Letters, Aug. 22

Foster system must be better

Re: Paralyzed foster girl has system under a microscope (Aug. 18)

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine’s assertion that “you can’t train people not to be violent” should concern everyone who cares about the safety of children in Manitoba’s child welfare system.

Of course, no training program can guarantee that an individual will never harm a child. But framing these tragedies as the actions of a few “abominable” people risks absolving the system of its responsibility to prevent harm.

The purpose of foster parent training is not to teach adults that being violent toward children is wrong. It is to prepare caregivers for the extraordinarily complex realities of caring for children who have experienced trauma, disrupted attachments, abuse, neglect and multiple placements.

Effective preparation teaches caregivers to understand how trauma can manifest as challenging behaviour; recognize their own stress and escalation; respond without coercion or violence; use regulation and de-escalation strategies; recognize when they are reaching their limits; and seek support before a situation becomes unsafe.

In my own research with foster parents, inadequate preparation and support emerged as important contributors to caregivers feeling overwhelmed, burned out and unprepared for their roles. Caregivers described being asked to manage behaviours and circumstances for which they did not feel adequately equipped. The lack of preparation does not only impact retention issues, it has implications for placement stability, caregiver responses and, ultimately, child safety.

There is also an important distinction between saying that training cannot prevent a person’s intent on abusing a child from doing so and suggesting that training cannot prevent violence. Not every dangerous interaction begins with a caregiver intending to harm a child. Violence can occur during moments of frustration, escalation and loss of control. As such, teaching caregivers how to safely manage challenging behaviour, disengage, and seek help when they are reaching their limits is precisely the kind of preparation that can reduce the likelihood of a crisis becoming violent.

Training alone will not eliminate abuse. Neither will screening, monitoring, respite, adequate financial support or agency oversight. But that is not an argument against these safeguards. It is an argument for ensuring they work together.

When a child in foster care suffers catastrophic injuries, the question cannot end with: What was wrong with this caregiver?

We must also ask: How was this caregiver screened? How was the home assessed? What preparation was provided? What ongoing supervision occurred? Were there warning signs? Were concerns reported? Were they acted upon? Did the caregiver have access to meaningful support and respite? And what will be done differently so another child does not experience the same fate?

Those questions become even more urgent when Manitoba is confronting multiple serious incidents involving children in care. Furthermore, these questions and answers must be transparent — secrecy and politics have no place in protecting children.

The overwhelming majority of foster parents provide safe, loving care under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. They, too, deserve a system that takes preparation seriously. Good foster parents should not be expected to simply know how to respond to complex trauma, aggression, dysregulation and behavioural crises. They should be equipped, supported and continually trained to do so.

So, yes, Minister Fontaine: we may not be able to “train people not to be violent.”

But we absolutely can train people to respond in ways that make violence less likely. We can teach caregivers to understand trauma. We can teach de-escalation. We can teach self-regulation. We can teach caregivers to recognize when they are becoming overwhelmed and when they need to step away. We can teach safer responses to challenging behaviour. And we can build systems in which asking for help is possible before a caregiver reaches a breaking point.

Jamie Pfau, PhD

President, Manitoba Foster Parent Association

Winnipeg

Numbers up, crisis remains

Re: Emergency rooms need help now (Editorial, Aug. 7) Adding emergency doctors, nurses and support staff is great, but it won’t break wait-time logjam (Aug. 20)

The editorial notes that recently “the wait time at the Health Sciences Centre’s emergency room for adults was 15 hours. The wait at St. Boniface Hospital’s emergency room was 10-and-a-half hours; at Grace Hospital it was nine hours.” Dan Lett’s column notes the recruitment of more than 4,700 net new health-care professionals and support workers, yet “emergency department wait times remain stubbornly high.”

What is going on? How is it that that many new health-care staff have been recruited and yet the health-care system in Manitoba remains in crisis, especially with regard to emergency rooms? The column suggests some contributing factors, primary among them “a desperate shortage of hospital beds, personal-care home beds and home care.”

OK, but I wonder if there might be a more fundamental issue which has to do with the nature of the strategic planning being done, which should be identifying the many moving parts and how they should be working together. Perhaps the department of health could provide some helpful information regarding this matter.

Gerald Farthing

Winnipeg

JD speaks

Re: Vance disses Carney, Poilievre on trade talks (Aug. 21)

If those excerpts from U.S. Vice-President JD Vance’s speech to a group of Republicans were an actual leak with no agenda, I have an investment in a paved road to Churchill I’d like to pitch.

Let the games continue. Vance needs to keep the Republicans placated, stroke his boss’s ego and maintain his friendship with his buddy from Yale, (Canadian Conservative MP Jamil) Jivani. The spin is on well before the ink is dry.

Janis Arnold

Winnipeg

It’s mind-boggling that JD Vance can be so out of touch with reality. His statement that “Canadians have shifted in a Trumpian direction” couldn’t be further from the truth.

Canadians believe in their country and you would have to look long and hard to find any Canadian who has shifted in a “Trumpian direction.”

He talks like a parent trying to punish his kids, saying the point to these trade negotiations is to change “Canada’s behaviour.” Really? We’ve been very bad and need to be shown the way to the light?

He’s right on one point — that Trump is not “going to bend over to make Canada happy” — because the only thing that will make Canada happy is to see (Trump) go down the road and never come back.

Ken McLean

Starbuck

Sad day for Canada

Wednesday, Aug. 19, was Donald Trump’s “day of reckoning” for all of Canada … a sad day in this chaotic world.

It was also the anniversary of the Dieppe raid of 1942, in which more than 900 Canadians died protecting a free society against a tyrant.

Too bad Donald Trump really is the current tyrant.

Harry McFee

Winnipeg