Healing the Nation
Healing the Nation-One Family At A Time
After Charlene and Jonathan came into our care in March 1997, I knew that for me this was a monumental life-changing event. It was so because my husband and I were over 50 years of age, and out of necessity, we needed to care for Destiny’s children. Protection Services were not addressing Destiny’s criminal actions and those of her friends. Instead, they did the opposite. They were denying they occurred and were supporting the return of her children to those Charlene alleged abused her, her parent(s). Charlene’s website, http://voicesofthebruised-reeds.com, attests to this.
Protection Services were doing ‘parental agreements’ with Destiny, and there was no long-term, integrated rehabilitation program to bring about real change, that is, lifetime changes which would be needed to raise her children. I was beginning to come to terms with what happened to Destiny’s children and dealing with their trauma, particularly Charlene’s, on a daily basis. I am now certain that I was suffering transference post-trauma. It was all mind-boggling. I thought I could ‘go crazy’ if I did nothing to be proactive to be a part of the necessary change.
At the time, my husband and I had been married just two years when this all began. We had a home-based business but immediately moved it to a downtown location. I was grieving the fact that Destiny was an unfit parent and that she and her children could not be together, as explained on Charlene’s website and my legal documents. Above all, I recognized thousands of others like us were out there who also needed help. So, I developed two rehab programs.
To recap, the first program I designed was A Focus on the Future-Guiding the Young. This was a ten-month course. Continued government funding was not forthcoming. After one year of not doing a program I submitted another program entitled Healing the Nation-One Family At A Time under the Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centers where funding was provided by Canadian Heritage.
That funding dried up after one year, as described on this website.
With minor revisions, this same program was submitted to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) for funding. They were impressed with it and provided funding of over $300,000.00 for one year.
As described, the Saskatchewan Minister of Social Services continued their coup to bring down our program and organization. They threatened the participants that if they did not ‘get out’ of this program, they’d risk losing their social assistance. This government refused to provide monetary support that should have been automatic once the major funding agencies like the AHF had committed funding to an organization.
The AHF also suffered a great loss when the Conservative government ensured their demise occurred during my lawsuit. Granted, I requested a lot of monetary relief for all of the pleadings, but money can never replace such losses as described. If the government was made to pay from the ‘taxpayers’ purse,’ they’d think twice about doing what they did here ever again. Not so!