When a child is taken into the province’s care
How is it that a child comes to be taken away from his or her parent?
Broadly speaking, there are a myriad of reasons, but the most obvious, as laid out in Ontario’s Child and Family Services Act, is intended to be for the child’s protection.
The child may have suffered physical harm from the person in charge of them, that person may have failed to provide adequate care or supervision, or the investigator may have detected “a pattern of neglect in caring for, providing for, supervising or protecting the child.”
Children can also be removed if they’re judged to be at risk of physical harm or if they they’ve been sexually molested or are at risk of being molested. Children with complex medical needs can be removed if it’s believed their caregiver can’t meet those needs. A child who has suffered or is at risk of suffering “emotional harm” can also be placed in care.
The same act acknowledges that special consideration be given if the child “is an Indian or native person,” including “the importance, in recognition of the uniqueness of Indian and native culture, heritage and traditions, of preserving the child’s cultural identity.”
“Special consideration” notwithstanding, Indigenous youth make up an overwhelming proportion of children in provincial care. In Manitoba, 90 per cent of the children in care are Indigenous, according to the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs’ First Nations Family Advocate Office.
In Ontario, the number of Indigenous children in care and the number who are removed from their home communities isn’t even tracked, although the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services said last spring it would begin to do so.
The federal government has allocated more money for social services in Indigenous communities, but a 2016 ruling from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal said that funding is still far less than what is spent on children in non-Indigenous communities. The tribunal has handed the federal government three non-compliance orders since then, said Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.
“No child should have to leave their community because the government of Canada provides their family less of an opportunity to succeed,” Blackstock said in an emailed statement. “It makes you wonder if Canada learned anything from the residential school tragedy.”
Privacy laws means the public seldom hears about Indigenous youth in care, but there are exceptions — usually tragic.
In April, 13-year-old Amy Owen was found dead from suicide in the group home where she was living in Ottawa. Owen was from Poplar Hill First Nation, 250 kilometres north of Kenora, and had been in and out of foster care since 2015. Owen had been in a group home in Prescott, but had been transferred to a home in Ottawa to be closer to the mental health care services she needed.
Just four days after Owen’s death, another Indigenous teen, 16-year-old Courtney Scott who was originally from the Fort Albany First Nation, died in a house fire at her group home on Montreal Road in Orléans.