"A pathway to restoration: From Child Protection to community wellness"

Abstract

The administrative devolution of provincial child welfare jurisdiction to Aboriginal authorities, dating back to the early 1980s, has resulted in a number of improvements for Aboriginal families that experience child protection services (Bellefeuille, Ricks and Garrioch, 1997; Hamilton, 2001). The larger political objective, however, of Aboriginal Peoples to govern and self­ determine their own culturally distinct, integrative and holistic community healing approach to social wellness and tackling the pressing concerns of child maltreatment, family break down, and vanishing sense of community, has failed to come about under the prevailing deficit oriented child protection paradigm.' Our experiences for over thirty years as a front line social work practitioner and past director of the largest First Nation child welfare agency in the country, and as a researcher, academic, and organizational consultant to several First Nation agencies leads us to conclude that the realization of the Aboriginal vision for an alternative child welfare model is untenable under the force of the imposing protection paradigm. In this article, we share both our thoughts about the devolution process, the traditional protection paradigm under which Aboriginal agencies are required to operate, and our experience in helping to shape the alternative paradigm which we believe must be built upon new themes that emphasize "community"and"wellness."