Youth Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond

[maryjane48]

B.C.’s child protection system has a problem that money can’t solve: It is riddled with racism and indifference.


Racism is “a very powerful word to use,” Turpel-Lafond admits.

“But when you see that it’s a pattern of girls — and some boys — but repeatedly aboriginal girls on a known pathway ... (and) the type of response that they receive. I don’t know how else to explain it except to call it institutional racism.”

She says she used the word deliberately — not to make people angry, but to provoke change.


Stephanie Cadieux, the minister of children and family development, rejects the characterization of a racist system riddled with professional indifference and the suggestion that hundreds of kids are in urgent need of help. (She says the number is more like 10 or 20 kids and has promised a rapid response team to deal with them.)

Attorney General Suzanne Anton hasn’t either, even though Turpel-Lafond once again pointed out that officials and professionals breached their legal obligation to report a child in need of protection.

In this rich, supposedly civil society, it seems impossible that any child is left to endure such inexcusable, unimaginable horrors; left to suffer such severe neglect that if the parent were a person and not “the system,” they would be criminally charged.

Perhaps the system isn’t racist (although the statistics overwhelmingly point that way). Still, maintaining the status quo ought to be unthinkable.


http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Daphne ... story.html

[Rosemary1]

Not to underestimate the very complicated and difficult issues faced by those in charge of protecting children in care and those of the children themselves. We have seen abject failures of one kind or another for decades involving such childrent at risk - non-aboriginal and aboriginal alike. There are just more aboriginal children in care - but this is not about why they are in care. That's a whole other discussion. This is about failure by the agencies charged with their protection.

It's not racism or blatant indifference. It seems to be more about a system buried under the weight of a massive bureaucracy, lack of clear accountability, failure of communication, and lack of integrated programs and policies across agencies, and what may be a sense of defeat amongst some workers (as opposed to indifference). Racial politics do play an increasing role in some cases adding another layer to issues. Nor do aboriginal agencies fare much better when it comes to dealing with some of the issues.

In short, we have a system in which the needs and voices of children in care and young people leaving care are too easily lost.

[Piecemaker]

In BC we do not have any way (except for jail) to hold a youth who chooses not to stay in a safe place. If they are addicted to meth or some other drug or alcohol it's near impossible to engage them in any sort of supportive service.
Often these youth have brain damage from being exposed to alcohol and/or drugs before they were born. And, or, they have experienced severe trauma throughout their childhood. (Sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, witness violence, death of a parent/caregiver/sibling, in and out of foster care, and so on.) Their brains simply cannot handle it all. They have difficulty in school and tend to stop attending, emotional (mental health) issues and do not attach easily to supportive adults. (Partly, I think because peers are important to teens and they are at the developmental stage when they are trying to establish themselves as separate from their parents.)
I think racism is not the correct word to use. Today's issues are the result of past racist policies such as residential schools and "the 60's Scoop".
There is a reason the government has been putting funding into programs that target the 0 to age 6 children and their caregivers.