Nunavik sees more children in need of foster care, but fewer foster homes

Staff from Quebec’s human rights commission will visit Kuujjuaq, pictured here, and Puvirnituq later this month to meet with social service providers in Nunavik—an opportunity for the commission to follow up on the region’s action plan to address its shortfalls in youth protection. (FILE PHOTO)

In 2015-16, 374 Nunavimmiut children were placed in care, up from 348 and 327 the two previous years. (FILE PHOTO)

It’s not enough that hundreds of children in Nunavik face abuse and neglect at home every year.

But once those issues have been flagged, Inuit youth have few safe places in their communities to go.

That’s because Nunavik faces a shortage of foster homes as the number of children placed in care continues to grow.

“At the moment, we’ve seen quite an increase in the need for foster care,” said Minnie Grey, executive director of the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services.

“We’ve had a number of children that need to be placed. We’re trying to the best of our ability to make sure they’re not sent out of the region. But we have a big shortage of foster homes.”

Some 2,137 reports were made to youth protection services in the region over the last year—a number that represents more than 17 per cent of the region’s population. A report is a call, visit or letter indicating that a child may be in danger.

That number of reports to youth protection has remained fairly steady in recent years, but the number of children eventually placed in care is on the rise. (See tables below.)

In 2015-16, 374 Nunavik children were placed in care, up from 348 and 327 during the two previous years.

But a lack of data provided to Nunatsiaq News by the health department makes it difficult to understand why those children are being placed; the NRBHSS said it won’t provide statistics on the number of reports retained and for what reason.

In fact, the NRBHSS said some youth protection statistics for the region aren’t even available for the period prior to 2013, at which point new software was implemented.

In a response to the newspaper’s access to information request earlier this year, the health board said its data isn’t harmonized and potentially inaccurate, which, in turn, could “stigmatize an already traumatized clientele.”

Health officials are equally mum on where Nunavik children are placed, in or outside the region, saying that information could risk identifying youth in care.

Children can be, and are, placed outside the region, even if it is a last resort.

In Montreal, Batshaw Youth and Family Centre’s 2014-2015 annual report shows it placed 395 Nunavik children in what it calls “campus-style settings” or units that year.

No one from the centre was available to provide more information or explain the centre’s role in placing these children.

Statistics aside, Grey said the neglect that health and social service workers in the region are seeing is largely alcohol-related.

She said that social services officials are currently dealing with a crisis in Puvirnituq, where a higher-than-usual number of children have been signaled to youth protection for alcohol-related neglect.

“It ranges from newborns to teenagers,” she said. “We have a backlog of children that have nowhere to go. And that’s sad.”

In the case of Puvirnituq, a community of 1,700 on Nunavik’s Hudson coast, Grey wouldn’t draw a link between the recent launch of wine and beer sales through the local co-op, noting the community has had a long history as a distribution centre for bootlegged alcohol.

Quebec’s human rights commission returns to Nunavik

Social services have long been lacking in the region, but those issues have seen more scrutiny since 2007, when the Quebec Human Rights Commission released a scathing report on Nunavik’s youth protection system.

In that report, investigators noted the large number of children in the region facing physical, psychological and sexual mistreatment, including children with substance abuse issues.

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

“The commission remains very, very concerned with the situation,” said Camil Picard, the commission’s interim president and vice-president of its youth mandate.

“We haven’t seen much development since the release of the report in 2007 and [follow up report] in 2010.”

The handful of complaints that first spurred the commission’s investigation have grown steadily, too: In 2015-16, the commission received 20 complaints or requests for intervention on youth protection files in Nunavik.

To put that number in context, the only other Quebec region that made more complaints (36) over the past year was Montreal, a city with a population that is more than 137 times larger than Nunavik’s.

“It really shows you the breadth of concerns that people in the region have around youth protection,” Picard said.

Those complaints made to the commission are separate from reports made to youth protection services. These trigger an independent investigation into a given file and provide recommendations to youth protection on how to resolve the issue, Picard explained.

And roughly half of the complaints made to the commission involve children already in foster care.

Later this month, Picard plans to visit Kuujjuaq and Puvirnituq to meet with social service providers in Nunavik—an opportunity for the commission to follow up on the region’s action plan to address its shortfalls in youth protection.

“We can’t touch on the problem of youth protection without touching on the social issues the region faces,” Picard said.

“And even if the measures are good, the realization of those measures will be long to achieve.”

Makivik advocates for changes to Quebec’s youth protection act

At the helm of the NRBHSS, Grey said she is working with its two major health centres to find solutions to the region’s foster care shortage.

But Nunavik’s major organizations have also worked for years to eliminate the need by finding ways to keep Inuit children at home before youth protection services intervene.

Among the region’s more recent efforts: family or safe houses, a community-run resource that works with local families in crisis. Family houses with a mandate to keep children with their own families have recently opened in both Kuujjuaraapik and Kangiqsualujjuaq.

“It’s helping to raise awareness about the well-being as children, and to work as families,” Grey said.

“It’s also helped mobilize community partners. It’s still early to say if it’s making a difference [in terms of children being put in care.] But it’s a positive direction… and it’s a great start.”

The health board is also hoping to create a new regional director of youth protection services to harmonize work now managed by directors on either of the region’s two coasts.

At the provincial level, Quebec has recently introduced a bill proposing changes to its own youth protection legislation.

Bill 99 aims to include Indigenous children’s community and cultural identity as important factors in deciding what type of foster setting is best suited.

That marks an opportunity for Nunavik to push for changes to section 37.5 of the act which allows the province to enter into agreements with Indigenous communities to design and manage their own youth protection programs.

The goal is essentially that of Nunavik’s social regulation project, Saqijuq, which is to allow for a traditional Inuit response or intervention before Quebec’s law is applied.

“We want to empower communities and families to create their own family councils,” Grey said. The councils would gather extended family, she explained, to determine a child’s situation and how they would best be cared for.

Makivik Corp. made a request to the Quebec government last year to have section 37.5 of the youth protection act modified, and will represent the region as the bill goes through consultations this fall.

This graph shows the number of children from both the Hudson and Ungava coasts placed in care between 2013 and 2016. The NRBHSS would not provide data on which communities or regions the children were placed in. (GRAPH COURTESY OF NRBHSS)

This graph shows the number of children reported to youth protection on both the Hudson and Ungava coasts between 2013 and 2016. (GRAPH COURTESY OF NRBHSS)