Reimagining Child Welfare Systems in Canada – Part II (original) (raw)

2018, Journal of Law and Social Policy

Contributions to volume 28:1 of the JLSP offered poignant insights into the root sources of the overrepresentation of Indigenous and African Canadian children and families in state child welfare systems, highlighting the role of poverty, racism, discrimination, and ongoing colonial violence. The contributions to this volume, 28:2, offer insights to deepen our understanding of the roots of overrepresentation, as well as concrete strategies with the potential to dramatically improve outcomes for children, families, and communities. As with volume 28:1, the contributions here arise from a symposium, Reimagining Child Welfare Systems in Canada, held 21 October 2016 and co-hosted by the JLSP, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, the African Canadian Legal Clinic, and The Action Group on Access to Justice (TAG) of the Law Society of Ontario. The symposium brought together community members, practitioners, academics, and students to explore how state child welfare systems have failed Indigenous and African Canadian communities and to share alternatives that communities have implemented, planned, and/or imagined. As noted in our Introduction to volume 28:1, a consistent refrain during the Symposium was that communities impacted and harmed by existing child welfare practices must be the ones to lead change, for it is within these communities that the experience of inter-generational trauma is lived daily and where sources of culturally relevant knowledge have been sustained and nurtured. Three of the contributions in volume 28:2, by Naiomi Metallic, Jennifer Clarke et al, and Isaac Yoryor, take up this clarion call, offering community-grounded strategies for change. Naiomi Walqwan Metallic, in "A Human Right to Self-Government over First Nations Child and Family Services and Beyond: Implications of the Caring Society Case," provides a detailed account over time of the role of the federal and provincial governments in the provision of child welfare services on reserve. Through her review of the evolution of the First Nations Child and Family Services Program (FNCFS Program) of the federal government, Metallic catalogues a range of deeply troubling features that have led to the widespread removal of children from their families and communities, undermined community control, and deepened poverty. Turning to the decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in the Caring Society case, Metallic notes that while much of the attention given to this decision has focused on its finding that the federal government's underfunding of child welfare services on reserve constitutes discrimination, critically important are two further propositions: "that, as a matter of human rights, (1) First Nations are entitled to child and family services that meet their cultural, historical, and geographical needs and circumstances; and (2) such services cannot be assimilative in design or effect." 1 As Metallic argues, these propositions in the Tribunal's decision ground a further claim: that First Nations have a human right to self-government, for it is only through community designed and controlled services that the "cultural, historical and geographic needs of First Nations communities" will be appropriately addressed. Moreover, Metallic argues, there is no reason why this logic should apply to child welfare services only; rather it is equally applicable to all First Nations essential services. Consistent with the analysis