6 Chapter 6 Foster Care Struggles for Indigenous People in Canada

The foster care system within Canada is one of their government’s biggest issues. Housing conditions and placements within this country are horrible and quite often over looked. The homes that children are placed in are often over populated or lack safety checks (Canadian Press). The conditions that any child in a Canadian foster care has to cope with heavily affects their lives, even notably after being released from these homes. Nora Watts, from the novel The Lost Ones, by Sheena Kamal, would be better understood with insight into the life as a indigenous foster child. She never had a nurturing home environment or raised with consistent care. As a result, she became completely independent, but also jaded and untrusting.    

Nora’s experience in The Lost Ones highlights the long lasting impact on an indigenous person who has been moved around the Canadian foster care system. One of the biggest questions asked in regards to these foster care systems might be; why are there so many indigenous children within the system? The answer to this is the high poverty rates. The high poverty rates among Native Americans have left many children orphaned and in this system, like Nora and her sister. In the article “B.C.’s Focus on Foster Care Neglects Need to Support Struggling Families,” Cherise Seucharan states, “apprehensions occur more often in poor families headed by lone mothers.” This helps us understand Nora’s case a little better, as Nora’s mother was alone after the father committed suicide. The Canadian government does not do enough to keep indigenous families out of the poverty that causes them to be in crises, leading to them losing their children. Nora said that in her childhood as an indigenous orphan, she was always in need. She lost her father and the lone mother was raising two girls on her own. This particular quote demonstrates that Nora’s indigenous roots and the fact that she and her sister were raised in poverty by one parent put her at high risk even before she entered a flawed foster care system.

Children get placed in these foster homes for a number of different reasons. In the article, “Why does Canada have so Many Kids in Foster Care” by Marni Brownell, she articulates the reason behind the quick removal of children from their homes is driven from their “child safety” approach to children welfare. Each province’s child welfare service has the ability to remove a child from their home if the living situation is deemed unsafe. One of the biggest issues within this process, though, is that Canada does a bad job at listing the number of children that are placed in these homes each year. With reports being made by each individual providence and each of their child welfare policies being different, it is hard to calculate accurate numbers representing this yearly number of placements (Brownell). In Another article “Canadian Foster Care in Crisis, Experts Say” by the Canadian Press on CBC news stated:

The lack of data means there’s no way the provinces, which fund foster care and often stake decisions on statistics and outcomes, can compare themselves against each other for best practices, “It’s impossible to create good policy without good numbers.”

The system is poorly managed with flawed accounting of how many children are being served. Without accurate data, it is impossible to provide adequate services to each province. While the “child safety first” mindset seems nice on paper, it arguably is a lot worse due to some of the poor qualities children are placed in.

Some of the low quality placements that children are often placed in can be avoided. Many kids have been assigned homes that either haven’t passed the required safety checks or already have too many children in that one location. No child should be forced to live in unhuman circumstances, so the government needs to do more in paying attention. Required safety standards need to be set clear and followed to insure greater livings for all foster children.  On top of this, families are noticeably less willing to have children placed in their homes because “foster-care rates tend to range between $23 and just over $30 a day (Brownell).” My own family houses two wealthy foreign exchange students from China for less than $30 per day per student. While it is simply nice to house these students, they receive financial support from their families in China; this money that is received would not be enough to successfully raise them. So, it makes sense that volunteer family numbers are depleting, because as the author of the article agrees, “nobody raises a kid on $30 a day.”

In The Lost Ones, Nora was treated poorly by her home owners. The fact that she said “Eat everything on your plate. You never know when they will feel like feeding you again (149)” indicates that she was deprived of a healthy childhood. This is common in real life with Canadian foster homes. As results, living in these homes can be mentally damaging. In the article  “High Prevalence of Exposure to the Child Welfare System among Street-Involved Youth in a Canadian Setting: Implications for Policy and Practice” the author discusses the issues of foster care. The author Brittany Barker states, “data indicates that many youth continue to struggle emotionally, physically, academically, and behaviorally during and after care.” The mental tole of foster homes is unhealthy for children and can be prevented with better government funding.

Rather than being so quick to remove children from their families homes, the government could do a better job supporting struggling families. By providing more support financially, children can stay with their families. In February of 2019,  The British Columbia government started providing higher support for extended family members who are caring for the children that cannot live with their parents (Seucharan). It is one thing to say these indigenous nations are getting aid, but it is another to say this is even adequate to provide the relief they really need. The Bill C-262 would force Canada to live up to the standards set forth by the United Nations. Abruptly removing any child from their home does not seem necessary. This Bill is what Canada needs; intensive home support to try and remove risks while the child stays with the parents, will fix the issue and maintain the longevity of the family.

To understand the plight of an indigenous orphan in the Canadian foster care system is to understand the basis of the character, Nora Watts. Nora’s situation, in which her mother was left to raise her alone, is not uncommon and is one of the main reasons children get taken and brought into child care homes. Indigenous families who live in poverty rates that are significantly higher than the national average are particularly vulnerable to the problems with foster care. With the governments impulsive decisions to remove children for their “safety”, they often are doing more harm than good. With Canadian foster homes unreliable with their background checks and the fact that after care, children struggle emotionally, the government needs to change their approach in “helping.” Canada should focus on providing  financial aid and other preemptive assistance to a family in need before they are forced into foster care. The goal should be to keep families together rather than the flawed solution of foster cure. Prevention is more effective than cures.

Works Cited

Barker, Brittany, et al. “High Prevalence of Exposure to the Child Welfare System among Street-Involved Youth in a Canadian Setting: Implications for Policy and Practice.” BMC Public Health, BioMed Central, 24 Feb. 2014, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3936938/.

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

Canadian Press. “Canadian Foster Care in Crisis, Experts Say | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 19 Feb. 2012, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-foster-care-in-crisis-experts-say-1.1250543 (Links to an external site.).

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

Seucharan, Cherise, et al. “B.C.’s Focus on Foster Care Neglects Need to Support Struggling Families, Experts Say.” Thestar.com, 13 June 2019, www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/06/13/bcs-focus-on-foster-care-neglects-need-to-support-struggling-families-experts-say.html.

Simons, Paula. “Simons: Don’t Look Away from These Children – They Deserve More.” Www.edmontonjournal.com, 25 July 2014, www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/simons+look+away+from+these+children+they+deserve+more/10060625/story.html.