SCYR Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Sub-Committee on Children and Youth at Risk of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

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1520

The Chair (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.))

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1525

Mr. Peter Dudding (Executive Director, Child Welfare League of Canada; and Co-Director, Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare)

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross (Board Member and Secretary, Adoption Council of Canada)

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dudding

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dudding

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dudding

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1530

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1535

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1540

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dudding

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1545

The Chair

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller (Director of Education and Communication, National Youth in Care Network)

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1550

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1555

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1600

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1605

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross

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1610

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1615

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross

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1620

The Chair

Mr. Larry Spencer (Regina--Lumsden--Lake Centre, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

Mr. Larry Spencer

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

Mr. Larry Spencer

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

Mr. Larry Spencer

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

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1625

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1630

The Chair

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

The Chair

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ)

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1635

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

Ms. Monique Guay

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

Ms. Monique Guay

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1640

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dudding

Ms. Elspeth Ross

The Chair

Mr. Alan Tonks (York South--Weston, Lib.)

Mr. Peter Dudding

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1645

Mr. Tonks

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

The Chair

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1650

Ms. Elspeth Ross

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross

The Chair

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1655

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

Mr. Peter Dudding

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dudding

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

The Chair

Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller

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1700

The Chair

Ms. Elspeth Ross

The Chair

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CANADA

Sub-Committee on Children and Youth at Risk of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

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NUMBER 021

l

1st SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

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[English]

    The Chair (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.)): Welcome, everybody.

    I see three people, including a member of the opposition. We can now begin our work. Others may join us as their commitments allow.

    I should warn everybody that there is the slight chance of a vote, which may be called anytime between 3:30 and 5:30. I think that is what I heard. It would be a half-hour bell, so we wouldn't have to rush off. We would have a chance to finish that round of questioning. It might be difficult to get us all back, but we'll do our best. I just wanted to warn you that in this place it's never possible to predict entirely what's going to go on. But with luck we'll get through this.

    Let me welcome our guests from the Adoption Council of Canada, the National Youth in Care Network, and the Child Welfare League of Canada.

    Just to locate what we're looking for here and to put it in some kind of context for our guests, this subcommittee works in a horizontal manner. It looks at government departments right across the board when they have something to do with kids. As a group we tend to focus on early childhood development, and we've tended to do it for the mainstream population. Collectively, we've had some degree of success in getting certain items put forward in the Speech from the Throne and the budget.

    About a year ago the subcommittee decided to focus its work this year on the state of aboriginal children. After further reflection we have essentially decided to divide our work into four chunks, and we're really only at the first chunk. The first section is zero to six on reserve, the next section is pre-natal to six off reserve, the third section is six to twelve on reserve, and the fourth section is six to twelve off reserve,

    We realize that in some ways these are artificial lines. Kids grow up and move along, and things that happen earlier in life have an implication for what happens to kids later in life. Those kids may not stay in one place. They may move off reserve.

    As our initial study is focusing on the zero to six population on reserve, we're particularly anxious to get a feeling from the witnesses about how the situation for young aboriginal children on reserve plays out in the various organizations of which they're a part. Because things happen here, there are consequences there. I hope that was the context you were more or less given in terms of what we want to hear from you about.

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     I have a batting order here. It's in alphabetical order by your institutions. I don't know whether you've had any chance to talk amongst yourselves, or maybe we should just go down the list.

    Mr. Peter Dudding (Executive Director, Child Welfare League of Canada; and Co-Director, Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare): Just go down the list, John. We didn't talk amongst ourselves.

    The Chair: All right. So it will be Elspeth Ross from the Adoption Council of Canada, Matthew Geigen-Miller from the National Youth in Care Network, and then Peter Dudding from the Child Welfare League of Canada.

    Let's start with Elspeth.

    Ms. Elspeth Ross (Board Member and Secretary, Adoption Council of Canada): I was going to suggest that I go last because adoption might be part of a solution for some of the concerns about children in care. If we wanted to look first at the situation in care, I'd be willing to go later.

    The Chair: Why don't we do that, then.

    I don't know whether, between you two, it makes any sense to go one way or the other.

    Mr. Peter Dudding: Matt just leaned over and said he was hoping to follow me, so I'll go first.

    The Chair: The best laid plans of every chairman go right down the....

    Mr. Peter Dudding: We have an order.

    The Chair: We have an order and it's the complete reverse of what I suggested.

    One of the things we've heard from other witnesses, which was startling to those of us who hadn't thought about it, is how care has become not a good solution necessarily but a solution that allows certain aboriginal children and their families to have access to programs they couldn't have if they stayed with their families. This struck us as one of the great paradoxes and sadnesses that we could imagine.

    With that introduction, Peter, why don't we start with you.

    Mr. Peter Dudding: Thanks very much, John, and my thanks to all of the committee for inviting us here today. Maybe I'll just start with a little bit of background. I have provided speaking notes to you, so you will have the detail of what I'm about to tell you.

    The Child Welfare League of Canada is a national voluntary organization. We're particularly concerned about vulnerable children, youth, and their families, and in particular those children who've come into contact with the child welfare system, the children's mental health system, and the youth justice system. Those are the three areas that are of primary interest to us. We represent 104 members across Canada, including, by the way, the provincial and territorial governments, provincial associations, and universities involved in child and family service programs.

    The CWLC--that's how I'll refer to our group--has first nations child and family services representation in its membership and on our board of directors. I'm also here today representing the Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare, which is the national research-to-practice initiative hosted by the Child Welfare League with our research partners at the University of Toronto and the Université de Montréal. As well, one of the things we have initiated as of last year is a first nations research site in partnership with the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. That site is located at the University of Manitoba, where first nations are initiating a research program with a very specific, obviously first nations, child welfare focus.

    Although the Child Welfare League is very interested in issues concerning aboriginal child welfare, we do not purport to speak on behalf of aboriginal child welfare organizations. I want to make that point really clear. That would not be appropriate. Rather, we urge this committee to speak directly to aboriginal people and organizations to gain their perspective.

    It's certainly true, whenever I discuss aboriginal child welfare issues across Canada--and I often have that opportunity--that it's readily apparent that the impact of the residential school experience and the mainstream child welfare system has had a very negative effect on first nations aboriginal people. The problems of loss of identity and culture, family disruption, racism, and assimilation have been clearly associated with very high levels of abuse, neglect, violence, family breakdown, and substance abuse. Clearly there must be better ways found to deal with these very real problems.

    During the past decade, child welfare agencies across Canada have seen a large growth in the number of children and families served in the community, and specifically the number of children in care. This really gets to the point, John, you were just speaking about in terms of how the in-care system has been functioning.

    In fact, the number of children in care is estimated to have increased from about 40,000 kids in 1996 to about 65,000 in 2001, although reliable national data are not available. That's an issue I'll return to later. Just to clarify those 40,000 and 65,000, that's inclusive of all children in the public care system, not just aboriginal children; I want to be clear about that. However, we know children from poor families and aboriginal children are disproportionately overrepresented in this population. In fact, if you go to western Canada, it won't be unusual in provinces like Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia to be looking at 70% to 80% of the population of children in their provincial in-care systems being of aboriginal origin. The numbers are really quite astounding.

    In my discussions with the folks at the Department of Indian Affairs, what they also note is that the numbers of aboriginal children--the on-reserve group--have been increasing on the average of 13% per year. So it's a substantial growth we've been looking at.

    I think the broad issue we see is that the public care system in foster care, group care, treatment care was really struggling to meet the needs of 40,000 children. I don't think any of us believe that with a population of 65,000 or so we're doing a better job, although there really are no meaningful outcome data available on what the trajectory and life course of this population are. Again, that's a point I'm going to return to later.

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    One of the things I'll really note is that since the reduction of the federal transfers in 1995-96 to the provinces and the implementation of the Canada health and social transfer, what we've certainly seen is that the level of spending on human services has fallen--funding for important programs for vulnerable families, such as income support, housing, family support, and counselling programs. All of those things, in a cascading way, have decreased, and therefore we've seen an increase in the population of kids coming to the attention of the child welfare system.

    From the perspective of child welfare, the introduction of the national children's agenda, although it has lots of promise associated with it, really to date hasn't produced much in the way of tangible results for families and children in the service systems that we see, although I'll note that the early childhood initiative has really been only recently implemented. And certainly other programs like CAPC have been ongoing and valuable programs from the federal perspective.

    I'll also note, however, that the child tax benefit, although a very well-intentioned initiative, is very problematic due to the practice of many provinces and territories of clawing back this money from families already receiving public assistance. This is not appropriate, in our opinion, and should be stopped by the federal government.

    I want to talk about the question of national data and outcome measures that I referred to earlier in my background comments. In fact, when we talk about the child welfare system in this country, we really mean 13 child welfare systems. Each province, each territory, has its own system and gathers data on its services in its own way. Therefore there really are no meaningful national data. It's really not possible to collect, analyze, or use for any sort of thoughtful discussion and planning any semblance of national data.

    Unlike in Canada, the American federal government funds, legislates, and sets policies, standards, and directions for state and Indian child welfare systems. In the U.S. national data on child welfare, the incidence of child abuse and neglect is readily available for both the mainstream and the Indian child welfare systems. In Canada, we really are, I think, at a somewhat disadvantaged position.

    Having said that, I would say that in Canada there have been some recent improvements in the situation. The first that I would mention is the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, known as the CIS, which collected data for the first time in 1998 from a sample of about 7,600 cases across Canada, including aboriginal child welfare data. It's the first study of its kind in Canada, so there's no baseline, there's no comparative data to be able to draw upon. Although Health Canada is considering the development of a regular surveillance and monitoring mechanism, nothing has been achieved in terms of the development of that ongoing surveillance and monitoring mechanism to date.

    A second initiative has been an interprovincial one, called the Child Welfare Outcomes study, which was conducted through the cooperation of the provincial and territorial directors of child welfare. What's important to understand is that these data are really very limited in their ability, because what you're really looking at is collecting data that are held in common by the 13 provinces and territories, so it's a very narrow data set.

    For example, currently they're looking at the capacity of those systems to gather information on aboriginal children who are living in non-aboriginal foster care. That is not data we currently have. We're hopeful we'll see some kind of development out of that through this Child Welfare Outcomes study process. That's certainly an initiative that deserves more development and support to improve its capacity.

    The third initiative to make reference to is what's called Looking After Children in Canada: Assessing Outcomes for Children in the Care of the State, which is a project to begin assessing and monitoring the quality of care and outcomes for those 65,000 children in the public care system. It's based upon research that started in England and is now in place in 14 countries.

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    The Child Welfare League of Canada actually is leading the work to support the implementation of Looking After Children in Canada, with support from the provincial and territorial directors of child welfare and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. It's an initiative that's funded by Human Resources Development Canada, through the social development directorate, and it has only just begun. But there has been development work done in Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, and they were hoping that the other provinces will begin to get on board in 2002-03.

    What Looking After Children in Canada really promises is an opportunity to assess children in the in-care system, to promote and monitor really what's good child and youth development in a thorough and consistent way, using tools that have reliability and validity. The really important thing here, in addition to those being good clinical kinds of tools, is to ensure that we as a public parent are doing the very best job that we can on behalf of these kids. They are also information-gathering tools that are going to allow us to collect and aggregate and compare the groups of children at local, provincial, national, and ultimately international levels.

    The other important thing is that we'll be able to compare the population of Canadian children with this very special needs population from the information that's gathered in the National Longitudinal Study on Children and Youth. For example, you'll be able to look then at this child and care population and draw some comparisons with the general population of kids.

    It's very interesting, for example, if you look at something such as special education needs. Well, it would come as no surprise, I'm sure, to people at this committee that children in the in-care system, as the little information we have would show, would generally have much higher rates of assessed special education needs. But what's interesting--and again it comes out of the small information we've been able to gather--is that their rate of participation in special education programs is lower than the average population of children. Since we know that education is one of the most important predictors in terms of your life development trajectory, getting hold of information like this is key for our aboriginal children and, dare I say, for our mainstream children as well.

    The Child Welfare League of Canada is working very closely with the first nations agencies to develop the Looking After Children model to ensure that it is culturally relevant for aboriginal children. This will be a long-term project involving the provinces, the territories, the aboriginal agencies, and hopefully Human Resources Development Canada.

    The next broad area I want to talk about is the emergence of aboriginal child welfare. I suppose this is really a very good news piece, because the development of aboriginal child welfare, which is governed and implemented by aboriginal people, is strongly supported by the Child Welfare League of Canada. However, the service system must be designed and supported to meet the unique needs of aboriginal children and families both on and off reserve. The objective here is not simply to put a red face on a mainstream child welfare system. Nobody wins in that kind of situation. Rather, the objective is to put a strong emphasis on community development and family support programs within those first nations communities.

    There have been important developments in the growth and emergence of these aboriginal child welfare agencies. The statistic I can actually cite you off the top is that within Saskatchewan alone, for example, there are now 17 aboriginal child and family service agencies. And it's not just Saskatchewan alone. We've really seen examples of exemplary aboriginal child welfare organizations, including the Mi'kmaq Family and Children's Services in Nova Scotia, West Region Child and Family Servicesin Manitoba, which by the way won a Peter Drucker Award for innovation in 1998, and the Siksika Child and Family Services in Alberta, just to name a few.

    However, these agencies face many challenges and obstacles, such as funding capacity, building their own standards and resources, across these 13 different legislative regimes that they're mirroring. Let me just give you a for instance in terms of a problem there. With regard to those 17 agencies I mentioned in Saskatchewan, the problem is they have no central organizing core. Yes, they do receive funding from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, but as to any other kind of support in terms of how they organize themselves, plan, develop, coordinate their services, they're left to their own devices in order to try to work those things out. This is unlike other service agencies in the province of Saskatchewan, for example, that do have a coordinating and an organizing body in the form of the provincial ministry.

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    During 1999 and 2000 a national policy review of aboriginal child welfare was conducted by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs and the aboriginal organizations. The review identified the key issues to be addressed as follows: the overall adequacy of funding levels in view of service volume increases and the historic underfunding of aboriginal child welfare.

    This is an interesting one. Not expectedly in many of those communities the need has always been historically higher than the ability to provide the service, but as these aboriginal agencies are strengthened, the service volume demand increases, particularly when the gears are shifted from a mainstream service provider to a culturally appropriate one. Build the field and the people will come is certainly the applicable metaphor here.

    The second issue raised was the requirement of DIAND, subject to what's called directive 20-1, that aboriginal child welfare mirror the prevailing provincial and territorial child welfare legislation and policy. What this really does is limit the scope of these aboriginal authorities in developing their own culturally appropriate systems. They are expected to follow the legislation or policy in that province and are in effect getting back into a situation where the same problems found in the mainstream provincial child welfare system are mirrored in their own.

    The other issue is around the whole question of the limitation of services to aboriginal people both on and off reserve. There is a real need to clarify these issues in the best interest of aboriginal children.

    There have been many excellent examples of services for aboriginal children and youth within the mainstream child welfare system as well. We must appreciate all that has been occurring, and similarly, much of the legislation has special measures built into it for aboriginal children; nevertheless, it's still a situation where the mainstream system is trying to play catch-up in terms of its services to aboriginal children.

    One of the examples I would draw the committee's attention to is currently the major redesign of services going on in the province of Manitoba. I don't know whether you've had a presentation about that already.

    The Chair: I can confirm for the committee that we're going to be having the Manitoba Minister of Family Services and Housing, Tim Sale, coming to us next month.

    Mr. Peter Dudding: Excellent. Then you'll get much more detail about that. Let it suffice to say that we would be creating two aboriginal agencies in the province, along with a Métis agency, all three of which will have province-wide responsibility for the delivery of services. So I think it's a rather exciting and innovative approach to the delivery of services.

    I believe it's now appropriate for the national government to also carefully consider this question about the creation of a national aboriginal child welfare framework that provides not only the fiscal support but the policy information support for this framework. What in essence I think we need to understand is that it is clearly an aboriginal governed and managed system.

    The framework should ideally allow the aboriginal vision for the future of their children and families to emerge. It's worth noting, for example, that the experience in the United States around the implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act has been very positive for them in enabling aboriginal control over the future of their children to emerge in the last ten years, when that legislation has been in place.

    The next area I want to talk about quite quickly is standards and accreditation. Again, the good news is that this growing trend of divesting mainstream child welfare services and aboriginal child welfare services to these community-based agencies is going on, and we support it immensely. However, the new model of service does create a rather urgent need, in our opinion, to ensure the quality of services, standards, and accountability.

    The fact of the matter is that there are no accepted Canadian standards in place for child and family services, child welfare. Some provinces have minimum licensing standards, while others have made attempts to establish voluntary self-accreditation programs. In some instances they rely upon U.S.-based accreditation programs such as the Council on Accreditation. But currently, there are no standards or accreditation programs for the mainstream system or for the unique needs of aboriginal child welfare agencies.

    Currently, a consortium of national and provincial organizations and universities is examining the feasibility of creating national standards for child and family services, including child welfare and aboriginal child welfare. Support from the national and provincial governments will be required to establish the appropriate standards and independent accreditation in order to ensure the quality and the accountability of these critical services. I think it's one thing to look to the community in terms of asking them to be more involved in this critically important area. I think it's incumbent on all of us to ensure that they have the tools in place to do the job we're asking them to do.

    This brings me finally to the recommendations I'd like to make for your consideration. The first one is that the federal government work with the provinces and territories, aboriginal organizations, and the voluntary sector to create a national data collection and outcome measurement system for child welfare programs, with specific reference to aboriginal children.

    Second, the federal government should support the work of the voluntary sector, the universities, and the aboriginal organizations, along with the provinces, to develop and implement an independent child welfare accreditation program. Obviously these accreditation standards should include specific reference to unique aboriginal child welfare services.

    Finally, the federal government, in partnership with aboriginal organizations, should examine the feasibility of creating some kind of comprehensive aboriginal child welfare program in consultation with the provinces and territories, obviously taking into consideration the issue around self-government agreements.

    I would ask the committee to consider, in the interim, looking at the recommendations of the national policy review that I referred to earlier and speaking with our colleagues at Indian and Northern Affairs about implementing those recommendations.

    Thank you very much for your time and attention.

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    The Chair: Thank you very much, Peter

    Our next guest is somebody who reminds me that we met each other about two years ago at the Sparrow Lake Alliance meeting in cottage country in Ontario. It's very good to see you again.

    Tell us about both your organization and your views on the things we're looking at here, Matthew.

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller (Director of Education and Communication, National Youth in Care Network): Thank you very much.

    I'd like to thank the subcommittee for the invitation to the National Youth in Care Network to give some remarks.

    I will frame the limitations of the remarks that I'm going to give today. First of all, they're going to be brief, which people are usually satisfied with. Secondly, the National Youth in Care Network is a unique organization in the area of child welfare because we are an organization driven entirely by young people who have been in some form of government care. Generally speaking, that means the child welfare system.

    Our board of directors, our volunteers, our staff, except for one administrator, are all young people under the age of 25 who've been in government care, mostly in the child welfare system.

    A member on our board of directors is a young woman who has a special responsibility for aboriginal issues. I'm not able to submit a written brief today because I really can't do that without consulting with her, and she's in exams. It's a difficult situation.

    The Chair: She has her priorities right.

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: I think she does.

    There will be a written brief submitted sometime in the very near future, but I am limited in my ability to get anything written to you right now. I also certainly am not in a position to speak for aboriginal youth in care. I'm in a position to speak on behalf of my organization and what we've observed and what our members have told us.

    Since its inception, National Youth in Care Network has included many aboriginal young people who are or were in care in our projects, in our grassroots membership, and in our highest levels of leadership--on our board of directors. However, that does not mean that the people within our organization historically have strong ties to the aboriginal community. On average, most of our members are young people who have been separated from their communities, quite often apprehended from a reserve at a very young age, and they had no contact with their biological families, their communities, or their culture for some years. That is very much the norm.

    You have to understand that the age range for our membership is 14 to 24 years. So for the young people who are involved in National Youth in Care Network now, their involvement with the child welfare system predates the emergence of Native Child and Family Services. It didn't exist when they were in care, and it certainly does not have responsibility for them now.

    So here are the experiences of many of our members who are at the age of adolescence in transition into adulthood. Quite often our members are young people who, as they become involved with us, are only beginning the process of reconnecting with their community and with their culture and sometimes their biological family in a process of negotiating their relationship with that community and culture. And they are really dealing with a great deal of conflict that is associated with this. Quite often these are young people who have been not only separated from their culture but also, of course, geographically displaced. They may be from a remote rural area, but they have been living in a city for many years and they have grown up in an urban culture.

    Our members who are aboriginal and who have been taken into the child welfare system face a great deal of conflict. That is the kind of experience we are able to speak to.

    Certainly the most important initiative underway within the National Youth in Care Network right now with respect to aboriginal youth in care is the initiative to create a youth in care network for aboriginal youth parallel to, but in collaboration with, the existing National Youth in Care Network and with the existing community and regional youth in care groups across the country. Discussions with the leadership of aboriginal organizations as well as with young people at the grassroots, at the community level, have been ongoing for some time, and they are looking very promising.

    In terms of the substance of my remarks, there are a couple of key pieces. One is the importance of the voice of youth. I never like to come into meetings and say, “Why isn't there the voice of youth, because I'm here?” Obviously people have good intentions. I think it is important, however, to illustrate the importance of having aboriginal young people in care and other kinds of aboriginal young people come to speak directly to this committee. I don't know if that is on the agenda at the moment. As I've explained, aboriginal youth in care have quite often been separated from their community and their culture. This also means they're separated from those conventional groups who give a voice to aboriginal people--band councils, aboriginal youth organizations representing children and youth on reserves.

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    I have read through the presentations of some of the witnesses you've seen. I understand you are consulting with aboriginal communities. However, those presenters, the chiefs and other people who are part of the conventional framework, are not really well positioned to speak to the experience of aboriginal youth who've grown up in care because there's no connection there. There's very much of a separation as a result of the child welfare intervention that removed these children from their communities, quite often placed them in an urban setting in a non-aboriginal living situation. So it is important.

    I would like to extend an offer to this committee that National Youth in Care Network would be very happy, if requested, to facilitate a process of putting together a panel of young people who are aboriginal and have grown up in care who could speak to you. This would be valuable. We would be able to bring people who come from reserves. We would also be able to bring people who have been living in an urban setting and have been separated from their community.

    It would be very valuable for this committee to hear from such a panel, first of all because the issue of child welfare and aboriginal children is a very important one; and second, because once they're here, there are many other questions that I'm sure you may have for them in addition to child welfare issues. So the offer is open.

    I've also obtained the support of the Canadian Council of Provincial Child and Youth Advocates in putting together a panel of witnesses for you. This is the council of all of the provincial children's advocates' offices. I spoke with the president of that council this afternoon, Dr. Deborah Parker-Loewen, and she certainly expressed her willingness to collaborate with us in putting together a good group of witnesses for you, should you desire. So please accept that offer.

    It's well established that aboriginal children and youth are overrepresented in the provincial-territorial child welfare systems. This is especially true in the western provinces, as Peter indicated. There are all kinds of different numbers going around. One of the most important things to keep in mind is something that Peter also mentioned: there's very little data available from the national perspective, virtually nothing.

    There are different sets of statistics you can obtain, but generally speaking, this is information from all different provinces and territories, which isn't necessarily very comparable or perfectly comparable, pooled together to try to figure out the national picture. It is a very difficult task. Anyone who is working on child welfare issues from a national perspective is aware of this.

    Just to throw out a few numbers at you--these may be ones you're familiar with--as of March 1999, in Alberta, the aboriginal children, including status Indian, non-status Indian, potential to be registered, unknown status, Inuit and Métis, represented 37% of all of the children found to be in need of protection under Alberta's child welfare legislation; aboriginal children in care represented approximately 30% of all of children in care in British Columbia; and estimates I've obtained from the Canadian Council of Child and Youth Advocates suggests that the numbers are closer to 70% to 80% in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and perhaps as high as 70% to 90% in the territories, the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Nunavut.

    This list of numbers is important because when we're talking about child welfare services for aboriginal youth, particularly in the western half of the country, you might say that we're largely talking about a service sector for aboriginal children and youth. A very, very large number, certainly the majority of all of the children and youth served by these systems, come from an aboriginal community.

    Aboriginal children and youth cannot really be separated from a discussion about child welfare, nor really can you separate child welfare from any meaningful discussion about aboriginal children and youth, because the child welfare system has had historically in its different forms, and continues to have, a profound impact on individual young people as well as on aboriginal communities.

¹  (1555)  

    If we're going to accept that you can't have a conversation about aboriginal children and youth without talking about child welfare--which is good; that's what we're doing today--then we also need to accept that you can't just talk about the child welfare system in isolation. What we find, when we talk to our members and hear about their experiences, is that involvement in the child welfare system, first of all--and this is true for all young people in care, not just for aboriginal children in care--often coincides with involvement in other systems of services as well as in other systems of disadvantage. By systems of services I mean, let's say, the provincial mental health services or the young offender services, or involvement in the youth court. When I say systems of disadvantage, I'm talking about scenarios of disadvantage such as involvement in commercial sexual exploitation, homelessness, incarceration, and so on--certainly poverty and many other risky situations.

    All of those things that are true for children and youth in care in general are especially true for aboriginal children and youth in care. To illustrate that, when you go to a province like Saskatchewan and hear that close to 80% of the children in care are aboriginal and then hear that close to 80% of their incarcerated youth are aboriginal, what you need to understand is that when you go into those young offender facilities, those aren't just aboriginal youth who are incarcerated. They are aboriginal youth who have past or present child welfare status, most often, because children in care are overrepresented in the young offender system. Quite often they come from situations of homelessness and have past involvement in the sex trade.

    These are all overlapping situations and issues. I think we need to explore the problems aboriginal children and youth in care are facing with that in mind. We need to understand just how complex these issues are and how many different systems of service and disadvantage these children and youth are involved in.

    In terms of where to go from here, we embrace the recommendations Peter has made. It's very frustrating not to be able to have clear, useful information to work with at the national level. It's difficult to make policies; it's difficult to advocate for positive change in the system; it's difficult to speak out, when you don't have a clear picture of what's going on.

    We need to do much more work at the federal level. One of the defences I hear quite often from the federal government is that child welfare is not a federal responsibility. I think everyone understands that aboriginal children and youth, including those in care, are a federal responsibility. In general, I think child welfare is a federal responsibility. As a significant funder of the child welfare system--less and less of a funder as the years go by, but as a large funder--I'm shocked that the federal government is not looking at where the money is going.

    We've had a horrible year for child welfare services. Child welfare is under attack in many different provinces right now. We've had immense cutbacks in the province of Alberta. We've had preparation for independent living programs slashed in B.C. They've eliminated the children's advocate's office; they've eliminated the watchdog, the advocate's office, which is a safeguard for the rights of children in care in British Columbia. That's horrible. We should be up in arms about this.

    If you put in a grant proposal for $25,000 to the federal government, you wouldn't believe the amount of red tape you have to go through and how you have to track the outcomes. But with the millions and millions of dollars that are dumped into the hands of the provinces through the CHST every year, no one's looking to see where the money is going. I think that's terrible. I know it's not popular among the provinces and territories to suggest that more strings be attached to the money, but the fact of the matter is we all know it's necessary. I'm sure I'm not saying anything that's new to this subcommittee.

    That is the rant portion of my remarks.

    The Chair: Well ranted.

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: Certainly my strongest recommendation would be that this committee understand that the focus of this study is on children zero to six and then six to twelve. Organizations like mine tend to be very fearful of those kinds of studies, because the possible consequence is that people are not really paying attention to what's happening with youth.

    We know that the situation for youth across Canada--for disadvantaged youth, youth in care, aboriginal youth, incarcerated youth, or when a young person is all three or more of those things--is not good and is getting worse. There are a number of indicators of that. If you look at incarceration rates, if you look at the outcomes for young people who are in child welfare care and are leaving care, if you look at how many people are homeless in the urban settings, it's not good and it's getting worse.

º  (1600)  

    I think the youth population, and particularly aboriginal youth, needs a great deal of attention. I hope this committee will be able to address some of those issues, if not within the scope of this study, then in some other study. Once again, I urge you to call our National Youth in Care Network and other organizations to assist you in putting together a panel of aboriginal youth witnesses. It would be our pleasure to do that for you.

º  (1605)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Matthew, for a terrific presentation. I think we'll want to get back, perhaps later in the discussion, to how we might work together.

    I would point out one of the things that we're aware of, because we're focusing on aboriginal children and youth. We're aware that over in the Senate, Senator Thelma Chalifoux has another study going that is a little bit further up on the age scale, so to speak. We're anxious that our work coordinate rather than compete with what she is doing. So we want to make sure we work closely with them, but we don't want to be poaching.

    I think we will get back to you, and we will have a discussion afterwards about how to work together. It's a very creative and generous offer, so we thank you for that.

    Elspeth Ross.

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today.

    I'm speaking to you from the Adoption Council of Canada, an organization with which I've worked for many years. I ran the office there from 1991, when it was set up, to 1997, and I'm still involved with them as a board member and as the secretary of the board. I'm still working with them.

     But I must point out to you that I'm essentially a volunteer. The Adoption Council of Canada is not funded by any government body at all, yet it is the only national non-government organization that speaks for adoption in Canada.

    The funding for the program of the Adoption Council of Canada essentially comes from Canada's Waiting Children, which is a program to make people aware of children who can be adopted from within Canada. It's funded by Wendy's restaurants of Canada and the Dave Thomas Foundation, which is an American organization. Dave Thomas was adopted, so he has put money into adoption.

    My qualifications in speaking to you today are as an adoptive parent of aboriginal children. My children were adopted at the ages of 19 months, three and a half years, and 11 years, and are now 19, 22 and 24 years old. They came to me as older special needs children. Two of my children are alcohol affected.

    I have done a great deal of work in the area of fetal alcohol syndrome, and run a support group here in Ottawa from the Children's Hospital on that. That's an additional area we haven't mentioned yet today, but it is of great interest when we're discussing aboriginal children. It affects not only aboriginal children, of course. Many children are affected by this invisible syndrome.

    I would like to explain to you also that adoption is often not talked about at all in the area of child welfare. The Adoption Council of Canada finds itself quite a bit on the outside. I'm quite used to, unfortunately, being on the outside.

    We worked very hard to see if we could get adoption included in one of the centres of excellence of children's well-being, and it's not really in any of them at all. We find there are often symposiums, conferences, and talks about the dangers of limbo, moving children around, and permanency for kids, without addressing adoption.

    In the area of aboriginal people, adoption is often very much considered to be simply a bad word. Because of the experience with residential schools in the sixties, when social workers scooped in and took away children without looking to see if they had family, adoption is a bad word. So we are looking at it now and asking why we aren't taking it seriously as an option for some of the children who could be adopted. Often this is not presented at all.

    I have prepared a document for the use of members. I believe it has already been translated. I would like to speak to you a bit from this document. One of the major problems is we don't recognize the need for permanency for kids, and we don't put real effort into looking at permanency. I could call my talk to you today “Adoption, the Forgotten Option; the Unsupported Journey”, because we don't really talk about it as a possibility for older kids. We often think of adoption as something to do with adopting from China, but not in relation to aboriginal children. If we do, we are only thinking about aboriginal families for aboriginal kids, yet there are so many children in care.

    Peter has come up with figures. It's very difficult to know how many children are actually in care, because of terminology problems from province to province, but we estimate there are about 40,000 children in permanent care. These children cannot go back to their families. They get moved around, so some children end up in 35 placements. So the first issue we should really be looking at is the need for permanency for these children.

    Some aboriginal communities are now working to do adoptions. Custom adoption used to be talked about. It was common for one family to look after another family's children. That is the way it used to be. In the Northwest Territories custom adoption is legalized. But in so many cases we don't really work toward it, and the children are moved around to maybe 35 placements. This is not a very good way to grow up. Foster care was designed to be temporary. Unfortunately, many children graduate, as Matthew will know, into independence without having families.

º  (1610)  

    Adoption could be an option, but how do we go about that? We need to recruit the families, and the recruitment efforts are very few in the provinces, especially the recruitment of aboriginal families for aboriginal children and the recruitment of families willing to keep in touch with cultural ties for their children so that they can grow up knowing their culture.

    I find when I talk to aboriginal people they simply do not believe that I believe in open adoption or doing things to keep my children in touch with their culture. It's simply unthinkable in certain cases because adoption is always thought of in terms of keeping children away from their birth families and their culture. Unfortunately, that doesn't have to be the case. There are many of us who work very hard to do things in terms of keeping children in touch with their culture. I'm not unique at all in that.

    We can't really talk about adoption unless we discuss open adoption, which makes so much sense nowadays. Some form of contact is often possible with family and can be maintained. We need to look at the different options available in terms of relative adoption and different forms of guardianship and the subsidies necessary to families so that they can adopt many of the children who have special needs--so that the foster families can adopt.

    What we also need to think about is the importance of training, both for professionals dealing with families and the families, so that they're able to parent these children who often have fetal alcohol syndrome and attention deficit, and learning disabilities, and who, because of all the movement from home to home, may have attachment disorders as well as having special needs in terms of cultural awareness. It's normal for our families to need services and referrals to services, and yet often we find that the provinces are not paying attention to adoption in terms of supporting the families and are not providing the subsidies that are necessary. Therapeutic foster families can obtain some form of help with their children, but adoptive families are on their own, and this is simply not sensible since we are caring for the same children as the foster parents were.

    We need to put our efforts into repatriation and reunion so that the children can return to their reserves. We need to work better together. My colleagues here have mentioned various efforts that are going on across the country, but often we find that adoption is really not part of those efforts. We would like very much to see something done so that there can be a much better dialogue between those of us who are working in the mainstream and our colleagues in the aboriginal community who want very much to care for the children. If we could work together, we'd be able to accomplish a great deal in learning from each other.

    Adoption is a provincial matter, but the federal government could do various things to help, and I have some suggestions and recommendations here as to what things.

    I would definitely agree and support what both my colleagues have said in terms of the very serious lack of data in Canada. We haven't had a book on adoption since 1984. We have no textbook at all that we can give to a new student who wants to study adoption. There is nothing out there. The Vanier Institute of the Family has published an issue on adoption every 10 years, but we can't really wait 10 more years to have some kind of consideration of adoption.

    I would like to suggest to you that there is a very serious lack in this area. We have a comparison, of course, with what's going on in Britain and the United States, but the situations there are very different. In Britain there is the Ministry of Health, which is doing a tremendous lot of research, including adoption research. There are all sorts of federal efforts in the United States, but we seem to be getting further behind because we're not really seriously considering the permanency needs of kids.

    We don't know how many adoptions there are, or how many adoptions there could be, or how many children there are in care. We don't know how many children there really are in permanent care across the country. That's what has already been stated. This is a serious problem that is affecting all of our planning.

º  (1615)  

    Something we really need to look at is the consideration of redefining success in adoption. This is my ninth point on your document. In the old days we had the idea that adoption meant walking happily off into the sunset, everything would be wonderful, love the child, everything will turn out okay. Now we know that this is often a little bit different from reality, and those of us parenting these kids....and I must say with my children that we have tremendous success in certain things, but we do have a different definition of success. High school graduation is a tremendous accomplishment in my family. Keeping a job at the moment doesn't seem to be quite possible, assisted employment may help, but we do have a different definition of success.

    I think what we really need to think about is the fact that children need families. Children can't wait for families and they can't wait to have a birth family heal.... We hope that will happen, but within the aboriginal community there's also a recognition that children need families. I think often we need to work together to understand that we have to speed things up, because the children need families now. We're talking about children who are primarily zero to six years old in this committee. Very young children need to have families who are going to stick with them, who are going to be committed to them no matter what, who are going to be strong advocates for them and work to get the services that these children need.

    I hope I have time to go through my recommendations. I gave you a separate piece of paper on them. I would like to say what the federal government could do.

    The Chair: I'm not sure if we have that as a separate piece of paper. How many recommendations do you have?

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: I have seven. They were taken....

[Translation]

    The Chair: Do you have the recommendations in French, or do you just have the points in French?

[English]

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: What you have in French are issues to be addressed, but I have a separate piece of paper that addresses what the federal government could do.

[Translation]

    The Chair: Is it in both official languages?

[English]

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: It's a separate document from that one.

    The Chair: Because this arrived today, alas in one language, I don't think we've...perhaps you could hit the highlights.

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: It's in answer to what the federal government could do. Because adoption is a provincial matter, we need to look at perhaps a potential role for the federal government in this area. Some of these points will be recognized as being already covered.

    Collect and disseminate national data on children in care and adoption. We've already discussed that, I think.

    Standardize terminology so that we know what we're talking about from province to province. There could be a federal role in that, and it's something that's been wanted, I understand, by the directors of child welfare. I don't know if it will ever come.

    Fund and support adoption research. There's been no funding and support federally for adoption research since 1993. There is a tremendous need for this because we have absolutely no outcome studies on aboriginal adoption, on what's happened. We just have urban myths about the fact that it often doesn't work out very well at all.

    We need to bridge the gap between aboriginal and mainstream child welfare and adoption and promote open adoption, relative adoption, as well as cultural awareness and adoption disclosure and reunions.

    Fund symposia on adoption, both regional and national, with community partners, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal, the directors of child welfare, and provincial child advocates. There has been talk of this, certainly the awareness of the need for permanency, but we need symposia.

    Direct service on reserves for development of adoption programs through the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

    Improve subsidy supports and services for families with fetal alcohol syndrome children, both on and off reserve, and for FAS individuals, and support fetal alcohol syndrome. This is an issue that needs to be really addressed, and Health Canada is doing some things toward it now.

    Include adoption in policy and program work for fetal alcohol syndrome.

    Also, let's see how we can get adoption thought about in terms of homelessness and in the broad definition of child care parental leave and employment insurance in Human Resources Development Canada.

º  (1620)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    I think we'll go straight to questions. We've had a very rich range of interesting presentations and I can see how it relates to our study.

    Larry Spencer.

    Mr. Larry Spencer (Regina--Lumsden--Lake Centre, Canadian Alliance): I really appreciate Elspeth's presentation because I can identify with that 100%, as the chair will know. I have an adopted aboriginal son and I appreciate your suggestion of adoption as a choice for permanency for kids. And yes, we do have different definitions as adopting parents. We are satisfied perhaps with less than what somebody else might be at certain times, and all this is very true.

    You were very clear with what you presented here. So I'm going to ask Matthew some questions to help me become clear on what it means to grow up under the child welfare system.

    Can I take it that you included yourself in the group and you were in care?

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: I do have experience living in the care of the government in more than one service system, but my experiences are not in foster homes and I don't think they're really representative of aboriginal children in child welfare care. Do you know what I mean? I certainly am not in a position to generalize from my own experience, because it's not consistent. I wasn't in foster care.

    Mr. Larry Spencer: So you're defining child welfare care as foster care? Is that what you mean?

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: The large majority of children who are wards of the.... First of all, I was never made a ward of any province or territory, nor was I in a foster home. I've been in various forms of state residential care, including treatment, mental health, young offenders, and so on, as is the case with some of our people. Generally speaking, I doubt that my own personal experiences would be helpful to the committee.

    Mr. Larry Spencer: That's fine. I'm just asking for clarification as to what you mean by child welfare care. What does a child or a young person actually go through in being in that kind of care? What do you get from the system in that kind of care?

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: How the child welfare services are organized in the provinces and territories--

    Mr. Larry Spencer: No, I don't want to know technical organization. I want to know at the door, at the home, where you put your coat on, where you get your meals. I want to know the living stuff.

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: Absolutely.

    Mr. Larry Spencer: I get enough government stuff around here.

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: They all have an impact on each other. Our members have been talking about the same issues and speaking out about the same problems for 15 years. Our members have been speaking out about concerns with lack of stability and permanency. This is an issue that Elspeth spoke about.

    It gets very complicated, because in fact I have not heard anyone from our membership advocate adoption. Of course, we're talking about teenagers and older in our case. We're talking about people who are thinking about living on their own primarily, and that's where they're directed. The lack of permanency and stability is one of the major concerns. What you have is a child who is apprehended under crisis circumstances, taken into care, quite often placed in an emergency foster home or group home, depending on their age and depending on the resources available in the community. That's supposed to be temporary. You find that some people are actually kept in these “temporary homes” for months and months at a time, because there are no other homes available for them.

    The child welfare agency in whatever province or territory has to go to court and argue that the child should be put into care. What that means is that you have this court process playing out with a child who is quite often very young, because child welfare services don't tend to apprehend older children such as teenagers and adolescents. They tend to be more focused on very young children. You have a court process playing out. The child may or may not be involved. There are all sorts of decisions being made about which the person is not even consulted or even given knowledge, which is a very disempowering and frightening process.

    Children are quite often moved from home to home. Elspeth spoke about that. The figure of 35 placements I hope is extraordinary. I have met a few people who've had 35 placements, but some regional statistics show that on average it's more like 11 placements by the time you reach the age of 16. That's still quite a lot, because for a child who is a ward of the child welfare authorities, moving can mean your social worker picks you up at your home with no notice, doesn't tell you where you're going, tells you to put all your stuff in garbage bags, come with them, now you have a new mommy and daddy or new group home or whatever. You move to a place that may be a change in neighbourhoods, may be a change in towns. On some occasions, it's a change in provinces.

    There are interprovincial transfers of children in youth care, particularly it seems--it's not a large number but it is an interesting trend--from the maritime provinces, where quite often they don't have as many resources or many places to put children, particularly children with higher needs. They place them in other provinces such as British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario. This is happening sometimes. You have children being moved, sometimes with very little or no notice, without having any say in the matter, without being consulted.

    We have the whole issue of stigma and criminalization and pathologization. You don't meet someone who has grown up in the child welfare system who has never had the following experience. On disclosing that they're a ward of the child welfare system living in a foster home or a group home, someone will ask them, “Oh really? Well, what did you do?” There's a stigma associated. The question is what did you do. I think it's quite obvious that the question should not be what did the child do. Children don't do anything to be apprehended by the child welfare system. It's what their parents did or did not do. Was their family able to support them? Was it a supportive healthy environment? Or was it neglectful and possibly very seriously abusive?

    But this is a very common scenario. Children in care grow up with this stigma, whether it's in the school yard, with teachers, with neighbours, or whoever, and that's a very troubling experience. I think it would be very difficult for you to find a young person who grew up in the child welfare system who did not have that experience. So there is the issue of stigma.

    On the flip side--and it's troubling--whenever you have all of the social services gathered around a child, I think it's inevitable that harm can result from that. I believe the more likely you expose a human being to a psychiatrist, for example, the more likely they're going to be diagnosed with something. Well, once you're taken into care--

    The Chair: Or be driven crazy, possibly.

º  (1625)  

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: You have these psychiatrists, for instance, who specialize in schizophrenia, and lo and behold, all of their patients are schizophrenics. There's no doubt about what's happening there, right?

º  (1630)  

    The Chair: If you're not now, you will be.

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: Absolutely.

    Children in care are diagnosed, misdiagnosed, pseudo-lay diagnosed on a regular basis, and have all kinds of pathological and damaging labels attached to them. This is a very troubling problem, because when you have a child who moves to--we've addressed the movement issue--a new neighbourhood, a new foster home, a new school, the first thing that happens is that the social workers and the other helping professionals involved are supplying this information to teachers, care providers, that kind of thing, saying “By the way, this child is screwed up. They have this problem, this problem, and this problem“, and that places the person very much at a disadvantage. It's not necessarily accurate information anyway. This is very damaging.

    So it's not just stigmatization and labels from the outside community, there are also problems of being overly pathologized and approached from a clinical perspective only within the system. So essentially the community is the rock, the child welfare system is the hard place, and you have the young person in the middle.

    Those are a few common experiences.

    The Chair: Thanks very much. That was a great question and a great answer in about 10 minutes.

    Madame Guay.

[Translation]

    Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): I want to welcome you and thank you for coming to meet with us. It is always very interesting and very important to take the pulse of the people who work in the community. We have met with many researchers, and it is interesting and important to hear their points of view, but it is also important to hear the point of view of the people who are in the communities and who are working with young aboriginals.

    You talked about guardianship. In French, in Quebec, we talk about children who are in foster homes. If I understand correctly, it is the same thing. Okay.

     I want to tell you about my experience. I was in eight different foster homes between the age of 3 and 17. I spent a good part of my life in that environment, and I know that it is not easy for a child. It is very, very difficult. Each time we were moved to a different foster home, we always wondered if it was because of us. What had we done? What had been concocted? Why didn't they like us? So it is a very difficult life.

    Ms. Ross, in the case of an adoption, it is easier because the child is guaranteed some stability. The child is much more important in his adoptive family than he would ever be in a foster family, where the people would be taking the child in for a year or two. Some people try to keep a child, but in the end realize that it does not suit them, and the child is moved to another family. I lived in all kinds of neighbourhoods, and I lost friends. That is not an easy life.

    Earlier on, you talked about provincial and federal jurisdictions. For my part, I came under the Quebec system. I am 43 years old today. At the time, 30 years ago, it was not at all like it is today. A lot has been done in Quebec to modernize the system and to try and develop foster care systems that are able to meet the needs of children based on their age and their needs. I will explain what I mean.

    There can be group homes for young people between the ages of 12 and 17. These are places where the young people live much more independently. They are with other young people. This is much easier for them than trying to integrate them in families that are already fully formed and where there is already a young person. They end up alone with a young person who is with his parents and that does not necessarily suit them. I do not know if that is done elsewhere. Perhaps you could give me your assessment of the situation, Matthew.

º  (1635)  

[English]

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: Reacting in what sense?

[Translation]

    Ms. Monique Guay: Is that done elsewhere? Do young people come to you. I assume that you are an association for young people. You explained that you help young people. Do you have group homes for teenagers, where they can be together? We call them group homes rather than foster homes. The system for teens is very different from the system for younger children.

[English]

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: That's right.

    It's difficult to understand this very well, because there's a lack of consistent information gathering. One of the apparent trends is the increased use of group homes rather than foster homes for children in care, particularly in urban settings.

    What does that have to do with anything? There are a couple of things to keep in mind. One is that when you talk to children in care, you find that the experiences in a group home versus a foster home are significantly different, and it needs to be understood that they have very different consequences.

    Secondly, bearing in mind that native child and family services is really in a very early stage of development, large numbers of aboriginal children in care are located in or have been relocated to urban settings and therefore are made permanent wards of their province. The child welfare agency would prefer to put a six-year-old or an eight-year-old into this foster home, so they move the older child into a group home. We see group homes across the country serving really young children. More and more group homes are being used for younger children, seven-year-olds, that kind of thing. It is true that they are more typically used for older children.

    The kinds of problems we see happening in group homes are very serious. The National Youth in Care Network convened a national round table in late November related to the overuse of violent restraining methods by staff to control children living in group homes, methods that have killed two 13-year-olds in Ontario in the past few years. Victor Malarek, who grew up in a large institutional-style boys' home in Montreal, was a speaker there, and he spoke about the situation in Montreal at that time and some of the present day problems.

    Children are often moved to group homes because of the perception that they have behaviour problems or are difficult to manage. It's often explained to the child in terms of a punishment: you're bad, so you're going to be sent to a group home. This is quite common.

    The reality is that they send people to group homes because they don't have anywhere else to put a child. Child welfare services are underfunded. Many of the provinces and territories are making valiant efforts, but they are not doing an adequate job of developing a large enough number of good foster homes. So they're relying on them more and more.

[Translation]

    Ms. Monique Guay: Isn't it possible to keep children and young people on reserves and to provide them with the services of a foster home or a group home there? They are being taken out of their culture and off their reserves, and these children end up completely isolated and lost, because they are losing their cultural base. If, in addition, they suffer from foetal alcohol syndrome and other diseases, it makes their problems worst. So it is a lose-lose situation, if I can put it that way. I do not understand why resources have not been earmarked for that.

    You are right the situation with respect to statistics is terrible. The people from Statistics Canada appeared before us, and we told them on several occasions that the situation was unacceptable and that we absolutely needed figures. A census was taken and we should finally have some figures soon, but I do not know if we will be satisfied with them.

    Something must be done on reserves. Isn't anything being done now?

º  (1640)  

[English]

    The Chair: We're coming to the end of this round.

    Mr. Peter Dudding: I'd like to speak to your two points. In terms of a vision of what a system could be, I think it's very important to start with the concept of it being a child-centred system. Rather than getting into a debate about whether it's a foster home or a group home, the fact of the matter is that we need to have a wide range of services available for children. Our first and most important issue, and indeed our international obligation, is to seek the best interests of each and every child in what is truly a child-centred system.

    I can only agree with your comment that part of that consideration of best interests is culture and background. I don't want to be a Pollyanna about all of this, but with the emergence of organizations that are aboriginal child welfare governed and managed, I think there is a bit of a good news piece there. It's never enough. Adequate funding is a problem. But we have seen a significant emergence, and that's a very positive development overall.

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: I would like to address the group home/foster home situation and pick up on Peter's comment that we need child-centred systems.

    I think what we often find is that the system does not have any way out of it. If you put a child in an adoptive home, hopefully the child will be out of the system. But we often find the system enclosed around the child. Services and supports are there. So there seems to be no way out from the circle of care with the child, and the birth family in the middle, into a potential other home. So I'm saying that could be an option that we just don't think about.

    But when we think about homes on reserves, yes, we talk to aboriginal people the way I've done in my FAS work. They want to keep the children on the reserves, in their communities. If there was more support there for training for the families....

    Some, like the Yellowhead Tribal Council, are telling me they worked really hard to get the caregivers there, the aboriginal foster families there, and to provide the services there, but in many cases these people are overwhelmed by the numbers. That would be the optimum, to keep the children there, but it's simply too many for the needs at the moment. The supports just aren't there. The funding is just not there.

    The Chair: My six-minute rounds have been entirely consistently ten minutes. What can I do? I am a creature of the committee.

    Alan Tonks.

    Mr. Alan Tonks (York South--Weston, Lib.): Yes, thank you for your presentation.

    What has been the experience with those provinces--Manitoba, I think the Yukon, and one other--that have entered into agreements with first nations whereby they have become responsible for the delivery of child welfare benefits on reserve? Is there any feedback, any results, that have come from those in comparison with more broadly community-based organizations, as opposed to aboriginal organizations?

    Mr. Peter Dudding: If I may, Alan, I think probably the most honest answer to that one is mixed.

    As a point of clarification, actually the Yukon doesn't have an agreement with any of its first nations at this point. British Columbia does, Alberta does, and Saskatchewan does. Manitoba we've spoken about.

    Ontario is an interesting case in point where, just sort of off the top, I think there are actually five mandated agencies, but that number is really, frankly speaking, currently on hold. The reason for that has been this problem I've spoken about in terms of the capacity of the training, the support of making these agencies really work. Elspeth referred to the fact in terms of the tremendous needs on reserve, and certainly the demand for services far exceeds the capacity of those service systems to provide it.

    I would hasten to add, I don't think there would be anybody in this room who would sort of say, well, gee, then maybe the alternative here is for first nations or aboriginal people not to have their own system. But I think it's really important to understand that they're struggling with massive kinds of issues that we're all very aware of, and the emergence of first nations governance of child welfare is a relatively new phenomenon. So there have been some really successful examples, but there are also some really problematic ones too.

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    Mr. Alan Tonks: Okay. Does anybody else want to reply to that?

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: There is one concern that has been brought to my attention by our members in a number of different provinces and territories. This is a concern that has a very direct impact on aboriginal children in care right now. When you have such a massive institutional shift as the one from mainstream child welfare services to community-delivered, on-reserve aboriginal child and family services, that kind of transition never happens easily or cleanly.

    We are seeing difficulties right now, during this transition. Let's say you have a child who's in care, who's living in a foster home, who has maybe been in care for two or three years. The child had a difficult time in the beginning and has finally been put in an appropriate foster home where things are working out. The child is stabilized, and then suddenly the province makes an agreement with an aboriginal community and delegates them authority. They get their delegated authority to deliver their child welfare services, and the first thing they do is start saying, “These children who are presently displaced and living in urban settings need to come back to us; they're our children”. This is something that is happening across the country.

    Here's the question. What is best? You have aboriginal communities, quite correctly, saying that these are children who are part of their communities. They were taken away from us only because we didn't have services to deliver ourselves. Well, now we have them. On the other hand, you have people directly around the child, social workers and so on, saying that this child is finally enjoying a stable situation, and another move is not necessarily going to be the best thing. So this is one of the transitional difficulties.

    Once again, I couldn't agree more with Peter that this doesn't mean we should give up on community-delivered aboriginal child welfare services. This is a difficulty that's part of the transition process, and we need to learn how to cope with the difficulty. We need to make decisions about these children through involving them as much as possible, depending on their age, keeping their best interests in mind, and doing it on a one-on-one basis.

    Peter and I were discussing this yesterday. We definitely agreed that we can't have blanket statements like “All children should be returned to reserves” or “All children, if they're stable, should be kept where they are”. It does not serve the interests of any individual child to have these broad guidelines attached to them when really what we need to be doing is looking at individual situations.

    This is where the provincial children's advocates have a very important role, and in many provinces a big role, in helping to negotiate between the aboriginal community and the mainstream child welfare services and helping to work that out. Unfortunately, many provinces don't have a provincial children's advocate to take that role. The provinces of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and all of the territories don't have a provincial children's advocate. Of course, we don't have a national commissioner for Canada's children yet. So that's a major gap, and these are advocacy roles that we need to have.

    This is a difficult transition process. We need good mediators, good advocates in there because it's going to happen. The transition is going to happen, but we need to make sure it happens with the least possible harm to individual children.

    The Chair: I must say that as we hear the story, I can't help but think there's future work for this committee on this subject. As I hear Matthew, I hear the echo of our mutual friend, Landon Pearson. I think he's a mutual friend of all of us. But that's not the current task we're confronted with.

    I have a couple of questions. First, Elspeth, I know everyone agrees the date is terrible. We're ballparking; we're guessing 65,000 are in care. Elspeth, during your presentation you said we really don't know how many. Well, I guess the question is this. Do we have a ballpark, quick and dirty, rough and ready, international, domestic, private, all-up figure on an annual basis for the number of adoptions that occur in the country? Do you have an equally crude figure for the number of families that are still left waiting? We understand that some families would be sort of hard core, willing to work with children with challenges, while others would want the perfect designer child, genetically. That's about another committee's work, reproductive technology. Do you have just quick and dirty figures on annual adoption rates as we know them?

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    Ms. Elspeth Ross: No, I'm sorry, I can't give you even those, because we know there may be 40,000 children in permanent care in Canada who can't go back home. We know that there are more children adopted internationally than there are domestically and that people are flocking to other countries because they hear there are no children in Canada.

    The Chair: Doesn't this get written down someplace?

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: It's too difficult. Well, we write it down in a few places, but I told you that there is really no publicity on these issues at all. We have very poor data on adoptions at all. We know that there is enormous demand.

    The Chair: Even on the demand for adoptions.

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: To follow along with what the member was saying, part of the problem is jurisdictional. There is a group in Alberta saying they have aboriginal children in their community who could be adopted and have the demand from other aboriginal families in the rest of the province, but they don't have the jurisdiction in order to meet those because they only have control over children in their own communities. There often is no way that can be met.

    I'm on some e-lists, so I hear. My e-mail comes in every single day from large numbers of families hoping to adopt. Many of these people are not waiting for babies. They are being turned away from the local adoptions and want more control themselves, so that they're going international. You have large numbers of people flocking to the Russian republics to come home with older special needs children, while you have older special needs children here in Canada who have no families. You have aboriginal families who want to adopt and they can't adopt because of various reasons. Sometimes they don't want to go to Children's Aid because of various problems.

    So we have a situation of really tremendous barriers. Yet we're not really looking at the barriers. We haven't done barriers yet.

    The Chair: It sounds as if you have another subject for a future piece of committee work here. Goodness, we thought we were getting ahead and now you've put us way behind in our plans.

    I want to come now to this point, and I think this will be a wrap-up. Matthew made a very kind offer to put together a panel. Here's how I'm trying to figure out how to connect what we're focusing on in the first case, which is to say prenatal to six on reserve. Clearly what we would see in an ideal world would be fewer children going into care and taken into child welfare. In a sense, although I say this as the happy father of an adopted child, this means fewer children having to be adopted for the best interests of the child.

    I guess I have this challenge for Matthew. We're trying to stop the phenomenon. What we're really trying to do is get at the thing. We want to stop fetal alcohol syndrome before it starts. Part of what we want to do on reserve is to head off the world's most preventable disease. We want to have families united and to overcome the barriers caused by six generations of residential schools. I don't know whether we should address it at this stage of our inquiry as opposed to later on when we get to ages six to twelve.

    What I would ask of members of your network--aboriginal or otherwise--is how did they get into this situation. In a sense, it wasn't of their making. I should really be more properly asking their parents or reviewing the history. I guess the challenge is that we obviously have to deal with people as they are, because they're on this planet and they have rights and we have to take care of them. But at the same time--without diminishing our responsibility to those 65,000 people, many of whom are aboriginals--if we're really trying to produce better futures from the get-go, from conception, then I guess, Matthew, I'm coming back to you and asking whether this is the time to hear about that stuff or would it make more sense for one of our later studies.

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    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: Ultimately I'm going to have to throw that back into the hands of the committee, but I think my words would be this. I understand the preventive orientation of the study and the desire to explore early intervention and what are the opportunities and implications and so on, and that's a very good thing. That's a very admirable thing to do.

    There are a number of kinds of information that I think people could present related to the child welfare study. The difficulty here is that I understand the scope and what it is you want to achieve; I think it's important to understand what is achievable, and what are reasonable outcomes, and what are reasonable objectives. The reality is that you can address fetal alcohol syndrome completely. I'm not saying you can do it tomorrow and I have the answer; it's right in my pocket. If you could, you would still have aboriginal children coming into care, because you would still have many, first of all, non-aboriginal children coming into care for reasons that have nothing to do with fetal alcohol syndrome or alcohol abuse and its problems, and you would have aboriginal children in that situation as well. So we're not going to wholly address the problem.

    I think when we understand best what causes what..... The difficulty with this hyper-focus on early intervention, zero to six, is that while it is wonderful, it's very important, and it's much needed, at the same time there is this reality that you can address the zero to six stuff very thoroughly and you're still going to have difficulties. We need to understand that, perhaps in another study, but I think there is a role within this one.

    Mr. Peter Dudding: If I may, I have two comments.

    One is that in my 30 years in child welfare, what has always struck me was the chronic cycle, the chronicity with these families. These are families who we've seen and known for generations. So part of the challenge is the fact--

    The Chair: Breaking the cycle.

    Mr. Peter Dudding: Breaking the cycle here, because if one applies the exponential notion to it, we know that the 65,000 then has a potential in terms of maintaining that cycle. That's point number one.

    Point number two is, remember, those numbers for the last five years are not static. This isn't 40,000 to 40,000, it's 40,000 to 65,000. I think in some senses there's a bit of a plea in terms of urgency here around the fact that we need to be mindful of that in terms of a growing population.

    I think that underscores your comments in terms of the preventive nature of the work we do, but I think it also makes somewhat important the second point in terms of paying attention to the needs of the 65,000 and growing.

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: May I have another comment?

    The Chair: Sure, and Elspeth has that sort of twitch that indicates....

    Mr. Matthew Geigen-Miller: And thanks to Peter for refocusing me there.

    We're aware that the birth rate in Canada is in the negative except in one area, and that's aboriginal youth. There's a boom in the aboriginal youth population right now. In aboriginal communities, we're having people having babies and having babies younger. So aboriginal youth are not just tomorrow's parents; aboriginal youth are today's parents. So this is something that's the trend, and the impact of it is really unique to aboriginal communities. There are young people having children all over the country, but it's especially so in aboriginal communities.

    So I think Peter is right. You can't ignore the aboriginal youth situation, because they are becoming parents tomorrow, but they're also having children today.

    When you take a look at situations like that death in Edmonton, the Krystal Coombs murder case, the young aboriginal woman who was born in Ontario, separated, moved to a different province and was placed in care in a different province, was in and out of care, wound up in a domestic violent situation with a partner, and eventually her two- or four-month-old child was murdered.... I probably can't speak about it too much because there's a publication ban in effect right now, but those basic facts have been reported.

    That's just one example of a very risky situation of someone who's a young person, aboriginal, fleeing from care right now, and her child is dead. There are many other situations, perhaps less dramatic than that, but that are of equal concern.

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    The Chair: Elspeth.

    Ms. Elspeth Ross: As a quick point about a youth panel, I think its very important that the stories be told, but we have to remember that often people who do speak out have very sad stories to tell. Many of the stories around aboriginal adoption, aboriginal permanency, are very terrible stories in terms of how people were treated in the past. I think we have to remember that the situation may be a little different now. So although it's good to listen to youth speaking out, in terms of thinking about listening to youth as well, I would like to put in a pitch for youth who have had to be adopted, maybe adopted as older kids. I've heard panels of youth speak out on this in the States, but so far we don't have a travelling road show, as far as I know, in Canada of youth who will speak positively about finding some form of permanency.

    I would also like to remind you that there's a tremendous difference, when we think of aboriginal children in Canada, between the Inuit and the Indians. I don't know if you people also are concerned with the Inuit, but as just a quick reminder at the end, adoption is thought of very differently in the Inuit community compared to the Indian community, and much more positively. There are very high birth rates in both communities, and certainly among the Inuit there are more. But there are positives there in terms of adoption and the Inuit.

    The Chair: Well, thank you all. This has been extremely useful.

    I think we'll want to ponder this, and we'll definitely want to take you up on your offer, Matthew. It's really a timing issue and where things fit best.

    As well, when we focus on zero to six, of course we're focusing at the same time on the parents. These children aren't living on rocks. They're not conceived in outer space. They're actually in a womb someplace.

    Part of the strategy is to make this a positive experience for all families and to be non-stigmatizing when we support them, and to inculcate parenting skills, self-confidence, and pleasure and joy in being parents. Also, as we're discovering with the aboriginal head start program, the people who work to do that in communities--and they're frequently women--are empowered. They're a separate set of beneficiaries in our win-win situation. So it's clearly intergenerational, to say the very least.

    I also take your point that it would be wrong for us to neglect taking care of people who are already on the planet. That's absolutely central.

    I guess the final point that's driven home by everything we've heard is that it's not only a question of.... Well, it is a question of being child-centred and aware of children's rights. As for policies that have the inadvertent effect of moving kids around or destabilizing them, and that do so in a way that is so disrespectful in terms of informing them or telling them what's going on, scooping them up with their garbage bags of belongings, we have to do something about that.

    The meeting is adjourned.