10 Chapter 10 Canada and the Foster Care System

Something that really stood out while reading The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal was the foster care system in Canada as well as Adoption and Child welfare. Foster care and the foster system consists of a temporary living situation for children who have parents who are unable to take care of them for one reason or another. There are multiple circumstances where children could be put into the foster system. Some of these circumstances include a family crisis such as unsafe parents, neglect, or just that the parents are unable to take care of the children. When thinking of the foster care system in Canada, people often wonder why children are in foster care, the challenges that children in the foster care system face, and the effect that being in the foster care system has on children. I chose this topic because I felt that it was discussed in the novel while still leaving a large room for interest. I enjoyed learning about how different systems for welfare and foster care took place within Canada and the novel. When looking at the connection between the foster care system in Canada and the book The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal, we are able to see that the author was able to portray and include some accurate descriptions of how the foster care system truly is represented in Canada. We can use the book as well to gain a deeper understanding of how the foster care system effects children in it. The connection between the Novel and the Foster Care System show us the effects that Child welfare and foster care in Canada has on people.

When trying to connect the idea of foster care to the novel The Lost Ones I noticed in an article that “The First Nations Child and Family Services Caring Society of Canada Estimates that Indigenous children comprise 30-40 percent of kids in care even though the aboriginal population is less than five percent of the total population of Canada” (Huffington Post). While The Lost Ones has a lot of different topics and themes in it, something that is extremely relevant to the story is the fact that it discusses indigenous people in Canada and the effect that it has on their life. There is one quote that I found in the novel that really stood out to me when discussing the topic of indigenous women that I felt could potentially relate to this topic. “There’s a whole highway in the north of the province stained by the tears of indigenous girls and women who weren’t blond enough to matter, whose families are still looking for justice” (Kamal 41). This quote shows how indigenous people, and women in specific are faced with injustices and Canada every single day. This idea can relate to the foster care system considering the statistics I have encountered thus far.

While looking at an article by the Huffington post, I noticed that there was a large of number of children in Canada who are in foster care. I began to wonder myself why there were so many children who were in it. According to the article, “Canada does not keep reliable national statistics on kids in care, instead relying on provincial reporting” (Huffington Post). This is concerning because each province in Canada relies on a different system and includes different policies when considering children in care. In 2007, reports counted over 65,000 Canadian children in foster care. More recent reports tell us that Canada has one of the highest rates of children in foster care in the world. When it comes to how and why children are placed in childcare, we can see that Canada heavily favors a “child safety” approach. This basically means that when a child is identified to be in a home that is “at risk” they are removed from that home. There are foster homes as well as other types of placements that children are placed into. These children can be facing neglect and abuse and this is why they would often be seen being removed from their original homes.

I began to wonder myself what some of the challenges that these children in the foster care system face. I found a news sources called the “Chronicle of Social Change” that directed me to an article that discusses child welfare in Canada. To begin with, In Canada, “there is no federal oversight of child welfare… it is all at the provincial level” (the chronicles of social change). In the united states, each state is in charge of protecting children from abuse and neglect and making sure the children are safe. This is a federal oversight that can allow for a data tracking resource that is nationwide. This is not something that is applicable to or available in Canada. It is much more difficult in Canada to get data on child welfare systems. In Canada when looking at the foster care system, we can see that it is extremely flawed. “we’ve got kids being placed in homes where the home is over the allowable number of children. This is just wrong and it is dangerous.” (The Canadian Press). These are challenges that Canada faces when it comes to the wellbeing of the children that they are supposed to be caring for. These children are exposed to neglect and abuse to begin with and are now being placed into homes that will also negatively affect them. With specific challenges that children are faced with in the foster care system, we can see that often, children are moved from one home to another or living in large group setting that often aren’t a fit place for these children.

For the children that are living in these situations such as foster homes or group homes or even those adopted, there are often some effects that take place on the children. Because these children can be constantly moving from one place to another, it could most likely effect the way that they perform in school, build friendships and family relationships. We can see this in Nora’s birth daughter and her actions in the novel. In addition to the effects that being in foster care has on their school life, I would suspect that there is a large impact on the children’s mental health. It must be hard for the children to be able to trust adults or deal with trauma on their own that they have experienced such as this abuse or neglect. This can then effect their developmental skills and could potential cause damage beyond repair. “Kids who grow up in the system are not expected to do well. That’s a big part of why they don’t” (Macleans). This quote to me is a great representation of the how the challenges of the foster care system in Canada effects children.

The foster care system is something that was definitely touched on in the novel The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal. We can see that Nora was effected by her experiences with child welfare, foster systems and adoption. Throughout this paper, I was able to gain a stronger understanding of why children are placed into the foster system, the challenges that they face and the effect that it has on them. This was all while relating it to the novel and including aspects of Indigenous people and their rights within the foster system as well.

Works cited

Brownell, Marni. “Why Does Canada Have So Many Kids In Foster Care?” HuffPost Canada, HuffPost Canada, 9 Nov. 2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/marni-brownell/foster-care-in-canada_b_8491318.html.

“Canadian Foster Care in Crisis, Experts Say | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 19 Feb. 2012, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-foster-care-in-crisis-experts-say-1.1250543.

Kamal, Sheena. The Lost Ones. William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.

Treleaven, Sarah. “Life after Foster Care in Canada.” Macleans.ca, 22 Nov. 2019, https://www.macleans.ca/society/life-after-foster-care-in-canada/.

“What Is Foster Care?” The Annie E. Casey Foundation, https://www.aecf.org/blog/what-is-foster-care/.

Ziminski, Devon, et al. “Child Welfare in Canada: More Federal Assistance, Less Oversight Compared to U.S.” The Chronicle of Social Change, 6 July 2016, https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/news-2/a-tale-of-two-systems-minimal-oversight-of-child-welfare-in-canada-compared-to-u-s/19433.