Community opens youth group home
From the moment Ochapowace First Nation Chief Margaret Bear walked into her community’s new youth home, she knew it was going to have a profound effect.
The children ran up to her, shouting “Kokum!” (grandmother in Cree). It was a perfect example of the connections that will come from keeping children in the care of the community, Bear said.
“That kinship is a special connection we have in our culture,” she said. “There’s a sense of family connection that a child has with their community and it’s important to instil that value of belonging.
“It’s important that the children learn who they are, where they come from, in their home community.”
The home, which had a soft open a few weeks ago, provides emergency care for up to 10 children ages 12 and under. While it wasn’t completely ready to open at the time, concerns about finding placements during the COVID -19 pandemic response bumped that date up.
As an emergency home, the goal is always to support parents and hopefully reconnect families, Headwoman Shaya Watson said. Eventually, it could be scaled up to a family support centre and provide parents with life skills programming and services.
Watson, who is in charge of the First Nation’s Social Development Portfolio, oversaw the development of the home. The impetus to create it came two years ago after seeing a child forced to leave the community, she said.
“That case stayed with me. At that time I knew that we needed to do better, that we have to do better,” she said. “I’m a mother, I have three children, but I have a very good support system and that doesn’t always happen.
“I think that was my push, was to make sure these little kids have that support all the time.”
The youth home is part of sweeping reform taking place across Canada in order to honour the right of the First Nations to have jurisdiction over their own child welfare. While Ochapowace works toward drafting its own child welfare act, the home is being operated through partnership with the Yorkton Tribal Council.
About 17 members of the community will be hired on to work at the home, Watson said, including land-based childcare workers to help connect the children with their culture. As children are the core of a community, investing in healthier families means Ochapowace First Nation grows stronger as a whole, Bear said.
“The children will learn about their culture, their language, customs and traditions,” she said. “And they will also know who they are related to, who their family is.
“When we feel good about who we are, when we feel proud of who we are, we do well in whatever it is that we do.”