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“There is a lack of humanity in the way that CFS operates.”

Author

Compiled by Debora Steel

Volume

33

Issue

4

Year

2015

“There is a lack of humanity in the way that CFS operates,” Manitoba’s new First Nations family advocate told the Canadian Press. Cora Morgan, appointed by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said Child and Family Services doesn’t treat children in care and their families as “human.” She said the system is broken. CFS is taking children into care too quickly, without doing the proper investigations, and parents find it almost impossible to regain custody of their children. Morgan told the CBC that she advocated for a grandmother who wanted to bring her grandchildren out of foster care, and because the grandmother had sought Morgan’s help, CFS cut off visitation rights. “We had a great meeting–or what I thought was a good meeting–that we were going to get some answers and the family was going to do what it needed to do,” said Morgan. “And the following morning the CFS agency took away their visitation rights because they engaged me. And so with my involvement on Tuesday, it looked like they were in a worse-off position than when we started. I was devastated.”