Training, support needed for successful fostering

Fear and mistrust of the system are two of the reasons why less Aboriginal families step up to the plate to open their doors to foster children.

“It’s scary to become a part of the system. I mean, Child Welfare doesn’t have a great reputation with Aboriginal communities. There’s a lot of fear in becoming that closely connected to the child protection system or to the legal system,” said Emelyn Desjarlais, supervisor and Aboriginal resource person with Crossroads, which has branches in Edmonton and Wetaskiwin.

Crossroads recruits and trains foster parents and has 70 families presently in which 140 children have been placed. Some families have up to five foster children, allowing siblings to stay together. If it’s not possible to house siblings together then Crossroads attempts to place siblings with foster families that are close to each other.

Forty to 60 per cent of the children in Crossroads care are Aboriginal but less than five per cent of foster families are Aboriginal.

Cross-cultural placements aren’t ideal, said Desjarlais, because they separate children from their culture and don’t provide role models from their culture.

“We need our healthy Aboriginal families to step up,” said Desjarlais. “And some of our healthier families are healthy at a cost. Sometimes they have large families and one person in that family is sort of the touchstone for everybody else and everybody in their family relies on them. So when you start adding kids with high needs and high behaviours and problems, it overloads them. You can crash the whole family.”

Another difficulty in finding enough Aboriginal foster families comes in the screening and strict criteria. Aboriginal families culturally care for their own so if a relative with a criminal record is residing in the home, a foster child can’t be placed there.

Kinship care is not necessarily the answer because, although a child is placed with his relatives, the system doesn’t provide kinship families with the same kind of supports as foster families.  Children often come in with high needs, suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome, attention deficit disorder, and high aggression.

“Families aren’t prepared to deal with these kinds of problems and they need training and they need support in order to do that,” said Desjarlais.

Sometimes training isn’t easily accessible and other times, said Desjarlais, families don’t realize they need it until they reach a crisis point with their nephew or niece or grandchild.

Desjarlais said she sees a lot of kinship care placements break down and children going into foster care.

Because of the lack of Aboriginal foster homes and the high number of Aboriginal children in care, agencies are required to provide foster parents with a minimum of one day each year of Aboriginal training.

With Crossroads, Desjarlais tracks the bands her children belong to and ensure they attend pow wows, round dances and welcome home activities in their communities. She also teaches them Cree and provides the foster parents with some Cree. Aboriginal activities in the city are attended by foster families so they can get a fuller understanding of their foster children’s culture.

Ideally, said Desjarlais, for there to be success, Aboriginal foster families need to have an agency where there’s Aboriginal workers, with small caseloads and who can work closely with the families to provide a high level support.

“Love isn’t enough,” said Desjarlais. “You need to have a high level of skills to work with these kids.”