Responding to last week’s report on the suicide death of 18-year-old Alex Gervais in government care, Williams Lake Indian Band Chief Ann Louie said she doesn’t agree with aging out children staying as independents in hotels.
“To me that’s an invitation for the kind of thing that happened with Alex,” Louie said.
Alex’s Story: Broken Promises, released by the acting representative of children and youth, details the life of Gervais who suffered instability and neglect, a lack of permanent housing, and a disconnect from his Métis culture during several years in the ministry’s care.
Driven by the belief that First Nations people need to always be involved with planning for their kids, Louie said WLIB is being proactive when it comes to child welfare.
Presently there are no children from the community in permanent care.
“We just have temporary orders and a lot of them are with their grandparents or aunts and uncles,” Louie said.
The band’s child welfare system is run under Knucwentwecw Society, not the ministry of children and family development.
Formed in 1996, the society has full delegation under the Child, Family and Community Service Act to provide mandated services to children and families residing in the member band communities of Stswecemc/ Xgat’temc (Canoe / Dog Creek Indian Band), Tsq’escen (Canim Lake Indian Band), Xats’ull (Soda Creek Indian Band), and T’exelc (Williams Lake Indian Band).
And for slightly more than a year, Louie’s community has been using Circles of Strength, a program focused on helping children and families.
The program, Louie said, emerged after the five Northern Shuswap bands signed a letter of understanding with the provincial government in order to develop their own working programs around child welfare.
“We try to get ahead to prevent apprehension and work with the families,” Louie said of the program. “That work will include a group of people such as the council, the band’s housing manager, social worker, KS Society, any agency that we will feel will have an influence on the outcome of stopping that child from going into care.”
As soon as the band is made aware of a child at risk, they set up a meeting.
“We work with the family and child right through until the child is either returned or placed with a family member,” she said.
Historically the band had concerns about the number of kids going into care and wanted to prevent it.
“We wanted to be able to get jurisdiction of our own children which we are pushing for in the treaty process,” Louie said. “Even with the gang violence stuff we use our circles of strength and are working with the RCMP.”
For example, she explained, an RCMP officer and one of the council members will go to discuss children from the community that are involved in criminal activity or drugs to find a way to work with them.
At a recent community meeting, Dave Dickson manager of community safety, gave an update to WLIB, Louie said.
“They talked about a new integrated program aimed at trying to get youth out of the criminal element and into the work force or back to school,” Louie said. “We made one referral to the program that night. We are right on it when it’s involving social issues within our band like when there are families at risk.”
