Absolutely I would say that is 100% true. Housing more people in jail--that's not the solution.
One of the big things is that when a mother or a parent needs her family the most, what happens is that the children get removed. There was an incident where a violent offence happened to a young infant. All of the children were removed from that home, at a time when she really needed her family the most.
One of the big things, too, is that we need to really look at working extensively with the family, with the grandparents, the uncles, the aunties, the cousins--all of that. We need to look at that.
I worked in the child welfare system 10 or 15 years ago. Back then it was like this: you can't have the foster parents and the parents together.
Well, about a year and a half ago, I worked with an agency where that wasn't the point. The program was all about the child.
That's what needs to happen. The programs need to be all about the child, because you know what? The child is now going to be removed and placed into a different setting. I'm a product of the “sixties scoop”, so I have a little bit of an understanding of that. When you take the child away from the community, and if there's no access, then how is that child going to learn about their culture? How is that child going to learn about who they are?
At the age of seven, I knew already that there was something missing in my home, but I didn't know what it was. It wasn't until later, when I met my biological dad, that I realized, “Oh, now I know what was missing: my culture.” Still to this day, unfortunately, I don't have my language.