39 search results for
West Coast LEAF
Recommendation 29:
MCFD should work collaboratively with Indigenous communities to develop training and tools to support Indigenous peoples and communities to understand their rights regarding child welfare.
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Recommendation 18:
MCFD should undertake a legislative review and financial policy review to ensure that all kinship caregivers are receiving the Child Tax Benefit and other benefits for each dependent in their care.
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Recommendation 4:
MCFD should undertake a comprehensive legislative review of the CFCSA in order to bring the provincial child welfare standards in line with the federal minimum standards. It is essential that Indigenous communities and Nations are adequately consulted in the review process.
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Recommendation 9:
MCFD should review the legislation to assess how the legislation could support a more accountable and robust legal framework for prevention-based supports including by:
- Adding a comprehensive list of functions for MCFD at the beginning of the legislation which includes:
- working with community and social services to alleviate and remedy the socio-economic conditions that place families at risk;
- developing and providing services and supports before and after intervention;
- proactively identifying groups of children the recognition and realization of whose rights may require MCFD to undertake special measures and develop special programming
- Replace the reference of prevention services in section 2(c) of the CFCSA, with a legislative provision that places a binding and measurable obligation on the Ministry to provide supports to keep families together who are at risk of having their children apprehended. The provision should place a positive obligation on the Ministry to take active efforts to provide remedial services and rehabilitative programs designed to prevent the breakup of the child’s family. The courts must then be satisfied that these active efforts proved unsuccessful in keeping the family together.
- Expand the list of supports under section 5 to include:
- improving the family’s financial situation;
- improving the family’s housing situation;
- improving parenting skills;
- improving child-care and child-rearing capabilities;
- improving homemaking skills;
- drug or alcohol treatment and rehabilitation;
- providing child care;
- mediation of disputes;
- self-help and empowerment of parents whose children have been, are or may be in need of protective services; and,
- transition supports for families who have just had a child apprehended or returned.
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Recommendation 15:
MCFD should develop a policy for supporting each family with whom it comes into contact to secure all the available provincial and federal benets. This may require training social workers to understand social assistance frameworks or creating a position within MCFD for a social assistance support worker that can help families secure all the benefits to which they are entitled.
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Recommendation 16:
MCFD should develop a plain-language fact sheet for kinship caregivers that sets out the pathways available to them under the CFCSA and FLA. Social workers must be required to provide this information sheet to all caregivers that could qualify for the EFP.
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Recommendation 5:
MCFD should amend the guiding principles of the CFCSA to ensure that children’s rights are not viewed as hierarchical but interdependent. The guiding principles should reflect the holistic nature of children’s rights including the right of the child to maintain relationships with their family and community, the child’s right to support services, and the importance of maintaining the child’s relationship to their culture.
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Recommendation 7:
MCFD should amend the CFCSA to reflect the right of the child to not be separated from their family by reason only of their parent or guardian:
- lacking the same or similar economic and social advantages as others in BC society;
- engaging is substance use or coping with addiction when a parent is actively pursuing or participating in addiction services; or
- having a disability.
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Recommendation 6:
MCFD should amend the best interests of the child principle set out in the CFCSA to ensure that decision-makers turn their mind to the entirety of children’s right. The best interests of the child principle should at minimum direct decision-makers to:
- consider the trauma caused by apprehension;
- weigh the risks to the child’s well-being if the child remains or is returned with the family against the risks to the child’s well-being that is caused by the removal and placement of the child in care;
- assessment of the risks to the child if the child remains or is returned to the family must be done with due consideration of all the supports and services that can be provided to the family; and,
- consider the impact of family violence on the child and provide all the necessary services to the family in a manner that supports family members and prevents the need to remove the child from the custody of an abused family member.
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Recommendation 17:
MCFD must advocate with the provincial government for the creation of a universal kinship caregiver benefit that is provided to all families in kinship care. This should apply to all children living in kinship care including families in which kinship caregivers have been granted guardianship orders under the FLA.
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