The perspective of potentially ruining a child’s outcomes claims my commitment

The point I want to make here is that the perspective of potentially ruining a child’s outcomes claimed my commitment when I was working up North in Nunavik, Quebec, Canada.

It was the hardest work I have ever had to do and you have to have done it to say something like: "On Monday mornings, I put myself in button-responsive mode and I will reflect on what I have done when I leave here for good" (my co-worker's words to me when I complained about never being allowed by supervisor to think things through for the best of the people and the children). No Child Should Take the Long Way Home aims to reduce the number of placements children have to face in Nunavik.

Projects like mine are grounded in reality

Despite my best efforts to see the placements of children as acceptable solutions while in that work and even after, my response was to think about how animals are better treated than many children in this day and age.  Eventually, I will be able to tell the story of the little girl who was moved 56 times in a 4-year span. You probably agree that no one would ever think of moving their dog from 19 to 56 kennels; all of us would certainly have found a better, more permanent solution.


Projects like mine are grounded in reality but they must be on the same page as other projects to exist. In this instance, it is important to work with other like-minded organizations.  Mary Ellen Turpel Lafond, Melanie Marks, Mark Gifford, SOS Children’s Village, Linda Day, Lise Cadieux all work to support children as best as they can.

The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, M.D., P.C., M.P., Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs says it very well: ‘’Children are our future, and to give them the best possible start in life, we must collectively move from an intervention-based approach of apprehension and protection to prevention-based approaches to community, families and children's rights and well-being. Working in genuine partnership with First Nations is critical to developing community-led solutions for reform that will reduce the number of children in care and result in better health, education and economic outcomes.”

Inuit children are still uprooted from their communities

Like their parents who were torn from their families and sent to residential schools, a generation or two later, First Nations and Inuit children are also uprooted from their communities and made more vulnerable by the impact of the too many placements that do not take into account their needs. We continue to see the impact to this day. There are some 27,000 Indigenous foster children across Canada. That’s more children than were taken from their families at the height of residential schools. They too are torn from their culture and their language because their parents are unable to raise them in living conditions (housing and overcrowding) that support their full development.

THE CHILDREN NEED A VOICE

Confronted by racism, sexual abuse, physical, and verbal abuse, many girls choose to run away from foster homes and reserves. Homeless and destitute, they survive on the streets where their vulnerability to violence escalates. Most children in foster care, if not all, experience feelings of confusion, fear, apprehension of the unknown, loss, sadness, anxiety, and stress. Such feelings and experiences must be addressed and treated early to prevent or decrease poor developmental and mental health outcomes that ultimately affect a child's educational experience and the quality of adulthood. Systematic orientation for all children entering foster care is proposed as a preventive intervention that addresses experiences associated to foster care.

Petition to empower the mothers and to reduce placements of the children

Like all that matters, we have to make the connections with what we can all do to help. The petition to be given to PM Justin Trudeau hopes to restore dignity but also their rights to a stable family and harmonious community. Policies and practices reflect longstanding and deeply embedded mother-blaming culture and father invisibility ideologies that shape child protection systems.