Alberta’s child welfare system is in a state of disrepair

In December 2016, Alberta Human Services formed a 10-person panel to investigate what critics said was government’s failure to properly handle and thoroughly examine the death of four-year-old Serenity, a young brutalized child who died from a brain injury in 2014. The coroner’s office noted that the child’s emaciated body also showed signs that she’d been sexually abused. But the panel’s job goes much deeper than investigating a single case of government bungling and indecision. The child welfare system and the kinship care program are flawed and everyone in the province, particularly the Indigenous population, knows it. Though the Indigenous population in Alberta represents less than six percent of the total head-count, 60 percent of children in care are Indigenous children.

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