WATCH: The family of Phoenix Sinclair finally knows the full extent of what led to the child’s murder and how the province’s child welfare system failed her. Lauren McNabb reports.
WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s child welfare system suffers from excessive workload, lack of training and confusion about standards — but an inquiry report says people, not the system, failed Phoenix Sinclair, the five-year-old murdered by her mother and stepfather.
“I do not find evidence that these organizational challenges had a direct impact on the services that were, or were not, delivered to Phoenix and her family,” Commissioner Ted Hughes found in his report on the inquest into her death.
“I believe that the social workers who testified at this inquiry wanted to do their best for the children and families they served, and that they wanted to protect children, but their actions and resulting failures so often did not reflect those good intentions.”
WATCH: Raw video: Kim Edwards on the Sinclair inquiry
While some social workers did excellent work on Phoenix’s case, creating excellent plans for her care, their recommendations were ignored, the focus remained on the short term and Phoenix was allowed to slip away, the report says.
RELATED: Key events in the Phoenix Sinclair case
Phoenix Sinclair died in the basement of her Fisher River First Nation home in June 2005 after suffering months of horrific abuse at the hands of her mother, Samantha Kematch, and stepfather, Karl McKay. Both were convicted of first-degree murder in December 2008 and are serving life sentences for killing Phoenix.
Despite the involvement of 27 different social workers with her family during her short life, her death wasn’t discovered until her half-brother told what he knew and her body was discovered buried near the community dump nine months later. A social worker reported she was alive and well months after she died despite never having seen her.
“I hope there is change,” said Kim Edwards, who had Phoenix Sinclair in her care at one point during the child’s short life.
Manitoba’s Family Service’s minister, Kerri Irvin-Ross, said this inquiry will not prevent another child in care from dying needlessly.
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“It is unrealistic to say you can prevent a tragedy like this from happening in our province,” said Irvin-Ross. “Is it our goal? Yes it is.”
Hughes’ 1,000-plus-page report includes 62 recommendations, including that the province create a provincial officer of the legislature titled “Representative for Children and Youth,” mandated to advocate for children and youth eligible for or receiving any publicly funded service, responsible for reviewing deaths and critical injuries of children involved with child welfare during the previous year, and authorized to make special reports to the legislature where considered necessary.
The report also recommends a caseload limit for social workers of 20 cases per worker for all family services workers and increasing the limit for family enhancement services from $1,300 a year.
In addition, the Child and Family Services Act should be amended to allow the extension of services to children who are involved in the child welfare system at age 18 up to age 25. Currently services end when a child becomes an adult at age 18.
Face-to-face meetings with children in care and speaking to a worker when passing a case to him or her are also recommended.
“Even though many things are obvious and were known, they weren’t being done,” said Sherri Walsh, the commission council to the inquiry. “It’s another way of enforcing compliance.”
The recommendations did little to impress the leader of Manitoba’s top native organizations.
“If they think more money…new legislation is the answer, they’re sorely missing the mark,” Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said Friday. “I think the whole system should be fired.” Aboriginal leaders have long argued the trouble with the child welfare system is rooted in the disproportionately high number of First Nations children who wind up in care in the province.
“This is ground zero for the apprehension of aboriginal children in the industrial world,” Nepinak said.
The inquest report paints an unflinching portrait of the failings of the system in Phoenix’s case.
“At least 13 times throughout her life, Winnipeg Child and Family Services received notice of concerns for Phoenix’s safety and well-being from various sources, the last one coming three months before her death. Throughout, files were opened and closed, often without a social worker ever laying eyes on Phoenix,” Hughes wrote.
He praised the work of supervisor Andrew Orobko and social worker Laura Forest, who both attempted to make sure adequate planning was done and supports put in place for Phoenix and her family.
But their words were ignored, Hughes wrote.
“Phoenix’s parents’ lack of motivation and commitment was identified repeatedly, yet nothing was done. Kematch’s parental capacity was questioned, but never measured … Time and again, the focus was on the short term. A worker would find no immediate safety concerns, the file would be closed, and the agency’s involvement would end until the next referral.”
Despite Forest’s warnings that Phoenix not be returned to either of her parents until they did something to indicate real change in their ability to parent, little effort was made to supply support.
“In the spring of 2004, after she had entered a relationship with McKay, Kematch took Phoenix from (the home of Sinclair’s friends Kim Edwards and Rohan Stephenson) and placed her on the social assistance budget that she and McKay shared. Edwards and Stephenson never saw Phoenix again. From that day, Phoenix was defenceless against her mother’s cruelty and neglect, and the sadistic violence of McKay…
“By not accessing and acting on the information it had, and by not following the roadmaps offered by clear-thinking workers, the child welfare system failed to protect Phoenix and support her family.”
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