Many families are split apart as parents must wait up to 300 days to access addictions treatment: Gerrard

 Winnipeg – Jon Gerrard, Leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party and MLA for River Heights, today revealed that the NDP’s poor performance on addictions treatment is exasperating the crisis in Manitoba’s child welfare system.

 “I have spoken with families who have had children removed from the home due to addiction issues,” said Gerrard.  “But instead of accessing addictions treatment or counseling quickly, they have faced wait times of up to 300 days.  That’s 300 unnecessary days that the family is torn apart even before the parents can begin to correct the central issue that caused their children to be removed in the first place.”

 Gerrard added that by adding spaces to provincial addiction treatment programs, there would be a number of families that could be reunited in less than a year and a significant amount of money would not need to be allocated to keeping kids in long-term care.

 “We must focus on reuniting Manitoba families and we must ensure that the services needed to bring families together are available in a timely manner. No family should be apart because a parent is on a NDP-created wait list for addictions treatment.”

 The Manitoba Liberal Party believes that keeping families strong and healthy is a cornerstone to the Liberal commitment to social justice and fiscal responsibility.

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 For more information, please contact: Michelle Nyhof, Communications Officer for the Manitoba Liberal Caucus at (204) 771-2513 or michelle.nyhof@leg.gov.mb.ca