Pivot Report Finds Kids Lost in Child Protection System
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Pivot Report Finds Kids Lost in Child Protection System
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Pivot Legal Society |
Vancouver, February 20--The plight of British
Columbia’s poorest children is the focus of Pivot Legal Society’s new report, Broken Promises:
Parents Speak about B.C.'s Child Welfare System. Based on interviews
and affidavits from service providers, social workers, lawyers and, in
particular, parents whose children are or have been involved with the child protection
system, the report depicts a short-sighted, crisis driven child protection
system.
The report finds that children are all too often apprehended as the first form
of intervention—even where there are less disruptive alternatives that could
keep them safe. And many children are left lingering in care, cut off from
family, community and cultural roots.
These current child protection practices violate the guiding and service
delivery principles that are set out in the Ministry of Children and Family
Development’s own Child Family and Community Services Act (CFCSA), the
foundation of the child protection system. The CFCSA mandates: using the least
disruptive intervention, apprehending children only as a last resort, and
reunifying families as quickly as possible.
“We cannot continue to think that putting kids in care is the solution for
families who need help and support,” says report author and Pivot lawyer Lobat
Sadrehashemi. “Taking children into government care in order to ensure their
safety and well-being is not working. The state is a poor parent and outcomes
for children coming out of the foster care system are devastating.”
Aboriginal children and families are particularly devastated. “The child
protection system continues to fail Aboriginal families,” says the executive
director of the Aboriginal Mother Centre Society Penny Irons. “The current
child welfare system is just another version of the residential school system.”
Aboriginal children are nearly ten times more likely to be in care than
non-Aboriginal children. Less than 16 percent of these children are placed with
an Aboriginal caregiver.
Samantha, a 34-year-old aboriginal mother of two, feels that her aboriginal
roots and her own history of growing up in foster care was the basis for her
children being apprehended. She explains,
“I feel like the Ministry is using my history against me. I have been working
consistently. I do not have a drinking or drug problem. I have worked so hard
to ensure that my children grow up in a healthy and loving home. Yet my
children were still taken from me by the Ministry.”
“Perhaps the most disturbing finding,” says Darcie Bennett, co-author of the
report and sociology PHD candidate, “is that 65 percent of the parents that
took part in this study spent time in the foster care system themselves as
children. If we don’t invest in providing families with the support they need
to care for their kids in the home and break this cycle we can only expect to
see more and more children lost in the system.”
Broken Promises: Parents Speak about B.C.'s Child
Welfare System
Media release
Cover of report
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