58 search results for
West Coast LEAF
Recommendation 21:
The BC government and MCFD should work with Indigenous communities to fund and develop comprehensive services for families that are experiencing violence including services for abusive men and services for the entire family. These services should address intersecting needs including historical trauma, parenting skills, and substance use.
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Category and theme:
- Accessibility ,
- Accessible services and technology ,
- Decolonization and Indigenous rights ,
- Disability and parenting ,
- Discrimination and hate ,
- Gender-based violence ,
- Health ,
- Health, wellness and services ,
- Housing and homelessness ,
- Indigenous children and youth in care ,
- Poverty and economic inequality ,
- Public services ,
- Substance use
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Recommendation 19:
The BC government and MCFD should increase preventative program funding to Indigenous communities for existing or new promising practices. Funding must be equitable, sustained and long-term, and cover the delivery of holistic services as identified by communities. Funding should cover services such as:
- Human resource needs of community-based groups including issues with retention, burn out, inequity in pay scales etc.
- In-home support
- Pregnancy support and baby welcoming programs
- Transition support programming for families after children have been removed or upon being returned home
- Supports for parents whose children are in care
- Provide in-home support immediately as a tool to prevent removal
- Funding for cultural programming that is consistent and frequent
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Category and theme:
- Accessibility ,
- Accessible services and technology ,
- Classism ,
- Culture and language ,
- Decolonization and Indigenous rights ,
- Disability and parenting ,
- Discrimination and hate ,
- Economic inequality ,
- Education and employment ,
- Health, wellness and services ,
- Income insecurity and benefits ,
- Indigenous children and youth in care ,
- Poverty ,
- Poverty and economic inequality ,
- Public services ,
- Racism ,
- Sexism ,
- Workers’ rights
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Recommendation 20:
The BC government and MCFD must fund and resource supportive housing alternatives where parents and children who are at risk of harm can live. These homes should be specifically qualified to address complex family circumstances. Creative housing solutions where caregivers and children can stay together while receiving wrap-around support are especially needed in remote areas.
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Recommendation 28:
The BC government and MCFD must ensure that each parent engaging with MCFD has access to a trained community-based support worker to help them navigate the child welfare process. Community-based support workers must be trained in collaborative, trauma-informed, and culturally safe practices.
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Recommendation 3:
the Alberta Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act (CYFEA), provides that the best interests of the child assessment requires decision makers to provide children who have been exposed to family violence any intervention service that “supports family members and prevents the need to remove the child from the custody of an abused family member.” This is a key framing of some of the programming needed to address family violence in the case of the child welfare system and is the approach that many Indigenous community-based family service organizations electively employ to keep families together. We recommend that similar language is included in the defnition of the best interests of the child principle that directs decision-makers to turn their mind to prevention-based supports in assessing the right of the child to be protected from harm.
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Recommendation 10:
Strengthen the legal duty of the Ministry to consider less disruptive measures by:
- Adding legislative language in the CFCSA that explicitly directs the Ministry to actively and diligently pursue and implement less disruptive measures on an ongoing basis;
- Including a non-exhaustive list of less disruptive measures that the Ministry must consider on an ongoing basis including an order of preference of placements akin to that set out in section 16 of Bill C-92;
- Adding legislative language in the CFCSA that directs the Ministry to establish in court that social workers have made active efforts that proved unsuccessful to return the child to their family;
- Where parents and Nations have identified less disruptive measures, the CFCSA should direct the Ministry to provide prompt, clear, and written reasons for rejecting these less disruptive measures.
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Category and theme:
- Access to justice ,
- Accessibility ,
- Classism ,
- Courts ,
- Decolonization and Indigenous rights ,
- Disability and parenting ,
- Discrimination and hate ,
- Health, wellness and services ,
- Human rights system ,
- Indigenous children and youth in care ,
- International human rights ,
- Policing and the criminal justice system ,
- Poverty and economic inequality ,
- Public services ,
- Racism
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Recommendation 1:
States should pursue policies that ensure support for families in meeting their responsibilities towards the child and promote the right of the child to have a relationship with both parents. These policies should address the root causes of child abandonment, relinquishment and separation of the child from his/her family by ensuring, inter alia, the right to birth registration, and access to adequate housing and to basic health, education and social welfare services, as well as by promoting measures to combat poverty, discrimination, marginalization, stigmatization, violence, child maltreatment and sexual abuse, and substance abuse.
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Recommendation 2:
States should allocate adequate resources to address risk factors and prevent violence before it occurs. Policies and programmes should address immediate risk factors, such as a lack of parent-child attachment, family breakdown, abuse of alcohol or drugs, and access to rearms. In line with the Millennium Development Goals, attention should be focused on economic and social policies that address poverty, gender and other forms of inequality, income gaps, unemployment, urban overcrowding, and other factors which undermine society
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Recommendation 5:
Recommends that Canadian legislation mimic the language of the US Indian Child Welfare Act, which requires evidence that social workers have made “active efforts” that “proved unsuccessful.
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Recommendation 6:
PUBLIC EDUCATION—efforts to raise public awareness about consent and sexual assault, options for survivors, the risks and benefits of reporting, and the steps in the justice system’s process
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