Weechi-it-te-win facing deficit, cutbacks

With a provincial funding cut of $941,000, Weechi-it-te-win Family Services here has joined the list of Children Aid Societies across Ontario projecting deficits for this year.
Weechi-it-te-win—which provides service to 10 local First Nations’ communities—is expecting a deficit of $650,000, executive director George Simard revealed.

“Because the ministry’s paradigm is one size fits all, it makes it that much more difficult, then, for Weechi-it-te-win to promote and provide an aboriginal restorative practice in child welfare,” Simard said about the funding difficulties and shortfall, noting that despite the limitations over the years, the agency has been doing “relatively well” when it comes to providing these services.
But when recent cutbacks by the province are added up, those made to native agencies represent almost a quarter of the $23 million the Ministry of Youth and Children Services has “clawed back throughout Ontario,” Simard noted.
And yet Ontario also is the only province with a welfare agreement with the federal government, he explained. Under this 1965 agreement, Indian Affairs pays to the province 93 cents of every dollar for every native child in care.
“So from our perspective, that’s Indian money, that’s federal Indian money that’s dispersed to the province,” he argued. “So you can appreciate it in that if our budget is $10 million, and 93 cents to the dollar is federal Indian money, then why is the province penalizing us?”
But Simard said the province calls this money part of a transfer payment from Ottawa and it goes into its general coffers. In times of deficit, this money could be, and has been accessed, by the ministries overseeing child welfare, Simard said—something the province is refusing to do anymore.
With the 1965 agreement in mind, there is a viable argument and legal challenge which could be made over the funding of Ontario native child services, Simard observed.
Unlike the dozens of CASs, including Family & Children’s Services of Rainy River District, Weechi-it-te-win has not applied to the province for review of its funding.
The expected $650,000 deficit comes despite measures they’ve taken, which include a five percent salary cut across the board for staff.
“Because of Naamigaan Abinojii [Ojibwe for ‘Children first, and foremost, at all times’], the board felt that if we’re going to operationalize that word, then we have to give to the cause too,” Simard stressed, noting that while five percent will hurt staff, it’s not an amount that would put them below the poverty line.
Meeting costs and expenses, reduction in staff travel, and training also have been cut back, he added, citing other examples of steps taken to reduce the agency’s spending.
But there are two areas the board has refused to touch so far: child in care and their service agreements with the First Nations’ communities, he stressed.
“We had to take the deficit from [head office costs] because we were not prepared to hurt the communities or the kids in care related to the cutbacks,” Simard explained.
But that doesn’t mean these areas won’t be affected eventually, he warned, given the demand for service could increase over the next few months, the possible rises in the costs for a child in care, and possible renegotiation of First Nation service agreements if there is an increase in demand for services.
And cuts to the administrative budget still affect how well Weechi-it-te-win can fulfill its mandate, said Rose Tuesday of Big Island First Nation, who chairs Weechi-it-te-win’s board of directors.
“It will still impact on the other parts,” she stressed. “When you talk about cutbacks in travel, that impacts the workers and the resource managers going out to the community more.”
Weechi-it-te-win also has looked at what can be done to increase its provincial revenue since the funding framework is “volume driven,” Simard explained.
Strategies include “volume driven items” such as better record in-takes, investigation and assessment referrals, and open home studies—which will produce more funding.
By February and March, Weechi-it-te-win will have a better idea of what the exact deficit is, noted Simard, and possibly go into a two- to three-year debt recovery plan.
“Or else by that time, there may be some reprieve and they’ll reinstate [funding],” he said.
“Maybe the chiefs at the provincial level are going to say to the ministry there’s going to be a moratorium on the aboriginal agencies simply because that’s Indian money.”
Despite the funding shortfall, Simard said there’s never been the intent to be adversarial with the ministry, pointing out Weechi-it-te-win has gone into debt recovery at least twice in the past.
“We’re trying to live within the allocation again,” he vowed. “We’re trying to be responsible, we’re trying to be responsible to the communities in order to ensure that the services are delivered, and we’re trying to do it with the limitations that have been handed to us.
“We’ll persevere because that’s the Anishinaabe way.”
Since its inception, Weechi-it-te-win has been under a mandate from the chiefs of the 10 communities to “provide in the interim alternative for child welfare” for First Nation communities until an alternative system is established, Tuesday explained.
“We have the leadership, of course, that we’re obligated to,” she noted. “We’re accountable to the chiefs, the elders, the grandparents, the parents, the children, of those 10 communities.
“That’s always foremost in the work that we do.”
“Weechi-it-te-win was never to become a brown CAS or a mainstream practice dressed up in Indian clothes,” Simard reiterated. “The mandate has always been to create an Indian alternative of mainstream practice and that’s what we’ve been doing these past 20 some odd years is working toward that end.”
But due to budgetary category restrictions, most of Weechi-it-te-win’s aboriginal development efforts and initiatives are placed under “infrastructure”—a category which the province also has “arbitrarily” capped for CAS budgets at 10 percent, Simard said.
“This is what the ministry is fighting us about because they want a one size fits all and our elders and our chiefs and our communities have said ‘no,’ you will do this as part of your practice.
“This is the stuff that we’re losing through the cutbacks,” he stressed.
All of the agency’s practices align with the ministry’s own standards and practices, Simard noted, but then also have been expanded to feature aboriginal context.
This includes Weechi-it-te-win’s goal of “Naamigaan Abinojii,” which they try to put in practice no matter what “bureaucratic stuff” may be in the way of helping a child, Simard said, and even though provincial funding isn’t distributed in this manner.
And within the aboriginal tradition, caring for the children means looking after the whole circle of people within the community—children, adolescents, adults, and elders, Tuesday explained.
“We always have to keep that in mind,” she remarked.
“For us, the dollars, they are one of the tools we need to do the work,” Tuesday said about ensuring that all of those within the circle—young to old—are cared for.
“When [cutbacks] happen, it’s almost like little fragments—little fragmentations happening in each of these areas.
“Anytime there’s a problem, we lose a little bit of that circle,” she added. “Which doesn’t mean we give up, but we have to keep working harder.”
Anishnaabe tradition also means “layers of protection” for an aboriginal child, Simard said, with the child surrounded by their family, their extended family, community, and nation, and Weechi-it-te-win’s protocol for dealing with children in need of protection reinforces this.
This means children have life continuity, and experience less trauma from separation. It also preserves families and “ensures growth within that cultural milieu of community,” he explained, adding the mainstream CAS practice bypasses these ties and considers them secondary when it comes to child protection.
“What happens, then, for aboriginal kids when this methodology prevails?” Simard asked. “Well, what you have is this child being ripped out of that protective environment, traumatized again by being placed in a non-native environment.
“That’s what mainstream practice has done to our people,” he charged, pointing to the generations of aboriginal children taken from First Nations’ communities and why Weechi-it-te-win was created so this practice could be stopped.
The effect of these type of past policies, and colonization, can be seen through what is called the “iceberg effect,” Simard explained, citing a study the agency did years ago in one community of 250 people.
Under the mainstream CAS, there were only six-eight cases in the community over the years, he recalled, but when Weechi-it-te-win went in, 190 individuals accessed the child welfare services for a three-year period.
By the end of that time period, there were 105 active and open caseloads. Of those, 57 of were family violence related while 35 of them were historic and current sexual abuse cases.
This is an example of the high volume of people Weechi-it-te-win is handling, Simard noted, but not necessarily what it is funded for.
“When you get cutbacks in our developmental efforts to promote an Indian alternative, it’s very severe,” he warned, referring to the province wanting to scale back services to just being about child protection.
“And we continue to expand this, pushing the agenda.
“Because in the long run, these stats here didn’t happen by accident,” Simard said.