Give First Nation kids an A+ solution

The other tragedy of Lee Bonneau’s death is that it still might not be the wakeup call we need.

We are just as likely to try to convince ourselves Lee Bonneau’s death was the fault of his parents, the foster parents or an inadequate child welfare system. We’re sure good at that, as we flip to the next story in this newspaper.

But given that the next story you will read may be the one telling you that the Conference Board of Canada has given Saskatchewan an A+ economic rating, better than any other province and better than any other country on this planet that it rated, do we really have an excuse for continuing to fail vulnerable children — particularly First Nations kids?

An A+ jurisdiction needs an A+ solution to this province’s greatest failure. And Children’s Advocate Bob Pringle’s report this week on the “preventable ... disaster” that was the death of Lee Bonneau only underscores why we must do something very different to stop failing vulnerable children.

Lee Bonneau was a sixyear-old non-aboriginal child whose extended family could not meet his complex long-term needs. He was shuffled to a second foster home, but welfare officials didn’t fulfil the requirement to have a plan for him within 30 days. It wasn’t completed until after the night of Aug. 21, 2013, when Bonneau died after crossing paths with “Derek” — a First Nations boy who had even greater challenges and needs.

While his foster mother was attending a bingo on a First Nation that night, Lee Bonneau was last seen playing outside. He was found with serious injuries 90 minutes later and died in hospital.

The RCMP suspected that Derek — a 10-year-old with fetal alcohol syndrome who’d received services from a First Nations agency working on behalf of Social Services — was responsible for Bonneau’s death, but he was too young to be charged.

At age eight, this boy had been suspected by the RCMP of killing a pregnant dog and her unborn pups. But even three years before that, Yorkton Tribal Council Child and Family Services had been alerted to his behaviour.

Derek, who is now in special care, never got the help he needed. Pringle rightly calls it a “disaster,” but the real disaster is the inevitability of something similar happening again under the current system.

A disturbed 10-year-old “falling through the cracks” (only visited once in fourplus years by the agency involved) isn’t a good enough excuse for what happened to Lee Bonneau. But the excuses also weren’t good enough for Baby Andy, the Oyate safe house or the B.C. toddler nearly starved to death by her grandfather on a Fort Qu’Appelle-area reserve.

The system hasn’t worked for decades and it won’t get any better unless we have a massive overhaul.

As well-meaning as Pringle’s 18 recommendations were — calling for more oversight, better case management, more timely services, etc. — they won’t change anything in a social services system plagued by underfunding, overwork and serious systemic shortcomings.

We need an entirely separate social services delivery system specifically designed for First Nations families — a system operated under the Social Services Ministry, but co-ordinated and run by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN).

Why? Well, a fully funded social services ministry largely run by white politicians and bureaucrats has not been the answer for First Nations children (see: residential schools).

But nor is the answer the current mess involving both that mainstream white Social Services Ministry and a series of piecemeal First Nations/tribal council child and family agencies that are underfunded and underequipped. And why should we expect it to work?

Should we expect a local band member beholden to the local band or tribal council to easily make the heart-wrenching decision to remove children from a reserve family they may know well?

But what if social workers — both white and First Nations — worked under a provincewide body? What if they could intervene with at-risk mothers, even before the child was born? What if this organization could avoid relying on privatesector generosity and social impact bonds to build the Sweet Dreams home for these mothers?

How much could we save in health, education, social services and policing costs — not to mention the human benefit from fewer missing aboriginal women and fewer tragedies like Lee Bonneau?

Yes, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, annually. But wouldn’t we use some of the current funding of the near-billiondollar annual Social Services budget anyway? Could we set aside some resource revenue for this venture?

Heck, why not stop playing politics with the Regina and Moose Jaw casinos and simply give the entire gaming industry to the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority under the proviso that all of its profits would go to fund A+ First Nations social services and education?

What if we took an A+ approach to solving our biggest failing?