Changes needed to cutoff age for Child and Family Services support, Manitoba youth advocacy network says
Too many Manitoba kids aging out of care into homelessness every year, says director
Every year, hundreds of children in Manitoba age out of the child welfare system, and advocates say too little is being done to offer early transitional support.
Now, some want the age cutoff for kids in care scrapped entirely.
In Manitoba, youth aging out of care are required to live on their own when they turn 18, except in special circumstances.
"Many of those young people we have lost," said Marie Christian, director of Voices: Manitoba's Youth in Care Network.
"I've attended too many funerals for young people who grew up in care and either felt hopeless and decided to take their own life or fell into addictions," she said.
"Let's just get rid of age-based transitions from care. Eighteen is an arbitrary number."
There are about 10,000 children in care in Manitoba, around 90 per cent of whom are Indigenous. The province says 625 kids will age out of the system this year.
Christian wants to see a system that takes into account the relationships youth in care have, the connections they have made, whether they have housing in place and whether they are ready to be on their own when they turn 18.
Some youth in care have their files closed immediately when they turn 18, whether they are prepared for it or not, she said — a system that sets young people up to face unnecessary challenges with everything from paying rent to finishing school or getting a job.
"We also see young people who are put into a position to be exploited," she said. "They're vulnerable because they need a roof over their head. They need food."
Instead of being able to access healthy forms of healing, many end up with addictions as they try to cope with the trauma they have encountered, she said, creating a vicious cycle that is hard to break.
Roughly half of those kids will continue to receive support through what's called an agreement with a young adult, which provides continued funding to help them become independent — but too little is being done to help the rest, Christian said.
"We are definitely leading them to gaps and expecting them to navigate those gaps on their own."
Putting youth at risk
Dysin Spence was just eight years old when he first encountered the child welfare system. He was apprehended while living on Peguis First Nation and placed in the care of his grandmother. His younger brother was placed with a non-Indigenous family they didn't know, he said.
"That really had an affect on me," said Spence.
There was too little support to help him and his brother during their difficult youth years, he said, and his life started to spiral out of control.
"I started to commit crime, started stealing and getting into negative peer groups," said Spence. "I was sexually exploited. I would be, like, selling myself.… I was just trying to make money."
By the age of 13, he had become a permanent ward of Child and Family Services.
"I would just commit crimes again and go down the same cycle, and so I went back to jail for a really long time," he said. "By the time I got out I was turning 18 … [and] there was little support from CFS."
As a permanent ward of the province, Spence, now 20, is able to receive support through a young adult's agreement. But not everyone in care is eligible.
Spence said too many of his friends have fallen through the cracks of the system and ended up incarcerated or living on the street.
According to the 2022 Winnipeg Street census, 50 per cent of homeless people surveyed were involved in the child welfare system. Two-thirds of those people experienced homelessness within one year of leaving care.
"It's a long-standing issue," said Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth Sherry Gott.
But it's one that doesn't appear to be getting any better, she said.
"That is not acceptable. You know our children deserve better than that."
'I'm sorry:' families minister
Manitoba's minister of families said the province is in the beginning phase of transforming the welfare system and acknowledged there is an opportunity to work with community members, leaders and people with lived experience to make it better.
"We know that it takes a village to raise a child, and that village certainly needs to even be more solidified as kids become young adults," Rochelle Squires said in a Tuesday interview with CBC.
"It's also dealing with a system that has historically not been there to support them."
Squires said she knows there are kids who feel like they've fallen through the cracks of a system that failed them.
"I'm sorry," Squires said in response, pledging to do better for those kids.
"This has been a system that has had many, many instances where families have not been supported, children have not been supported, family reunification has not been paramount — and we're changing that."
Squires said the province is trying to help youth access resources more easily when they age out of the system.
The province currently has four mentorship hubs, with six others planned, designed to support youth exiting care by providing outreach, case management and support services, and making sure they're aware of benefits they are entitled to.
Too many resources are going underutilized, Squires said, such as a shelter benefit (increased to $350 from $250 in last week's budget) available for youth exiting care. Only around 20 per cent of youth take advantage of the benefit, she said.
"We must do a better job of informing them, and I think these youth hubs will do a really key job in connecting them with resources."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
