My Testimony To The Senate Human Rights Committee On Youth In Care

Comments To Senate Human Rights Committee

–             I am grateful for the opportunity and invitation.  More than grateful to sit with on this panel my friend and mentor Jennifer Charlesworth and her colleagues

–             I don’t want to spend time, given I have only a few minutes to make an opening statement, on the outcomes for youth in care. You know the outcomes.  I began my journey alongside youth in care in 1985.  In 1986 the national Youth In care Network published “On My Own With No Direction From Home” , years later in 2014  young people in and from care released a seminal report stemming from their Youth In Care Hearings in Ontario “My Real Life Book”  ( https://ocaarchives.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ylc_report_eng.pdf ) downloaded now over a million times.  In recent years those with lived experience released “Ethical Standards” for Youth Leaving Care. https://www.cwlc.ca/post/equitable-standards-for-transitions-to-adulthood-for-youth-in-care-public-report-policy-brief I understand you have heard from this group.  There have been many, many reports and studies in between.  Here is the truth – the outcomes have not changed nor has the experience of children in care.

–             I remember being asked by a  Deputy Minister in exasperation.  I know I am a carrier of exasperation and transfer it like a virus.  He asked “Irwin is there a better approach out there somewhere?”  “ No” I answered “ there is “no child protection system across Canada, in the US or in any liberal democracy that has better outcomes”. “Aha” he said.  “Aha” I said back. “ Its because every child protection system in liberal democracies is the same.  Just variations on a theme.  Its why we need something different”

–             I say to this Committee by asking about youth leaving care you are perhaps starting at the wrong place.  Like starting a book on page 253 instead of page 1.  A wholly unsatisfying process.

–             Our child protection system across Canada ( I say “child protection system” because  there is no child welfare system) is the legally mandated service at the core of all services touching the lives of children and families

–        It is 130 years old. It comes out of the Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals.  Now some say it’s trite to even say this. Well maybe in some circles of the “child welfare industry” it is trite.

–             It is a system of surveillance built to keep track of immigrant children and their parents in New York then to Toronto and then across Canada

–             It is a system built in risk and liability.  I say this in a non pejorative manner.  As they say “just the facts.  

–             Despite the fact or perhaps due to the fact that the social work framework was used to implement the child protection system nothing fundamentally has changed in 150 years.

–             Now work with me here.  A system built in risk and liability, with its primary tool of surveillance, can not possibly raise a child.

–             So what will you hear from the system itself these days? Living in care is no place for a child ( who asked children and young people?)

–             How dare they. At any given night in Ontario 10,000 children live n care 

              20 percent Indigenous. 80 percent are non Indigenous.  Abandoning them is not the answer and the statement is purely from those who can not envision different 

 Let me say that claims that this is harmful “abolitionism” again claims coming from within the system/industry itself is self interested, wholly inaccurate nonsense. I am making no assertion that we should abandon child protection. I’m calling for different.

–    I ask you to read the crucial report from my friends at the BC Representative for Children and Youth – “Don’t Look Away”. https://rcybc.ca/hfaq/dont-look-away/

For the first time, a legitimate institution, posits a new system. What they term a “North Star”. They ask us to imagine a system not built in “risk and liability” but a system built in another mental model another framework, another world view.  Imagine a system built in ;

–             Social Determinants of Health

–             Child development

–             Empowerment

–             Anti Oppression

–             Human Rights

–             Family development

–             Indigenous ways of knowing

–             Other cultural ways of knowing

–             Trauma informed care

–             Love

Imagine a system where every child and every family, however constituted, had what they  need when they need it  in order to thrive.  Within this system children who found themselves in out of home care would stand a chance. 

What would this North Star look like? How would it work? What would need to change?

–             I ask the Committee, no I implore the Committee, to be bold.  Create a sub-Committee and hold hearings across Canada with the Central question – what would this North Star look like?  

–             The hearings would need to be “restorative” in nature and would need to centre the voices and experiences of those with lived experience.  The Committee would have to undertake its work differently, but that is possible.  It would have the broad support of young people, parents, associations, lawyers, advocates, professionals from every sector, from every corner of the country.  

–             It is the moment.  You are Senators. Seize the moment.  Lead.