Training given to prospective First Nations foster parents

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More than half of the 800 child welfare cases in Alberta involve Native children, says Doug Dokis, of Calgary's Indian Friendship Centre.

"The provincial government is mainly concerned with finding safe, reliable foster homes for these kids. We'd also like to place them in an appropriate cultural environment."

Working with Alberta Family and Social Services, Dokis has put together a training program to help Native people learn what's expected of them as foster parents or temporary guardians, and to ensure foster homes meet provincial standards of safety, education and reliability.

Dokis says his team has been recruiting Native short term care, emergency safe homes in the Calgary area since 1992. His search for people interested in providing longer term care began in 1994, but has been stepped up recently, with the tragic death of Sachary Giroux, a Metis, in a fire last year.

The 80-hour friendship centre training program includes courses in first aid and CPR, dealing with problem children and the handicapped, and working with youngsters who have been abused. It also tries to provide non-crisis support and on-going training to people who go on to become foster parents.

Elders and Native traditionalists also participate as cultural teachers and counsellors.

"We developed our own training program, with help from a lot of other agencies and people. We've been building on it ourselves too, and are now working on a manual that should also prove useful to other groups," Dokis said.

"The Calgary Foster Parents Association has a similar program, without the Native culture content of ours. In 1992/93 they were contacted by 433 people interested in becoming foster parents. Of these, only 286 registered for their training and only 20 actually applied to be foster parents," he added. "The number of interested Native people is a lot smaller, though the need is greater."

Dokis feels one of the biggest obstacles is the low rate of compensation paid by the government. Infant caregivers currently receive less than $13 a day, with those providing for older children receiving slightly more.

"We're certainly not interested in people looking to get into it for the money," Dokis notes, "but sometimes this barely covers expenses. The government spends a hell of a lot more that that on each child it places in an institutional setting.

Since 1973, about half of Alberta's 45 Indian reserves have taken over child welfare services, with relative success in providing local homes, especially among family, for neglected children. But Dokis says the urban Native children aren't as lucky. Only 20% of Native children in the province's cities manage to find their way to Native homes.

Final placements and home assessments are done by Family and Social Services, but Dokis can make recommendations from his program graduates. The friendship centre recently trained their first batch of 31 prospective foster parents, with 11 of them completing the course and being approved by the government.

Though Dokis agrees that the child's safety and physical welfare comes first, he points out that study after study show Native foster children do better in homes that are culturally similar or at least sensitive to their own backgrounds.

Though he agrees it would be ideal if a child could be placed with extended family, or at least members of the same tribe, Dokis says the program's primary objective is to find Native guardians, without worrying about a precise match. And while families would get priority, single fosters are also being used.

"The key thing is to find responsible people, who are really committed," Dokis says. "There's a big need and it can be a rewarding job, but it's also an extremely demanding one. Many of these children have been through the system for years and have become very troubled and difficult to live with."

Calgarians interested in learning more about becoming a Native foster parent could call the Calgary Indian Friendship Cetre at (403) 777-2269. Elsewhere, they should contact their provincial government social services department.