We thank you for this opportunity to share with you our personal thoughts, feelings and experiences representing as foster parents. Our family is a former one time Métis foster family living in Alberta. The foster children that were in our care have direct family connections to an Alberta Métis Settlement. For reasons we fail to understand, we believe the Government of Alberta Children and Youth Services, together with the Child & Family Services Authorities and Delegated First Nations Agencies is failing to provide adequate care to children in foster care or their families. High caseloads, insufficient caseworker training and compensation, a combination of unstable and ineffective agency management, and a lack of resources plague the foster care systems. As a result, children who were removed from their homes for basic protection actually suffer continuing harm in care.
With this letter we plead that the government improve the performance of the foster care system. Promoting strong and vibrant communities starts where children and youth are valued, nurtured and loved, so they will develop to their potential and are supported by enduring relationships, healthy families and safe communities. The time for the foster care system to change is now!
We strongly believe the mandate we received and observed from Alberta Children and Youth Services put our foster children and biological children’s safety at unnecessary risk and did not provide sufficient supports for success or healing. No one was ever accountable. Structured guidance and supports were missing for this family and our family to stay safe, heal, be valued, nurtured and loved so all could develop to their potential. As we see it, this is simply not working. We cannot understand how the Government of Alberta Children and Youth Services, together with the Child & Family Services Authorities and Delegated First Nations Agencies accept this.
We were shocked and ashamed of the mistreatment that we endured and witnessed of the children and their families in care by the Government of Alberta Children and Youth services. We are no longer proud to say that we were a Métis foster family. The children in care their families and foster families are not just numbers, not animals; they are humans whom deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Foster families, foster children and their families are getting lost within the system that was developed to support and protect them.
We didn’t witness any family healing within the system during our eighteen months as caregivers. “The use of judgment and punishment actually works against the healing process. An already unbalanced person is moved further out of balance.” Rupert Ross. Without healing the cycle continues. We believe what the threat of the children not returning home to their parents does do is keep people from coming forward and taking responsibility for the hurt they are causing. In order to break the cycle, the parents must accept accountability, and support must come from, those most affected by the victimization – the children - the families, and the community. The immediate separation may alleviate some of the pain of this family but it also reinforces it. Hurt cannot heal hurt. The healing process of all is therefore at best delayed, and most often actually deterred.
The children came to our home after being removed from an unstable, unsafe environment. In our eighteen months as their caregivers we feel that the children, their siblings and their parents and our family experienced and continue to experience a foster care system that itself is unstable. Our government declares that it is better equipped to care for the children than their dysfunctional caregivers are. Because of overwhelming caseloads assigned to under paid caseworkers and, of course, insufficient government funding, the quality of case management remains inadequate. As a result, many of the children's needs are not met. More funding and efforts should instead be centered on attempts at significantly decreasing the amount of time spent in foster care by the average child.
We think it is undeniable that children who reach permanent placement earlier in their lives are significantly better than those who have a more extended stay in foster care. We think it is clear that the foster care system has continually failed to protect and improve the lives of our most vulnerable citizens. Our government needs to invest more into programs and initiatives aimed at helping to speed up children's exit from foster care. For example, helping families stay together while keeping children safe, finding the relatives of a child in foster care, increasing support for grandparents and other relative caregivers, improving support for young people who age out of foster care, promote healing for the family, and adoption initiatives campaigns for older children. The result of these efforts would be a significant decrease in the number of children in the foster care system. As a result, caseloads would be decreased, caseworkers would no longer be overwhelmed, and children would benefit from adequate case management.
We question if the scenario was the same, no family support, financially exhausted, a family clearly overwhelmed but the disease was cancer not addictions would this family had received different supports and respect? From day one of the children entering our home and through all three caseworkers, we were told that these children would never go home. Nothing had been decided by any court, just verbally through the caseworker. It would seem that before any healing of the addiction disease, the expectations for the parents are the same template as anyone else that enters the system. Without healing it is inevitable that these parents would fail the goals set by the caseworker and those failures are marks against the parents, all the while building a case against the parents for the courts to grant permanent guardianship order.
I understand the children’s need for permanency, but that should not come with inadequate family connection or losing all connection in the form of adoption. I would expect that a parent with the disease cancer would be allowed the time to heal so the family could reunite and all through the illness a healthy and respectful family connection maintained. I do not agree that is what is happening for the parents with addiction disease. The mandate is very abrasive and an intrusive process. It seems that Alberta Child and Youth Services fail to accept alcoholics and addicts as an ill person in need of healthcare.
At a recent round dance, I spoke with a first year indigenous university student who grew up in and out of foster care and she compared it to the residential schools. She said that she was lost for a very long time; she didn't “hear the drum beat”. She continues on her life journey to find out who she is with many obstacles along the way that she contributes to the time she spent in foster care away from her family without connection. She quoted, "How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong look like right." Black Hawk, Sauk
We have met many good foster parents like us whom have quit. They are good, honest people whom are not willing to be part of a team that doesn’t support enhancement for families in need. We have also met many good foster parents that continue the humble work they do, but they are just as exhausted, under paid and overwhelmed as the caseworkers which develops into inadequate care for the children. The children deserve more than their basic needs met.
The time for the foster care system to change is now! No longer can we afford to sit by while our children drop out of school, get involved with drugs, engage in sexual activity, continue the cycle of sexual abuse, become homeless, become depressed, or commit suicide. For their sake, our sake, and the sake of our future generations, we must make a change--a lasting change. Our kids are literally dying for it!
Alberta and Children Youth Services mission statement: “Our mission is to work together to enhance the ability of families and communities to develop nurturing and safe environments for children, youth and individuals.” From our view as foster parents, Alberta and Children Youth Services has failed this family.
We believe that changes to the foster care system need to start by the Government of Alberta Children and Youth Services, together with the Child & Family Services Authorities and Delegated First Nations Agencies taking accountability and learning from the mistakes made, not ignoring them. We sent our resignation letter on October 24, 2010.
