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Saskatchewan is charting a new course to prevent babies from falling into government care after the province discontinued its controversial ‘birth alert’ system this winter.
Last week’s provincial budget included $500,000 in annual funding for Sanctum Care Group, which interim executive director Jamesy Patrick said will fund a prenatal care team to help at-risk pregnant women navigate social assistance, housing, addictions and mental health programs in the hopes their children will not be apprehended at birth.
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Saskatchewan’s Minister of Social Services says advocacy from Indigenous partners is what convinced her to end the practice of issuing “birth alerts” for at-risk newborns.
Saskatchewan will become the latest jurisdiction in Canada to abandon the system next week, after years of Indigenous organizations arguing it’s discriminatory.
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Such alerts are sent by hospitals to alert authorities about an at-risk birth. Of the 537 infants aged 30 days and under who were taken into care from 2016 to 2020, inclusive, 401 were Indigenous. Not all such apprehensions are the result of a birth alert.