Thank you very much, and thank you for inviting me to speak here today.
I come here today with an interest in Manitoba's children and a career that I've had working in the public sector for nearly 40 years. The areas I have some responsibility for now, and overseeing within the provincial government, are child care, child welfare, family violence prevention, and family conciliation services, which are geared toward families experiencing separation, divorce, and custodial issues with respect to those.
I'd like to talk a little bit about each one of those areas and identify some of the current trends that we're seeing and also some of our challenges, and perhaps offer some information that may be of help in the future deliberations of the panel.
With respect to child care, in Manitoba we have a child care program that, as you have heard, does not meet all of the needs for all of the families that we have. We've had a system that we've been building consistently and steadily over the last number of years. We are right now in the middle of another five-year strategic delivery where we're trying to expand the number of spaces for families as well as improve the quality of our child care.
There is no national program for child care. Each province is working within its own framework in order to look at the needs it has within the province to find ways to ensure that it works toward building a program.
Within child care right now in Manitoba, we have approximately 1,100 centres, and half of those, or about 600, are centres that would be located in schools and other community facilities. The remaining are in family homes where we have licensed people within families where they have smaller numbers of children, but they do provide licensed child care.
In looking at child care, definitely we do see the need to continue the growth for training in order to expand the programs, because with training comes quality programs. We look at the issues of capital facilities and infrastructure. One of the things with child care programs is that they do not enjoy the same kind of infrastructure that many of the other established programs have, like the school systems.
Most recently, we've been having some dialogue with the federal government because of the initiatives that are being undertaken with child care on reserve. There is a directive that the federal government is expecting to have child care on reserve licensed by the year 2015. The opportunity here exists to look at, again, trying to have a program that is equitable and has the same opportunity both on and off reserve.
In child welfare in Manitoba, we've had a long history that started many, many decades ago, but there were some profound events that occurred prior to 1991, and with the release of the report of the aboriginal justice inquiry of Manitoba”in 1991. Ten years lapsed before there was activity with respect to that report and its recommendations. Now in the year 2011 we have a system within Manitoba that was jointly designed with the aboriginal community, the Métis community, and the provincial government in order to look at the governance of child welfare within the province of Manitoba.
This is a very challenging area. I think we all know the challenges this presents to families. The biggest drivers for child welfare, of course, are addictions, housing, and poverty. This is what brings children into the child welfare system.
Our social workers, who are the front-line firefighters in terms of trying to keep children safe, have many, many challenges that they themselves cannot do by themselves. Most recently our work with the federal government has resulted in a landmark activity in terms of the development of a joint or harmonized funding model for child welfare. It was finalized in terms of the work that we were doing together last July, when there was an announcement by the federal government with respect to the proportion of funding they were going to contribute to ensure that we would be looking at a model for child welfare that would reduce the number of children in care by providing resources and funding to prevention services, and to enhance family services across the province.
In family violence prevention, we continue to work across the province in terms of the resources we provide for women who have the experience of domestic violence. This is an area that continues to be of concern. We're also looking forward to the work that we're going to be doing collaboratively to improve the services on reserve.
My time is up. I wish I had more.