The Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan is building its own child welfare program in an effort to keep Indigenous children out of the traditional foster care system.
The program is the first of its kind in Canada.
Nicole Cook, associate CEO of the Chief Red Bear Children’s Lodge, told CTV’sxjmtzyw Your Morning the child welfare program is rooted in the idea of keeping children connected to their culture and community throughout family hardships.
Cook said Wednesday that the program uses a "circle of care model" for those families that are struggling, with its main focus on prevention services.
"We are hoping to keep the families at home… and that would mean that we will help support the family before they become into crisis," Cook said. "If they’re low on food or they’re struggling financially, we want to jump in there and support them so that the families are successful [and] the children aren’t apprehended."
Cook said the model allows Indigenous families to decide what their own care plan looks like and what they need to succeed as a family, with the support of Chief Red Bear Children’s Lodge’s resources behind them.
"We will surround that family with… somebody in early learning culture, potentially health care, so that they’re surrounded by all of the people that they might need in order to achieve this," she said.
The program is the first to make use of Bill C-92, which gives jurisdiction over child welfare back to First Nations. The federal legislation was passed in June 2019.
"What we’re looking at doing is probably exactly opposite of what social services has been doing thus far," Cook said. "Basically, we feel like this system might not be working especially for Indigenous families."
According to data from Statistics Canada, roughly 52 per cent of children in foster care are Indigenous, despite Indigenous children comprising less than eight per cent of Canada’s total child population.
Cook said Canada’s foster care systems have been particularly harmful to Indigenous children and families by taking them away from their culture, spanning from the creation of residential schools to present day foster care.
Cowessess First Nation was in the spotlight last year, after experts reported 751 unmarked graves at the site of the former Marieval Residential School. Numerous sites have been found at residential schools across Canada since.
Cook explained that the Chief Red Bear Children’s Lodge is not just a child welfare system, but a family care system.
She said Chief Red Bear Children’s Lodge also offers a program to help those families torn apart by Canada’s foster care system.
"We’ll take the whole family together and we will help teach them how to be a family again, how to re instill the culture in the program, as well as teaching them how to live in the world again," Cook said.
She added that this includes labour skills, as well as financial aid and help finding housing.
So far, Cook says the initiative has been successful for some families with no children currently in care on the Cowessess reserve.
