Manitoba getting foster kids out of hotels
Aboriginal girl taken off life support after assault that prompted change
Manitoba is close to declaring victory in its bid to remove Crown wards from hotels that have served as their home of last resort, even as the badly-beaten girl who inspired the policy change appeared near death Thursday.
The family of the 15-year-old aboriginal, who was beaten and left on a parking lot ramp in downtown Winnipeg in the early hours of April 1, removed her from life support after two weeks in an induced coma. The young woman, originally from a northern Manitoba reserve, had been athletic, a violinist and the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, her mother told the Winnipeg Free Press.
“She’s a very good kid and somebody seriously hurt her,” she said.
A 15-year-old boy who was also a Crown ward living in a hotel and knew the young woman has been charged with aggravated assault and sexual assault.
On Thursday, the Manitoba government moved its only Crown ward living in a hotel to a “more appropriate placement,” but that child will not be the last as the province expedites its vow to end the practice of using hotels as emergency placement for wards in the child-welfare system.
“We are carefully monitoring the situation with the child in the hospital and we’re hoping for the best, obviously,” said Rachel Morgan, spokesperson for Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross.
Irvin-Ross made an emotional vow the day after this young woman’s beating to speed up the phase-out of hotels as a means of lodging for children in the care of Child and Family Services. These hotels, particularly in downtown Winnipeg, have been known to be dangerous, and the government offers little supervision and support for children living there.
That practice, Irvin-Ross told reporters, will end by June 1.
The government already had pledged to stop using hotels as way stations for young people in care after the death of Tina Fontaine last summer. The 15-year-old, who lived in the Best Western Charterhouse Hotel before she disappeared, was found wrapped in plastic on the banks of the Red River.
The use of hotels to house children in emergency situations may be very close to the end. The number of children in hotels has been at “zero several times in the past few weeks,” Morgan said.
The provincial government has promised to create 71 emergency foster home spaces and a secure residential care unit to work with girls aged 12 to 17 with complex needs.
While the province’s indigenous leaders are glad to see this practice end, they say there is a lot of work to be done to fix a child-welfare system in which aboriginal children are vastly over-represented.
“To see another young girl perish in that way, we have to do more,” said Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief David Harper, who was at her bedside Wednesday to pray with the family.
“It’s a pretty sad state,” he said. “Winnipeg being the orphanage capital of North America, we have to bring some light into the situation.”
Indigenous leaders have repeatedly called for more on-reserve supports so children can stay close to their communities and culture, but say they haven’t seen enough action toward that goal.
“We’ve got to be putting more programs into First Nations, pushing for more recreational activities into First Nations — that’s one way of eliminating these kinds of issues at the reserve level (so) kids can have more of a chance,” Harper said.