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Child and Family Services should focus on the protection of Manitoba children at the exclusion of all else and also take major steps to restore the public's confidence in it.
These are among the recommendations for positive change in the provincial child-welfare system suggested Monday by Phoenix Sinclair's dad, her former caregiver and "nana mom" through their legal team as closing submissions in the public inquiry into the little girl's death got underway.
Inquiry Commissioner Ted Hughes must issue a report by Dec. 15 with recommendations on how to better protect Manitoba children without duplicating any of the nearly 300 recommendations already made in separate reviews of Phoenix's case.
Phoenix was brutally abused and killed in June 2005 at age five by her mother, Samantha Kematch and Kematch's boyfriend, Karl Wesley McKay, in a Fisher River First Nation home.
The death went undiscovered until March 2006 as Kematch and McKay continued to collect welfare on her behalf.
During her short life Phoenix was apprehended twice by CFS and concerns about her welfare often blipped on the system's radar.
But by April 2004, Kematch had simply reclaimed her without a word of protest from CFS despite the fact the mother was deemed in the past to be a major risk and had already had another child apprehended.
Social workers and a supervisor closed Phoenix's file a final, fateful time in March 2005 without seeing Phoenix or getting to the bottom of allegations she was being abused and locked in the bedroom of McKay and Kematch's McGee Street apartment.
Lawyer Jeff Gindin argued Monday this point in Phoenix's travels through the CFS system was where a lack of common sense "reaches a high point" in a case where much of what CFS did -- or didn't -- do for her lacked common sense.
That's regardless of social workers' workload pressures, supervisory issues or financial stress the system faced, Gindin said.
"You can have all the money in the world (but) you have to have sound judgment and common sense," he told Hughes.
The commission should be left with serious questions arising from testimony of system insiders and CFS's internal response to Phoenix's case, the lawyer suggested.
"The lack of supervision is hard to understand," Gindin said. "Ambivalence towards a child is hard to understand "? no one being disciplined, no one let go -- that's hard to understand," Gindin said.
No. 1 among the 47 recommendations Phoenix's biological father, Steve Sinclair and long-time caregiver Kim Edwards are making to the commission is how CFS needs to embrace a new philosophy through a rewrite of the CFS Act.
Their first: that CFS focus solely on child-protection, leaving family preservation and support services to another government department or possibly non-governmental organizations.
No. 2 is ensuring CFS undertake efforts to improve its public image through "education, knowledge and advertising." "The safety of children is the responsibility of all members of society. The public should know that they can call CFS anonymously and also call if they are under 18," their written brief to Hughes states.
Written closing submissions from all parties involved in the Phoenix Sinclair inquiry can be found here: http://phoenixsinclairinquiry.ca/applications.html.
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Source: http://www.winnipegsun.com/2013/07/22/focus-on-child-protection-phoenixs-family-tells-inquiry
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