The provincial government wants to meet with the family and representatives of the groups calling for a public inquiry into the death of a 22-month-old boy at a foster home last week.
But the province might not be able to answer all of the questions the family and First Nations officials have asked of the government, said Social Services Minister Donna Harpauer.
"What isn’t bound by privacy, we’ll try to accommodate what information they would ask for," Harpauer said. "Some answers will be bound by the Privacy Act in what information we can share."
The ministry is pulling files and gathering a history of the toddler and the foster home where he lived, but will wait for its own investigation and one by the RCMP to finish before deciding to hold a public inquiry.
The 22-month-old drowned in a bathtub last week, says the provincial coroner. Scald-like burns also covered the boy’s body, though the preliminary autopsy results didn’t reveal whether the burns contributed to his death.
RCMP and the coroner continue to investigate the death.
Officials with the Sturgeon Lake First Nation and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations called on the government to establish a public a inquiry into the death and to review all files related to the band’s children in foster care.
The toddler died about seven months after his cousin, also a toddler, died in a Saskatoon home, Sturgeon Lake officials say.
A review of the files would be difficult to complete, Harpauer said.
"To review all the files would be extremely difficult and would take additional staff," she said. "We’re on a paper system and those files are in different offices throughout the province."
Changing legislation to provide families — and the public — with more information about deaths in foster homes and subsequent investigations could harm the government’s recruitment efforts, Harpauer said.
"The amount of negative publicity that fostering has is a deterrent for people to consider becoming a foster family," Harpauer. "That then puts more stress on the system."
A lengthy debate would have to precede any legislative changes, she said.
"There are a number of things that would have to be debated before we decide to change the Privacy Act," Harpauer said.
The toddler’s biological father spoke to The StarPhoenix last week and raised concerns about overcrowding at the Aberdeen-area foster home.
In a critical June 2009 report, Saskatchewan’s children’s advocate said almost half, or 837, of the foster kids in Saskatchewan live in overcrowded homes.
Social Services recommends that a maximum of four foster children or youth live in a single home.
Since the advocate’s report was released in 2009, Social Services has reduced the number of children in overcrowded homes by one-third, Harpauer said.
"We will always have some overcrowding because when we have a sibling group, we like to keep them together," she said.
The toddler who died in care last week was living with five other children in the foster home. There was a sibling group in the home, but the toddler was not part of it, Harpauer said.
Investigations by the RCMP and Social Services could lead to recommendations that improve foster care, said Deb Davies, executive director of the Saskatchewan Foster Families Association, an independent agency funded by the province.
"We want to make sure we’re providing the best support to children and foster families that we can," she said.
The association has made its support staff available to the Aberdeen-area foster family to ensure the caregivers have help throughout reviews and investigations, Davies added.
The public must be careful not to judge the family until all the investigations are complete, Davies said.
"Do people jump to conclusions? In all fairness, the way that the media reports stories, of course people jump to conclusions," Davies said.
"This is a tragedy what happened last week, but we still have many foster families across the province that are providing an amazing service to children."
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