Protecting Aboriginal Children

Beginning in the 1960s, large numbers of Aboriginal children in Canada were removed from their families by provincial child welfare services. Known as the “sixties scoop,” the practice caused great harm to individuals and families and devastated communities. Today Aboriginal children comprise roughly half the children in state care, but since the 1980s, bands and tribal councils have developed unique community-based child welfare services to better protect Aboriginal children.

Protecting Aboriginal Children explores contemporary approaches to the protection of Aboriginal children through interviews with practising social workers employed at Aboriginal child welfare organizations and the child protection service in British Columbia. It places current practice in a sociohistorical context, describes emerging practice in decolonizing communities, and identifies the effects of political and media controversy on social workers.

This is the first book to document emerging practice in Aboriginal communities and describe child protection practice simultaneously from the point of view of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal social worker.

Those working in child welfare or contemplating a career in child protection will find the book an insightful analysis of current practice thinking and experience. Aboriginal peoples with an interest in health and human services, as well as social work students, child welfare workers and administrators, and health, education, and human service professionals will find it particularly useful.

Christopher Walmsley teaches in the School of Social Work and Human Service at Thompson Rivers University.

Trial lawyers specializing in aboriginal law will find this text to be the first of its kind describing child protection proceedings from the standpoint of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal social workers. The 1960s practice of mass removal of Native children from their homes resulted in roughly half of all children in care being from Aboriginal families. The author sets out creative and humane alternatives to the past processes. --- This little volume fares quite well as a single message book, that message being that historically, child and family practice in Aboriginal communities in British Columbia has been a dismal failure.