Nain fatal fire report recommendations will be adopted, says CYFS minister
In the wake of a damning report on a 2010 Labrador fire that killed two children and one adult, the province's new minister of Child, Youth and Family Services says her department will do everything it can to ensure a similar incident does not happen again.
Sherry Gambin-Walsh said Tuesday that while she had yet to read the report, she had been heavily briefed on it.
"As the minister of Child, Youth and Family services, I'd like to offer my deepest condolences to the family and friends of the individuals involved in the report that was released today," she said.
The report by Carol Chafe, entitled A Tragedy Waiting to Happen, says that the Department of Health and Community Services and the Labrador-Grenfell Regional Health Authority failed to report child protection concerns.
The child advocate said the children who died in the fire lived in harmful conditions for years, and that there was a lack of oversight, collaboration, communication and information sharing between different departments when it came to the case.
Chafe said that both the Department of Justice — as it was known at the time — and the RCMP failed to report child protection concerns.
But on Tuesday, Gambin-Walsh, the new minister of Child, Youth and Family Services, was unwilling to fully concede to wrongdoing by the department.
"Sometimes there may have been issues of communication, there's no denying that, and the result is as the report presents today."
"I believe the frontline workers did do everything within their capacity at the time based on the resources they had."
Gambin-Walsh maintained however, that the government would accept and implement all 10 of the recommendations outlined in the child advocate's report.