Aboriginal Children Exposed To Family Violence: A Discussion Paper

Social Workers In Children Family Services

The Issue of Family Violence and Its Impact on Aboriginal Children

What Is The Social Workers In Children Family Services?

Aboriginal Children Exposed to Family Violence is a discussion paper that has been prepared for the purpose of Native Women’s Association of Canada by Advocate Valerie Nicholls on 29^th February, 2008. Paper was written with an intention to address the violence faced by the children of Aboriginal communities in Canada. Recent studies have shown that in Canada children aged between 5 to 14 years are subjected to abuse as a result of family violence (Nicholls, 2008). The violence on Aboriginal women created serious impact on the children. It can be observed that in most of the times, Canadian children has witnessed that their mothers of being abused which created serious impact on them psychology. It has been emphasized that children are often considered as direct victims of abuse in their families. However, the child is often abused in a family both physically and mentally by using forces like beating and threatening thereby creating a state of fear in their minds (Lacharité, 2014).

The Child Family and Community Service Act is a current law that has been introduced in Canada for the addressing the issues related to child abuse. It can be stated that the provisions of child protection services are delegated under this Act by the Minister. The provisions are delegated to the child protection social workers across the province for the purpose of carrying out the work effectively. The purpose of the Child Family and Community Service Act is to provide appropriate solution to the victims of child abuse in need. However, it was required on the part of the general public to provide assistance in this regard as much as possible. According to the Act, if it occurred to anyone that a child has been abused and neglected and needs to be protection then it has to be reported to the Director or to a delegated social worker. It is essential that such reports must be investigated by the community service workers from time to time before taking any appropriate action. The actions which the community service workers must implement should include providing appropriate provisions in support of family services, protecting the child from being abused from relatives and other members of the family and supervising the proper maintenance of child in the household (Zannettino & McLaren, 2014).  It is worth noting that the social workers are entrusted with the delegated authority of the Director to arrange foster homes for children in need and for those who approaches the ministry for help.

Child, Family and Community Service Act

In this regard, the Act has facilitated the development of specialized residential groups and facilities in order to improve the condition of children under care. It can be observed that recently, the child protection services across Canada has facilitated the development of 429 ministry offices including a number of Aboriginal agencies which has been delegated to the community service workers (Ungar, 2015). On January 29, 1996 the Child, Family and Community Service Act came into being however; the Act is current to March 14, 2018. The Child Family and Community Service Act have been formulated with an intention to restructure the approach of the province towards child welfare and development (Lewallen et al., 2015). It is important to note here that the Act was enforced in Canada by ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol t the Convention of the Rights of the Child. In this regard, it can be stated that in 2002 the Criminal Youth Justice Act was enacted by the government of Canada by replacing the Young Offenders Act (Trocmé et al., 2014). Therefore, it was emphasized that as Canada is a member of the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child and young persons and therefore the rights and freedoms of young persons are depicted in the Child, Family and Community Service Act (Martin, 2014).

The penalties and other rehabilitation programs that have been imposed by the Child, Family and Community Service Act can be emphasized. According to the Child, Family and Community Service Act, the penalties and rehabilitation programs for child abuse has to be separate. Various rehabilitation and reintegration programs have been implemented in order to provide appropriate punishment to the offenders of child abuse. Under the Child, Family and Community Service Act it has been provided that if an individual fails to report to the Director or to the concerned community service worker regarding the abuse or suspected abuse of a child then he shall be entitled to a fine of $ 10,000. However, the Act states that in some cases the offender of child abuse can be charged with a felony depending upon the seriousness of the crime. In serious cases the offender may be imprisoned with life sentences. According to the Act, the nature of the punishment will be severe if the offender has a prior criminal record of child abuse. In this regard, the Act states that for the purpose of sentencing, the person charged with an offence of child abuse may apply plea of guilty. However, the term of sentencing in child abuse cases includes a probation period of five years (Robson, Cossar & Quayle, 2014).  The Child, Family and Community Service Act facilitated the development of various rehabilitation programs in order to provide necessary treatment to the victims of child abuse. Necessary funds can be collected from the delegated Aboriginal agencies and other government organizations. Most of the rehabilitation programs developed under this Act identified the issues faced by the abused children who have been witnessing violence between their parents for a long time (Denison, Varcoe & Browne, 2014).  Therefore as a result of this they have been targeted as victims of violence and abuse. However, various special programs were introduced in which the abused victims relied upon the referrals of other service community workers. Various therapists and psychologists were part of these special programs that were specialized in dealing with the issue of child abuse. It can be observed that the programs addressing the issues of child abuse not only focused on the influence of child but also emphasized on family violence as well (McFadden, Campbell & Taylor, 2014). The members of the family were given proper counseling sessions in order to eliminate the issue of child abuse in every household.

Penalties and Rehabilitation Programs under the Act

Though the Child, Family and Community Service Act provided appropriate solution and treatment by introducing various rehabilitative programs, it failed to address the issues of Aboriginal children exposed to violence within the family. The Act failed to provide the appropriate intervention and treatment to abused victims. The Act failed to intervene into the activities of the existing residential schools. It can be observed that these residential schools which previously dealt with school healing programs by applying the traditional restorative justice do not focus on the treatment of abused children caused as a result of family violence. Therefore, it can be suggested that the Act should clearly refer to the activities of the government policy makers, legal professionals and community service providers in addressing to the issues of family violence and abused women and children. It is important on the part of the both federal and territorial government to provide sufficient funding in order to prevent crime. Therefore, the Act should implement provisions in order to eliminate issues regarding financial resources. However, it would have been beneficial if the Child, Family and Community Service Act emphasized on the long and short term issues faced by the Aboriginal children in Canada as exposed to family and community violence in relation to current law and policy of Canada.

References:

Denison, J., Varcoe, C., & Browne, A. J. (2014). Aboriginal women’s experiences of accessing healthcare when state apprehension of children is being threatened. Journal of advanced nursing, 70(5), 1105-1116.

Lacharité, C. (2014). Transforming a wild world: Helping children and families to address neglect in the Province of Quebec, Canada. Child Abuse Review, 23(4), 286-296.

Lewallen, T. C., Hunt, H., Potts?Datema, W., Zaza, S., & Giles, W. (2015). The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model: a new approach for improving educational attainment and healthy development for students. Journal of School Health, 85(11), 729-739.

Martin, J. (2014). Child sexual abuse images online: Implications for social work training and practice. The British Journal of Social Work, 46(2), 372-388.

McFadden, P., Campbell, A., & Taylor, B. (2014). Resilience and burnout in child protection social work: Individual and organisational themes from a systematic literature review. The British Journal of Social Work, 45(5), 1546-1563.

Nicholls, V. (2008). Aboriginal Children Exposed To Family Violence. Retrieved from https://www.nwac.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/2008-Children-Exposed-to-Family-Violence-A-Discussion-Paper.pdf.

Robson, A., Cossar, J., & Quayle, E. (2014). Critical commentary: The impact of work-related violence towards social workers in children and family services. British Journal of Social Work, 44(4), 924-936.

Trocmé, N., Kyte, A., Sinha, V., & Fallon, B. (2014). Urgent protection versus chronic need: clarifying the dual mandate of child welfare services across Canada. Social Sciences, 3(3), 483-498.

Ungar, M. (2015). Practitioner review: diagnosing childhood resilience–a systemic approach to the diagnosis of adaptation in adverse social and physical ecologies. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 56(1), 4-17.

Zannettino, L., & McLaren, H. (2014). Domestic violence and child protection: towards a collaborative approach across the two service sectors. Child & Family Social Work, 19(4), 421-431.