Mr. Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon this section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 254 will resume the consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Family Services. When the committee last sat, it had been considering item 9.4. Child and Family Services (a) Child, Family and Community Development (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $3,301,700.

Mr. Doug Martindale (Burrows): A couple of years ago I obtained a copy of statistical data from Winnipeg Child and Family Services, a number of pages, one is called Placements and Related Costs; another one is Summary of Provincial Funding, and Historical Financial Facts, all very interesting reading for those of us who like numbers. Last year I wrote to the CEO, Mr. Lance Barber, and requested a similar printout. I have got that. It is dated March 31, 1998, or at least the stats are for the end of March 1998. I wrote to Mr. Barber again on April 20, 1999. I requested the same statistical information. Actually, one of our research staff phoned Mr. Barber and was told, yes, we could receive that. However, a few minutes later we were told, no, that was not available. I am wondering if the minister has this information for me.

Hon. Bonnie Mitchelson (Minister of Family Services): I am informed we have not received it.

Mr. Martindale: I guess I am a little incredulous at the answer. As the minister knows, this agency receives tens of millions of dollars from this government and this minister's department. It is hard to believe that the minister does not have statistical information from this agency. Now, if the minister does not have this information for March 31, maybe she has it for the end of February.

Mrs. Mitchelson: I guess I would have to see the kind of information my honourable friend has. I probably should not have been as quick to say that we do not have statistical information. What I would have to do is review the information that he has and see whether in fact it is something that is prepared on a regular basis and submitted, whether it was something that was done specifically for him or whether it is something that we receive regularly that we might provide.

Mr. Martindale: The minister is leaving me a little frustrated, because in a previous year's Estimates, I requested the information. The minister said I would have to ask Mr. Barber for it. So I did, and one year I got the information. This year, I cannot seem to get it. If I cannot get it from the minister and I cannot get it from Mr. Barber, where am I going to get it?

Mrs. Mitchelson: I will indicate that I am not sure what my honourable friend asked Mr. Barber for. I do not know if he asked for information that would be provided on a regular basis to the department or whether Mr. Barber prepared something specific for my honourable friend based on what he asked for, so if I can see, it looks like my honourable friend has tabled that information.

Once I have an opportunity to look at it and have my staff look at it, there might be something very comparable that we have but, again, I need to know what it is he asked for, what was provided, and then I will be able to answer more fully the question.

Mr. Martindale: The Clerk's office is photocopying the document. It will be tabled and then the minister will know exactly what it is that I seek. Perhaps this minister has more clout than I do. If she requests it from Mr. Barber, I am sure she will get it. I look forward to the minister tabling it in the Estimates committee before we are finished here.

I would like to move on now to the current reorganization which is underway at Winnipeg Child and Family Services. I did hear that there is a possibility that there might be major changes in the board of directors of Winnipeg Child and Family Services. I wonder if the minister has any information on that.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Yes, there will be changes to the board. We will be releasing that information very shortly.

Mr. Martindale: I am wondering if the minister is willing to divulge any details now or whether you are waiting to have a press conference.

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Mrs. Mitchelson: I would indicate to my honourable friend that the announcement will be made shortly. I would imagine it will be made before the end of the time that we are through the Estimates of the Department of Family Services. Then we can discuss in more detail those changes.

Mr. Martindale: It is my understanding that as a part of the reorganization, and actually I have a very interesting document here, Program Management Reorganization Plan, April 1999, for Winnipeg Child and Family Services. I presume that the minister's staff has the same documentation. It is my understanding that about 31 positions have been redeployed. I am wondering if the minister can confirm that 31 positions have been redeployed.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Yes. That is my understanding.

Mr. Martindale: Could the minister tell me which positions were redeployed? Do you to have a detailed report on the redeployed positions?

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, our understanding from discussions with the Winnipeg agency is that they are going through the reorg now and that they are anticipating there will be full implementation by October or November of this year. They will have the same number of staff working in the system, but the goal was to increase front-line staff, so he has reorganized rather than on services in the four different areas of Winnipeg Child and Family into program areas. The reorganization will create some delayering at the administrative level, so that in fact there will be more front-line staff.

Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, all of that information I am aware of, except that the minister did not answer my question. I would be interested in knowing where the redeployed positions are coming from. Surely, they are not all going from senior management to the front lines. Whereabouts within the agency is the agency finding those staff to redeploy them?

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, as my honourable friend does not have that information, we do not know specifically, exactly where that is going to take place. I do know we have no detail around that plan, but we can certainly ask Mr. Barber for that information and share it with my honourable friend.

Mr. Martindale: Can the minister indicate whether she would have that information before Family Services Estimates are completed?

Mrs. Mitchelson: Yes, we will certainly undertake to have as much information as we can before the end. We will ask that question directly and provide the response.

Mr. Martindale: Can the minister tell me if the staff that were moved to the front lines, at least that is my understanding, will be replaced by other staff?

Mrs. Mitchelson: I think I indicated in my first answer that full implementation will be October or November of 1999, so this is the plan for reorganization and my sense would be that it will take until October or November to get full implementation and all of the issues sorted out. So they are in the process right now. They have put a conceptual plan in place.

Very often when a reorganization takes place, it does take some period of time in order to fully implement it. So I will find out exactly where it is at today from the agency and try to report back tomorrow on any information that I can obtain, recognizing and realizing full well that implementation does not happen over night, and that is why they have given themselves several months in order to complete that process.

Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, can the minister tell me how the reorganization is going to affect the east area? As the minister knows, in the past there were concerns raised by people in the east area. They did not want to be separated from Winnipeg Child and Family Services and put into a government department. I wonder if we could get an update on what the agencies plans are for any kind of geographic redistribution.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, the reorganization will not remove any of the existing Winnipeg Child and Family Services, so east area will remain to be a part, although I think I indicated in my first answer that rather than having the four different areas within the agency, they are looking to program streams and reorganizing in that manner, but there will not be any change in the size or the demographics of the Winnipeg agency.

Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, can the minister tell me how much the deficit was for Winnipeg Child and Family Services at the end of the most recent fiscal year?

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, the deficit was $4.66 million.

Mr. Martindale: Can the minister tell me why she thinks every year there is a serious deficit for this agency? What has the minister done in the past to try to avoid this problem? What are you doing in the current fiscal year to avoid this problem?

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Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I guess we have to look at going back to the operational review that was done of the Winnipeg agency that had some recommendations in it on reorganization and restructuring of the agency. As a result of that review, I think the agency has undertaken proactively reorganization, and they have looked at functional areas now rather than demographics, which I think is certainly a step in the right direction.

We do not have more children in care today than we have had in the past year or two; I mean the numbers of children coming into care have stabilized. What has happened is the cost of providing service to the children in care has increased. Hopefully as they complete their reorganization–I mean, we are working with them on a regular basis–they will be able to achieve some savings as a result of being able to provide better service in areas of common ground for families and children.

The one thing that I hope will in the future have some positive impact on the situation in our Child and Family Services agencies will be all of the early intervention programs that we have begun to put in place in last year's budget and in this year's budget. Through the Children and Youth Secretariat, we have certainly much more proactive programs in place with the goal and the end result being that less children will have to be taken into care, to have service provided for them, that they will be children in more functional families that will not require the services of Child and Family Services, the mandated agency. So everything that we are doing now that is community based is hopefully going to lead towards the end result of having less children having to come into care.

Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, does the minister believe that there is any connection between the $4-million deficit and the reorganization? Is it possible that the agency was told to reorganize in order to get rid of their year-after-year deficits?

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I think the whole reorganization and restructure has come about because of a couple of things, one being the operational review that looked at services to children and families and made some recommendations on how families might be served better through some sort of a new structure and new leadership in the agency that went through–I have to give the new CEO a lot of credit for going through a very significant strategic-planning process where he worked with staff in the agency to determine how to better deliver service. This has never been about a dollars-and-cents issue; this has been about trying to provide the best service possible for children and families. I think that was the whole process that has been gone through, and to go to a functional reorganization, the agency believes that they will be able to serve children and families better. So we have to look to those who have worked in the system, who have made recommendations, and to the new leadership that has come up with a plan that they believe will better serve children and families.

Mr. Martindale: Since the minister referred to the operational review, and since I have it here with me, I would like to refer to the executive summary where, in the main findings, it 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.

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Mrs. Mitchelson: I have some statistics here for the 12 months ending March 31, 1998, and the average per month was 36 in hotels. I have the average for the 12 months–it would be March '98 to March 31, '99–and the average was 15 per month. For April of this year, and May, it has averaged 29 per month.

Mr. Martindale: Can the minister keep going on her charts there and tell me what was the average bed use for apartments/shelters?

Mrs. Mitchelson: For apartments and shelters, for the period ending March 31, 1998, it was 81, and for the 12-month period ending March 31, 1999, it was 100, the average use.

Mr. Martindale: Can the minister tell me how many children were in four-bed units?

Mrs. Mitchelson: In four-bed units for the 12 months ending March 31, 1998, there were 60 on average per month. For the year ending March 31, 1999, there were 51 per month.

Mr. Martindale: Can the minister tell me what IPPs are and how many children are in IPPs?

Mrs. Mitchelson: IPP stands for an individual placement plan. These are specialized 24-hour care, usually apartment-type settings that are not short term. They are longer term. Individual placement plans are specialized 24-hour care plans that are created for individuals, specifically to the needs of the child. They are for short-term assessment and treatment. They are not the hotel-like accommodation, which is supposed to be very short term.

Mr. Martindale: At March 31, 1998, there were 18 children, on average, in IPPs. How many currently are there, or the most recent figures the minister has?

Mrs. Mitchelson: For the 12 months ending March 31, 1999, there were 19 on average.

Mr. Martindale: Just as I suspected, the minister has all kinds of detailed numbers at her fingertips. I am wondering if she would table the charts and numbers that she is reading from.

Mrs. Mitchelson: I will endeavour to get a clean copy of this and table it.

Mr. Martindale: In the operational review, it says that one of the factors that has triggered the current cost overruns, and this is in 1997–there are two factors listed. One of them is a shortage of emergency housing which has forced the agency to rely on hotels and expensive residential placements. I am wondering if this problem has decreased at all or whether it has just been shuffled around by putting children in places other than hotels, since, you know, the deficit is still as large or larger than in past years, and there are still large numbers of children in emergency reception and short-term assessment according to the categories in the chart that I have.

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Mrs. Mitchelson: I think the statistics indicate that apartments and shelters on an average in the year ending 1998 had 81 on an average per month. If you look at the 1999 figures, there are a hundred. So there has been an increase in the number of children that are going into apartments and shelters for short term and a decrease in the number of children that are going into hotels. So what they are trying to do is develop more apartments and shelters for short-term emergency placements. They have had some success, and they continue to work on it. The issue certainly has not been addressed completely yet, but that is the ultimate goal and objective, is to move children into apartments and shelters on intake rather than into hotels.

Mr. Martindale: I think the minister is actually proving the case that I am about to make, and that is that large numbers of children are still in short-term placements, whether it is a hotel, motel, apartment, four-bed unit. Really it does not make any difference. These are children that are either I guess waiting to go back to their family if that is appropriate or to go into foster care. If you look at the numbers, Child and Family Services for March 31, 1998, says 194 children. If I have the figures that the minister has given me today correct, depending on whether we use the higher figure or the lower figure–because the minister indicated that in March '99 there were 15 per month, in April-May '99 there were 29 per month in hotels, but the lower total would be 185, which is only 10 different from a year earlier, or using the higher figure of April and May, 219, which is higher than a year ago.

So the problem still exists, and the operational review comments on this. It says the foster care system is in malaise. 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 I would like to ask the minister: is the agency making any progress on recruiting foster parents? I do not thing they are; otherwise, they would not have so many children in emergency placements. If the minister thinks that they are, what is the evidence for that?

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I think the focus by the agency has been to move away from the hotel-type situation into other short-term types of placements. There is always going to be a need in any system for short-term placements when kids are perceived to be in danger and in need of apprehension for a short period of time. I mean that will never go away. I guess the issue is where are they placed for that short-term period while they are assessed, and I can indicate that they are moving aggressively away from hotels to apartments or shelters. That is the focus of some of their reorganization, redirection.

They certainly have had an aggressive recruitment campaign for foster homes underway. The agency tells us that they are fairly pleased with the way that campaign is going, and homes are being found as a result of that recruitment campaign. I am sure my honourable friend has heard or seen comments from Michele Brown who works from the agency is working very aggressively in this area.

So that has been part of their focus as a result of restructuring, but I do want to indicate to my honourable friend that there always will be need for some sort of short-term placement. Hotels are certainly not the placement of choice or the area we would like to see kids cared for. I know the agency shares that view, and they are working proactively to try to change that and fix that, but they are not there yet.

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Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, going back to the operational review, it says a study of emergency housing is required to develop a plan that will eliminate the need for costly hotel accommodation. Can the minister tell me if that study of emergency housing was done?

Mrs. Mitchelson: As a result of that recommendation, there was a joint committee set up with the agency and the department that worked and continues to work to identify alternative resources to hotel placements. They review case-by-case planning and on intake try to determine what is the best placement. I do want to indicate that although hotels are still being used and that they are working aggressively on more shelter or apartment capacity, hotels still are being utilized, but my understanding is that it is for much shorter periods of time than it was in the past, because they are aggressively looking on a case-by-case basis, if a hotel is the only option in the short term to move progressively and pretty quickly to a case plan that will move that child into alternate placement. So the time periods are shorter. It fluctuates depending on circumstances or situations. It fluctuates at least on the time of the year and day of the week too when children are apprehended.

Mr. Martindale: I think it does not really make any difference whether we are talking about hotels or apartments or four-bed units. We are still talking about short-term placements. The public should know that these short-term placements in many cases are not even staffed by staff of Winnipeg Child and Family Services or people with experience with children. A lot of them are staffed with people supplied by companies like Medox. So these kinds of short-term placements really are not acceptable for children. From time to time we hear that children are there for months in spite of what the minister claims may be a declining average number of days there.

What we really need is more foster care to get children out of these short-term placements. The operational review said a task force is needed on foster care and the creation of a province-wide clearing house and co-ordination process for allocating, recruiting, and maintaining regular foster care. I am wondering if that task force was ever set up.

Mrs. Mitchelson: What has happened as a result of that recommendation is that we have set up a provincial placement desk. The department chairs that with representation and support from the agencies–Winnipeg, Central, Westman–and those from group homes, from First Nations agencies and from treatment facilities also are part of that placement desk. So we are trying to co-ordinate services better. We are trying to ensure that we look at the needs of the child and the issues and see whether there can be sharing of resources between different agencies, whether there might be a better option for placement in co-operation with another mandated agency that is providing service. So we are trying to look at the individual children who need our support and service and see whether we cannot find the best placement or treatment option possible.

I know my honourable friend can be critical, and I know that he criticizes short-term placement. But I will go back and say again that there will always be the need for some short-term placement while we get a plan in place and assess a child. It is the appropriateness of that short-term placement, I think, that we all would argue needs to be better and that hotels are not necessarily the preferred option. We would like to see the use of hotels decrease and not exist in the near future, but the reality is until you do an assessment, until you understand all of the issues, it is pretty hard to develop a comprehensive plan that is child focused and is in the best interests of the child.

So we are working and certainly in a more co-ordinated fashion, but again there continues to be work that needs to be done. My honourable friend says, yes, there needs to be more foster homes. The agency in Winnipeg has a plan in place for recruitment. They appear to be having some success, but again this is not an issue that is solved overnight. We do know just by the fact that the cost of providing service for children today is higher than it was in the past, that there are more individual specialized needs for children who are coming into the system.

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You know, if my honourable friend has some suggestions or ideas or some sense of what he might do or what direction he might give to the Winnipeg agency in order to have them do things differently, maybe he might share that with us. I mean, my sense is that they are aggressively pursuing options and opportunities, trying very hard to find families who will deal with children with very high and specialized needs, in many instances, very troubled children. So it is something I would like to see. I would love to direct people to take children and look after them. I do not know if that is what my honourable friend is saying he would do with the agency. I think this is a co-operative approach. I think that we are working together. I think that everyone who is working in the system has the best interests of children at heart, and we can all be critical of things that are not happening. But I think that we have to celebrate the achievements and the progress that has been made as a result of strategic planning, as a result of an agency that is taking the issues surrounding protection and support for children very seriously and are trying their very best to fix some of the issues.

Ultimately, the agency does not create dysfunctional families or troubled kids. But the agency has to be there to try to respond in the best manner possible to deal with these children. I like to be able to give them some credit to think that they are working co-operatively within the agency to find better ways of ensuring that the services for children are at the very best that they can be and that they are working in co-operation with our government department and my ministry with the staff that I know are committed to trying to find better answers and trying to ensure that children get the appropriate service. I think we are seeing much more co-operation within all different areas of society and all different areas, whether it be our group homes, our First Nations agencies, agencies outside of the city of Winnipeg, our treatment facilities, to try to ensure that the most appropriate support for the children is there when they need it.

But if you are asking me whether it is a perfect system, I would have to say no. I am not sure it ever will be, but I do believe that steps have been taken to move in the right direction. I believe that there is very much a co-operative approach and certainly a focus on trying to put children first and ensure that treatments and supports are there when they need them, but that is not always the case again. I like to think that we are moving in the right direction, and I like to give the agency the benefit of the doubt of working towards trying to implement the recommendations from the reviews that have been done. I guess I would ask my honourable friend would he or his party do something differently, you know, what might they do?

I mean our government is as guilty as I am sure his party was when they were in government. The Child and Family Services system has always been criticized. I can go back as far as I can remember, reading stories in the newspapers before I was even involved in politics in any way and knowing that there were always children that suffered through the system.

I know there was a Children's Aid Society that functioned as one agency or one unit many years ago. There was significant controversy. I know that when the New Democratic Party was in government, they got rid of the Children's Aid Society and decentralized into six different agencies. Were families healthier and children being served better? I am not sure. I do not think so.

So we came into government and looked at that and said: our families are not any better; our children are not being served any better by the new system that was set up. So we changed it and amalgamated it back to one agency.

Are we saying that families are healthier and children are being served any better through that process? I guess there is still criticism. I mean, I think I have come to the conclusion that we have to try to work within the system that is there to effect and impact change and find better ways of delivering service. You cannot just dismantle and think you can set up some new structure that is going to fix things. Quite frankly, again, it is not the agency that creates the issues with children. It is society. It is families. There are all kinds of different dynamics.

What we would hope to see is less children needing the services of a Child and Family Services system. We would rather get to the issues before they end up in a system where they need protection or they have to be apprehended, where they need foster care or they need specialized placement or they need hotel rooms. I would love to see no need for a Child and Family Services system, but the reality is I do not think in my lifetime or my honourable friend's lifetime we are going to see that happen. But I do think that some of the early intervention things that are happening today will help us to strengthen families, build stronger communities, have people looking out for each other and working within their neighbourhoods and within their extended families to ensure that children get off to a healthy start to life, receive the proper nutrition and parenting support that will lead to less children needing to be apprehended, less children needing to come in to the Child and Family Services system.

So a lot of my energy and effort and time goes into building those programs, listening to what the communities have to say about the direction we need to go, and when they come up with the ideas, then I think it is incumbent that we support those communities to become healthier and stronger and ultimately those families who live in those communities to become healthier and stronger.

You know I honestly believe that the Winnipeg agency is making a strong effort to try to ensure that their services are child focused, that they are putting the best interests of the child first, that they are doing the assessment that needs to be done. We want to be able to support that. We want to be able to work with them.

It is certainly not an us-and-them issue. We do not need to be at loggerheads with each other. I believe that everyone who works within my department in the Child and Family Services area has the best interests of children at heart. I believe everyone who works in the agencies and the treatment facilities, the group homes, I honestly believe that everyone wants to see stronger, healthier children and families. So I am just really pleased to see that there is more co-operation, that there is more interaction, more dialogue around how we can best serve children and families.

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You know, I, again, will say it is certainly not perfect. We certainly have a lot of issues to deal with, but we cannot just sit back and do nothing. If we can prevent children from needing the services of our Child and Family Services agencies, then I think we have made significant, positive steps in the right direction. That does not happen overnight, because the early intervention programs like BabyFirst, like Stop FAS, like the Women and Infant Nutrition Program are starting with children that are born today. We may not see significant results for a few years, but I am hoping that as we assess risk and we see–I know that BabyFirst this year will be working with 1,000 families with newborns. That will be families that will be mentored, that will be supported, that will learn parenting skills, will learn how to ensure their baby gets off to a healthy start to life. That is a big part of the battle towards trying to ensure that children are nurtured and loved and will not be into situations where they are abused or neglected or need to be taken into protection.

So I have to indicate that there are issues on all fronts. We have to work at the far end to try to ensure that the proper placements are there and available for children and for families, but we also have to work at the front end on the prevention side.

Mr. Martindale: I would like to thank the minister for that little lecture.

Going back to the operational review, the recommendation was that the use of hotels be eliminated. That has not happened. There was a recommendation to set up a task force. That has not happened. The minister pointed out that there is always criticism, which is true, but if you look at what and who are being criticized, it is mostly Winnipeg Child and Family Services, and as the minister knows, there are other agencies that receive almost no criticism. For example, she and I were both at, I believe it was, the 100th anniversary of Child and Family Services of Western Manitoba. I have been to their annual meetings in previous years as well, as the minister has, I think, and it is always wonderful to be there because there are usually a couple of hundred people in attendance. They have lots of volunteers who attend their annual meeting and foster parents. They hand out certificates or awards to people for long service, both staff and volunteers and foster parents, and they seem to be doing a very good job.

Interestingly, at one of the previous annual meetings that I attended, I did a little analysis on their budget, partly because of one of the reviews of Child and Family Services. I do not have the whole document here, so I am not sure whose review this was; but there was a recommendation to increase preventative program expenditure to 10 to 15 percent of the budget allocation. Well, if you look at the budget of Child and Family Services of Western Manitoba, about 10 percent of their budget is spent on prevention, if you include their family resource centre and their child care centre. Maybe there is a cause and effect there. Maybe it is because they are spending substantially more of their budget on prevention that they seem to be able to live within their budget.

Now, maybe the other factor is that socioeconomic conditions in Brandon are quite different than Winnipeg. We know that there are risk factors for children coming into care, and those risk factors, or at least the most significant ones, are single-parent status, being aboriginal, and being poor. We cannot do very much about single-parent status, although I suppose I have a responsibility, as do other people in society, to encourage families to stay together and discourage families from breaking up.

We cannot do anything about people being born aboriginal, although we can do much more for aboriginal people in our society, but we could do a lot more about poverty, but this government has chosen not to do that, other than reducing welfare rates and not doing anything about the very high numbers of people living in poverty in Manitoba. So they are still at risk, and in Winnipeg we see children coming into care.

The numbers, if you compare May 1999 with March 1998, there are more children in temporary facilities. We know that last year, for example, there was a lot of media coverage of this issue. For example, I have a headline from the Winnipeg Free Press from June 3, 1998, which says: All agree child care in turmoil. Fix elusive. Province's vow to recruit more foster parents bears no fruit.

We have a headline that says: Child and Family Services eyes new treatment facilities. New CFS chief expected to inherit the hot seat.

We have other headlines about children in hotels which, as the minister knows, was a major issue last year. We even had people like Nicholas Hirst writing articles about children in hotels, and yet nothing has changed. In fact the situation is worse, if we are talking about temporary facilities. We have more children in temporary facilities, rather than less. We had an editorial in the Free Press last year, on June 3, entitled Cruel Message, and the first paragraph says: The doubling in the number of children kept in hotel rooms by the Winnipeg Child and Family Services agency is both an evil in itself and a symptom of a deeper failure. Family Services Minister Bonnie Mitchelson needs to improve the support for foster parents so that more can be recruited. She also needs to show her cabinet colleagues the steps that all departments should take to ease the pressures that produce abused and neglected children.

The Nicholas Hirst article is titled Focus on inner city kids, and he points out that last year there were 71,000 occasions that a child spent a night in short-term placements, including hotels. That was dated July 4, 1998.

We have another article, also by Nicholas Hirst, June 6, 1998, titled A huge failure of policy.

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So obviously things are not getting any better. They are getting worse, so there needs to be something done. I think this government has contributed to the problem by cutting foster care rates, even though many of the experts have said that one way to get more children out of temporary placements and into foster care is to increase the rates, not decrease them, as this minister and her government have done in the past.

So I guess the obvious question is: has this minister done anything to encourage agencies like Winnipeg Child and Family Services to increase the number of licensed foster homes and to increase the number of licensed emergency placements? Surely it would be better to have children living with a family in a home that is licensed as an emergency foster placement than in a hotel or a four-bed unit or any other kind of temporary placement where there are children and staff living in apartments or wherever on a temporary basis. What is this minister and her government doing to encourage agencies to license more emergency foster parents and more foster parents in general?

Mrs. Mitchelson: I suppose one of the benefits to being in opposition and a critic is that you can selectively pick the newspaper articles that might support one's point of view. Maybe I need to be researching a little bit and getting the newspaper articles that talk about some of the positive things that have happened in the recent while, especially articles that talk about how our ChildrenFirst plan is probably one of the best plans across Canada when it comes to early intervention and support to families and children. I will just have to make sure that I have those in front of me the next time we meet.

It was interesting to hear my honourable friend talk about the issues of poverty and how they contribute in a negative way towards families. I would like to just spend a few minutes talking about the whole issue of poverty and the welfare system and maybe ask for some comments from my honourable friend at the end, because I think it is important that we hear his perspective and his point of view, because I do know that a life on welfare will always be a life in poverty. I mean, I want more for families in Manitoba than a commitment to a life of poverty on welfare. We know that welfare is in some instances a career option, and it is certainly not anything that I want to see as a career option. I would be interested in hearing my honourable friend's comments on that issue.

We want to break the cycle of welfare and dependency on welfare. We want to try to ensure that the tools are in the hands of individuals and families to move off of welfare and into a life where they have a job and an adequate salary to provide for their families. I think that that does an awful lot to ensure healthier, happier families.

We know that people that take some pride in contributing in some way to community and to society feel better about themselves. It has an impact on those that surround them and it certainly has a positive impact on their children. When you feel good about yourself obviously it changes your whole attitude and outlook on life. Those kinds of positive attitudes certainly rub off on your children. I do not want to see the next generation of children know only a life of welfare and poverty.

Certainly if we can support and encourage independence and help people develop the tools that they need to move off of welfare and into the workforce, we can and we will see happier, healthier families.

That is one of the only ways that people on welfare will move out of poverty. There is not any government of any political stripe that is going to be able to provide or I do not think would want to provide welfare assistance, a program of last resort, to the amount that would move people out of poverty. It is just not a reality, unless my honourable friend has something in his back pocket that he and his party may pull out during the next election campaign that might guarantee families of four $30,000 a year on welfare. But I know that we will not be able to make that commitment. I know that anyone who is being realistic will not be able to make that kind of commitment. I would be interested in hearing my honourable friend's comments on those issues.

I do know that the agency, with our support, is certainly looking at recruiting foster parents. I do know that we want to find a co-ordinated way to ensure that we on intake–and again I will say that there will always need to be short-term placements within our system. If in fact kids are found abandoned on a Friday night and parents are not around, they are going to have to be placed in some sort of a temporary support system. It might only be overnight until we can find a support network within the community or parents that are deemed capable of continuing to look after their children that maybe made a mistake, those kinds of things. But until we get an assessment that tells us what kinds of supports individuals need, there always will need to be short-term placements. I take some exception to my honourable friend's comments about saying that the report and the recommendation says that we should not use hotels. We have all agreed that we should not use hotels.

I guess I would ask again for his comments on what his approach would be. I mean, he is saying we failed, the agency has failed, the government has failed, everyone has failed. It is fine, again, to read the articles in the newspaper that are critical and say things need to change, and it is fine for my honourable friend to say that everyone has failed and things need to change. I need to know what his suggestions or ideas would be on how he would impact that change and where his leadership would take the system, because again I know in opposition you can have it both ways. You can be critical, but you do not have to indicate what you would do.

Again, we have the Minister of Family Services in waiting–certainly must have, if he says and is critical of what is happening today and believes that nobody is working towards an end goal or an end result of not using hotels–what his answers would be, because we have not found the absolute solution yet, but we are working towards it. There is an aggressive working towards ensuring that if it has to be a short-term placement, it is just that. It is not a six-month or a year placement. It is a short-term placement while there is an assessment, and ultimately the end goal or the end result would be that we would not ever have to use hotels again.

We are not there yet, but again I have to say that surely my honourable friend has some suggestions or ideas on how he might do things differently if he had the ability to set direction. Would it be a confrontational direction where he would provide an edict from on high and say you will? How would he make that happen, because our approach and my approach as a minister has been that we have to identify the issues? Then we have to work co-operatively with those that are in the system to impact a change.

I could probably go back to reports that were done when the New Democratic Party was in government that made recommendations on how to fix things and how to change things. I might go back and find that they did not accomplish everything that was recommended in every report that was presented to them as government, and I think that is reality. In a perfect world we would have a perfect system. All I can indicate is that ultimately I think everyone is working together today in a co-operative way to try to find the right answers and the right solutions.

So my honourable friend may say that we have failed miserably, but I guess I still would like to hear what his approach would be and how he would deal with the issues, because certainly he has to have some ideas or suggestions, if we are not doing it right, how he might be able to do it better.

Mr. Martindale: I think the minister will have to wait until the election campaign or until we form government to see what we would do in Child and Family Services.

Hon. Mervin Tweed (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): I just want the record to show that the member for Burrows constantly does criticize the department about the care and need of children, and yet he is prepared to wait for a call of an election to bring forward a platform that would help those children today.

Mr. Chairperson: The honourable minister does not have a point of order.

Mr. Martindale: We were ready for an election several months ago, but this government chickened out and postponed it. So you could have found out what our party position was in April, but you missed the opportunity.

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The minister and I would probably agree that there is a need for temporary protection even for one night, as the minister said. What we are talking about is what is more appropriate. Is it more appropriate for children to be in a family home or to be in a hotel or a four-bed placement? I think it would be better for a child to be in a family home. So I am wondering what the minister believes are the barriers or the obstacles or the problems in licensing additional foster homes, including emergency homes, and is the agency working on that? Do they have a plan, and are they making any progress on it?

Mrs. Mitchelson: We certainly have discussed the issue of culturally appropriate foster homes with the Winnipeg agency. As my honourable friend knows, it is estimated that about 70 percent of the kids in care in the Winnipeg agency are aboriginal children, and yet we do not have a large number of culturally appropriate aboriginal foster homes. I have been working and dialoguing with Ma Mawi around the issue of development of culturally appropriate foster homes. You know, as I talk to those that are involved with Ma Mawi, I hear very often that it is not only foster homes but it is community capacity. A big issue for many within the aboriginal community is trying to ensure that if a family is having difficulty–and sometimes it is temporary difficulty. That is, so very often a child is removed from the community and the neighbourhood that they live in and placed in circumstances that even if it was a foster home placement, it may not be in the best interests of the child to be removed completely from community, from neighbourhood, from friends or from extended family. So the whole issue is building community capacity to try to ensure that we provide the appropriate supports.

So Ma Mawi is working aggressively on that issue, and we are working with them. We are very supportive, and we have expressed our desire to the agency to work aggressively to try to, as well as recruit foster homes, look at culturally appropriate services and supports and build community and neighbourhood capacity to provide the right supports for the right reasons.

So that discussion and dialogue is ongoing. I know that my honourable friend knows that there has been a report done. We had a committee that was struck to look at the issue of aboriginal involvement in the Winnipeg agency, and we have a report that has been endorsed that does indicate that there needs to be a greater focus on engagement of the aboriginal community and helping to find the solutions along with the Winnipeg agency. I think I cannot at this point give any detail around changes to the board of the agency, but I think it will show a step in the right direction in trying to ensure that sort of at the board level and the policy level we will be looking at those issues in a different way.

So we are working on that. I have had the opportunity to meet especially with aboriginal women that we know. I mean no discredit to men sitting around this table or men in our community but–

An Honourable Member: All good men.

Mrs. Mitchelson: All good men. But we do know that it is aboriginal women that are developing some of the leadership skills. They do take family issues very seriously, and they are traditionally the nurturers in the family. I hear on a regular basis from aboriginal women that I meet with that they can and will and are prepared to develop a capacity and help to find the solutions to make their families and the families within their communities stronger and healthier. So I am prepared certainly to reach out, and I have. This is not a them-and-us issue, it is a we-together that we have to find the answers, and I think we are working towards that goal.

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Mr. Martindale: The minister has been challenging me and hoping that I would rise to the bait and tell her what my party would do, and I have been resisting the bait. However, I do have one idea which is my own idea. I have not caucused it, and it is not a party position, but it did occur to me that if 70 percent of the children in the care of Winnipeg Child and Family Services are aboriginal, then maybe it makes sense to make 70 percent of the board aboriginal. So, instead of trying to transform the agency from the bottom up by hiring more aboriginal staff, which has had limited success because quite often they get their first job with Winnipeg Child and Family Services, they get some experience and then they leave to go to work for an aboriginal agency, it seems to me that if you had a majority of the board aboriginal that would have a profound impact on the entire agency and actually might be easier than trying to negotiate with a number of different aboriginal organizations to set up a mandated or several mandated aboriginal agencies in Winnipeg. So that is an idea that I have had personally.

But going on to follow up on one of the examples that the minister gave, and that is Ma Mawi, I think we would both agree that it is a very good agency and doing some good work. So I wonder if the minister can indicate if there are any plans to increase their funding or increase their responsibility?

Mrs. Mitchelson: I have to indicate that Ma Mawi, although it has had growing pains and it has had some issues that it has had to deal with from time to time, certainly has grown and certainly we have partnered as a government with them and will continue to do that. I think my honourable friend might be very pleased with some announcements that may take place very shortly that will look at significant new partnerships with Ma Mawi around issues that are very near and dear to their hearts and issues that I think will address in some way the support to young parents within the aboriginal community.

So I meet with them on a regular basis. They have some excellent ideas on how we could do things better and do things differently. As I said earlier, when the community comes forward with suggestions or ideas on how they can have a positive impact on neighbourhoods and communities, I think it is important for government to listen and then to partner when we can, because the suggestions and ideas are coming from the community level, sort of rather than developing programs internally within government and implementing them. If we implement programs that the community recommends or suggests because they know their community best, I think we have more opportunity for success.

So we are working with Ma Mawi, and we will be announcing something shortly that they believe and we believe will have a positive impact.

Mr. Martindale: I would like to move into a new topic, and that is children who die in the care of an agency. Maybe I can begin by asking the minister to explain the process that happens as to whether or not there is an inquest into the death of a child. Now, I understand that there is a review by the Chief Medical Officer and that there is a children's inquest review committee, and I guess they make recommendations, but I wonder if the minister could explain to me how the process actually works.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, I think I have this, so maybe I will see a head shake negatively if I am not getting this right.

Every child death has to be reported to the Chief Medical Examiner. If a child is in care or has been connected to the system within two years prior to the death, the Chief Medical Examiner must do an investigation and a report. Also, there is a child inquest review committee which reviews every child death and recommends to the Chief Medical Examiner whether an inquest should be conducted. Now, they just make recommendations to the Chief Medical Examiner, and, ultimately, the Chief Medical Examiner has to make the determination of whether an inquest will be done or not.

Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, I have some newspaper articles from 1996 and 1997 but not very much that is more recent than that, so I am wondering if the minister can tell me, for the years '97, '98, '99, how many children died in care and which ones resulted in an inquest. Maybe the minister might want to take that as notice.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Yes, Mr. Chairperson, we will get that information for tomorrow.

Mr. Martindale: As the minister knows, a child died and there was a judicial inquest, and the results were made public in March of this year, and there were some recommendations from the judge. This, I believe, was the Brian Thompson–no, that was the father. I guess the child was Brian Thompson, as well, who was in a foster home in the Steinbach area. I wonder if the minister can tell me if she has had a chance to review the inquest recommendations.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, just on the issue of the recommendations that were made, I think there was a recommendation that was made that standards should be looked at and should be more realistic and appropriate. I do not have the recommendations right in front of me, but I think there was one around standards. We were already in the process of rewriting standards. They have been completed. They are out in the field right now being tested, and we are working with the agency around workload issues as a result of the rewritten standards being out there in the field right now. We also do know that there was a recommendation around better monitoring of foster homes. With the reorganization within the agency, they will have one central function that will work with foster home placements and foster homes. So they are starting to address that kind of an issue around better monitoring of foster homes when they have one function, and with one way of dealing with foster homes right across the system, there should be better ability to monitor circumstances.

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We do know, too, that with the agency's reorganization, they are looking at 31 more staff members being redeployed, or whatever, to the front line so they will have more front-line workers, and that should, in some way, begin to address some of the workload issues. So we are working with the agencies around the workload issue, and, hopefully, we will be able to resolve some of the issues around workload.

Mr. Martindale: Mr. Chairperson, the judge recommended that social workers' caseloads be reduced because they were three times the acceptable level. He also said that social workers were supposed to make quarterly visits at minimum, but the worker in this situation had not visited for about five months. It seems to me that when it comes to standards, you can either hire more staff or redeploy staff and have more frequent visits or have visits that are as frequent as the current standard allows, or you can rewrite the standards.

The minister is saying that the standards are being rewritten. My concern is whether rewriting the standards is, in fact, lowering them or whether it is improving them. I wonder if the minister can expand on what she said previously.

Mrs. Mitchelson: Mr. Chairperson, the rationale and reasoning for rewriting the standards was not to downgrade the standards in any way or make them any less onerous, I suppose, but indeed to try to improve the standards and implement revised case management standards. I will just indicate some of the reasons why we might want to do that or why we wanted to do that.

Certainly, some of the criticisms that came from the field and some of the shortcomings within the standards as they existed were that they were timeworn and that they do not reflect the current service realities, that they were not living, breathing standards. They are viewed as tools to assist staff in doing their job, that the mechanisms in place to ensure compliance with the standards were piecemeal and disjointed, that there was no clear, consistent direction from central office in this regard, that the responsibility for compliance was spread around several different offices and individuals, that there was a section on quality assurance that attempted to deal–[interjection] The new standards have a section on quality assurance that attempts to deal with the whole picture, that the standards or the blue book itself were repetitive, that the beginning section on each area was the same, that it was a ponderous document and needed to be reconstructed to be more readable and useful, that because the message had not been clear, agencies and regions interpreted the standards differently and responded in different ways to the same situation, and there were inconsistent practices from area to area, unit to unit, case to case, and from worker to worker within the system.

So it was really important that standards be rewritten. That has been done. There was a lot of time and energy and effort that went into that in the branch, and the final draft right now is out in the field and it is being field-tested. I think the response that we are getting back is very positive. So that is the reason that we did rewrite the standards. It has been in the process for over a year now. They are, as I said, out now being field tested. The feedback is that they are certainly a significant improvement. So we look forward to them being put in place and implemented.

Mr. Martindale: I will come back to this tomorrow, but I have two questions I would like the minister to take as notice, partly because it is almost six o'clock and partly because it has to do with Community Living. I accept responsibility for not asking these questions yesterday, but when I was preparing for today I came across a couple of topics.

One has to do with a report I believe by the project group, a review of services for people living with a mental disability. I am wondering if the minister could get me a copy of that report. The other issue has to do with sheltered workshops. I do not have proof of this, but I was told that some sheltered workshops used to use a locked 5 by 8 foot room for punishment. There has been a change in policy, so now the doors are no longer locked. But I am interested in knowing if that actually occurs, and if so if there is a good rationale for it.

Mrs. Mitchelson: I know we have passed those lines in the Community Living area, but I am prepared to try to get as much information and provide it to my honourable friend as I can on that.

Mr. Chairperson: Is it the will of the committee to call it 6 p.m.?

The hour now being 6 p.m., committee rise.