New Blog Post – Out of Relationship: First Nations and the Child Protection System

Many of us think of colonization as political policy that exists within US and world history, but in fact the effects of colonization are alive today in the institutional practices of many social service systems. These practices result in inequitable outcomes for people involved with systems and institutions including child welfare, health care, mental health, education, and juvenile justice, producing multi-systemic disparities for ethnic and cultural groups that have been historically colonized.

Many of us think of colonization as political policy that exists within US and world history, but in fact the effects of colonization are alive today in the institutional practices of many social service systems. These practices result in inequitable outcomes for people involved with systems and institutions including child welfare, health care, mental health, education, and juvenile justice, producing multi-systemic disparities for ethnic and cultural groups that have been historically colonized.

NCCD’s Heather Haberman discusses the influence of colonization on First Nations people in the US and Canada in our latest blog post. She compares this history to the evolution of social work perspectives and stresses that with unfunded, ill-defined legislation around issues of child welfare and First Nations children, we must do more than acknowledge history and revise practices in order to stop systemic colonization. For effective change to take place, it is critical that we convene working groups with First Nations stakeholders when creating any policy that affects them, and that the policies adopted ultimately reflect the needs of the First Nations communities as those needs are defined by First Nations people.