The General Child and Family Services Authority has a number of priorities and initiatives.
PRACTICE MODEL
BUILDING ON THE STRENGTHS OF FAMILIES: THE PRACTICE MODEL
The General Authority’s core principles provide for a partnership in prevention and permanency supported by the Practice Model. We do this in the spirit of building on the strengths of families, promoting hope and developing capacities for families and staff.
The Authority has placed much of its effort and focus on prevention: working to prevent children from coming into care, while at the same time building on family strengths to provide care and support in their own homes.
The General Authority is committed to providing training, mentoring and support to assist agency staff so they may strengthen their work with families. As a result, in 2010, the General Authority embarked on the implementation of the Practice Model with its agencies.
The fundamental goal of the Practice Model is to work with families to keep children safe. The Practice Model uses research-based Structured Decision Making® (SDM) tools. The SDM tools help to assess safety, risk, and families’ strengths and needs. In conjunction with these assessments, the Practice Model uses solution-focused engagement strategies and skills. These include mapping, danger statements, safety goal statements and behaviourally based case plans that are measurable and achievable for the family. These tools and approaches help to increase the transparency about what the worries are, what is working well, and what needs to happen next.
Click on the video for a general overview of the Practice Model.
A common definition of safety has been adopted by all General Authority agencies which incorporates all of the elements that need to be in place to ensure child safety. This definition is shared with families so they know what is expected of them, and gives families and workers a common language.
The General Authority’s commitment is to prioritize the Safety, Permanency, Belonging and the Well-Being of children. Safety is always a primary concern and includes the physical and psychological safety of children. The Practice Model ensures caregivers and children have an opportunity to engage with and participate in safety planning to ensure ongoing, sustainable safety. Permanency and Belonging is the intent to find permanent, sustainable connections, whether that is to family and community or to permanent placement outside the family home. This includes caregivers who are committed to helping children and supporting them in their transition to adulthood. Well-Being is a key goal–helping children maintain familiar connections, including school and community.
AN ACT RESPECTING FIRST NATIONS, INUIT, AND METIS CHILDREN, YOUTH AND FAMILIES
An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families (Bill C-92) came into force in its entirety on January 1, 2020. This legislation was co-developed with Indigenous partners with the goal of keeping Indigenous children and youth connected to their families, communities, and culture.
It affirms the inherent right of First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities to move forward with legislation to exercise jurisdiction over child and family services at a pace that they choose.
The legislation establishes national principles such as the best interests of the child, cultural continuity, and substantive equality to help guide the provision of Indigenous child and family services across all jurisdictions. Most importantly, it provides an opportunity for Indigenous peoples to choose their own solutions for their children and families and emphasizes the need for the system to shift from apprehension to prevention.
The legislation represents an important step toward real change. It will help secure a better, brighter future for First Nation, Inuit and Métis children and youth in this country, and lay the right foundation for future generations.
For more information please see: https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/F-11.73/index.html.
Also, please see:
INDIGENOUS GOVERNING BODIES
One of the primary purposes of An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families is to affirm the inherent right of self-government by enabling an Indigenous group, community or people to pass their own legislation for the delivery of child and family services to their community members. Sections 20 through 24 set out the process for this to occur. The legislation requires that an Indigenous Governing Body (IGB) provide notice of the Indigenous group, community or people’s intent to exercise this legislative authority. Any law of an Indigenous group, community or people that comes into force will have the force of federal law. This means that the law will prevail over provincial legislation. The law of an Indigenous group, community or people can only come into force if an IGB has entered into a tripartite coordination agreement with both the federal and provincial governments or has not entered into such an agreement after making reasonable efforts to do so over a twelve month period.
Current List of declared Indigenous Governing Bodies that require Notice of significant measure under Section 12 (1) of the Act Respecting Indigenous, Inuit and Metis Children, Youth and Families:
SAFE & TOGETHER™
The Safe & Together™ model is a perpetrator pattern-based, child-centred, survivor-strengths approach to working with domestic violence. It is a new model of service delivery that has been introduced to the General Authority’s agencies and service regions.
As a child-centered model, it is consistent with the mission of child welfare agencies and provides child welfare workers with an enhanced capacity to practice in cases that prove to be challenging, frustrating and at times dangerous. The Safe and Together™ model supports meaningful ways to both better understand domestic violence as it relates to children and improve these skills to support the safety and well-being of children.
The model has a growing body of evidence associated with it, including recent correlations with a reduction in out-of-home placements in child welfare domestic violence cases.
For more information, please visit the Safe & Together™ website.
CARING DADS
Caring Dads is an intervention program for fathers (including biological, step and common-law), who have physically abused, emotionally abused or neglected their children, or exposed their children to domestic violence or who are deemed to be at high risk for those behaviours.
The program consists of a 17-week, empirically-based, manualized group parenting intervention for fathers, systematic outreach to mothers to ensure safety and freedom from coercion, and ongoing, collaborative case management of fathers with referrers and other professionals involved with men’s families.
The group component of Caring Dads combines elements of parenting, fathering, battering and child protection practice to enhance the safety and well-being of children.
Program principles emphasize the need to enhance men’s motivation, promote child-centred fathering, address men’s ability to engage in respectful, non-abusive co-parenting with children’s mothers, recognize that children’s experience of trauma will impact the rate of possible change, and work collaboratively with other service providers to ensure that children benefit (and are not unintentionally harmed) as a result of father’s participation in intervention.
For more on Caring Dads, please visit http://www.caringdads.org.
3-5-7 MODEL
All children in care must know their own story and history, and have the supportive time to understand and reconcile past losses. Our role at the General Authority is to provide and promote supports and best practice approaches that allow agencies to do this critical work with children and at the same time build a continuum of lifelong connections which give the child security beyond their time in care. It is our ultimate responsibility to provide this.
The 3-5-7 Model©, developed by Darla Henry, a child welfare expert based at Temple University in Harrisburg, Pa., is a strength-based practice model that provides workers with practical skills and tools to do this work with children and youth, helping them understand:
- What happened to them (loss)
- Who they are (identity)
- Where they are going (attachment)
- How they will get there (building relationships)
- How they will know when they belong (claiming/safety)
One of the ways to help children and youth work through these life transitions is through the creation of a lifebook. Lifebooks allow for the creation of pages which reflect the child’s experience and record memories and life events that occurred when they lived with family, as well as when the children were in placement. Lifebooks can help the child remember connections to people who have been important in their lives and may help heal past experiences with their present circumstances in a positive way. Until children and youth can reconcile the separations and trauma in their lives, they are not able to make a successful transition to permanency (reunification, legal guardianship or adoption).
MANITOBA DEFINITION OF PERMANENCY
The following definition was developed and approved by the four child and family services authorities and the Child and Family Services Division. Children require safety and stability from childhood through to adulthood. Fundamental to the required safety and stability is “certainty of responsibility” – caregiver(s) who accept lifelong responsibility and commitment to care for the child and whom the child mutually understands and accepts to be a trusted support.
Manitoba’s definition of permanence recognizes that all children have natural certainty and belonging through their family and community of origin and that these connections are vital to maintain. The markers of permanency are intended to provide children the connections, supports and understanding they require to find ‘certainty of responsibility’ following CFS involvement with the child and their family. Each marker of permanency has specific and important intended outcomes:
Knowing one’s story and history – Provides the child with a distinguishable sense of belonging, culture and identity. For children in care this is facilitated through helping the child understand and reconcile past losses, therefore assisting them with the transition to permanency.
Safe and stable home – Creates a safe, stable, reliable place for the child to learn life skills and healthy coping mechanisms.
Certainty of responsibility – Establishes trusted caregiver(s) in the child’s life who will provide the supports and resources for the child into and throughout adulthood. Provides the child with the security of an ongoing connection with supportive caregiver(s).
Lifelong connections – Emphasizes the importance of making every effort to maintain connections with the child’s natural network of support and extended family whenever possible. Creates the safety and security required to foster resilience and ensure the child has the connections and supports in place to pursue education, employment and any other aspirations into and throughout adulthood.
Although difficult to measure, each marker of permanency is also rooted in providing the opportunity for the child to love and feel loved. Love is an imperative part of a healthy and safe childhood, and a key aspect of a successful transition to adulthood.
Coalition of Manitoba Cultural Communities for Families
The Coalition of Manitoba Cultural Communities for Families (CMCCF) is a community organization which functions as a resource to bring together new Canadian cultural communities to build their shared interest and collective preventative capacities. The intention of the CMCCF is to strengthen and enhance the physical, mental, emotional and cultural health and safety of their families and children.
The CMCCF’s goals include:
• promoting the safety and security of cultural communities and their families, children and youth
• continuing to develop an open learning platform with diverse health and human service providers to share and exchange information, wisdom and experiences
• continuing to educate and build awareness of the challenges and strengths within cultural communities by building bridges between cultural communities, CFS and diverse health and human services
• continuing to promote the coalition’s vision and expand its opportunities to grow
The CMCCF emerged as one of numerous networks established following the launch of the General Authority’s New Canadian Initiative (NCI) in 2009. That year, the Authority launched the NCI in recognition of the challenges facing new Canadians and the need for a preventative approach to raising awareness and providing accurate information about the CFS system in Manitoba.
The General Authority looks forward to continued collaboration with the CMCCF. The CMCCF is now working closely with General Authority agencies along with other collaterals to create future opportunities for learning, community development and strategies with the shared goal of promoting better outcomes for children, families and communities.
SOUNDS THROUGH THE WALL
*Please scroll down to see the video, available in several languages besides English.
Sounds Through the Wall is a video resource and presentation created by the General Authority, Winnipeg Child and Family Services, Child and Family All Nations Coordinated Response Network (ANCR) and the Child Protection Branch, along with Healthy Child Manitoba, to introduce and familiarize new Canadians with Manitoba’s child welfare system and Manitoba’s parenting laws.
The goal of the video is to help newcomers understand how the child and family services system in Manitoba works and to emphasize two important goals of the system: to keep children safe and to support youth and families. It also seeks to alleviate parents’ fears that if child and family services becomes involved with their family, their children will automatically be taken into care, which is not the case. Additionally, Sounds Through the Wall endeavours to provide important information on parents’ rights within the child welfare system. The video emphasizes that children are not taken into care unless there is no other way to ensure children’s protection. The video also shows viewers that CFS’s most important goal is to keep children safe and to help parents keep children secure and supported in their own homes.
*Note: While this video provides helpful information about the child welfare system, it is best used in a facilitated dialogue with those knowledgeable about the system who can answer any questions that may arise.
Sons à travers la paroi
*Veuillez faire défiler vers le bas pour voir la vidéo, offerte en plusieurs langues outre l’anglais.
Sons à travers la paroi est une ressource vidéo et une présentation créées par la Régie générale, les Services à l’enfant et à la famille de Winnipeg, le Child and Family All Nations Coordinated Response Network (ANCR) et le Service de protection des enfants, ainsi que par Enfants en santé Manitoba, afin de présenter et de familiariser les nouveaux Canadiens avec le système de protection des enfants du Manitoba et les lois manitobaines sur l’éducation des enfants.
L’objectif de la vidéo est d’aider les nouveaux arrivants à comprendre le fonctionnement du système des services à l’enfant et à la famille au Manitoba et de mettre l’accent sur deux objectifs importants du système : assurer la sécurité des enfants et soutenir les jeunes et les familles. Elle cherche également à apaiser les craintes des parents qui craignent que si les services à l’enfant et à la famille interviennent dans leur famille, leurs enfants soient automatiquement pris en charge, ce qui n’est pas le cas. En outre, la vidéo Sons à travers la paroi efforce de fournir des renseignements importants sur les droits des parents au sein du système de protection des enfants. La vidéo souligne que les enfants ne sont pas pris en charge, sauf s’il n’y a pas d’autre moyen d’assurer leur protection. La vidéo montre également aux utilisateurs que l’objectif le plus important des Services à l’enfant et à la famille est de protéger les enfants et d’aider les parents à assurer la sécurité et le soutien des enfants dans leur propre foyer.
*Remarque : Bien que cette vidéo fournisse des renseignements utiles sur le système de protection des enfants, il est préférable de l’utiliser dans le cadre d’un dialogue animé avec des personnes connaissant bien le système et en mesure de répondre à toute question qui pourrait se poser.
La vidéo Sons à travers la paroi est offerte en plusieurs autres langues, à savoir :
• Arabe
• Bas-allemand
• Somalien
• Espagnol
• Swahili
Sounds Through the Wall is available in several other languages: