Public Numbers, Private Pain: What Is Hidden Behind the Disproportionate Removal of Black Children and Youth from Families by Ontario Child Welfare?

Respondent

• Leyland Gudge

• Elevated Ground,

• Toronto, ON, Canada

This chapter takes a bold step in going behind the disproportionality numbers to expose how the child welfare system in its policies, practices, and lack of research can, and do, hurt African-Canadian children, youth, and families. While I along with members of the African-Canadian community support the collection and publication of race-based data in the province of Ontario – as a strategy to identify gaps in services and address the issues of disparity and disproportionality – knowing the numbers of our children in State care only tell part of the story. An important part of the story that often gets lost in the discourse around numbers is the racial trauma that is historic and enduring in the lives of Black children and families and a significant factor in their involvement with the child welfare system.

While trauma knows no racial boundaries, there is increasing evidence that racism and ongoing victimization by racist incidents can negatively impact health and mental well-being (Qureshi, 2015). However, in Canada, and Ontario more specifically, research on mental health and racism is scant (Kafele, 2004), particularly in the child-welfare system with African-Canadian children in care who are experiencing inappropriate assessment, multiple placement breakdowns, and poor educational outcomes. It is my belief that there is great need for Canadian-based research that is targeted to examine systemic racism and the enduring impact of anti-Black racism on the mental health of people of African heritage. The traumatic experiences of having your child suddenly removed from your care is one area where research is urgently needed. It is worth noting that this call has been made since the 1980s by James Walker (1997) specifically as it relates to the impact of slavery on African Canadians. Others have called for an examination of the psychosocial and emotional residual effects of slavery on multi-generations of African people (Carten, 2015; DeGruy, 2005). Such research may provide insights into a myriad of issues related to disproportionality and disparity and the pervasive and overarching feelings of fear, distrust, and hopelessness of African-Canadian parents and children in dealing with child protection agencies. To date, there continues to be a paucity of research in this area.

As a practitioner with decades of child welfare experience from front-line to senior management, and as one of the architects of Harambee Child and Family Services , which was established to provide prevention and intervention services to African-Canadian children and families, I am aware of how mainstream child welfare agencies have failed to meet the needs of African-Canadian children and families. Beginning in the early 1970s and 1980s, when more African Canadians migrated to Canada, especially Ontario, often leaving their children behind due to racist immigration policies, the child welfare system changed the way it worked with children and families and failed to address the resultant trauma, fear, and helplessness experienced by parents with separation, loss, displacement, and destruction of their accustomed patterns of family life when their child(ren) were taken into the care of child protection agencies.

Child protection workers not only lacked the knowledge and skills in undertaking evidence-based, race-informed trauma approaches, but also failed to acknowledge the trauma experienced by African-Canadian children and families, and did not make it a priority in their conceptualization, assessment, and service plan – not even for those children who were admitted to the care of child protection agencies. Similarly, rather than providing services and supports to assist mothers whose children were forcibly removed from their care and home, and placed either with some unknown family or unfamiliar facility, these African-Canadian women were labelled as unfit mothers, who lacked adequate parenting ability and skills, which continues, to date, to have a debilitating effect on their dignity, psyche, and socio-emotional functioning.

My own experience in facilitating group counselling sessions with African-Canadian adolescents and teens who were recently admitted to care revealed painful expressions that reflected a profound sense of loss of control over their lives following admission to care. In these group sessions, African-Canadian adolescents and teens often expressed a sense of hopelessness in merely not being able to plan and engage in leisure-time activities without having to negotiate permission and explain the minutiae of type, place, time, and duration of the desired activity. They expressed feelings of frustration and hopelessness that strangers in the roles of foster parents, group home staff, or social workers could exert such control over their lives.

It is time that a specific focus on the presence and effect of trauma on the psyche of African-Canadian children, youth, and families who are involved in the often intrusive and much-dreaded child welfare system be closely examined. As discussed throughout the chapter by my colleagues, the impact of sudden removal or separation of children from their families and communities can negatively impact children’s mental health, regardless of how imperfect their home situation might be; the profound sense of loss, belonging, and attachment to parent(s), siblings, friends, and cultural community can intensify children’s feelings of fear and hopelessness for the future. The three recommendations provided in the chapter offer hope for a different way forward for African-Canadian children, youth, and families involved with the child welfare system in Ontario.