Motels no place for foster care: advocate

Putting foster children in motels is a deplorable practice, but one that sometimes cannot be avoided, Newfoundland and Labrador's child and youth advocate says.

"It's absolutely not acceptable that any child would be in a hotel or in a makeshift apartment, [but] it is far less acceptable that they would remain in situations where their personal safety is in jeopardy," Darlene Neville said, responding to a rising use of motels to house children taken into protective custody.

CBC News disclosed earlier this week that the number of foster care placements in eastern Newfoundland has jumped 20 per cent in the last year.

With almost 700 children in foster care, but with foster families numbering just over 400, authorities have had no choice but to place some children in motels and rented efficiency units — occasionally for weeks at a time — under the supervision of home-care workers.

Neville said the answer is for more people to step up and become foster parents.

"Now that the public is very aware of just how critical this situation is, and I think it is something that does shock the average person, hopefully that will raise awareness and there will be people who come forward," she said.

Neville said the province is struggling to hire new social workers in the child protection field, and that many now in the field are burning out.

Dawn Power, a St. John's mother who has lost custody of her daughter, said social workers are too quick to take children into care in the first place, and too busy to make the arrangements to return them.

Power lost custody because of drug problems, but said even though she has been clean for two years, she only has custody of her five-year-old for three nights each week.

Her daughter, though, has moved through three foster homes and recently was brought to an efficiency unit in St. John's.

"She's been housed at Hillview Terrace for a night, because there was no one to take her. It just makes me sick, because she could be home," Power told CBC News.

Turner case may have sparked increase: prof

Ken Barter, a professor of social work at Memorial University, predicted a spike in the number of children brought into care, in the wake of a review into the death of Zachary Turner in 2003.

His mother, Shirley Turner, a fugitive from U.S. justice authorities, drowned herself and her 13-month-old son, whose case had been supervised by social workers.

A death review released in October 2006 had sharp criticism for the social services system.

"In other provinces where there [have] been death inquiries, and subsequent reports with recommendations, the trend has been that children coming … into care do in fact increase," Barter said.

Eastern Health is considering a plan to staff a house with full-time staff, to provide a more home-like environment for children taken in emergency cases. Neville, though, said the solution is to recruit and keep more foster parents.