18 young Albertans died while receiving child intervention services since April, 16 were Indigenous

Executive Director of First Nations Child and Family Caring Society Cindy Blackstock's office is pictured in Ottawa on July 26, 2016. (Sean Kilpatrick)

Data from Alberta’s Ministry of Children and Family Services shows 89 per cent of young people who died while receiving child intervention services this year were Indigenous.

Advocates and front-line workers are urging the Alberta government to take immediate action to protect at-risk children and implement long-term child welfare reforms.

Between April 1 and Aug. 31, 18 children, youth, and young adults died while receiving intervention services in Alberta. Sixteen were Indigenous.

Of those who died, eight were in care, two were not currently in care and eight were receiving post-intervention support, which can be accessed by young adults over 18 who have previously been involved in child intervention.

Nearly all the deaths are still under investigation with the cause of death listed as pending in the report from Children and Family Services (CFS). One death is listed as accidental, and two died by suicide.

"When we see that 16 out of 18 deaths are Indigenous, it's really clear that systemic problems persist, despite the previous interventions and reforms," said Audra Foggin, associate professor of social work at Mount Royal University and a Sixties Scoop survivor.

"It's no longer shocking to me as an Indigenous person, and nor should anybody in Canada be shocked about this. They should be taking action towards this.

"And I think everybody has a responsibility as a treaty person in Canada to be thinking about how we can address these devastating impacts through Canada's history," she said.

Foggin said there needs to be a shift towards community prevention and early intervention efforts that keep youth close to their community and cultural practices, as well as more attention given to cultural competence, trauma-informed approaches and anti-racism training.

"It means addressing and dismantling systemic racism that's embedded in the structures of child intervention services. Because historically, child welfare systems in Canada have really been used as tools of colonialism and assimilation, leading to this overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care that we now see," she said.

Indigenous children are 17 times more likely to be removed from their families and put in the child welfare system than non-Indigenous youth in Canada, according to a 2019 Canadian Incidence Study on Reported Child Abuse and Neglect.

In its 2023 year-end report, The Office of the Child and Youth Advocate (OCYA) assessed the status of 31 recommendations it had made to government to improve services and support for young people. At that time, four were evaluated as met, two were closed, and the remainder were in "various levels of progress."

Ashli Barrett, press secretary to CFS Minister Searle Turton, said that since 2013, the ministry has received 111 recommendations from the OCYA.

"To date, 110 have been implemented, including five in progress. One recommendation related to whole-family treatment programs was not accepted, as analysis indicated that this action would not achieve the OCYA’s desired outcome," Barrett said.

Barrett said CFS ensures all children in care are supported in maintaining relationships and cultural ties. Cultural plans are required for all children in care, and in 2023-24 "97 per cent of all children, youth and young adults receiving intervention services had a recorded service plan."

Along with the many systemic changes that need to be addressed in the child welfare system, Sandra Azocar, vice-president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) and former Child Intervention Practitioner, said there is an immediate need to fix staffing shortages she says put youth at increased risk.

"One of the factors that never gets looked at, unfortunately, is the lack of the amount of staff that should be there to ensure that whatever plan these children and their families have to follow to keep them safe, to keep them away from whatever situation brought them to child welfare’s attention to begin with is actually dealt with," Azocar said.

"Short staffing is always one of those areas where we say that if there's not enough people, then kids continue to be at risk."

In July, AUPE warned of a "crisis situation" as high staff turnover left entire communities without child intervention practitioners. Azocar said the situation hasn’t improved.

"The minister continues to say that they have hired hundreds of people. But the reality is that we don't see those numbers. And areas like in the northwest, for example, we're still seeing offices covering (for other) offices that have absolutely no staff."

Barrett was unable to say how many child intervention practitioner positions are currently vacant, but said the ministry is filling those openings as quickly as it can.

"Due to the size and geographic spread of our workforce across the province and ongoing recruitment efforts, the number of vacant positions is variable. These efforts are paying off, with approximately 540 child intervention workers hired from Sept. 2022 to Sept. 2024. We continue to post and fill jobs as quickly as we can," she said.

Foggin acknowledged that giving child intervention workers a larger caseload than they can reasonably handle, "almost double or triple (the national standard) in some cases," can lead to rushed decisions, weaker relationships, burnout, and over time, tragedies such as the death of children in care.

However, the challenge of decolonizing child welfare systems extends well beyond workforce issues, she said.

"There's a shortage of child welfare staff, but I think that shift in prevention has to happen. We have to get away from child welfare because the system is broken," Foggin said. "It has never been a good parent to Indigenous children, youth or families, and it's never been helpful to us in any way, shape or form."

"I think that where child welfare needs to look is to the expertise of Indigenous communities, because answers for healing are in community. And the answers for any community problem have been in Indigenous community.

"Because our ways of knowing predate contact and predate Confederation and have been in effect since time immemorial. And our ways have always had us thriving until that impact of colonization."