theQuestion: Should the province get out of the business of child welfare?*
Scathing reports from child welfare critics are not going to prevent future tragedies as that which befell 18-year-old Alex Gervais. The Metis teenager took his own life after being bounced around in government care since the age of seven and, according to Bernard Richard, B.C.’s acting representative for children and youth, the provincial government is to blame.
In a news conference releasing a report titled Broken Promises: Alex’s Story, Richard detailed how Gervais “drifted through the care” of B.C.’s Ministry for Children and Family Development and was “abandoned by the system.”
The overriding narrative is Gervais took his own life as an act of desperation after B.C.’s child welfare system abandoned the young man by placing responsibility for his care into the hands of private contractors. This charge is pure sophistry.
It would do good to remind those in the field of social work that it is an impossibility to know what is going on in the minds of people who decide to take their own lives. Assigning blame for a suicide to a third party is perilous and, in this case, a treacherous political attack. I have no doubt every word of this report is written with the upcoming provincial election in mind.
Social workers are prone to hubris. Each day they make fateful decisions based on their interpretation of what parents and children are thinking. No situation is clear cut and the law of unintended consequences reigns supreme when removing a child from the parental home.
The government should simply get out of the business of child welfare and hand total responsibility back to the immediate or extended family. Failing that, communities where these children live should step in. Local organizations, volunteer groups, schools, churches, charities and aboriginal communities would rise to the challenge if the province removed the fail safe and abrogated its responsibility in this area.
Most disturbingly, it could be argued that B.C.’s child welfare system is largely perpetuating a policy of paternalism towards aboriginals. According to a 2015 governmental review, out of the more than 7,200 children and youth in care in B.C., 60% were aboriginal. And the proportion is growing.
It’s unsettling to consider we respect aboriginal nationhood, ancestral land rights and self-government yet nearly two-thirds of all children and youth the government removes from parental homes are aboriginal. Why is that?
Let’s place the responsibility and resources back where they belong at the local community level.