On October 8 in Families Estimates for the Department of Families, I asked about the government's policy to continue issuing birth alerts. Birth Alerts are used by Child and Family Services with regard to families where CFHIsS workers believe that children need to be taken away from their parents. Historically, Manitoba CFS has apprehended far more children than other comparable jurisdictions, and in recent years has been apprehending about a child a day at birth.
Hon. Jon Gerrard (River
Heights): My question deals
with birth alerts, and I understand the minister has indicated that there will
be continued issuing of birth alert.
There has, in the
last few years, been a series of studies showing the tremendous adverse impact
of taking children away from mothers: harm to the mother's health, including
increased risk of suicides, and there is also potential significant deleterious
effect on the impact of the child.
So I am looking
for an update on the status of that and what the minister is planning.
Mrs. Stefanson: So I want to thank the member for the
question. And, certainly, the safety and security of infants, children and
youth is our government's top priority. Sometimes families face challenges that
might leave a newborn vulnerable, and we need to ensure that children are
'safed' for first and foremost. So we have been working with the CFS
authorities to limit birth alerts to situations only where there is a high risk
of harm to an infant, and we remain committed to that shared goal.
We do recognize, of
course, that this came out of the MMIWG inquiry as well as our own Legislative
Review Committee as well. And we know that BC is moving in a certain direction,
and we're having a very close look at this, but we do know that, certainly,
birth alerts are–the number of–that birth alerts themselves are down and–but
we, first and foremost, we need to ensure the safety of those children. So that
will remain to be our top priority.
We're also taking
other preventative measures as well. We've introduced our new social impact
bond, which is working with doulas working with expectant moms closely to
develop birth plans and–moving forward. And so we're looking forward to moving
that forward as well.
We want to,
obviously, look at ways to prevent the apprehension of children in cases where
we can. We don't want to have apprehensions where they're not needed, but we
will–we have to look with that safety lens first, and so we'll continue to work
with the authorities and agencies towards that goal.
Mr. Gerrard: Yes, I would be interested if the minister could share the
statistics showing the number of birth alerts and how that they are actually
going down.
I'm quite
concerned about this for a number of reasons. I remember a young woman who had
her child taken away at birth. She was breastfeeding. The child was grabbed and
taken away on day 4. She was doing well. There was no good reason for
taking the child away, as was proved in court some six or eight weeks later.
And what do we want to
make sure is that you have a good opportunity for mothers and children to do
well, and, you know, this practice of, you know, preventing mothers from
breastfeeding, who have been–and developing some of the attachment that is so
critical to early childhood development, and I think that the–what I'm
concerned about is that we really have strong, valid measures being used in
terms of the risks of children and that in this case, the agency concerned had
adequate opportunity to make a thorough and careful assessment before the child
was born, and they failed to do that. And they were nervous, as a result of not
having made that assessment, and they went ahead and issued a birth alert and
took the child away.
So I think that
we need to make sure that the agencies are involved and make–taking preventive
measures, looking carefully at and developing plans with mothers.
So I would ask
what preventive measures are being taken and what–so that mothers can be
supported properly and so that you decrease the chance of children having to be
taken away.
Mrs. Stefanson: I thank the member for the question and we
do take prevention initiatives very, very seriously, and we've been–I did
mention in my previous answer about our social impact bond, called Restoring
the Sacred Bond doula project. So we'll keep working to protect vulnerable
newborns and support families through initiatives like that.
I think it's also
important that part of our prevention work also includes partnerships with
community-based organizations, like the Indigenous Women's Healing Centre,
Villa Rosa, Families First and insight mentorship program to support pregnant
women and new parents.
So the prevention
side is–we take it very seriously. We will obviously want to reduce the
apprehensions, where possible and so those are some of the initiatives that we
have ongoing on the prevention side.
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