I think one of the things to remember about First Nations children coming into child welfare care is that the leading reasons for them being in child welfare care are poverty, poor housing and caregiver substance misuse related to multigenerational trauma. Now the good news is that we can do something about all three of those things, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a systemic level, you can advocate as an early childhood educator or through your organizations with provincial and federal government to make sure that those inequalities we talked about are remedied. And that there\u2019s adequate culturally based treatment services to address substance misuse and that you\u2019re actually training yourselves on substance misuse. Because a lot of people think it\u2019s all just one big category. But those of us who have worked on the front line know that\u2019s not true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a lot of differences between the level of substance that someone\u2019s using, the combination of substances they might use in terms of the impacts on their parenting. And I\u2019m a big believer in holding people\u2019s feet to the fire for things that they can change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The one thing that I would ask that you think about as early childhood educators is where is the real source at the risk for this child coming from? Because I did child protection myself for 15 years and I began to see that for First Nations families, often the source of the risk, these inequalities we talked about, the multigenerational trauma from residential school was sourced outside of the family and yet our tendency in the system was to think well, it\u2019s the parents\u2019 responsibility to change all of this stuff. It\u2019s the community\u2019s responsibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part of that is true. Where they can make those changes, they should. But isn\u2019t it our responsibility as well to deal with those things that place kids at risk that aren\u2019t in a control of families, reasonably in control of families? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other thing that I would try to do is really learn from other early childhood educators like Margo Greenwood, the Aboriginal Childcare Association in BC about the types of resources that you can use within your centre to talk about all different forms of families. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thankfully, we\u2019re starting to kind of see that now with the LGBTQ community and others in ways that certainly weren\u2019t available when I was growing up. But we need to broaden that out to talk about children in care who are living temporarily away from their families, sometimes permanently away from their families, and that they may have multiple families. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The one they happen to be living with and then the one that they get to visit and spend time with in other ways, and try to normalize that for other children and normalize that for the child themselves. And thankfully, Sesame Street now has a character who is in child welfare care. So there\u2019s growing resources for early childhood educators to access. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other thing is to understand how difficult it is for children when they\u2019re removed from their family. That they will be missing all the things that are normal to them. They may have had a special blanket at home that\u2019s not with them right now. They may be missing their dog or their cat or their brother or their sister depending on the placement type. And so to give places to kind of have them express that and to link them up with supports that they may need. And where you can to really integrate elders and other knowledge keepers into your centre. Not just for that one particular child necessarily, although sometimes that\u2019s needed. But for all the children to begin to kind of understand the wisdom but also some of the struggles that First Nations people are experiencing. I find kids are far; they learn fairness when they\u2019re about 2 right-developmentally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so I just find that little kids, they understand when something\u2019s not fair and they want to be a part of setting things right so you can get the children in your centre also involved in remedying those inequalities. There\u2019s lots of ways for children in early childhood to begin to make a difference to make sure this generation of First Nations children has a fair go. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think one of the things to remember about First Nations children coming into child welfare care is that the leading reasons for them being in child welfare care are poverty, poor housing and caregiver substance misuse related to multigenerational trauma. Now the good news is that we can do something about all three of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-text-only.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1161","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1162,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1161\/revisions\/1162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}