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28 J.L. & Soc. Pol'y 1 (2018)

handle is hein.journals/jlsp28 and id is 1 raw text is: Mosher and Hewitt: Reimagining Child Welfare Systems in Canada Reimagining Child Welfare Systems in Canada JANET MOSHER & JEFFERY HEWITT Can you tell me where my real home is? I'd really like to know, All my life I been a foster child with no place in mind at to go.... The removal of children from their families and communities has long-lasting and often devastating consequences. The breaking of the bonds that connect children to family and community erodes the transmission of culture, of language, of belonging, and of identity. There is no doubt that there are circumstances in which the well-being of a child requires that changes be made in who is to be entrusted with the responsibility for care. However, there is equally no doubt that child welfare systems across the country are plagued by serious shortcomings: bonds are broken unnecessarily; structural failings undermine parents' well-being and their capacity to provide adequately for their children; children, once removed, have limited or no access to their cultural roots; and racism is embedded in structures, practices, and individual encounters. The scale upon which Indigenous and African Canadian children have been taken from their families continues to generate deep impacts in a variety of ways. Some examples: the number of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls; human trafficking of Indigenous youth; the over-policing of neighbourhoods with concentrations of predominately African Canadian or Indigenous people. In these ways, and others, the larger legal infrastructure supports the taking of Indigenous and African Canadian children by first breaking apart families, then devaluing cultures, language, identity, and lives and subsequently cycling their lives through the justice system. The taking of Indigenous children in disproportionate numbers is an active tentacle in the ongoing colonial project. Removing African Canadian children from their families takes aim against the community to the advantage of the existing power structure. All aided by law. Therefore, though more will be required, it is necessary that law, which provides the authority for state child welfare systems to continue to take Indigenous and African Canadian children in disproportionately high numbers, must change because the harm-too often dressed up as justice-continues to oppress Indigenous and African Canadian children, families, and communities from cradle to grave. On 21 October 2016 the Journal of Law and Social Policy (JLSP) co-hosted a symposium, together with the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, the African Canadian Legal Clinic, and The Action Group on Access to Justice (TAG) of the Law Society of Ontario. Called Reimagining Child Welfare Systems in Canada, it brought together community members, practitioners, academics, and students to explore how state child welfare systems have failed Indigenous and African Canadian communities and to share alternatives that communities have implemented, planned, and/or imagined. With the exception of the article by Kate Bezanson, the contributions to this Issue of the JLSP-and another that will follow in the coming months-arise from the symposium and the conversations during a day-long workshop for presenters that followed the public event. Awareness of the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in child welfare systems across the country has existed since the 1980s and has increased sharply since the release of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, the launching of several 'April Isadore, Kokum's House, this volume. Published by Osgoode Digital Commons, 2018

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