The province is giving $2.1-million to Kunuwanimano Child and Family Services.
Timmins MPP George Pirie announced the one-time grant, to help the indigenous child welfare agency eliminate its accumulated deficits.
Executive director Shirley Gillis-Kendall says Kunuwanimano was founded in 1989 as a prevention service, and was given the child welfare mandate in 2015.
“Since 2015 to now,” she explains, “the cost of living has gone up, wages have gone up, we’ve had more children coming in to care because of the pandemic, because of the explosion of the opioid crisis. So this means a lot for stabilization for our agency.”
Kunuwanimano currently has about 230 kids in care, covering an area of the North roughly the size of Michigan. Gillis-Kendall says it does the same type of work as NEOFACS – the mainstream children’s aid organization. But it deals with a lot of different factors in the native communities it serves across the North.
She adds that when Kunuwanimano was given the child welfare mandate in 2015, NEOFACS handed over about 200 files.
“We do have a really good working protocol with them we’ve developed and we consult should the family want to be with NEOFACS for many reasons.”
