Indigenous Youth Under the Care of Child Services

Land acknowledgement

This article was written on the traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Watuth) nations. [...]

The postcolonial reality for First Nations children in Canada reflects a continuation of the colonial policy of oppression, subjugation and assimilation. Although it is often the assumption that the residential school system represents the only incidence of the Canadian state forcefully taking Indigenous children from their families and communities, which entailed 150,000 children attending this schools between 1880 to 1996, this is sadly not the case. Starting in the early 1950s, federal and provincial Child Welfare agencies joined this colonial project by taking Indigenous children away from their families and communities at unprecedented rates, in what has become known as the sixties scoop.

Legislative Background

In 1951, the federal government added Section 88 to the Indian Act and handed over control of on-reserve child welfare to the provinces, although federal funding did not follow until 1966. With this change in authority, we can locate the birth of Canada’s modern child welfare system, and its discriminatory approach to Aboriginal children.

The Sixties Scoop

The result of this change was a slew of middle-class white social workers heading out to reserves, and taking unprecedented numbers of Aboriginal children away from their families and communities. These workers had no idea about Aboriginal culture and its different understanding of family and community. They also had no idea about the impact the residential schools had on these communities. This social workers were coming to the reserves and taking children away without  “any context on why poverty, poor housing and sanitation, substance abuse and violence were omnipresent." The social workers ignored both culture and context, and failed to adopt an intersectional analysis in their decisions about the children they tookaway in immense numbers. As Blackstock and Trocmé state, “Social workers deprived of the information, skills and resources to address the poverty, disempowerment, multi-generational grief and loss of parenting knowledge defaulted to a practice of mass removals known as the 60’s scoop.” British Columbia is an excellent example of the impact the sixties scoop had on First Nations children and communities. In 1955, 1% of children in B.C. government care were Aboriginal. In 1964, the 1500 Aboriginal youth in the care of the British Columbian government represented 33% of the total children. These numbers reflect the nation average with 50% of total children in government care being Aboriginal by 1980. The sixties scoop, which carried on well into the 1980s, included many children being adopted out-of-province and even out-of-country to white families; the Scoop was exploited by administrators to continue the colonial project of forced assimilation and control; and many children were removed from caring and loving families and communities. In relation to the last point, Dart elucidates, “Intact, loving families that were deemed to be in some way “insufficient” by white middle-class social workers had their children taken away, rather than getting support from the province. Again, this represents a complete lack of considering the realities of being an Aboriginal family living on reserve, and instead applying white middle-class perspectives and standards to a space that had nothing to do with the white middle-class. The sixties scoop, therefore, can be seen as a continuation of the residential school system in many ways. Instead of helping Aboriginal people heal from the trauma of residential schools, more trauma was inflicted with the sixties scoop. The impact was the continuation, unintentionally or otherwise, of undermining Aboriginal cultures by removing children from their culture and placing them with white families. What is more, by removing Aboriginal children from their families and their communities, they were completely disconnected from their communities and cultures, which impacted many of these children negatively. The impact of this continuation has carried forward until today.

Background Today

In Canada, there are approximately 76,000 children living in out of home care, which means they have been placed in some type of foster care, such as family care homes or specialized residential services. 40% of these 76,000 children are Aboriginal, which means that Aboriginal youth are grossly overrepresented in Canada’s foster care system, as only 4.3% of the total Canadian population is Aboriginal. The 2012 data for the province of British Columbia, reveals that in that year 8,000 youth were in the care of the government with 55% of these youth being Aboriginal, even though only 5% of the British Columbian population is Aboriginal. Statistics indicate the Aboriginal youth population is increasing in Canada. Blackstock and Tracome state that between 1995 and 2001, the youth population of status Natives living on reserves has increased by 71.5%. Blackstock et al. (2006) found that currently in Canada, there are three times the amount of Aboriginal children in government care than were placed in residential schools during the 1940s. Therefore, it is no surprise that “historic and contemporary realities have resulted in many Indigenous communities viewing child welfare as an agent of colonialism rather than a support to the safety and well-being of Indigenous children and youth.”

British Columbia and the Ministry of Child and Family Development

In British Columbia today, the Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) is in charge of the care of all children, including Aboriginal children. The MCFD utilizes an institutional approach to child welfare, which “maintains that social welfare is a primary institution of society (similar to religion, government, and education) and therefore has a normal, legitimate, and necessary function in a civilized, modem society.” The MCFD is a vertically organized government ministry, which means it is hierarchical in nature, and belongs to the public service delivery model. This also means it is bureaucratic and has numerous polices procedures which need to be adhered to. Research shows the vertical model is particularly unappealing to youth. Karabanow sites a number of studies and reports which found homeless youth are “on the streets primarily because of their experiences with child welfare agencies.” In these reports, it was found that when in the system most youths found “they were not heard or believed, . . .  they were not considered capable of making decisions for themselves, and . . .  they were dealt with punitively and in a controlling manner.” (p. 50). This is the result of oppressive bureaucracy which does not include clients in the decision-making process. The result is youth feeling alienated and unloved.

Problems with the MCFD

Between 2011 and 2016, forty-nine 17-19-year old Aboriginal youth died while in the care of MCFD. When the age range is extended to 25, then the number jumps to 200 with these older youth still being in the MCFD system. 49 of these deaths were suicides.

David: A Case Study

Alex was a 18-year-old Metis boy who was under the care of the MCFD when he took his own life by smashing through the window of his fourth floor hotel room and falling to his death. Alex had lived in the hotel room for 49 days before taking his own life, which was the paid arrangement with a former respite worker by the MCFD and the Delegated Aboriginal Agency (DAA). This hotel was Alex’s 17th placement since he was taking away from his abusive parents when he was young. During his life, Alex was subjected to abuse first from his parents, and then from the people at his different placements with this abuse being of all types. A child needs stability, but Alex was afforded none.

There is ample evidence illustrating community and family are deeply important for Aboriginal children. However, the investigation into Alex’s death found no attempts were made by social workers to connect Alex to his Metis culture. In fact, for unexplainable reasons, the MCFD refused to place Alex with his stepmother or with his aunt, both of whom would have provided stability and helped Alex discover his Metis identity. The MCFD failed Alex miserably by not prioritizing placing him with family or community.

Links to More Case Study

Report: Lost in the Shadows

Report: Approach with Caution

Report: Paige's Story

Solutions: Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society

Fortunately, there have been improvements made in many provinces, including British Columbia. Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society (VACFSS) is a non-profit society that provides important services to urban Aboriginal children and families residing in the GVRD. According to VACFSS’s About Us page, VACFSS honours “the traditions and wisdom inherent in the Aboriginal community” with it goal being “to work to create a stronger community through partnerships with other service providers and by connecting with community resources.”  The organization is committed to a holistic approach to contribute to the development of a balanced and harmonious Aboriginal community. VACFSS began as a child and family service agency in 1992 and operated providing family support services until 1999. At that time, through negotiations with MCFD, VACFSS began to provide limited delegated services. VACFSS signed the Delegation Enabling Agreement (DEA) on December 14, 2001, which allowed VACFSS to provide a wide range of delegated resource and guardianship services and non-delegated services through its Aboriginal Family Preservation and Reunification Services. In 2008, VACFSS was granted full child protection services for urban Aboriginal youth in the Vancouver area from the MCFD.

Numerous studies have found that the mainstream approach to child welfare is antithetical to traditional Aboriginal approaches. Mainstream approaches focus on the individual only, and do not embed decision-making in the community, or in historical context, nor do they privilege cultural norms. We can see in the sections above that the child service workers have historically just based their decisions on what can be framed as colonial thinking, and removed Aboriginal children from perceived undesirable situations with no considerations of holistic or long-term well-being.

The Work of VACFSS

VACFSS seeks to overcome the mainstream approach by adopting an Aboriginal one with a real focus on keeping families together and keeping children and youth in Aboriginal communities, which has been shown to have better outcomes than separating them from their communities and cultures. An important component of VACFSS’ Family Preservation and Reunification Service (FPRS) is early intervention and keeping children with their families. According to the VACFFS 2017 Annual Report, “The VACFSS Family Preservation and Reunification Counsellors work collaboratively with other delegated programs at VACFSS by providing a range of services to assist families whose children are in care or at risk of coming into care” (p. 2). FPRS offers an impressive and robust suite of programs to facilitate families staying together. One such program is the Strengthen Families Program, which aims to “increase family bonding, family strengths and resilience and to reduce risk factor by improving family communication, positive parenting skills, school performance and parent and child relationships.” The program focuses on families where the parents have substance abuse issues. The idea behind this program is to put Aboriginal families in an empowered position of knowledge and family stability to keep families together, and provide the parents with both help for their substance abuse problems and knowledge in relation to child rearing and child behavioral management principles. The Strengthen Families web page states, “What makes the SFP one of the most powerful programs available is because it focuses not on children or parents individually, but rather the whole family as an entity.” This is clearly an Aboriginal approach, as it is holistic, endeavours to keep families together, and embeds well-being in the relevant social context. This approach is proactive because it intervenes to keep families together. The MCFD approach would be to immediately take the child away from a family where substance abuse is present.

Other FPRS programs include The Strengthen Fathers Group and The Strengthen Relatives Group. FPRS also offers a number of in home supports, including the Family Day Program, the Pace Program, which provides therapeutic counseling for children, child and youth interventions, mentoring, and supervised visits, transportation and home-making.

Further reading

Blackstock, C. & Trocmé. (2004). Community Based Child Welfare for Aboriginal Children: Supporting Resilience through Structural Change. In Ungar, M. (Ed.)(in press). Pathways to resilience: A handbook of theory, methods and interventions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Blackstock, C., Cross, T., George, J., Brown, I. & Formsma, J. (2006). Reconciliation in child welfare: Touchstones of hope for Indigenous children, youth and families. Ottawa, ON, Canada: First National Child & Family Caring Society of Canada/ Portland, OR: National Indian Child Welfare Association.

Dart, C. (19 November, 2017). Birth of a Family: The Sixties Scoop Explained. CBC. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/the-sixties-scoop-explained

Hyslop, K. (9 May, 2018). How Canada Created a Crisis in Indigenous Child Welfare. The Tyee. Retreived from https://thetyee.ca/News/2018/05/09/Canada-Crisis-Indignenous-Welfare/

Sinha, V. and Kozlowski A. (2013). The Structure of Aboriginal Child Welfare in Canada. International Indigenous Policy Journal, 4(2), 1-31

External links

Birth of a Family: The Sixties Scoop Explained

The Sixties Scoop

How Canada Created a Crisis in Indigenous Child Welfare

Residential Schools in Canada

Ministry of Children and Family Development

Kiskisik Awasisak: Remember the children. Understanding the overrepresentation of First Nations children in the child welfare system

Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the Indian Residential Schools

Indigenous Child Welfare

Indigenous Children and the Child Welfare System in Canada