements that may be upcoming.
Mr. Martindale: People on social assistance will be pleased if those recommendations are implemented. Of course, we are expecting lots of pre-election good-news announcements as this government spends money to get re-elected. These recommendations have been out since March 1995 and so, you know, within a year of an election, they are going to be implemented even though they are three and probably by the next election four years old or maybe even four and a half years old.
Going back to the main findings, the Operational Review, No. 3 says the foster care and emergency housing systems, including residential care, are failing and forcing the agency to rely on expensive alternatives such as hotels and residential care. We already discussed this a little bit, but this issue really ties in with concerns about foster care and especially foster care rates, and there are observations about this in these reports saying that one of the reasons that Winnipeg Child and Family Services has difficulty getting foster homes is because of cuts in rates, and so I would like to know what this minister and her government are planning to do to address the shortage of foster homes.
Mrs. Mitchelson: You know, the issue of foster rates, I think, is an issue my honourable friend raises without true knowledge or understanding of exactly what happens. Yes, there is the basic rate and one can argue whether the basic rate is adequate or not adequate, but I think the thing he is failing to recognize is the issue that most of the children that are in hotels awaiting placement would be children with special needs that would get certainly special rates. I do know that special rates go anywhere from--[interjection]
You know, the average rate for foster placement in the city of Winnipeg is $44.85, and I want to indicate to my honourable friend that those are tax-free dollars also. So they are not dollars that are taxed in any way. I know that rates go up to $80 a day or more for significantly high-need individuals, so you are looking at specialized foster parents that can deal with the kinds of issues that might be needed to support those kinds of children that might be waiting for placement in hotel accommodations or in some of the other short-term placement areas. So I am not sure that, when he raises the issue of foster rates and the lack of ability to recruit foster parents, that he is really speaking about the true issues that need to be addressed.
When we talk about recruiting foster parents, they are foster parents in many instances that would need some special qualities or qualifications to deal with children with higher needs. So I just do not want him to ever leave on the record that we do not pay when there is a requirement for a special rate, additional support to foster parents.
Mr. Martindale: These reports refer to a number of problems, including with special rates, for example, No. 9 says many activities such as foster care and special rate determination are fragmented across the four service areas. Another problem is that Winnipeg Child and Family Services often recruits foster parents, trains them and places children with them and they get experience, and then when they find out that if they contracted with Marymound or Macdonald Youth Services as specialized foster homes or treatment foster homes, they can get a much higher per diem, so Winnipeg Child and Family Services loses these foster homes to these other agencies.
I am wondering what this minister is willing to do about that problem. It seems to me that those kinds of rates should be available in Winnipeg Child and Family Services so that they can keep their homes in their system, or at least keep these foster parents and not lose them to other nonprofit organizations that have the specialized or treatment foster homes with the much higher rates.
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Mrs. Mitchelson: That was an issue that was identified in the report, certainly an issue that we have been dealing with Winnipeg agency on trying to ensure that there are standard rates and uniformity right across the city. We should not be treating foster parents in one area of the city differently from others, but that is an issue that the agency must address. We are working with them to address that and also the Winnipeg agency is meeting with the treatment centres to try to deal with the issue and work things out so there is some consistency. It is not resolved yet, but certainly there are discussions ongoing to try to resolve the issue.
Mr. Martindale: "Discussions" sounds rather vague. I wonder if the minister can give me more detail. What is it that is being discussed? Are you hoping to allow Winnipeg Child and Family Services foster parents to become treatment foster homes if they meet the criteria?
Mrs. Mitchelson: I am informed that the executive director or the CEO of Winnipeg Child and Family has met individually with the treatment facilities and he is meeting collectively with them and we are working with them. There is not a resolve to the issue but the ultimate end result will be to have some sense of consistency throughout the system on specialized foster rates. I cannot say anything more than that except the meetings are ongoing. It was not like there was one meeting and it is finished. This is a process that will take some time to resolve but, in fact, it is an issue that is on the table for discussion and the ultimate end result would be to have a uniformity across the system for special foster rates for all children.
Mr. Martindale: Just for clarification, does uniformity across the system mean that Winnipeg Child and Family Services will be allowed to have foster homes that are treatment foster homes or special rate foster homes?
Mrs. Mitchelson: I am informed that they do now and that will be maintained.
Mr. Martindale: Well, I am a little perplexed then. You know, I have heard these complaints from staff--actually recruiting staff--in Winnipeg Child and Family who are looking for foster homes, and their complaint is they are losing these foster parents to Marymound and Macdonald Youth Services and the reason seems to be the daily rate.
Now, I understand there is currently a difference in what is being provided, and having talked to staff at Marymound and Macdonald Youth Services, I know that they are providing a different kind of service. They are providing treatment foster homes and, you know, it is my understanding that those foster parents have different qualifications, different standards, but why can we not allow Winnipeg Child and Family Services to provide those kinds of homes, as well, so they do not lose foster parents to the other organizations?
Mrs. Mitchelson: I guess it is an issue that the new CEO at the agency certainly has identified, and there are ongoing negotiations and discussions. I am not sure I can say anything more than that at this point except that he wants to try to ensure that there is some sort of uniformity throughout the system, so we do not have to worry about people moving back and forth from the agency to treatment facilities, that if, in fact, there is a need for a certain level of care, whether it be agency provided or residential treatment, whether it is through the residential treatment system or through the Child and Family Services system, there is some sort of standard support for foster parents that require that level of training or expertise to deal with children. So it is not something that has been resolved, but it certainly is something that the CEO of the Winnipeg agency is working through with the residential treatment facilities.
Mr. Martindale: Well, I guess we will look for announcements again. The minister will be interested to know that I got taken to task by a foster parent who said that we should not continually talk about money, that they are not being foster parents just for the money, they are doing it because they love children. I think it is a point well taken, but if you look at these reviews and if you look at what they are saying, over and over again we hear that agencies are having trouble finding foster parents. They say that one of the reasons is the need for adequate rates so that parents will stay home and foster. The cuts have been in the basic rate. I do not hear complaints about people who are--well, I hear some complaints, but I do not hear complaints about people who are getting rates that are near the top of the scale. We also have heard this from the Children's Advocate, who in his 1993 recommendations recommended to the minister that rates be restored that were cut by 11 percent and there were cuts in 1994, several of them.
In 1995, there was a 6 percent rollback for special needs children in foster care, so I am wondering if the minister is willing to look at the rates and see if there is not a relationship between the rates and the willingness of people to foster because that is what we are being told, that is what these reports are saying, and I am interested in knowing what the minister is willing to do about it.
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In fact, I believe it is in the executive summary of the operational scan, it says the recruitment training and retention of foster care is seriously troubled. Winnipeg Child and Family Services is experiencing difficulty in securing sufficient foster care within the city and relies extensively on foster homes in rural Manitoba. So we are seeing it in these reviews, we are hearing it from people in recruitment, we are hearing it from the agency, we are hearing it from parents. What is the minister going to do to encourage more foster homes so that we have fewer children in hotels and fewer children in four-bed units? Obviously there is a relationship here.
Mrs. Mitchelson: I hear my honourable friend's comments, but I do want to indicate that I have had the opportunity to have discussions with individual foster parents throughout our community too, and the biggest concern I hear from foster parents is the whole issue of training and connection. It is certainly an issue that I have raised with the new CEO of the Winnipeg agency, where they believe there is not a strong enough network between foster parents to understand the issues of the children that they are dealing with and the unique circumstances that do arise from time to time.
So I think part of the overall strategy at the agency in the recruitment of foster parents is looking too at how training needs to be done in a more significant way and how we start to connect and recognize foster parents for the valuable contribution that they make. I know that one specific foster parent that I have spoken to on many, many occasions talks about--and here, you know, sometimes I look at British Columbia and I raise the issue of British Columbia with my honourable friend, but she is a foster parent that did foster in British Columbia before they moved to Winnipeg.
She was telling me about the connection of foster parents to foster parents and how the agency--and I guess it would be a government agency in British Columbia--made sure that they did foster parent recognition and brought foster parents together on a monthly basis. They did training sessions, and they also recognized specific foster parents for the contributions that they had made. It was an informal process, but something that she felt was extremely valuable and was wondering whether--and she has felt really isolated since she has moved to Manitoba to foster. I have raised this with the CEO at the agency. I think, as part of their foster parent recruitment strategy and their dealing with foster parents, they are starting that kind of activity here.
I know that Lance Barber was really open and really receptive to taking a look at that issue around the training, around how you bring people together and share the positive experiences that fostering brings into a family and into a community. So we have learned something, I think, from someone that has moved from a system in one province that works better than what is happening here. Her complaint has never been the financial resources that she receives but the connection and the training and the opportunities for training. We do--a few years back gave 50 cents per day per child in care to the agencies to provide that training. I think what we want to do is ensure that the foster parents do have some connection and do feel that they are valued in our community and in our society.
So those are some of the things that are happening and that hopefully we will see take place in our Winnipeg agency. I know that rural Manitoba--and we have not even talked about the northeast piece yet of the Winnipeg agency and what might happen there, but I know that they do depend a lot on the rural communities that are part of the Winnipeg agency for foster placements.
One of the recommendations in the Operational Review was to look at some sort of a central inventory of foster homes right throughout the province so that you did not have one agency with vacant foster homes and foster parents hoarding them in case they needed them where another area or another agency had real need and there were not enough foster parents. So those kinds of things need to happen. I know that we are working away at the recommendations that were made to see whether some of them can be implemented, what makes sense and how we can have a better system. I also do know that the agency certainly has focused in Winnipeg on recruitment of foster homes, and hopefully we will have, as time goes by, more and more homes available to us.
I know that we have attempted to work with Ma Mawi. I know the Manitoba Metis Federation has raised the issue of training and recruitment of Metis foster families. We will be working through the committee that we have set up in Winnipeg to see whether there is the ability to recruit and train foster parents in the aboriginal community, so we have culturally appropriate homes. Those things are all in progress at some stage or another, but the discussion, the dialogue is happening, and, again, no easy undertaking, but it is a direction we have to move.
Mr. Chairperson: Is there agreement for the committee to take a five-minute recess? [agreed] We will resume proceedings at 10 after four.
The committee recessed at 4:08 p.m.
The committee resumed at 4:19 p.m.
Mr. Chairperson: Would the committee please come to order. When the committee recessed, we were on line 9.4. Child and Family Services (a) Child and Family Support (1) Child, Family and Community Development (a) Salaries and Employee Benefits.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, I really do not know how this minister has the nerve to talk about foster parents feeling isolated and not supported when it was her government in 1993 that cut the grant to the Manitoba Foster Parent Association. Ever since then, we have been hearing that foster parent feels isolated and unsupported. It is really strange to hear this minister five years later talking about foster parents feeling isolated and unsupported when it was her own government that cut the grant to an organization that did try and provide support to them.
I am wondering if the minister is willing to help a new organization to get organized that could provide support to foster parents.
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Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, it might be interesting information for my honourable friend to note that the foster parent that I talked to that moved here from British Columbia indicated that there was no formal foster parent association that received any government grant in British Columbia to support ongoing operations, but it was, in fact, the agencies that--and I guess it is a central agency in British Columbia; they do not have mandated agencies under their legislation. Do they or do they? [interjection] It is partial. But interesting to note that there was not any government grant or support to a formal organization or structure, but there was more connection in British Columbia than there is here. So I just wanted to put that information on the record, and she felt that there was no necessity to support that formal structure.
I think that in discussions with the CEO in the Winnipeg agency, he believes they can play a significant role in supporting foster parents through the grant that we give them, the 50 cents per day per child in care for training and support for foster parents.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, the Operational Review on page 111, in addition to saying that the foster care system is in crisis and that foster parents are receiving poor support, says that there is a need for a program of subsidized adoption because, as they say, a foster parent who cares for a high-needs child stops receiving financial support on adoption. This is a powerful disincentive to the adoption of children who cost well above basic rates.
Is this something that the government is willing to consider?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, we heard about the issue of subsidized adoption and some recommendations to the Zuefle report, too. Through our new adoption legislation, there is provision for financial support for adoptive parents. It was there under the old legislation, too, but it certainly was not a well-used piece of the legislation, and we are certainly encouraging that kind of activity and the financial support.
I guess I have always had a bit of a hangup on the word "subsidized" adoption, because I do not think we ever want to say that we are going to pay people to adopt children. But if there are special needs required by children as a result of additional medical needs or special educational needs or additional supports rather than the normal supports that you would provide to your own child or an adoptive child, there is provision in the act. I guess it was not a well-used piece of legislation, but we are encouraging that to happen to enhance the ability for some children with higher needs to be adopted. So it is there. The provision is there, and we are encouraging its use.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, moving on to another topic since we are running out of time for this section, could the minister tell me if there have been any meetings in recent months or even in recent years to discuss the establishment of a mandated aboriginal child welfare agency, and if so, what were the results of those discussions and what is your government's position?
Mrs. Mitchelson: That has been a recommendation that has been made from time to time in different reports, and that is the sole purpose of the committee that I talked about a little earlier that has been set up with the MMF, the AMC, the Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg, the Social Planning Council, Child and Youth Secretariat, the Child and Family Services agency in Winnipeg, my department and Ma Mawi. It is to look at exactly that issue and make recommendations on how to deal in the most appropriate fashion with aboriginal people in Winnipeg needing access to the child welfare system.
I am not sure what the results of that dialogue and discussion will be. We have had three meetings already of that committee and the fourth is scheduled for next week. I will await their recommendations on what they believe needs to happen in Winnipeg.
Mr. Martindale: In the absence of a mandated agency or in the meantime until one gets established--if that eventually happens--is the minister interested in providing more resources to existing agencies, such as Ma Mawi, who are providing nonmandated services, but there is always the possibility of giving an existing agency more responsibility or more funding for doing some of the things that they are already doing?
Mrs. Mitchelson: We are always interested in looking to provide better services for families, and one way that we have helped to support Ma Mawi is through the family group conferencing process, the announcement that we made for Ma Mawi as the lead organization in pulling together members of the community, the professionals and family members to look at how we can better meet the needs of individual family members in conjunction--it is the one at Gilbert Park. Ma Mawi is the lead with the Gilbert Park housing association, Nor'West Co-op, the police service, the Child and Family Services agency, I guess public health through Nor'West. I think those are the partners that are involved, and Ma Mawi has the lead on that, and there are dollars available for that project.
So those are ways, concrete examples of how we can work in a co-operative way when there is community need. I also have been having discussions, ongoing discussions with Ma Mawi around adolescent pregnancy, and there certainly may be some partnerships that can be formed and may be announcements made in the near future around how we might deal with some of those issues. So we are working in a very significant way with them.
Quite frankly, a lot of the work that is being done today is on the prevention side in the Winnipeg agency too, and if, in fact, we can partner with community and have community in some instances take the lead on some of those prevention activities, there may be less of a requirement for the mandated agencies to do all of that work in isolation. That is what the community told us when we did our community consultation on Families First, was that sometimes it is a little more nonthreatening to families if someone from a community organization works with them rather than the agency that is there to snatch and grab your kids. So, if we can develop those kinds of partnerships where community can take the lead, I think we may be able to have better results with families and working with them before we get into a crisis situation.
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So we are and will continue to do those kinds of things as they make sense, while we work through the process of whether a mandated aboriginal agency is the right solution or not. I have to say that I think sometimes there is a bit of differing opinion between the urban aboriginal people and the bands that have responsibility. There are some issues to work out in that respect. I am not sure we will have a quick resolution to a mandated agency in Winnipeg. I mean, some of the issues that have to be worked out, of course, is who would have control. Is it the urban aboriginal population or is it the bands or the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs that would take responsibility and control of a mandated agency? There is no easy answer here, but there has to be a meeting of the minds, and we have to all work together around that. In the meantime, if there are things that we can do in a nonmandated way to ensure that there is more aboriginal presence and participation, we will do that.
I do want to indicate too that outside of Winnipeg, in the Lynn Lake example, where we set up the family group conferencing, it is in partnership with the Indian and Metis Friendship Centre who is the lead up there on that project. So those are ways that we can involve the community and the aboriginal community in trying to find the solutions, even without a mandate.
Mr. Martindale: I have in front of me an article from the Winnipeg Free Press from March 29, 1997, that says, the headline says, Fast end to Anishinabe turmoil vowed. I believe Mr. Bruce Unfried is still there. The word "fast," I guess, is open to interpretation, but I am wondering if the minister can tell me how long she thinks her staff will be managing this agency and when they will be back on a self-managed basis.
Mrs. Mitchelson: I have been following this issue and I understand that we are getting close to a very positive resolution in Anishinabe, that we certainly have, through the services of Bruce Unfried and the department, established a very stable and co-operative relationship, have worked with the chiefs and band councils and we have a very much more stable financial and service delivery in that area. My understanding is that they have recruited or are in the process of recruiting a First Nations individual to run that agency and are very close to finding a resolution. No offer has been made as yet but it--[interjection] Oh, an offer has been made, pardon me, and we are just awaiting acceptance of that offer, and so it has been a positive process, not an easy undertaking but a positive resolution, I think, to a difficult situation.
Mr. Martindale: When Seven Oaks Centre was shut down, it was replaced with a stabilization unit. Can the minister tell me if this unit is accessible 24 hours a day?
Mrs. Mitchelson: I think the shutdown of Seven Oaks, there were several components of the new service delivery system. One was the crisis stabilization unit, the other was mobile crisis teams, a 24-hour help line or phone line, a brief treatment team.
I have some statistics to tell you what has happened since, I guess this is since May, no, this is at May 1998, and I guess it is our experience from January till April 30. There were 574 requests for service, and as a result of the 24-hour phone line, 121 of those cases were resolved by telephone intervention and the mobile crisis team was involved in 453 cases. Out of those 453 cases that the mobile crisis team responded to, there were 365 different children served. There were 88 repeat requests for the mobile crisis team. Of the cases that the mobile crisis team dealt with, 122 were referred to brief treatment, and the brief treatment therapy workers followed up, and I guess those 122 required up to one month's follow-up by a brief therapy worker.
Okay, the crisis stabilization units, the boys operated by Macdonald Youth Services and Neecheewan had 54 admissions. There were 39 different individuals, different boys. Fifteen were readmissions, 18 boys were returned home to the same placement after the stabilization period and 21 boys were relocated.
The girls stabilization unit, there were 89 admissions, comprising 64 different girls so that meant there were 25 readmissions. Forty-six of the girls returned home or to the same placement they had come from and 18 were relocated. All children who were admitted to one of the crisis stabilization units are followed up or supported by a senior case manager.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, I thank the minister for those statistics. Is the girls crisis stabilization unit at Marymound?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Yes, it is. I am sorry; I may not have mentioned that.
Mr. Martindale: Are they both 24-hour-a-day units?
Mrs. Mitchelson: The crisis stabilization units are 24-hour-a-day service units, so kids are there for a full 24-hour period. The access is through emergency referral services, so the phone lines are open 24 hours a day. You may want to know where the referrals come from. Some of them, I guess there were 35 referrals from Winnipeg Child and Family Services after-hours program and generally from Child and Family Services, primarily Winnipeg but some rural agencies referred 103. Those are day-time referrals. Thirty-five requests for support after hours, 103 during the day, 33 from foster parents, 45 from group homes, 12 from residential care facilities, 27 from the psychiatric health centre. Individual referrals and/or crisis situations were 181, and others, that would be schools, crisis lines, probations, police or youth shelters, there were 17. That makes up the 453.
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Mr. Martindale: I guess what I really was trying to find out was whether or not the crisis stabilization unit is open 24 hours a day to accept children. Is it accessible 24 hours a day?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Yes, there is the ability to admit to the crisis stabilization units 24 hours a day, but I think that the first and primary focus is to try to deal with the issue without moving them into the crisis stabilization unit, and therefore we have mobile crisis teams that go into the home and try to provide support in home to see if the situation can be stabilized with supports that come in and deal with that. If the ultimate end result has to be that they are admitted or have to be removed from their place of residence, then that is where the stabilization units kick in. There is the ability to access those or be admitted to those 24 hours a day. The main focus is to try to stabilize a family or an individual so that removal and placement in the stabilization unit does not need to occur. When it does, the beds are there and the ability is there to admit 24 hours a day.
Mr. Martindale: And they take children or youth up to the age of 18?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, there is the capacity to admit up to age 18, but I think the experience in our crisis stabilization units is similar to the experience in Seven Oaks and that is that the children are, on the most part, younger than 18. But there is the ability to admit up to 18 if that is required.
Mr. Martindale: Is someone keeping track of where the children go, whether they are admitted to the stabilization unit or not, if they are referred somewhere else? I know the minister gave me a lot of statistics. Are there statistics being kept on where they go after they are released from the stabilization unit? Perhaps the minister is giving me some of those as well.
Mrs. Mitchelson: We are in the process of trying to get that information available through technology, but we can manually pull together that information and provide it. But we are keeping statistics on where they go if they are relocated, and we are keeping statistics on how many reunifications there are, people who go back into their own homes or back into the same placement that they came from. So we can get that information.
Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, I am aware that there was a proposal submitted to Winnipeg Child and Family Services by New Directions for children, youth and families for a neighbourhood resource for juvenile prostitutes sometime around April 1997, and that the original proposal was to use a unit in Lord Selkirk development. But my understanding is that the tenants were not in favour of that and probably was not a good location for it but that the request is still there for a neighbourhood resource centre.
I am wondering if that is still being given active consideration or if it has already been approved or what is happening to that proposal.
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, it has not been approved as we speak. I think what is happening presently around the whole issue of child prostitution is a bit of a broader strategy, and it is being worked on through the Children and Youth Secretariat involving everyone, including New Directions, Child Find, juvenile prostitutes themselves, the police service--[interjection] Yes, I indicated I think the City of Winnipeg Police and Corrections.
As a result of the steering committee's report and recommendations on child prostitution, the Children and Youth Secretariat have certainly been working towards trying to find a solution. It is not a circumstance that is unique to Manitoba. I know the secretariat was involved in the forum in Victoria that dealt with child prostitution, and we are looking at an overall strategy. I guess the last meeting--[interjection]
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The honourable minister was in the process of responding to a very important question.
Mrs. Mitchelson: I think if I can indicate that it is an issue that everyone in the community involved in child prostitution is working on, no easy answer again to this one, but I think some of the things that we have done as a government--certainly on the Justice side, could have an impact, and that is the confiscation of cars when men are caught sexually exploiting children--are changes to The Child and Family Services Act that allow us to include third party sexual offenders which would include johns on the Child Abuse Registry. Those kinds of activities have been undertaken.
But as I said, there is not one easy answer to all of this, and we have everyone in the community who might have some interest in dealing with the issue of child prostitution involved in a process with the Child and Youth Secretariat to see whether we cannot come up with some other answers.
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Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, I am pleased that the minister brought up the judicial system.
I have with me a clipping from the Winnipeg Free Press from January 17, 1997, which talks about johns' names going on the Abuse Registry, which was something that this minister did through amending The Child and Family Services Act. But the former director of Winnipeg Child and Family Services, Mr. Cooper, says if the law very clearly stated that sexual exploitation of children included purchasing sex from them or counselling them for prostitution, there would be much more concerted action against the johns.
Now, I do not know whether we are talking about amendments to the Criminal Code or Manitoba legislation, either in the Minister of Justice's (Mr. Toews) department or this department, but is that something that is under active consideration?
Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, we did what we could do under The Child and Family Services Act and certainly identify a child that is being sexually exploited as the child in need of protection and therefore can charge johns with child abuse and therefore put them on the Child Abuse Registry. That was what we had the ability to do under our legislation. The issues that, I think, Keith Cooper was talking about, there would be criminal code activity, and that would be a responsibility of the federal government.
Mr. Martindale: I would hope that this minister and her government would encourage the federal government to make those changes to help attack this very serious problem.
Yesterday, the Leader of the official opposition and I asked questions about 16- and 17-year-olds, and I have some questions on it, but I am wondering if the minister would like to use this occasion to reply to those questions that were taken as notice. If you want, it would be entirely appropriate to do it here.
Mrs. Mitchelson: I think I could try to respond to them and provide information on the record. You know our policy to 16- and 17-year-olds has not changed. I mean, The Child and Family Services Act is still very specific on what service is to be provided to children under the age of majority, and our policy for 16- and 17-year-olds really does have, I guess, a few different components. Certainly, if a family is in a crisis and we can work with that family to resolve the issue, we do that. If, in fact, it is deemed advisable for a voluntary placement agreement to happen and all parties agree that that is the right direction to go, that happens.
I guess the issue comes when there is a youth that is not prepared to participate in any type of treatment or activity. I know, under The Child and Family Services Act and children that are in need of protection in Winnipeg, there are approximately 100 youths in independent living situations. Now our policy states clearly that, when a child in care is not prepared to actively be involved in a service plan, agency involvement may be limited to the provision of financial support based on levels provided to a single unemployed person with the Social Allowances Program, but it says in our policy that agencies will monitor these placements through the direct administration of the monthly support payments. So that is our policy clearly.
It is my understanding that in most instances cheques are not just mailed to kids in independent living situations, but that they are provided to--the money is provided through bi-weekly contact with workers in the agency. It is my understanding that there is always an attempt to connect those that are in need of protection to some sort of formal or informal treatment, but we cannot compel children that do not want to be involved in treatment to take treatment, so I do not know how many questions that answers.
I certainly got the indication from reading through the questions that there was some sense that there were some children out there that did not feel they were being served well through the child welfare system. Certainly I would want to know of any specific cases of individuals who felt that they wanted treatment and the agency was not willing or able to provide that kind of support to them. If there were any specifics, I would certainly investigate that, because our policy states very clearly that if the individual wants to be involved in any type of treatment activity the agency should be working with them to try to find the proper supports.
Mr. Martindale: Obviously, we are dealing with a very difficult situation here, and I suppose it really depends on one's point of view, maybe even one's point of view of human nature or childhood growth and development. I do not know. Because on the one hand you can say it should be up to the youth to make a choice, that if they want treatment or if they want help, then it is much more likely than anything that is done for them or anything they do is going to be successful, that if they do not want help and they do not want treatment, they are probably going to run, to use the slang, or they are going to resist treatment or the treatment is not going to be successful, so I suppose that is one view.
The other view and the one that I hear is from parents who are saying we want the agency to take the child into care and we want them to force treatment. Just this morning, I was asked to go as an advocate with a parent who lives in Burrows constituency, and I was unable to attend, sent my constituency assistant to the psych health unit, children's psych health unit where discharge plans were being made for a youth, and the mother was saying he is engaging in high-risk activities, he is on the street. In fact, I talked to her yesterday, and she phoned me this morning--can you call these people to order, please.
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. I would ask that committee members, outside the member for Burrows and the minister, when they are in discussion, refrain from extra discussion beyond the committee.
Mr. Jack Penner (Emerson): On the same point of order, Mr. Chairman, actually discussing the water qualities and whether the quality of water being served might, in fact, meet the quality standards for families. So I am sorry, if we disrupted.
Mr. Chairperson: The honourable member does not have a point of order.
Mr. Chairperson: The honourable member for Burrows, to continue with your question.
Mr. Martindale: Thank you, Mr. Chairperson, for calling the members to order.
Yesterday when I talked to this parent, she said that her son was involved in high-risk activities. This morning when she phoned to see if an advocate, myself or someone else would be at that meeting, she said that she was just informed that he has hepatitis C. So, you know, we are talking about a youth who is at risk to himself and at risk to other people, and a voluntary placement agreement broke down. He was in treatment for substance abuse, and upon discharge went AWOL. She wants the agency to take him into care so he can be forced into treatment. I have had similar discussions with other parents in the past.
I have three pieces of casework with me where the situation is quite similar and where I was talking to the agency, and in every case the agency says we are not prepared to do anything because the youth will not co-operate. If they do not want to participate in the plan, then there is nothing we can do. The parents are saying we want our son or daughter to be forced into treatment. If you look at the Operational Review, on page 129, it says at this point relatively few children over 16 are apprehended and brought into care.
The big concern here is that because of high caseloads, because of lack of time, because of overburdened staff, for a whole lot of reasons, we keep hearing from staff that 16- and 17-year-olds are getting very little service. In fact, in meeting with the Children's Advocate's office, what we were told was that the staff heave a big sigh of relief if the youth get apprehended by the police and get taken to the Manitoba Youth Centre because then they are the problem of the judicial system, and then Child and Family Services no longer have to deal with them. There is no discharge plan for them when they get out of a detention facility because the workers do not visit them there. Then they are involved with two systems or they have had a history of involvement with two different systems, the judicial system and Child and Family Services.
I guess my question is what is the minister going to do to make sure that the needs of 16- and 17-year-olds are being met?
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The hour being 5 p.m., and as previously agreed, committee rise.