Sure, and thank you for that question.
Just like the previous speaker said, you can't take an adult program, impose it on youth and have it work. It's the same for indigenous populations. You can't take a mainstream program and apply it to an indigenous population and expect it to work the same. The world views and the approaches need to be adjusted for the population to be served.
The land-based cultural and ceremonial supports and the identity-supporting pieces of the programming need to be there in order for programs to be effective for first nations, Métis and Inuit children, youth and families. I would say that at our organization we have experienced first-hand how much those pieces of our service model impact and have a positive outcome for the families we serve, especially in comparison to the mainstream services and programs they were accessing.
Because we are a new indigenous child well-being agency, very many of the almost 1,200 files we currently have open came to us from a mainstream agency, so we have a comparator between how they were being served before and how they're being served now. We have a number of services and positions within our organizations that mainstream child welfare does not have, and those pieces in particular, around culture and ceremony, protecting and nurturing their identity and having their identity as part of the service model, make an incredible difference.