Block funding cheating CFS: Liberals

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This article was published 21/02/2019 (2481 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Liberals are accusing the provincial government of short-changing Child and Family Services agencies with its new block funding model, a claim the province has denied as “false” math on the part of the opposition party.

Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said in a press release Wednesday that the $435 million that will be provided to agencies in 2019-20 is $108 million less than the $543 million agencies spent in 2017-18 and is below what funding levels were five years ago.

Lamont accused Premier Brian Pallister’s government of “balancing its books on the backs of the most vulnerable people in the province,” when the amount of time children have spent in care is at a record high.

Earlier this month, Families Minister Heather Stefanson announced up-front, or block, funding for Manitoba’s four CFS authorities — the First Nations of Manitoba CFS Authority, the General Authority, the Métis CFS Authority and the Southern First Nation Network of Care — in order to provide children and families with better access to services.

In a statement, Stefanson’s press secretary, Andrea Slobodian, called the Liberal math “false” and said the party was “making an inaccurate comparison by pulling previous years’ totals that include other areas of child maintenance than block funding.”

“We plan to make more than $435 million in block funding available up front to authorities in 2019/2020 to improve outcomes for children and families and give agencies the freedom to devote more money to prevention, early intervention, community and kinship involvement and other positive supports,” she said.

On the Liberal party’s allegations, Brandon West Progressive Conservative MLA Reg Helwer told The Sun: “We’re looking out for outcomes for the children as opposed to what happened in previous occurrences with other governments.”

Lamont offered a separate response, saying he stands by his party’s statement — which he said was based “entirely” on the government’s own figures — and that First Nations leadership have expressed concerns about whether they will receive more or less funding under the new formula.

“If the PCs want to deny our claim, they need to prove it, and they are on weak ground given that the Auditor General raised red flags about the Pallister government’s habit of misleading accounting and overstating how much they were spending by hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.

“We have called on this government to implement honesty in budgeting, but the PCs are running multiple sets of books. They make spending promises they have no intention of keeping to make themselves look generous, while forcing other agencies and departments to cut budgets so they can avoid blame.”

The Liberals also criticized the provincial government for providing “unreliable” numbers on how many children were in care, referencing a CBC report last month which said the province was tracking those figures using a central database as opposed to self-reported numbers from child welfare agencies.

The latest Manitoba Families annual report states that there were 10,328 children in care as of March 31, 2018, a drop of 386 from the year before.

However, the numbers don’t include the additional 448 children who were reported to be in “own home” — or living with a parent, guardian or lifelong family member — or in “supervised adoption placements” without financial support from the government, also referred to as “non-paid care.”

By comparison, Manitoba’s child welfare agencies reported that 11,143 children were in care.

Stefanson told the public broadcaster that the decision to use a centralized system was about transparency and presenting more accurate numbers.

Meanwhile, the total number of days children spent in care had increased by 7.1 per cent in 2017-18 to 3.19 million.

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