275 MacLaren Street, Ottawa, ON K2P 0L9
Urban Aboriginal families with children in care: Understanding the experiences and needs of parents living in Fredericton and Halifax
Research Start-up Summary and Abstract:
Aboriginal children, youth and families across Canada face multiple and persistent disadvantages, central among which is the disproportionate number of children in out-of- home care. This overrepresentation has increased in the last four decades to the point that the number of Aboriginal children in child welfare services today is approximately three times higher than the number placed in residential schools at the height of their operations in the 1940s (Bennett and Auger 2013). The underlying forces driving this growth are well known: out-of-home placements of Aboriginal children result primarily from cases involving child neglect, which is ultimately linked to factors such as poverty, poor housing, domestic violence, substance abuse and other structural inequalities stemming from colonialism and assimilationist government policies (Blackstock et al. 2004; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996; Sinha et al. 2011; Trocmé et al. 2004).