Welfare of children a priority

Page 7

On July 7, members of the Blood Tribe celebrated the grand opening of the Blood Tribe Child Protection Services Corporation (BTCPSC) with the signing of the delegation of authority agreement by Blood Tribe Chief Chris Shade and Alberta Children's Services Minister Iris Evans.

The signing of the agreement puts the Blood Tribe one step closer to achieving its goal of helping Blood children keep their identity and Aboriginal culture while in care and in seeking legislation that would give the tribe more control over the welfare of its children.

"We felt that we could better take care of our children, our Blood Tribe children, due to the fact that the province wasn't fulfilling their responsibilities to the child," said Lenora Many Fingers, communications co-ordinator for Kainaiwa Children's Services Corporation.

"What we're doing right now is we're still delegated under the Child Welfare Act, but in the end we are hoping to have our own legislation. This is just an interim agreement until our legislation is in place, probably in four or five years."

Many Fingers said the children will benefit with the more culturally appropriate programs and services that BTCPSC will provide.

"The corporation itself is more culturally sensitive, whereby we're trying to keep the best interest of the child foremost and also helping the children keeping their identity and hopefully keeping them with extended family," said Many Fingers. "If that doesn't help we have Kainaiwa Children's Services prevention and support programs for them to utilize so that way the children will be better taken care of."

"It was a very good grand opening. Iris Evans was present and a lot of government officials from both the federal and provincial governments were there," said Joanne Little Bear, supervisor for BTCPSC. "[Evans] was also given a Blackfoot name. I think it was Holy Star Woman."

Little Bear said BTCPSC will provide many benefits "because we interject our programs with a lot of cultural content. We use our Elders a lot. We use our cultural beliefs and our treatments, like ceremonies. That's the direction given to us by our leaders and we've been following that for a long time."

The BTCPSC will be there for the children in terms of protection, but it is still a department under Kainaiwa Children's Services, which is an organization whose goal is prevention rather than protection.

"Our delegation comes from the province. So basically we carry out what the province does in terms of child welfare. But we've got a whole other section under Kainaiwa Children's Services which does the prevention services and then we just come in with protection," said Little Bear. "We've got foster homes on-reserve and off-reserve. We've got a residential treatment centre known as the Blood Tribe Youth Ranch. We've got an adolescent treatment centre for solvents, drug, alcohol addictions."

In a press release sent out by Kainaiwa Children's Services Corporation for the grand opening of BTCPSC, it states the Blood Tribe has a "history of decision-making in respect of child welfare matters" and Many Fingers hopes that the BTCPSC will continue this tradition.

"We're underneath (Kainaiwa Children's Services) because it's fulfilling part of our goal to have full responsibility for our children, Blood Tribe children, and it was an inherent right where we didn't give up the right for the province to take care of our children due to the fact that the federal government does not have a national child welfare act," said Many Fingers. "We're taking back our responsibility of raising our children. That's the history, that's our inherent right we never gave up."