Bennett – kinship care

Kinship care is recognition of extended family members and their ability to care for children. So this would include grandparents, this would include aunts and uncles. And it doesn’t necessarily also mean that it has to be a family connection. It could be a community connection as well, because those kids belong in that community. So we have a wide recognition of who is our kin, so community members for certain can be part of that well.   

I am from the First Nation community of Sandy Bay. So our agency and our community; we are implementing a new model based on kinship care and recognizing too that many of our families who want to be caregivers for the children in our communities need financial assistance. So how do we get around that? 

And so it’s really recognizing the role of extended families in our community and giving more teeth to recognition of extended family than what we see in the legislation around child and family services. So even though they say they recognize an indigenous child’s cultural background and extended family members, sometimes they just don’t put that into real action. 

So I know with Sandy Bay they are working really hard to strengthen and recognize that we do have people in our community that can provide care to our children. And sometimes to be able to do that they need financial assistance, because that’s really what it’s all about. People do want to look after their own children but the way the world works today, it’s all based on money, so they need financial help because so many of our families live in poverty. So we have to turn that around.