Foster parents of Inuit kids battle misunderstanding, dodgy protection system

About 300 Nunavut children are living with foster families. But only about 60 are living in other territories and provinces. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

In Nunavik, more than 200 children are in foster care, some in the South. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Patty L., and her husband, André L., will spend the Christmas holidays with their four young foster children, two boys and two girls, who range in age from 18 months to seven years.

They feel that these children, who arrived within their care as infants, are their own.

As foster parents, they receive about $30 a day per child. But they both hold jobs, so they’re banking that money for the kids.

“I don’t ever want my kids to think I’m being paid for them,” Patty said.

The names of Patty and André, and some details of their experience as foster parents, have been changed in this story to protect their identities and their place of residence.

But in the predominately Inuit community where they live, some people have told Patty that being a foster mother is just a job for her.

“For the most part I’ve had good reactions, sometimes I haven’t. In the co-op store someone said ‘for you this is a job’— as if I am making money off this,” she said. “What job pays less than two dollars an hour?”

Patty and André remain sensitive to the fact that they’re non-Inuit parents to four Inuit children. They put photos of their children’s birth families up in their home, and they plan to stay in the North.

But many who know the biological mother of three of their children say she suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and is “crazy.” The mother of their other foster child is in and out of jail.

“I’m under no illusions that these kids’ parents are capable of parenting,” André said.

But you don’t have to look far to find Inuit in Nunavut and Nunavik who say social workers are taking Inuit kids away from their families with no justification.

About 300 Nunavut children are living with foster families. But only about 60 are living in other territories and provinces.

In Nunavik, more than 200 children are in foster care, some in the South.

But Patty doesn’t agree with those who accuse non-Inuit social workers of breaking up families.

“Those are the ones who are drowning in their own issues, that they no longer see the difference between safe and unsafe. If you’ve been raised in a real dysfunctional home and you think, ‘my parents did that and I turned out fine,’ that minimizes the degree of risk,” she said.

“If you’re dealing with a lot of substance abuse issues yourself and drinking away your problems, it’s easy for you to say, ‘It’s okay, I’m dealing with things.'”

Each of the children now in Patty and André’s care have suffered.

Collectively they have suffered broken bones, including skulls and ribs, infections, respiratory illnesses, reflux and developmental delays, all as a result of their injuries and neglect. One had his skull fractured when he was 62 days old.

“No child at 62 days old is capable of making someone angry,” Patty said. “Generally, I think there’s denial, and it’s uncomfortable to think your family or friends behaved in a certain way.”

“Those situations aren’t going to fix themselves,” André added.

The two also reject the idea that Inuit social workers would enforce the rules differently.

“If you had trained Inuit social workers, they’d be able to address risk just like the white ones. I don’t believe it comes down to race. White people can be bad parents too,” André said.

The disadvantages of having people from the South is that it takes a long time to establish trust with your clientele, he said.

“If people assume you’re going to leave in a few months, why would they open themselves up and try?”

And if there were more Inuit working in the system it would be easier to communicate, he acknowledged.

“But what makes it harder if you are Inuit is that you are probably related to, or know everyone. It’s really hard to have an Inuit social worker with no conflicts of interest,” André said.

Problems remain in the youth protection system, such as chronic understaffing and a huge rotation of social workers.

These problems, in the case of André and Patty, meant that social workers only recently conducted a home study with them to see if they were fit foster parents. although they’d been taking in foster children for years.

And communication links with social workers remain dodgy, they say.

If you call a social worker, it’s never answered. What you hear is, “Please leave a message, it may be over a week before I get back to you,” the couple said.

Once when Patty called to make a report about a child in danger, she was asked by the social worker to “call me back next week.”

“That was outrageous,” Patty said.

Over the years, Patty and André have had other foster children dropped off at their door, one with severe cases of scabies and lice.

That would have been good to know about beforehand, but when kids come to them on an emergency basis, there’s no way to have that information, Patty said.

“Say the mother was medevaced out, and the father was in jail: you don’t have any information. You just know that someone needs a home.”

On one occasion, a young child, who didn’t speak any English, was dropped off at their home and they were not given the child’s correct name.

The child was terrified and cried all weekend. On a walk outside, she ran into someone who said her mother was at the police station.

So the girl went running off to find her, André relates.

While Patty and André are now seeking parental rights for their foster children, in the past, there has always been talk of reuniting the kids with their biological parents.

“The worst day of my life was when I’d had her for a few months and she was just a tiny baby still and even the social workers had said there’s no chance of this baby going home, then I get call at 8:30 at night saying ‘Jessie is going back to her family. Can the mom come right now?’ I was speechless. The social worker said they would pick her up the next day, and that’ll be that,” remembers Patty. “I stayed up all night crying and finished up a baby book to send back with her.”

Within months, the child was back with them. But in the meantime, she had learned to vomit as a way to get attention.

“They tried again to reintegrate her, and then, three weeks later I was told ‘she has a newborn sister can you take her, too?'”

Soon the two siblings were both back in their care, later to be joined by a third.

Getting foster children back into their families can work out if there is a social worker who is focused on creating a schedule, the couple said.

But forcing the situation won’t go well if mother doesn’t want it, they say.

“If the kids were taken for a reason, you have to make sure that reason is gone before you reintegrate. There’s no magical fixes. If you’re not collaborating with the social worker to get your child back, then you’re not that interested in getting your child back.”

Right now, there’s a big push for reuniting families in the community where Patty and André live.

“But they forget to protect youth before all else. I know family preservation is the goal, but not everyone has it in them to be a good parent. It’s better to have a few good visits, a good mom three days a year, than it is to have a bad mom 362 days a year,” Patty said.

What parents need is a non-judgmental child services centre and parental mentoring to get rid of the “intimidation factor” in speaking to social workers, suggest Patty and André.

That, and more housing, would go a long way towards relieving the family tensions that can result in dangerous situations for children, they said.

Last March, Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s report on child, youth and family services in Nunavut found that in 59 of the 61 files that the auditor general’s office studied, social workers responded quickly when notified about incidents of child abuse.

But beyond that, Fraser said the Department of Health and Social Services was not complying with the Child and Family Services Act.

The report found shortfalls including a failure to conduct safety checks when children are placed outside the parental home, a failure to perform criminal record checks on potential foster parents and a failure to complete home studies to find out if foster parents meet the needs of the child.

During its 2007 investigation, Quebec’s human rights commission probed the entire youth protection system in Nunavik, finding the rights of Inuit children and young people in Nunavik were routinely infringed under sections 1, 4 and 39 of the Quebec charter of human rights.

Investigators found “a large number of children are physically, psychologically and sexually mistreated. Some children, despite their young age, are addicted to alcohol, drugs or other substances that cause serious physical or mental disorders.”

They found the region’s social network failed to give children and youth the protection to which they are legally entitled.

And the Youth Protection Act is badly known and, “as it is poorly; applied, it is considered to be poorly adapted to Inuit culture,” they said in 2007.

A year ago, the commission said these problems persisted.

Overall, efforts to improve conditions remained fragile and their results were shaky and “precarious,” says the commission’s lukewarm evaluation of progress made since 2007.

One in five children, many the victims of assault and neglect, were reported to youth protection in 2010.