This last area I wanted to speak of is a little more complicated — for me, anyway. There always seems to be indifference, I guess would be the best term to describe it, in how the social workers.... The social workers have a policy to follow. It doesn’t exactly fit with the way the people in the small aboriginal communities see the action that should be taking place under certain circumstances.
If there were — I’ll use an example I’ve used previously — an area of child protection, how the department goes about protecting the child is sometimes not how the community would envision the child being protected. So although I don’t have a specific case, a hypothetical example could be that there is a child care issue and the individual, the child, is taken out of the home. In small communities it’s hard to find foster parents, so often the children are moved out and into non-aboriginal homes in other communities, sometimes even in the south. I don’t think that’s the case right now with the children from Tu Nedhe, but I am wondering if the department is going to take a look at this huge problem.
I’m sure other MLAs will talk about how some of their communities are an extreme case. Looking at a way to tweak the policy, or maybe even look at the standards of the individual social workers as far as education requirements go — from that to the local individual who has worked in the community in various capacities — may be excellent for working between the families and the communities, where an individual with a PhD, who is obviously very well qualified and is an expert at delivering policy.... If that’s what the standards or the qualifications are, then you hire the person with the higher education standard, except that person is not culturally sensitive to the community issues in this area, the protection of children.
I am wondering if the Minister is going to have her department reconcile that somehow. I think there’d be a big cost reduction. First of all, I think there’d be a huge cost reduction if fewer kids were apprehended for their own protection. I’m not saying don’t protect the kids; I’m saying find another way. They are feeling protected but pretty sad because they’re protected a long way from home. So again, I am just wondering if the Minister is going to look into that area.