A new report has found two major, discriminatory issues with BC’s management of Indigenous Child Welfare.
That report, titled At a Crossroads: The roadmap from fiscal discrimination to equity in Indigenous child welfare, was released today.
It revealed funding gaps that lead to inequity, based on whether or not the family lives on, or off-reserve, and which level of government is providing funding.
Funding for on-reserve services come from the federal government, and thanks to a 2016 Human Rights Tribunal ruling, include cultural, needs-based prevention services at cost.
Off-reserve services are funded provincially, and does not include prevention services, is not needs-based, and see much lower funding rates.
Lastly, those living on reserves of First Nations without an Indigenous Child and Family Service Agency receive federal funding based on an older model, making funding difficult to track.
The report also reveals that the province’s system is so broken that it is impossible to link outcomes for children with funding allocations.
Three recommendations were made in the report for the province’s Ministry of Children and Family Development.
Those include: adoption of the Tribunal’s principles and funding models, updating the ministry’s fiscal management and reporting practices to align spending objectives and government priorities, and incorporating the Grandmother Perspective to collect disaggregated race-based data to understand the diverse needs of Indigenous populations.
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