Foster-care system continues to cause harm

Opinion

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This article was published 27/07/2022 (784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THIS week has been replete with reminders of the horrific suffering of residential school and Indian-day school survivors, and the genocide inflicted on them by the Catholic Church. There’s been much debate about the papal apology and the engagement of First Nations across the country in the process of seeking a way to heal a harm that feels insurmountable.

Yet in Manitoba, we are continuing the legacy of the destruction of families as part of the decolonization process through our foster-care system. If we really want to talk about reconciliation, look beyond the ’60s scoop and the residential school system — as awful as they were — and instead deal with the continuing seizure of Indigenous children into foster care.

According to APTN, there are more Indigenous children now in the foster-care system than at the height of Canada’s residential school system. Let that sink in for a moment.

A 2012 study in the medical journal The Lancet observed that Manitoba’s rate of kids in care is among the highest in the world. We currently have a higher percentage of children in foster care than any other province in the country, and 90 per cent of the kids in care are Indigenous.

While there may be strong reasons to pull children out of homes when there is danger, far too often the decisions are made based on subjective and cultural beliefs that have little substantive value.

Despite the intentions to make the child welfare system culturally appropriate through devolution under the NDP, what occurred was bad policy-making. It incentivized taking children; agencies were funded based on the number of kids in care.

Under the NDP, the number of children in care doubled after devolution. With the election of the Progressive Conservatives, a block-funding model was put in place, but that approach has been criticized for not providing enough money.

Still, foster kids are seen by some as a way to make money. In May of this year, the Court of Queen’s Bench ruled the Manitoba government has violated equality rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by clawing back a federal benefit for children since 2006. The NDP, and later the PCs, argued the clawback was appropriate since the provincial government was paying for children in care.

However, Justice James Edmond ruled the government’s actions violated equality rights under the charter because Indigenous children make up almost 90 per cent of kids in care. While the federal government increased its allowance payments every year, the province froze funding rates for many child-welfare services between 2012 and 2019. It’s estimated the province collected almost $250 million over a 13-year period.

To put it bluntly, the child-welfare industry in Manitoba has been getting rich off the backs of the kids they seize – up to 11,000 of them.

And so we continue the cycle of familial breakdown, trauma and neglect. Kids in the child-welfare system do not to do well. Statistics on foster children who eventually age out of care suggest they have low academic achievement, lower employment and suffer from housing security issues.

They also have higher involvement with the criminal justice system, may experience parenthood at an earlier age and suffer from poor physical and mental health and loneliness. Much of this may be the result of the initial loss of the parent-bond – an important part of a child’s development.

And before anyone gets up on their high horse and to suggest that “at least they were made safe,” you have to realize that in many cases, children are pulled out of homes because of poverty, not neglect. For Indigenous mothers, having to choose between food or rent could result in a child was pulled out of a home.

On reserve, where housing options are limited, having inadequate housing also resulted in a child being put into the foster-care system. And the cycle of breaking up families continues.

The first section of the Calls to Action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report relates to child welfare. Families must stay together when it is safe to do so. Governments at all levels must commit to this, or we are just recreating the horror of residentials schools in real time, in Canada and, more explicitly, in this province.

Shannon Sampert is the former politics and perspectives editor at the Winnipeg Free Press and a communications consultant. She was the Eakins Fellow for the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada for winter 2022.

shannon@mediadiva.ca