Actions and Commitments

Call to Action # 1 : Child Welfare (1-5)

“Stop Giving Me a Number and Start Giving Me a Person”

May 7, 2020

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Release of “Stop Giving Me a Number and Start Giving Me a Person: How 22 Girls Illuminate the Cracks in the Manitoba Youth Mental Health and Addiction System”, a Special Report by the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth 2020. “Alarmingly, in Manitoba, suicide is the leading manner of death for young people ages 10-17”. Of the 22 girls who all committed suicide between 2013 and 2019, 20 were either First Nation of Métis. The Advocate’s report highlights some key findings of the Virgo Report of 2018 “Improving Access and Coordination of Mental Health and Addiction Services: A Provincial Strategy for all Manitobans”:

  • how underfunded and underperforming the youth mental health system is here and they make key recommendations calling on the provincial government to address the gaping cracks in service delivery.
  • Manitoba stands out as the highest or very high on almost all SUA/MH need indicators, including those related to health, social and justice-related factors. Indigenous youth are at the top of ALL the metrics
  • jurisdictional issues between the federal and provincial governments are “a “fundamental challenge to be addressed going forward as it underlies significant issues related to access and coordination

As the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (2019) noted, “mental health spending in Manitoba remains below the standard set by international and national research which says it should be 9 per cent of total health spending. In 2019/20 Manitoba budgeted…5% of the health budget” for mental health services (p. 9 )

When compared to its provincial and territorial counterparts, Manitoba has:

  • 76% of First Nations children living in poverty, the highest rate among provinces;
  • the highest number of children in care, 90% of who are Indigenous;
  • the highest rate of youth incarceration, with 90% of those youth being Indigenous;
  • the highest homicide rate, of which the majority of victims are also Indigenous; and
  • the second highest rate of violence against women and girls in the north of all northern regions in Canada (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2016, Virgo Planning, 2018; Malone, 2019; Jones, 2019; Gibson, 2019).

“With these stark numbers, it is not a surprise that that the rate of suicide for adult First Nations Peoples in Manitoba is five times the rate for all other Manitobans”

https://manitobaadvocate.ca/wp-content/uploads/MACY-Special-Report-Suicide-Aggregate-2020.pdf

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