Winnipeg Free Press

This is the last posting for the summer, folks. The reaction to the Segway post made me realize there’s a lot of free-floating anger and hostility out there that will do nothing to further my healing.

 So tomorrow I celebrate my birthday by tying balloons to my walker, watching my friends drinking champagne and hoping for the patience to enjoy the healing process.

Enjoy the warm weather. We’ll talk again in the fall.

I am writing this on a laptop balanced on a pillow. I’m beginning what will be a very long recovery from a Segway accident.

 Segways are those scooters that premiered to much fuss a few years back. You charge them by plugging them in, move forward on the two-wheeled device by leaning foward and reverse by leaning back. It’s all fun and games until someone breaks her pelvis in two places.

 Which is what I did in Minneapolis last weekend.

It was an organized tour and things were going well until our leader asked us to stop and admire some historic point of interest. We formed a Segway clump, I was wheeled against a building and, as soon as wheel met concrete, I was catapaulted off.

When the ambulance arrived, it was clear my pelvis was fractured. The pool of blood came from a laceration on my arm. The newsworthy bruises on my hip and butt started to appear a day later.

One expensive night in a Minneapolis hospital a commercial flight back to Winnipeg, six days at the Grace and I’m back home.

I can’t walk. Getting to the bathroom involves both a wheelchair and a walker. My summer trip to Europe has been canceled. I’m feelimg very sorry for myself.

But I will heal. Take care of yourselves this summer — and stay away from Segways!!!

Remember the names Samuel Maytwaywashing and Will Trout Jr.

They are the two latest Manitoban children to die while under the watcghul eye of Child and Family Services. Baby Samuel was five months old. His other siblings had been seized but, inexplicably, CFS left the infant at home. He died of what RCMP are calling natural causes; sources say the baby was severely dehydrated and possibly malnourished.

The child’s mother said she made repeated efforts to have CFS follow through on a supervison order that would have seen workers come to her home. In six months, they came twice.

Will trout, 16, hanged himself in a foster home where there had been an on-going investigation into the abuse of another child. He was not moved to a place of safety during the investigation.

Since 2003, at least 25 children under the care of CFS have died as a result of homicide. Another 39 others have commited suicide.

And it goes on and on and on.

This afternoon, the Tories issued the following news release:

McFADYEN CALLS FOR ALL-PARTY WORKING GROUP TO FIND CFS SOLUTION 

Time to end the finger-pointing: McFadyen 

In the wake of two more deaths of children in the province’s child and family services system, Progressive Conservative leader Hugh McFadyen called on the NDP today to agree to an all-party working group to urgently re-evaluate devolution and come up with changes to reduce the risk of similar tragedies in the future.  

“Legislators, First Nations social services experts and current and former CFS workers need to work together to fix what’s wrong with child and family services,” McFadyen said. “We need to stop the blame game and start finding solutions. The 7,000 Manitoba children within the CFS system are depending on us.” 

There have reportedly been 25 homicides and 39 suicides involving foster children since 2003. McFadyen said the countless reviews, reports and inquiries into these deaths haven’t solved the problem. 

“We hear news today that two more children have died. We call on this government to agree today to an all-party working group to support those agencies that are working well and get on with fixing the rest,” McFadyen said. 

Progressive Conservatives have been critical of the rush to devolution (changes made five years ago that relinquished the government’s responsibility for CFS and handed it over to three aboriginal and one non-aboriginal authority) ever since Premier Gary Doer began pushing it. 

As well, PCs have consistently called for changes to the Child and Family Services Act that would make child safety – not cultural considerations – the highest priority when considering foster care placement. McFadyen renewed that call today. 

“We have the opportunity to strengthen the Child and Family Services Act to put child safety ahead of everything else,” he said. “But this is only the first step to fixing a damaged system and we look forward to working with Child and Family Services Minister Gord MacIntosh to making the system better for those who unfortunately need it. We hope he will agree to our proposal for a transparent, non-partisan approach.” 

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They’re about a year late to this particular issue but maybe the pressure will do some good.

Or maybe, as I fear, kids will keep dying while the NDP keep insisting devolution works.

Prince Edward, the Queen’s youngest child, will be in Winnipeg tomorrow. I’ve been assigned the task of following him around and, with luck, coming up with some sort of pithy column for Tuesday’s paper.

I trotted around after his mum of her last visit to town. It was a fascinating, flag-waving experience as thousands of Manitobans came out to catch a glimpse of the Queen. I’ve never met so many corgi fans in my life.

I also met Sarah, the Duchess of York, when she blew through town several years ago. By then, she was divorced from Prince Andrew and saddled with a reputation as a very bad girl.

But I had to Google Prince Edward to get his place in the royal family straight. He’s just not on my radar, lacking the glamour of Princes Harry and William, the scandal of Princess Diana or even the gossip-worthy Camilla.

Is the monarchy still relevant?

Or maybe the better question is this: Was it ever relevant to you?

In the next four weeks, I’ll be watching one daughter graduate from high school and another from university. They’re both feeling on the cusp of new lives, as though things get serious now and they have to think about their futures.

They’re right — sort of.

 Few decisions in life are irrevocable. They don’t have to pick a career that they’ll have forever at 18 or even at 30.

So today’s column is a slightly tongue-in-cheek advice piece for graduates. My own kids won’t listen to me. I thought I might do better with someone else’s.

So tell me, what sort of advice do you wish someone had given you when you were entering adulthood? What’s the best advice you got? What’s the worst?

The best piece of advice I ever got? That it’s worth spending money on travel. You forget about the cost. You never forget about the experience.

I’m done with CFS stories for a time.

Too much pain, too much heat, too many sad stories. There are so many positive stories in the child welfare system, so many great foster families and we tend to focus just on the tragedies.

And so, enough. Tomorrow’s is likely the last for a time.

In the next few days you’ll read about a great young Burmese man who is organizing a fundraiser for his country. You’ll read my advice for young people graduating from high school and university.

And then I’m gonna take a few days off, have a massage, get a stranger to paint my finger nails, maybe have a glass of champagne.

 I’ll spend time with my own children.

But tonight, I urge you not to be silenced. Please continue to care. We need voices to support the children in care, the children who would otherwise not have a voice.

Good night — and good luck.

My column has tended toward the bleak and desperate in the past few weeks. I know it, I feel it and I’d love to present you with some really cheerful news.

 The problem? When you’re writing about child welfare people tend not to e-mail you with stories of happy children, furry pets and good weather.

An acquaintance of my husband’s came up to me recently and asked why the Free Press couldn’t pick a day and publish nothing but good news. He insisted it would cheer up the whole city. I can’t see that happening but I do have a proposition for you:

Send me some good news, some positive things about Winnipeg, some thoughts you’ve got about what you love about this city and I will somehow build a column around that.

I’m not going to stop writing about child welfare. That’s too important. I still want your thoughts on that topic. But even hard-bitten columnists get the blues. The Free Press won’t put me on the spa beat so it’s up to you.

 What good news are we missing?

As you’ll read it today’s Free Press column, the Northern Manitoba Child and Family Services Authority had planned to spend $140,000 on three public service announcements decrying the negative images of their agency.

Yesterday, communications manager Rhonda Gordon Powers insisted the ads were simply intended to counteract sterotyping about First Nations people. The money for the ads, she said, wasn’t being directed away from the care of children. Communications budgets would be cut to the bone and the savings used to send out a positive message.

But that’s not what the briefing paper she wrote said. It named Mia Rabson and me. It called CJOB “a right wing news radio program”. It insisted the work Rabson and I have done exposing the failures and fragilities of the child welfare system “released an onsalught of racial attitudes”.

Here’s the part where she was talking you:

“The idea children are left to suffer at the hands of the very people who are paid to take care of them appeals to the visceral heart of the uneducated.”

Gage Guimond. Call me uneducated but he’s still dead.

She went further. Here are her comments on the readers of this blog, commenting on Baby Mark’s biological mother: “… it was obvious the majority of the posts were written by highly educated individuals, painfully ignorant and racist individuals.”

I have repeatedly said there’s no room for racism on this blog. Some of you were upset when comments were blocked that were deemed to be racist. So be it. We need to discuss issues, not spread hatred.  But the Northern Authority decided to spend a great deal of time accusing Rabson and me of ignoring facts, promoting racism and skewing the truth.

We’ve overlooked a great deal of the mud that has been flung at us over the past year. I was told one of the authorities had hired a private investigator to go through my past with a fine tooth comb. We couldn’t prove it and, although I haven’t led a stain-free life, who cares? What really concerns me is that the child welfare agencies charged with the protection of the vulnerable are instead wasting precious resources on this BS.

Rhonda Gordon Powers is a well-educated, savvy and commited woman. On a personal level, I’ve always liked her. But she and her agency (and all other CFS authorities) need to examine their priorities. With children in care dying and desperate, should they really be wasting their energy trying to discredit reporters?

I know that I’m jumping the gun here but I’ve been surrounded by Mother’s Day stories this week.

First up is the piece you’ll read in today’s Free Press featuring four kids who entered a Why I Love My Mom contest. They won iPod shuffles for their efforts and their moms won the arm feeling that comes when your kid admits you’ll pretty swell.

On Sunday, you’ll read my tale of an uber-foster mother who has seen scores of children pass through her home in two decades. She’s an inspiration and she comes with some practical advice for raising children. Discipline and consistency, anyone?

Finally, tonight I’m hosting the Villa Rosa Celebration of Motherhood dinner. Villa Rosa, which those of us who grew up in Winnipeg once called ‘the home for unwed mothers’, is a wonderful facility that care for pregnant women, helps them get an education and puts them on the path to independence.

This Sunday? Well, I’m hoping for some burnt toast and runny eggs in bed. There may be a bunch of tulips or some chocolate. Mostly it will be a chance to spend some time with my daughters. Later in the day I’ll be cooking a roast for my mom.

Tell me how you’re going to celebrate. Share some advice you got from your mom. Tell me your secrets for raising children.

And stand up straight.

Those of you who read  Mike McIntyre’s blog (and who read my coumn in Sunday’s paper) will now be aware that four children in the remote Northern community of Shamattawa tried to kill themselves last week.

 The youngest was nine.

These were separate incidents as, one at a time, kids decided they’d had enough of their misrerable lives.

So why did no one in the south know about these attempted suicides until McIntyre got a tip? Why wasn’t the Northern Affairs minister pounding on his desk in the Legislature and vowing change?

This isn’t a new story. Shamattawa has an overwhelming substance abuse problem. It’s a dry reserve but people still manage to smuggle in booze or nail polish or mouthwash. Ninety-eight per cent of the population hasn’t got a job. It’s not like there’s a McDonalds in the community where the kids can work after school, if they go to school.

But the people from the Northern CFS Authority I met with Friday, people who greeted me with wariness and a fair amount of suspicion, also wanted the stories that are positive in the community to be told. Stories about elders who are trying to teach another generation how to be parents, stories about people volunteering their time, stories about therapy sessions intended to heal families.

I don’t have any answers. My gut response was to say we need to swoop in and save all these kids. But the question is “save them how?” The Sixties Scoop didn’t work. Removing children from their families, however fractured, isn’t the answer either. Can we build mental health care facilities near these kids? Can we find employment for their parents?

How do you save a generation that has known little more than substance abuse, terrible poverty and a future without dreams?