WINNIPEG -The province says hotels are no place for vulnerable kids. On Tuesday, Manitoba’s Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross announced the province is promising to overhaul the way children at risk are cared for.
“We know the best place for a child is with their family if we can assure their safety,” said Irvin-Ross. “That’s why we are going to develop more family support workers.”
The goal is to bring the number of Child and Family Services kids in hotels down to zero by creating 71 new emergency foster home spaces and hiring 210 new childcare workers. This announcement comes just three months after 15-year-old Tina Fontaine was found dead in the Red River. Fontaine was in the care of CFS, staying in a hotel, but wound up on the streets.
But social workers are skeptical. Charlene Gladu has been a social worker in Winnipeg for 20 years. She said she has heard promises like this one before.
“I’ve been saying this for years. The training when you go to social work school has to be different because we are living in a different time.”
Irvin-Ross hopes many of these initiatives will be fully implemented in the next two years.
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