This study compares child welfare services provided to Aboriginal (Indian) and Caucasian children in Canada. The findings suggest that child welfare reports involving Aboriginal children are more likely to be classified as suspected or substantiated than reports for Caucasian children. Aboriginal children also are twice as likely to be placed in foster care. This overrepresentation in out-of-home placement is explained statistically by socioeconomic, child, parent, and maltreatment characteristics. In addition, these variables play a significant role in accounting for higher rates of case substantiation among Aboriginal children. These factors may reflect the multiple disadvantages experienced by Aboriginal families. Annual reports from provincial and territorial ministries of child and family services for the years 2000-2002 estimate that 76,000 children and youth are living in out-of-home care in Canada (Farris-Manning

No abstract

This comparative analysis of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal families uses a 1998Canadian study of child maltreatment cases to identify important differences: Aboriginal families face worse socioeconomic conditions, are more often investigated because of neglect, less often reported for physical or sexual abuse, and report higher rates of substance abuse. At every decision point in the cases, Aboriginal children are overrepresented: investigations are more likely to be substantiated, cases are more likely to be kept open for ongoing services, and children are more likely to be placed in out-of-home care. Findings suggest the development of neglect intervention programs that include poverty reduction and substance misuse components.

This paper explores how the propensity of social workers to make a direct and unmitigated connection between good intentions, rationale thought and good outcomes forms a white noise barrier that substantially interferes with our ability to see negative outcomes resulting directly or indirectly from our works. The paper begins with outlining the harm experienced by Aboriginal children before moving to explore how two fundamental philosophies that pervade social service practice impact Aboriginal children: 1) an assumption of pious motivation and effect and 2) a desire to improve others. Finally, the paper explores why binding reconciliation and child welfare is a necessary first step toward developing social work services that better support Aboriginal children and families.

Whilst theorists in physics have been striving for a ‘theory of everything’ to explain the interconnections of matter across time and space (Hawking, 2006), western social theories are largely segmented and situated within a limited scope of time and space with little attention to the multiple dimensions of reality that western physics and indigenous knowledge have already validated (Blackstock, 2009a,b). Ten years ago, I developed the Breath of Life theory (Blackstock, 2011) to provoke a conversation about Indigenous ontological approaches that place human experience in an interconnected web of reality across time, space and dimensions of reality. The overall goal was to engage other theorists into the communal building of a ‘theory of everything’ to inform social sciences and to highlight the richness of Indigenous ontology and epistemology. This article revisits the Breath of Life theory and argues that a greater emphasis on equity within and between the relational worldview principles (Cross, 2007) would be a useful modification.