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What If We Gave Struggling Families as Much Support as Foster Parents? | The Tyee
Child welfare experts say we’re investing in the wrong end of the system. A collaborative deep dive.
Brielle Morgan, Katie Hyslop, Cherise Seucharan and Tracy Sherlock: What If We Gave Struggling Families as Much Support as Foster Parents? Child welfare experts say we’re investing in the wrong end of the system. A collaborative deep dive. When it comes to child welfare, social work experts and parents in B.C. say we’re investing in the wrong end of the system — pouring money into foster care instead of offering adequate support to vulnerable families, many of whom are Indigenous.
“We’re willing to give strangers just about anything to look after kids,” says Jeannine Carriere, a social work professor at the University of Victoria, who is Métis. “But we have this blockage when it comes to supporting families.”
As part of a collaborative investigation into B.C.’s child-welfare system, journalists from the Discourse, The Tyee and Star Vancouver asked parents whether they felt they were getting adequate support — financial and otherwise — before their kids were apprehended by B.C. social workers.
Of the 30 parents who filled out our questionnaire, 29 told us they weren’t getting the support they needed. Only one parent told us the question wasn’t applicable because she and her husband were “financially stable” and had “no issues.”
Data from the Ministry of Children and Family Development shows nearly 75 per cent of the kids in their care by December 2018 were apprehended because of “neglect,” a term experts say is too often linked to poverty. But financial support for at-risk families can add up to less than what is available for foster parents.
“Sadie” — a mother from the Squamish First Nation whose real name we’re withholding to protect her children’s identities — said she knew her son was struggling by the time he was eight or nine years old. She said she “begged” the ministry for support for years, but “no adequate, consistent or relevant services were provided.”
“We were pigeonholed and deemed not critical or important until [our son] was suicidal,” she wrote in our questionnaire. “No cultural supports [were] offered to us.”
Ronda Merrill-Parkin, who’s a member of the Fond du Lac First Nation, told us she reached out to ministry social workers when she started feeling depressed last year, to no avail. “I told them that I needed help, and they didn’t listen to me,” she alleges.
She says she placed her children in care on voluntary care agreements, and shortly afterward they were apprehended. That was last October; they were only returned to her in May 2019.
“We’re investing in the wrong area,” says Jennifer Chuckry, executive director of Surrounded by Cedar — one of 24 agencies delegated by the province to deliver child-welfare services to Indigenous children and families in B.C.
“We need to be investing in children and families long before there is a child-protection concern,” she says. “Instead of paying caregivers hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep kids in care.”
‘It was a bit shameful’
Patricia Douglas is a Chilliwack resident and member of the Douglas First Nation. She says that just prior to her child’s apprehension in 2015, she’d been relying on permanent disability as her main source of income, and she was struggling to afford basics like fresh fruit and vegetables. “I had to look for sales to get the staples to fill my kitchen,” she says.
For Douglas, walking her daughter to school was an exercise in shame.
“Taking her to school, making sure that she had all the clothes and shoes and food [she needed]. It was — it was a bit shameful, you know, being looked down upon.”
After her daughter was apprehended, poverty made it harder to meet the ministry’s expectations, she says.
“I had so many challenges just trying to get to the meetings on foot and on [the] bus,” she says. “[The meetings] were on the other side of town, a 40-minute walk, you know, and I didn’t have $2 for [the] bus.”
“We’re willing to give strangers just about anything to look after kids,” says Jeannine Carriere, a social work professor at the University of Victoria, who is Métis. “But we have this blockage when it comes to supporting families.”
As part of a collaborative investigation into B.C.’s child-welfare system, journalists from the Discourse, The Tyee and Star Vancouver asked parents whether they felt they were getting adequate support — financial and otherwise — before their kids were apprehended by B.C. social workers.
Of the 30 parents who filled out our questionnaire, 29 told us they weren’t getting the support they needed. Only one parent told us the question wasn’t applicable because she and her husband were “financially stable” and had “no issues.”
Data from the Ministry of Children and Family Development shows nearly 75 per cent of the kids in their care by December 2018 were apprehended because of “neglect,” a term experts say is too often linked to poverty. But financial support for at-risk families can add up to less than what is available for foster parents.
“Sadie” — a mother from the Squamish First Nation whose real name we’re withholding to protect her children’s identities — said she knew her son was struggling by the time he was eight or nine years old. She said she “begged” the ministry for support for years, but “no adequate, consistent or relevant services were provided.”
“We were pigeonholed and deemed not critical or important until [our son] was suicidal,” she wrote in our questionnaire. “No cultural supports [were] offered to us.”
Ronda Merrill-Parkin, who’s a member of the Fond du Lac First Nation, told us she reached out to ministry social workers when she started feeling depressed last year, to no avail. “I told them that I needed help, and they didn’t listen to me,” she alleges.
She says she placed her children in care on voluntary care agreements, and shortly afterward they were apprehended. That was last October; they were only returned to her in May 2019.
“We’re investing in the wrong area,” says Jennifer Chuckry, executive director of Surrounded by Cedar — one of 24 agencies delegated by the province to deliver child-welfare services to Indigenous children and families in B.C.
“We need to be investing in children and families long before there is a child-protection concern,” she says. “Instead of paying caregivers hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep kids in care.”
‘It was a bit shameful’
Patricia Douglas is a Chilliwack resident and member of the Douglas First Nation. She says that just prior to her child’s apprehension in 2015, she’d been relying on permanent disability as her main source of income, and she was struggling to afford basics like fresh fruit and vegetables. “I had to look for sales to get the staples to fill my kitchen,” she says.
For Douglas, walking her daughter to school was an exercise in shame.
“Taking her to school, making sure that she had all the clothes and shoes and food [she needed]. It was — it was a bit shameful, you know, being looked down upon.”
After her daughter was apprehended, poverty made it harder to meet the ministry’s expectations, she says.
“I had so many challenges just trying to get to the meetings on foot and on [the] bus,” she says. “[The meetings] were on the other side of town, a 40-minute walk, you know, and I didn’t have $2 for [the] bus.”
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