A Winnipeg non-profit organization that helps parents overcome trauma and addiction is at risk of closing its doors due to the backlogs in Jordan’s Principle funding, its founder says.
Geoffery’s Garden supports parents with children in care, helping them heal after going through detox programming, with a goal of reuniting them with their children.
Cindy Huckerby, the founder of Geoffery’s Garden, says funding through Jordan’s Principle stalled last fall, as that program grapples with a massive backlog of approximately 140,000 requests.
Huckerby says she has made multiple requests to the province for interim support, but those requests have been denied. She worries Geoffery’s Garden will have to close its doors by December if they cannot find interim funding support.
“(The province) is saying there’s no money, there’s nothing they can do for us at all,” Huckerby said. “Which is a real struggle for me, because we save the province millions of dollars every single year – every time we pull a kid out of care, we’re saving the government millions of dollars.”
“Not only for the child in care, but for getting parents off the streets,” she added. “When parents are on the streets, there’s a lot that goes on behind that in our medical system; they come from jails, they come from institutions. We save our province millions of dollars and no one is willing to pay and support families healing and getting better, I don’t understand it.”
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Huckerby says the majority of parents that come through their doors heal from their addictions and are able to reunite with their children.
“I’ve seen these parents come in here so broken and so hurt and so angry and they’ve just transformed their lives,” Huckerby said.
“How can that not be worth a few hundred thousand dollars?”
Manitoba families minister Nahanni Fontaine says the province is already working alongside several organizations doing reunification, and said she is urging the federal government to take swift action to address the backlog.
“We’re continuing to do that work with the partners that we’re working with and for the partners that have been doing that work for many years,” Fontaine told Global News. “And what I can say is we’re going to continue to encourage Canada to get back to the table and continue to fund those organizations that are doing that work.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Indigenous Services Canada says the are aware of the specific case, but declined to provide further detail, citing privacy legislation.
Helping families heal
Geoffery’s Garden also strives to help families connect with Indigenous culture and ceremony, much of it lead by Strong Bear, the program’s knowledge keeper.
“Our spirits become very quiet and they don’t move much when we’re out there being addicted to alcohol, being addicted to drugs. That spirit gets so quiet that it’s not even there,” said Strong Bear.
“I just teach them about their spirit, I teach them about who they are as Indigenous people, this land, because the reason why they’re here in this program in the first place is because they’re lost, they don’t know who they are.”
One graduate of the program that Global News is not identifying due to the Child and Family Services Act, says Geoffery’s Garden was life-changing for her. She’s now reunited with her children, going to school, and her CFS file is closed.
“I became a mother at a very young age, so it was very difficult. And that was my identity – taking care of my kids – and once I lost my kids, I kind of lost myself. I went off the deep end and it was a very dark place,” she said.
“Geoffery’s Garden held me accountable and pretty much held my hand along the way till I found where I was meant to be.”
A similar scenario for another graduate of the program.
“I had been struggling with alcohol and drug abuse for about 10-11 years and it just got to a breaking point, and it spiralled out of control and I ended up losing my son to CFS,” she said. “I just needed to find something that was going to work for me and Cindy and Strong Bear, they reached out to me and yeah that’s where my journey began.”
She says she’s now reunited with her son, working, and will soon be going to school. She says the cultural teachings through Geoffery’s Garden helped free her of her trauma.
“I really enjoy being on the land, it feels really free being on the land,” she said.
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