Child death probes take too long in Manitoba

Manitoba's ombudsman says it's taking too long to investigate the growing number of cases of children dying while in the care of the province's welfare agencies.

Irene Hamilton says there were 106 cases that hadn't been investigated when Manitoba's children's advocate took over reviews of child welfare deaths in 2008. That number had grown to 186 by last March.

"A growing number of deaths to be investigated suggests that ground has been lost rather than gained since the transfer of responsibility," she said in a report issued Tuesday.

Some reviews aren't concluded until years after a child's death -- sometimes making any recommendations irrelevant, Hamilton said. The responsible welfare agency has often conducted its own review by then and made internal changes that aren't recognized in the advocate's recommendations, she said.

"There appears to be consensus that the usefulness of the special investigation report decreases as the time between the death of a child and the report on that death increases," she wrote.

Child welfare in Manitoba came under intense scrutiny after the death in 2005 of Phoenix Sinclair. The five-year-old girl died after repeated abuse by her mother Samantha Kematch and stepfather Karl McKay, both of whom were convicted of first-degree murder in 2008.

The pair neglected, confined and repeatedly beat the little girl.

Court was told she was shot with a BB gun and forced to eat her own vomit before dying from her extensive injuries on a cold basement floor on the Fisher River reserve in 2005. Her parents concealed her body in a garbage dump.

She was a ward of the province for much of her short life and an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding her death is to be held next year.

The current backlog of casessome dating back to 2008seems to be exacerbated by confusion over how thorough the investigations need to be, Hamilton said.

Some cases involve babies who die "from prematurity, birth complications or medical fragility." Those cases don't need the same kind of attention as those which may have been prevented by a welfare agency.

"Completing such exhaustive reviews on every child who was in care of or received services from an agency within one year of the death, regardless of the cause of the death, is a huge undertaking and would unfortunately seem to have contributed to the following problems noted by the child welfare community."

Hamilton says investigations could be prioritized better and all agencies responsible for child welfare should work more collaboratively.

She did note that the children's advocate is already working to chip away at the backlog. Between March 31 and the end of August, the office completed 79 investigations.

It has promised to prioritize more recent child deaths to make subsequent recommendations relevant and timely.