Thursday, November 07, 2013

You Go Girl!!

Vaughn Palmer: Aboriginal child welfare system is a gravy train with no destination
"There’s virtually nothing to show for the $66 million spent by the B.C. government in the past 12 years on improving aboriginal child welfare, according to a damning report by child advocate Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond."
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"More than half of the children in care are aboriginal, though they account for less than 10 per cent of the population under the age of 18. Native communities, angered that so many of their children were being taken by the state, wanted a greater measure of control and control over those decisions."
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"“Landmark agreements between government and aboriginal leaders set the foundation for a new, more positive relationship (and) created a climate of hope,” as child and youth representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond noted in a report released Wednesday.

But as Turpel-Lafond goes on to chronicle in her almost 100 detailed and fully researched pages (46 boxes of documents, 76,000 pages reviewed), the result was a decade-long public policy catastrophe.

“Since 2002/03 more than $66 million has been expended on these change initiatives and not a single child directly served.”"
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"About half the money went to an attempt — subsequently abandoned — to establish regional authorities to deliver aboriginal child care.

“Nearly $35 million ... paying people to meet, hiring consultants to facilitate those meetings, and producing materials of questionable practical value that almost never addressed the actual difficulties children and youth were experiencing in their lives.”

After that exercise was abandoned, the government substituted a replacement program, Indigenous Approaches, that Turpel-Lafond characterizes as “a hodgepodge of financial arrangements” grounded in a belief that “First Nations partners should do what they want” and be funded accordingly.

“The agenda was ad hoc and that securing resources consisted of making a pitch to senior officials, who then recommended funding for activities. The financial accounting was too poor to permit assessment of objectives and outcomes. These projects existed outside most government financial and policy frameworks.”

Against that backdrop, one has to note her damning comment on where many of the aforementioned millions landed: “To be blunt, a significant amount of money has gone to people who provide no program or service to directly benefit children.”

The representative doesn’t hesitate to name names. Page 51 of the report details some 18 native organizations that received $32 million in contracts over the years 2009-2012.
And that, my dears, is the product of the Indian Industry. And it's not confined to British Columbia.

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