Finding balance in disproportion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/06/2015 (3953 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Grand Chief Derek Nepinak has done the math and it just doesn’t add up.

There are more Manitoba aboriginal children in care now than ever before. Nepinak, head of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said many of those children come from homes where at least one parent spent time in foster care. The same holds true for their parents’ parents.

“There aren’t going to be enough foster parents to raise the foster children of the last generation of foster children,” Nepinak said during an interview at the Free Press News Café. “This is an escalating situation.”

Nepinak has started a campaign to challenge some of the assumptions in Manitoba’s child-welfare system. Part of that campaign was unveiled last week, when AMC announced the creation of the Manitoba First Nations family advocate.

The new office will offer support to and collect information from children, families and workers in the child-welfare system.

The common assumption is given the higher rates of economic and social disadvantage in the aboriginal population, it only made sense there were more aboriginal children in foster care. However, growing numbers of people are asking whether the child-welfare system is devoting too much time to apprehension, and not enough to supporting families in crisis.

This was one of the conclusions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which said putting aboriginal children in care is only perpetuating the dysfunction of aboriginal families. “Canada’s child-welfare system has simply continued the assimilation that the residential school system started,” the commission’s report states.

Statistically, the number of aboriginal children in care is staggering. Of the 47,000 Canadian children in foster care in 2011, less than half were aboriginal. In Manitoba, 87 per cent of the roughly 10,000 children in care are aboriginal.

Nepinak said after talking with parents who have lost children, those in care, and those working within the system, he believes it has become too easy for the system to apprehend a child. “It takes more paperwork to buy a new car in Manitoba than it does to apprehend a child,” he said.

The number of children in care has been a top-of-mind issue in Manitoba, where the province has been harshly criticized for keeping apprehended children in hotels.

The province hired new foster parents and has, to date, mostly stopped using hotels in Winnipeg. Outside Winnipeg, efforts are still underway to limit the practice.

However, more worrisome is that the province’s response does not come with a pledge to better explain why so many aboriginal families have had children apprehended.

Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross was not available, but her department denied the system is too quick to apprehend.

“There is no single reason children are taken into care,” a spokeswoman said. “We know that a disproportionate number of indigenous families are struggling because of the impacts of poverty, colonialism, residential schools and the Sixties Scoop. As a result, there have always been a disproportionate number of indigenous children taken into care.”

Although the province seems unwilling to consider it, there is evidence the system has become too reliant on apprehension after being criticized for returning vulnerable children to dangerous situations at home.

‘There aren’t going to be enough foster parents to raise the foster children of the last generation of foster children’

— Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Derek Nepinak

From 2000 to 2004, Manitoba had about 5,500 children in care. The next year — 2005 — started a steady and precipitous increase in the number of foster children.

That was also the year we first learned about Phoenix Sinclair.

In June 2005, five-year-old Phoenix was slain after being returned from foster care to a mother and stepfather who had abused and neglected her throughout her short life.

The aftermath of Phoenix’s case has been nothing short of traumatic for aboriginal people in particular, and the child-welfare system in general. It certainly encouraged the province to revise its protocols in an attempt to ensure no child would be left in a vulnerable situation.

However, it seems as a result of that one case, apprehension is viewed as a simple and effective way of ensuring no further tragedies take place. Unfortunately, as Nepinak and the TRC report have correctly argued, this stop-gap measure causes as many problems as it addresses.

To be fair, the province claims it is “changing its focus” by investing more money in prevention and supports to keep more children with their families. Together with the First Nations family advocate, a change in focus for the child-welfare system is exactly what all vulnerable children desperately need.

The debate over when to apprehend will no doubt continue.

However, everyone can agree taking a child into care is not a solution. It is, in almost every way, just a perpetuation of the problem.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca