Campaign to recruit foster parents takes flight

The Foster Family Coalition of the N.W.T. is hoping a campaign targeted at airport passengers will help recruit more foster families in communities around the territory.

"The N.W.T is huge,"saidTammy Roberts, the coalition'stheexecutive director.

"This is a place where we can meet a lot of people travelling to and from their communities without having to go to the communities. It's a great place to spark up a conversation with people."

The coalition is a territory-wide organization that advocates for support for foster children and foster families.

Roberts, who has been a foster parent for 25 years, was at Yellowknife airport Friday, and says they'll be there weekly until the end of November.

Catch-22

Recruiting foster parents is a challenge, Roberts says, not just in the N.W.T., but across the country,partly because the number of foster parents is already so low.

"Because we have few numbers we tend to expect too much from people we do have," she said.

"It is quite challenging for foster parents to get the support and answers and communication that they need."

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The drive happens to start as the Department of Health is responding to a scathing report on the child care system in the N.W.T.

The 41-page audit report shows a bureaucracy struggling and in most cases failing to implement recommendations from four years ago.

The report showed that:

• The government continued to place children in foster care homes without proper screening.

• Children were regularly moved between foster homes.

• Officials did not properly supervise children placed out of the territory.

Roberts says the child protection system needs more resources, especially for youth whose needs can't currently be met in the territory.

"Kids that require more attention, treatment for addictions, might have to leave the north which is extremely challenging for a child," she said.

But Roberts is optimistic "it can only go up from here."

She says they're going to continue to work with the new territorial health authority to improve supports for parents and foster children.

- With files from Michael Hugall