Manitoba CFS intervened with 50% of First Nations parents from 1998 to 2019: study
First Nations parents involved in study nearly 4 times as likely to have open CFS file than others
A "striking level" of First Nations parents came into contact with child protective services in Manitoba over the last couple decades, which could ultimately burden the health and well-being of their communities, a new study says.
Published last week, the joint study by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and University of Manitoba researchers identified nearly 120,000 birth parents who had their first child in Manitoba between 1998 and 2019. First Nations parents made up nine per cent of that number.
The study found half of the First Nations parents had an open file with a child protective services agency during that period.
"This was almost four times higher among First Nations parents compared to non-First Nations parents," said Kathleen Kenny, the U of M researcher who led the study.
The study also found just over a quarter of First Nations parents had their child or children put in an out-of-home placement — a rate nearly six times higher than their non-First Nations counterparts. About 10 per cent had their parental rights terminated, compared to less than two per cent for non-First Nations parents.
Kenny says most child welfare research tends to focus on rates of contact among individual children, but a more accurate picture can be gleaned from looking at their families as a whole.
"I think that paints … a bigger picture of how these events are not isolated, they're very patterned," she said.
The study analyzed anonymized population-based data from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, linking it to individual information from Child and Family Services, hospital birth records, employment and income assistance case reports and the Canadian census.
'Not hearing anything' from province: grand chief
The head of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs says the report's findings aren't a surprise for many First Nations people.
"It just further verifies and confirms what we've already known for so long," Grand Chief Kyra Wilson told CBC News on Tuesday.
Manitoba's child welfare system should be focused on supporting families, children and parents through their difficulties, Wilson said,
"We need to make sure that we have capacity within our nations to ensure that children don't fall through the cracks, through any transitional period."
But she says the province hasn't been forthcoming on how the current system is being improved.
"Transparency and communication [are] the key to ensuring that changes are being made, but we're not hearing anything from the province in that regard."
Manitoba Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said Wilson's claim is "not true."
Fontaine says she regularly met with Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak and the Southern Chiefs' Organization before legislation came into effect last October to allow Manitoba CFS agencies to place kids in care with extended family or people within their home community.
"Everything that I've been doing as the minister is done in concert and with the knowledge of leadership that are responsible for the authorities," she told reporters on Tuesday.
While Fontaine said there was "nothing too new" in the study's findings, she said the research is a reflection of historical child welfare in Manitoba.
The kinship care changes last October, as well as a relationship declaration signed by the province last spring that pledged a jurisdictional transfer for child welfare to Manitoba First Nations, are among ways the province is working to dismantle the harmful child welfare system of the past, said Fontaine.
"It's really about decolonizing the way that we do child welfare while we still have this provincial system, and while we're walking the path to jurisdiction," she said.
The study recommends the province invest in First Nations-led solutions and continue to work on jurisdictional issues involving child welfare in First Nations communities.
Fontaine said her government has been doing that and "a lot more."
'Incredibly high' rates
The study is the first multi-year project to estimate population-level CFS contact rates among parents in Manitoba, Kenny said.
But the findings do have several limitations, as the study says it did not include parents who came into contact with child protective services during the research period but did not have a file opened. It was also not able to estimate CFS contact rates among non-birth parents.
The non-First Nations category in the study also includes people who are non-status First Nations, Métis and Inuit, the study says.
It notes patterns of CFS contact may have been affected by the 2003 decentralization of Manitoba CFS into four authorities, as well as the end of the controversial birth alerts program and workforce changes after the 2005 murder of Phoenix Sinclair.
While inequities in CFS contact rates can be expected among First Nations and non-First Nations families, Kenny says the new study reveals that contact rates for First Nations parents are "incredibly high and show a wider scale of disruption" than data has previously shown.
The threat of child removal, involuntary surveillance and navigating institutional processes can create stress, trauma and fear for parents, the study says.
Those stresses may be worsened by the fact child protective interventions are concentrated in First Nations communities, which could create extra burdens on the community as a whole that "are similar to the spill-over effects of mass incarceration," the study says.
The study's findings are easy to overlook for those who don't experience or see the effects of Manitoba's child welfare system each day, said Kenny.
"The underlying message is that First Nations families need to be protected and supported to flourish in ways that they determine to be the right ways for their communities."
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With files from Josh Crabb, Ian Froese and Karen Pauls