Licensing foster homes raised by Saskatchewan’s Children’s Advocate

The second report was ‘Two Tragedies: Holding Systems Accountable’ which found gaps in reporting and communication between agencies in the case of a 10-year-old boy believed to be responsible for beating six-year-old Lee Bonneau to death.

In both of those cases, Pringle noted that the ministry of social services and other agencies are implementing many recommendations for better reporting and oversight.

Pringle is once again calling on the government to license foster homes to ensure better accountability and to address overcrowding. He points out that daycare facilities and even seniors homes are already licensed.

“We take our most vulnerable children, often alone in trauma, and somehow we can’t find our way to license those homes,” Pringle said.

In his view, licensing would be a critical next step to ensuring children’s safety, noting that several other provinces already license foster homes.

Social services minister Donna Harpauer says the province already maintains a rigorous process for training and screening foster parents and they already provide certification.

“We could call that a licence if you like but it’s not going to change the results,” Harpauer said. “We have quite rigorous standards by which we hold our foster homes and with the provinces that have formal licensing where we have certification – it hasn’t changed the results. They don’t necessarily have the same standards of qualifications quite frankly that is as rigorous as ours.”

Harpauer says the licensing idea will be reviewed, but from her perspective it is a formality and an extra bureaucratic step that wouldn’t actually result in any stricter qualifications.

Pringle does not deny that the ministry of social services has good training and screening programs for foster parents but he asks why not embed those policies into law?

Harpauer says the government has to be mindful of the perception of licensing because the ministry is already struggling to recruit foster families.

Beyond the two most high profile child deaths in Saskatchewan, the Children’s Advocate actually reported that 23 children died either in the care of social services or youth corrections. Pringle says 10 of those deaths were linked to illness or medically fragile children but the other 13 were preventable.

The Office of the Children’s Advocate was also notified of 41 critical injuries with 38 of those linked to youth involved with corrections. The majority of those critical injuries were from suicide attempts or self-harm, but 33 per cent were linked to assault.

Pringle says the rates of attempted and successful suicides are alarming.

“It is critical that good mental health and addictions services be available to youth who are in the correctional centres because almost all of our critical injuries are actually from corrections,” he said.

Most of the suicides and assaults involved youth who had recently left correctional facilities. Pringle said this points to the need to improve community plans and transitional mental health services for youth as they leave these facilities.

Pringle said he looks forward to seeing what the new Mental Health and Addictions Plan will provide in terms of services for these youth at risk.

The Children’s Advocate is also slamming the government’s decision to close open custody programs like the Yarrow Youth Farm and Orcadia Youth Residence and the plan to move these programs to secure custody facilities like Kilburn Hall Youth Centre in Saskatoon.

“We do not support the closure of one of the best open-custody programs in the country to put youth in jail,” Pringle said.

He said in the past two years he has been very frustrated with the lack of consultation from the government about decisions regarding youth corrections.

“Telling us what you’re going to do is not consulting with us,” Pringle commented.

The minister of justice was not available for comment on the report but questions from the media were directed to Drew Wilby as the executive director of corporate affairs for the Ministry of Justice. He said the ministry held several meetings with the Children’s Advocate which he described as productive.

Regarding the criticism of open custody youth programs moving to Kilburn Hall, Wilby referenced a study saying that the programming and staff is more important than the facility or location that it takes place in. He says the program has moved entirely and renovations are underway to accommodate all of those programs.

Pringle said there are many more research and studies that say the environment is important despite what the ministry might say.

panews@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @princealbertnow

by Adriana Christianson

Licensing foster homes raised by Saskatchewan’s Children’s Advocate

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