Health officials in St. John's are putting children in motels because of a critical shortage of foster families, a CBC News investigation has found.

'I'm not sure how much of a home-like environment can be provided in a hotel room,' Sondria Browne says.
(CBC)

More than 700 children are now in Newfoundland and Labrador's foster care system or are waiting for a placement. However, a smaller number of families — more than 400 — are willing to take children in.

Eastern Health, the largest authority in the province, has been placing some children in motels and efficiency units and hiring home-support workers to look after them.

"Children are also supposed to go into a warm, caring environment, and I'm not sure how much of a home-like environment can be provided in a hotel room, with round-the-clock caregivers that are different every eight hours," said Sondria Browne, who works with families whose children have gone into custody.

Health Minister Ross Wiseman said placing children who have been taken from their homes into a motel is far from the preferable choice, but is sometimes necessary.

"Sometimes it happens to be in hotel rooms. That's an emergency response," Wiseman told CBC News.

"And, after some working with the foster families in the system that we now have, over time we're able to place them in homes."

Health Minister Ross Wiseman said placing children in motels and efficiency units is done only in emergency situations.
(CBC)

But details obtained by CBC News show that some children have stayed in motels for weeks at a time.

As well, home-care workers now sometimes supervise the visits between children and their parents, and write the reports on those visits that are passed on to child welfare officials.

"Not everybody is a qualified social worker that's working with these children, to be able to deal with the impact of being removed from their families, and the trauma and grief that goes along with it," Browne said.

Diane Molloy, who works with Newfoundland and Labrador's Foster Family Association, said hiring home-care workers to look after children in motels is simply not the answer to the foster care crunch.

"Absolutely not," she said. "The optimal situation is a foster home that can nurture and care for the children until they are able to go back home."

Jump in case load

The Newfoundland and Labrador government would not say how many children are currently being cared for in motels. Eastern Health said its staff has been dealing with as many as 10 cases per night.

In part, the crunch has been caused by a steep increase — about 20 per cent in Eastern Health's area alone — in the number of children take into protection in the last year.

Cathy Barker-Pinsent, the director of child, youth and family services for Eastern Health, said it's difficult to pinpoint what has caused the increase in cases.

"Children come into care because of maltreatment, neglect [or the] parents have issues, sometimes addiction issues, so there is not one answer to that," she said.