[IPSM] Feds breaking promises to children in care

[Dan ngh!]

Feds breaking promises to children in care

by Paul Barnsley
Winspeaker Staff Writer


	The announcement last month that as much as $1 billion in new money will be 
directed to improving the health outcomes of Aboriginal people doesn't 
impress Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child 
and Family Caring Society of Canada.
	Blackstock knows the numbers on Aboriginal children in care and they're not 
good.  And she says the department of Indian Affairs and Northern 
Development has informed her that none of the recently announced money will 
make it into this area of concern.
	Windspeaker obtained a letter that Blackstock wrote Oct. 21 to Senator 
LAndon Pearson, with copies sent to Prime Minister Paul Martin and Indian 
Affairs Minister Andy Scott.  The senator is a well-respected advocate for 
children.  In 1996, she was named advisor to the minister of Foreign Affairs 
on children's rights.  In 1999, she was named personal representative of 
then-prime minister Jean Chrétien to the 2002 special session on children of 
the United Nations general assembly.
	The letter was blunt, laying out the bitter realities of the situations of 
children in care.
	"There are more First Nations children and youth in institutional care in 
Canada than there were at the height of residential school operations in the 
1940s," Blackstock wrote, calling the situation critical.  Aboriginal 
children represent 30 to 40 percent of children in child welfare care but 
only five to six percent of the child population in the country, she said.
	Figures supplied by the Department of Indian and North Affairs Canada 
(INAC) itself indicate the number of status Indian children resident on 
reserve placed in child welfare care increased a staggering 71.5 percent 
from 1995 to 2001.
	She quoted the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 
which stated that Aboriginal children are twice as likely as they 
non-Aboriginal counterparts to be reported to child welfare authorities for 
neglect.
	"Unpacking the neglect definition further, researchers found that if 
conditions of poverty, inadequate housing and substance misuse were 
addressed there would be no over-representation of Aboriginal children in 
the child welfare system," she wrote.
	Child welfare is normally a provincial responsibility but First Nation 
child welfare agencies are funded by INAC.  But they must follow provincial 
rules.
	When the Assembly of First Nations and INAC conducted a joint national 
policy review of child welfare processes with INAC in 2000, it was 
discovered that First Nation agencies, on average, receive 22 percent less 
funding per child than their mainstream, provincially-funded counterparts.
	As well as being asked to maintain provincial standards with but 
three-quarters of the funding, First Nation agencies are also being denied 
funding for services that are required by law, Blackstock told the senator.
	"Least disruptive measure," services that are provided to children at 
significant risk of maltreatment so that they can remain safely in their 
homes [examples include family counseling, guidance and assessment, in-home 
support, parent aides; child care, respite care, services for improving the 
family’s housing, mediation of disputes], are not funded at all by INAC, she 
added.  These services are, however, provided in the mainstream agencies to 
help children remain in the care of their parents and out of foster care.
	"First Nations agencies report that the numbers of children in care could 
be reduced if adequate and sustained funding for least disruptive measures 
was provided by INAC," Blackstock wrote.
	The national policy review also showed that child welfare costs are 
increasing by more than six percent per year but there has not been a cost 
of living increase in the INAC funding formula for First Nations child and 
family service agencies since 1995.
	The policy review contained 17 recommendations that would deal with these 
troubling statistics, but four years later those recommendations have not 
been acted upon.
	During a meeting with former Indian Affairs Minister Andy Mitchell, 
Blackstock was told the "government was balancing the needs of children in 
child welfare care with other pressing priorities for the department."
	"We acknowledge that the ministry does face a series of competing 
pressures; however, it is important to underscore that least disruptive 
measure are statutory and thus are not a discretionary expenditure for 
government," she told Pearson.  "The failure to fund these services has not 
only resulted in an increases in the numbers of First Nations children in 
care, it has also meant that First Nations children on reserve do not 
receive equal treatment under child welfare laws."
	That's a violation of the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and 
Freedoms and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which 
both admonish against all forms of discrimination, she added.
	And despite the lower-than-mainstream funding levels and almost a decade of 
seeing inflation erode funding levels further, there have been cuts.  The 
government has capped the amounts First Nation agencies are funded for legal 
costs.  Mitchell claimed that funding exists for legal costs but Blackstock 
reminded him the $5,000 per year received by the Mi'kmaq child and family 
services agency -- one of the largest of the 105 agencies in Canada -- is 
only a fraction of the $500,000 a year required.
	During a phone interview, Blackstock was asked why these disturbing figures 
have not been reported before.
	"A lot of this information wasn't available until very recently.  It's new 
and emerging information coming out.  But the issues in regard to the 
funding have been longstanding.  Agencies have been providing reports to the 
department about the inadequacy of the funding as well as the impacts of the 
inadequacy of the funding for a long period of time," Cindy Blackstock 
replied.
	She was asked if she saw it as reasonable to wonder why some portion of the 
recently announced $700 million for Aboriginal health shouldn't include some 
funding to fix the problems in the child welfare area.
	"I would have hoped so but I haven't seen anything about child welfare.  In 
my view there should be a connection here," she replied.  "The piece that 
the department doesn't seem to get is, number one, these are statutory 
services that are provided not to children who are at risk of maltreatment 
but who are experiencing some level of child maltreatment, who are amongst 
the most vulnerable kids in the country.  Yet they're not receiving the 
services that would keep them safe in their homes, that are available to 
every other Canadian.  We understand that some kids will need to go into 
foster care but it shouldn't be because they're not receiving services that 
are available to every other child."
	Two hundred million of the $700 million is set aside so that bureaucrats 
can solve jurisdictional squabbles and design ways to work together through 
different levels of government.  That's a big chunk of money eaten up by 
government officials that will not help address the troubling shortfalls in 
child welfare.  Blackstock said kids who are in danger should be a more 
pressing priority than bickering bureaucrats.
	"I'm not even convinced at this point that it's even on the agenda.  Within 
the department, I've never heard any of the ministers make a statement about 
child welfare.  INAC does not consider itself a children's ministry.  And 
that's the type of profile I'm trying to put on it, to say, 'Yes, you still 
are a children's ministry and of all the promises you make you should be 
keeping the ones you make to children.'"
	Some decisions to direct money to First Nation agencies may be affected by 
the fact that a couple have had highly publicize problems dealing with 
financial accountability and political infighting.
	"We don't have a monopoly on that, you know.  I'm against bad practices 
everywhere," she said.
	There have also been problems with some mainstream children's aid groups 
"but that doesn't mean you quash every provincial children's aid society," 
she added.
	"The other stereotype that's out there is that these kids are already 
getting all the perks.  Look at this big $8 billion, etc.  That's where 
we've really tried to put our research, to debunk that myth and show that 
not only are these kids receiving 22 percent less federal services but 
they're not receiving any provincial child welfare services in most cases, 
no municipal services for quality of life like rec centres and libraries, 
which mean a lot to children," she said.
	And support services provided off reserve simply don't exist on reserve.
	"They don't get access to most of the voluntary sector resources, that 
provide food banks, parent support centres, camps for kids.  It's funded to 
the tune of $90 billion a year and our research shows that First Nations 
kids on reserve receive almost none of that," she added.  "You don't miss 
what you don't have.  But when you start to think about just equality of 
life support that people don't have on reserves, that we take for granted 
off reserve, it's really chocking.  And its no wonder, on the basis of that, 
that we have so many kids in care.  I think if we did that to every Canadian 
kid the numbers of kids in care would skyrocket."

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