English - Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies

LISTENING DIFFERENTLY
It is important for us to prepare ourselves to be aware that when people get together
to talk with one another, that each person shares their views about how they see
things. It is up to each of us to respect other people’s views. Each of us interprets and
understands what we hear or are taught based upon our life experiences,
understanding and knowledge we each have. If we sit in a circle and listen to a story,
each of us will interpret and understand the story in a way that is both the same and
different as the person sitting next to us. We can talk to everyone in the circle and
each person will have a different point of view. It is up to the listener to make sense of
what is being said, to be guided and assisted in their development toward wholeness.
If we look straight ahead, we can develop tunnel vision and see things only one
way. The more we listen to other people’s views, the more our vision will
open up and we will start to have peripheral vision, to be able to see from all
perspectives and respect those perspectives. That is what creates our wholeness, to
walk in balance and harmony, to respect other people’s way, their journey of life,
their way of interpreting, to treat each other with much more than kindness and
respect (McCallum as cited in NAHO, 2008).
CREATING A CULTURALLY SAFE ENVIRONMENT: SELF-REFLECTION
Cultural safety is intended to establish a self-reflective, open-minded and nonjudgmental
workforce. Through self-reflection, a child welfare professional would be
able to identify the values, beliefs and assumptions guiding his/her thinking. A
child welfare professional would be able to know that s/he is not aware, does not
understand and may not even agree with an Aboriginal individual, but s/he needs
to respect the individual’s views.
An Aboriginal woman may not disclose violence in her family because she senses that
child welfare professionals will judge her as an inferior parent; in this case, the worker
has not established a safe environment to help the woman address the violence that
she is facing.
Helping families is not simply moving children out of immediate harm’s way. Helping
families means helping the family, individually and collectively, to embark on a
pathway that can address and eliminate the violence in their lives. As a child welfare
professional, you are a key helper on the family’s journey and your individual actions
can either reinforce colonial attitudes or recognize the complexity of the family’s lives.
ADDRESSING PRE-JUDGMENTS AND ASSUMPTIONS: CHALLENGING OUR BIASES
While it is unacceptable for a child welfare professional to express a prejudicial or
racist comment, workers may not recognize that some unexpressed thoughts are
pre-judgments and interfere with building a relationship.
Focus group participants mentioned a commonly-heard phrase which impedes the
connection with a worker: “S/he does not look like an Indian.” The phrase assumes
that there is a specific way that an Indian looks which challenges an individual’s
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