http://www.ammsa.com/windspeaker/ Feds breaking promises to children in care by Paul Barnsley Winspeaker Staff Writer The announcement last month that as much as $1 billion in new money will be directed to improving the health outcomes of Aboriginal people doesn't impress Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. Blackstock knows the numbers on Aboriginal children in care and they're not good. And she says the department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has informed her that none of the recently announced money will make it into this area of concern. Windspeaker obtained a letter that Blackstock wrote Oct. 21 to Senator LAndon Pearson, with copies sent to Prime Minister Paul Martin and Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott. The senator is a well-respected advocate for children. In 1996, she was named advisor to the minister of Foreign Affairs on children's rights. In 1999, she was named personal representative of then-prime minister Jean Chrétien to the 2002 special session on children of the United Nations general assembly. The letter was blunt, laying out the bitter realities of the situations of children in care. "There are more First Nations children and youth in institutional care in Canada than there were at the height of residential school operations in the 1940s," Blackstock wrote, calling the situation critical. Aboriginal children represent 30 to 40 percent of children in child welfare care but only five to six percent of the child population in the country, she said. Figures supplied by the Department of Indian and North Affairs Canada (INAC) itself indicate the number of status Indian children resident on reserve placed in child welfare care increased a staggering 71.5 percent from 1995 to 2001. She quoted the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect which stated that Aboriginal children are twice as likely as they non-Aboriginal counterparts to be reported to child welfare authorities for neglect. "Unpacking the neglect definition further, researchers found that if conditions of poverty, inadequate housing and substance misuse were addressed there would be no over-representation of Aboriginal children in the child welfare system," she wrote. Child welfare is normally a provincial responsibility but First Nation child welfare agencies are funded by INAC. But they must follow provincial rules. When the Assembly of First Nations and INAC conducted a joint national policy review of child welfare processes with INAC in 2000, it was discovered that First Nation agencies, on average, receive 22 percent less funding per child than their mainstream, provincially-funded counterparts. As well as being asked to maintain provincial standards with but three-quarters of the funding, First Nation agencies are also being denied funding for services that are required by law, Blackstock told the senator. "Least disruptive measure," services that are provided to children at significant risk of maltreatment so that they can remain safely in their homes [examples include family counseling, guidance and assessment, in-home support, parent aides; child care, respite care, services for improving the family’s housing, mediation of disputes], are not funded at all by INAC, she added. These services are, however, provided in the mainstream agencies to help children remain in the care of their parents and out of foster care. "First Nations agencies report that the numbers of children in care could be reduced if adequate and sustained funding for least disruptive measures was provided by INAC," Blackstock wrote. The national policy review also showed that child welfare costs are increasing by more than six percent per year but there has not been a cost of living increase in the INAC funding formula for First Nations child and family service agencies since 1995. The policy review contained 17 recommendations that would deal with these troubling statistics, but four years later those recommendations have not been acted upon. During a meeting with former Indian Affairs Minister Andy Mitchell, Blackstock was told the "government was balancing the needs of children in child welfare care with other pressing priorities for the department." "We acknowledge that the ministry does face a series of competing pressures; however, it is important to underscore that least disruptive measure are statutory and thus are not a discretionary expenditure for government," she told Pearson. "The failure to fund these services has not only resulted in an increases in the numbers of First Nations children in care, it has also meant that First Nations children on reserve do not receive equal treatment under child welfare laws." That's a violation of the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which both admonish against all forms of discrimination, she added. And despite the lower-than-mainstream funding levels and almost a decade of seeing inflation erode funding levels further, there have been cuts. The government has capped the amounts First Nation agencies are funded for legal costs. Mitchell claimed that funding exists for legal costs but Blackstock reminded him the $5,000 per year received by the Mi'kmaq child and family services agency -- one of the largest of the 105 agencies in Canada -- is only a fraction of the $500,000 a year required. During a phone interview, Blackstock was asked why these disturbing figures have not been reported before. "A lot of this information wasn't available until very recently. It's new and emerging information coming out. But the issues in regard to the funding have been longstanding. Agencies have been providing reports to the department about the inadequacy of the funding as well as the impacts of the inadequacy of the funding for a long period of time," Cindy Blackstock replied. She was asked if she saw it as reasonable to wonder why some portion of the recently announced $700 million for Aboriginal health shouldn't include some funding to fix the problems in the child welfare area. "I would have hoped so but I haven't seen anything about child welfare. In my view there should be a connection here," she replied. "The piece that the department doesn't seem to get is, number one, these are statutory services that are provided not to children who are at risk of maltreatment but who are experiencing some level of child maltreatment, who are amongst the most vulnerable kids in the country. Yet they're not receiving the services that would keep them safe in their homes, that are available to every other Canadian. We understand that some kids will need to go into foster care but it shouldn't be because they're not receiving services that are available to every other child." Two hundred million of the $700 million is set aside so that bureaucrats can solve jurisdictional squabbles and design ways to work together through different levels of government. That's a big chunk of money eaten up by government officials that will not help address the troubling shortfalls in child welfare. Blackstock said kids who are in danger should be a more pressing priority than bickering bureaucrats. "I'm not even convinced at this point that it's even on the agenda. Within the department, I've never heard any of the ministers make a statement about child welfare. INAC does not consider itself a children's ministry. And that's the type of profile I'm trying to put on it, to say, 'Yes, you still are a children's ministry and of all the promises you make you should be keeping the ones you make to children.'" Some decisions to direct money to First Nation agencies may be affected by the fact that a couple have had highly publicize problems dealing with financial accountability and political infighting. "We don't have a monopoly on that, you know. I'm against bad practices everywhere," she said. There have also been problems with some mainstream children's aid groups "but that doesn't mean you quash every provincial children's aid society," she added. "The other stereotype that's out there is that these kids are already getting all the perks. Look at this big $8 billion, etc. That's where we've really tried to put our research, to debunk that myth and show that not only are these kids receiving 22 percent less federal services but they're not receiving any provincial child welfare services in most cases, no municipal services for quality of life like rec centres and libraries, which mean a lot to children," she said. And support services provided off reserve simply don't exist on reserve. "They don't get access to most of the voluntary sector resources, that provide food banks, parent support centres, camps for kids. It's funded to the tune of $90 billion a year and our research shows that First Nations kids on reserve receive almost none of that," she added. "You don't miss what you don't have. But when you start to think about just equality of life support that people don't have on reserves, that we take for granted off reserve, it's really chocking. And its no wonder, on the basis of that, that we have so many kids in care. I think if we did that to every Canadian kid the numbers of kids in care would skyrocket."