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Irwin Elman is Ontario’s Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth. He spoke to us about how Ontario cares for Indigenous children who have been placed into group homes, often hundreds, even thousands of kilometres away from their families and home communities.
Last spring, after several fatal fires at group homes, you urged the provincial government to count the number of First Nations children living in group homes in southern Ontario. Have you received answers?
I know they said they were going to begin tracking, but I don’t have an answer. There’s an over-representation of Indigenous children in care in Ontario. It’s around 20 per cent. It’s not rocket science. I understand there’s no computer tracking system where they can hit a key and get a number. But they do have the ability to ask each welfare agency, ‘Let us know how many children from the far North are placed in care in the South.’ They could know by tomorrow.
Why is it important to know that number?
Because the moment they start asking for information, it will indicate that they’re willing to try to do something about it. What I hear all the time is about big plans and frameworks and transformations. And you’ll hear about the blueprint to change residential care in the province, which we push for and support. But you also hear it’s going to take seven years.
READ: This mother travelled 2,000 kilometres to find her missing daughter
It doesn’t take seven years to find out the number of Indigenous children who are in care kilometres away from home. Once you know the number … you can start to do something about it case by case. You can say, ‘Tell me more about this kid.’ If she needs a home in Kenora and not thousands of kilometres away, how do we provide that home? … When it becomes about individual children and we focus on one child and we bring all the resources of our provincial government to bear and to support that one child, we can do it. It doesn’t take seven years.
What do you hear from the children and youth who’ve contacted your office as their advocate?
They wish that someone had done something to help their families. They’re brought into care and it’s as if, according to the government, their life begins when they’re brought into care. Because no one spends any time trying to support the family or helping with the things the family is dealing with. Even though they may have had a very difficult time at home, they still feel like, ‘Well, that’s my family.’
The other thing is that when she turns 18 and is dumped out of the system, guess where she goes? Back to her family. Young people are saying, if they’ve done some work in care to try to be better and healthier, they wish to heavens that someone had helped their family do some work.
I’ve heard people talk about ‘The Millennium Scoop’ to describe the number of Indigenous children in group homes or foster care. Have you heard that term?
I haven’t heard that term. There’s a lot of cynicism that speaks to the experience of young people in the system. We hear from young people who hear workers call the group home ‘storage’ And that’s how many young people feel it is. So far away from home. So far to go because it’s the last place the agency placing them can find. It’s the last stop before they’re just dumped out. It’s just a place to store them.
I am always on the ministry’s case, but these aren’t bad people out to harm kids. I just think that people are caught up in a system that sometimes loses sight that this is about children. I can’t tell you how often I hear from workers who say, ‘This is not what I went to school for.’
In a recent case in Ottawa, a 14-year-old girl ran away from her group home and by the time she was found, she was being groomed for the sex trade. Is taking someone out of their community and into care any better than what they would face at home?
To be clear, I don’t know about this case. But if you hear this 14-year-old’s story, you cannot live your life again as if you’ve never heard it. You can do whatever else you want with it, but you can’t pretend you don’t know it. And once you know about that one story, I believe you will do something. Then you go to the next one.
What would you wish people to take from the Ottawa case?
It’s not about a bad kid, it’s not about a bad mother. … It’s about two people caught up in not having what they need. And I’m sure, in this case, you could trace the legacy to residential schools in that family’s life. They are two, everyday people living extraordinary lives, caught up in a system that, over years, does not provide them with what they need to do well.
That 14-year-old is every bit as capable and has every bit of potential as every child in this province does. And she deserves to live her life in the light of her full potential and she’s not being able to do that because we are deciding we can’t figure out how to serve her better. That’s a problem.
查看原文...
Last spring, after several fatal fires at group homes, you urged the provincial government to count the number of First Nations children living in group homes in southern Ontario. Have you received answers?
I know they said they were going to begin tracking, but I don’t have an answer. There’s an over-representation of Indigenous children in care in Ontario. It’s around 20 per cent. It’s not rocket science. I understand there’s no computer tracking system where they can hit a key and get a number. But they do have the ability to ask each welfare agency, ‘Let us know how many children from the far North are placed in care in the South.’ They could know by tomorrow.
Why is it important to know that number?
Because the moment they start asking for information, it will indicate that they’re willing to try to do something about it. What I hear all the time is about big plans and frameworks and transformations. And you’ll hear about the blueprint to change residential care in the province, which we push for and support. But you also hear it’s going to take seven years.
READ: This mother travelled 2,000 kilometres to find her missing daughter
It doesn’t take seven years to find out the number of Indigenous children who are in care kilometres away from home. Once you know the number … you can start to do something about it case by case. You can say, ‘Tell me more about this kid.’ If she needs a home in Kenora and not thousands of kilometres away, how do we provide that home? … When it becomes about individual children and we focus on one child and we bring all the resources of our provincial government to bear and to support that one child, we can do it. It doesn’t take seven years.
What do you hear from the children and youth who’ve contacted your office as their advocate?
They wish that someone had done something to help their families. They’re brought into care and it’s as if, according to the government, their life begins when they’re brought into care. Because no one spends any time trying to support the family or helping with the things the family is dealing with. Even though they may have had a very difficult time at home, they still feel like, ‘Well, that’s my family.’
The other thing is that when she turns 18 and is dumped out of the system, guess where she goes? Back to her family. Young people are saying, if they’ve done some work in care to try to be better and healthier, they wish to heavens that someone had helped their family do some work.
I’ve heard people talk about ‘The Millennium Scoop’ to describe the number of Indigenous children in group homes or foster care. Have you heard that term?
I haven’t heard that term. There’s a lot of cynicism that speaks to the experience of young people in the system. We hear from young people who hear workers call the group home ‘storage’ And that’s how many young people feel it is. So far away from home. So far to go because it’s the last place the agency placing them can find. It’s the last stop before they’re just dumped out. It’s just a place to store them.
I am always on the ministry’s case, but these aren’t bad people out to harm kids. I just think that people are caught up in a system that sometimes loses sight that this is about children. I can’t tell you how often I hear from workers who say, ‘This is not what I went to school for.’
In a recent case in Ottawa, a 14-year-old girl ran away from her group home and by the time she was found, she was being groomed for the sex trade. Is taking someone out of their community and into care any better than what they would face at home?
To be clear, I don’t know about this case. But if you hear this 14-year-old’s story, you cannot live your life again as if you’ve never heard it. You can do whatever else you want with it, but you can’t pretend you don’t know it. And once you know about that one story, I believe you will do something. Then you go to the next one.
What would you wish people to take from the Ottawa case?
It’s not about a bad kid, it’s not about a bad mother. … It’s about two people caught up in not having what they need. And I’m sure, in this case, you could trace the legacy to residential schools in that family’s life. They are two, everyday people living extraordinary lives, caught up in a system that, over years, does not provide them with what they need to do well.
That 14-year-old is every bit as capable and has every bit of potential as every child in this province does. And she deserves to live her life in the light of her full potential and she’s not being able to do that because we are deciding we can’t figure out how to serve her better. That’s a problem.
查看原文...
