English - Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies

3. Focus group participants expressed the importance of children maintaining
and staying in touch with their culture when they are in substitute care. It is
difficult to achieve this objective, however, because often foster parents do
not have sufficient knowledge about Aboriginal cultures.
4. Encouragement for foster parents to reduce the impulse to indulge children
with toys and life styles that the biological parents are not able to provide
once the children are returned.
Focus group participants made the following suggestions to support Aboriginal
children in foster care:
> > Provide supplementary training for foster parents caring for Aboriginal
children, to provide them with cultural knowledge
“The list of requirements is too
grand. There are cultural values that
determine what is appropriate or not
appropriate, and barriers are created
to Aboriginal families being foster
parents.” - Focus group participant
PRACTICE TIP
Encourage foster parents’ use of
Lifebooks and involvement in key
ceremonies to help ensure a child’s
ongoing connection to his/her culture of
origin.
> > Create a peer support group for foster/adoptive parents of
Aboriginal children
> > Address the systemic barriers preventing Aboriginal
families from being foster parents. Some of the criteria
for foster parents are embedded in class based assumptions
(e.g. the number of children who can share a room), which is
contrary to traditional ways of child-rearing.
> > Establish a better connection between foster parents, the
child welfare agency and community organizations to ensure
the child’s cultural needs are met in a respectful way
> > Put specific expectations and conditions on foster parents
who have the care of Aboriginal children, to ensure that
children maintain family and cultural connections (e.g. key
ceremonies that relate to the child’s time in the lifecycle and
reinforce the lessons that children need to be learning at this
time in their development).
> > Explore the variety of culturally appropriate care options
to ensure that cultural identity is maintained, including:
Customary Care, Kinship Care, Open Adoptions, Customary
Adoptions
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J. PRACTICE: SELF-CARE AND PERSONAL WELLNESS
Individuals require a great deal of help and support throughout their lives. Those who
play the role of a helper are recognized as having an important role in the Aboriginal
community. As a child welfare professional engaging families to protect their children
and strengthen their supports, you are recognized as a helper.
Helpers primarily create and establish relationships based on reciprocity.
Interdependent relationships based on caring and respect and an innate sense of
responsibility for one another is core to the helping relationship.
Many Aboriginal individuals have his/her own medicine wheel and practices that will