7 crucial conversations

Season 2 of Continuing the Conversation took off with an introduction to the Child Welfare TRUTH-Telling Collective, the purpose of this series and what to expect. The dialogue focused on the ‘things’ that trouble us about child welfare systems and why now, more than ever, things need to be different. We landed on a starting point for systemic change.  


  1. troubling things…troubling times —

The conventions of teaching and learning about child welfare history tend to champion a narrative of social progress. This version of history has erased and/or dismissed important facts about why good ideas are gasping for air on the margins of core operating procedures and why people continue to be harmed by child welfare involvements.

This dialogue explored questions like: Who made child welfare systems? When? Why? For what purposes? We explored how the policies and practices that led to the genocide of Indigenous communities through the placement of their children into foster care (often referred to as the 60s scoop in Canada) continue in current arrangements. We concluded with cautions about why the well-documented, persistent ‘overrepresentation’ of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (aka the global majority) is likely to intensify over the next decade.



2. a revisionist history of the child welfare system —

Colonizing codes are buried deep in the DNA of child welfare systems. What do we mean by colonizing codes? Why do they exist? How are they operating?

This session focused on the ‘separation creates safety’ colonizing code which forms the basis for relationships with parents and children/youth. One of the consequences of this code is that workers are constructed as evidence gatherers, parents as suspects and children/youth as victims. Regardless of the reason for child welfare involvement, the threat of child removal is ever present for those receiving services whilst the threat of liability should something go terribly wrong is ever-present for workers.

We had a conversation together about how the separation creates safety code shapes worker-parent/child relationships and what it is like for workers to form and maintain relationships under these conditions.



3. deep in the DNA of child welfare systems (part 1) —

4. deep in the DNA of child welfare systems (part 2) —

This session focused on how worker words both reflect and maintain the separation creates safety code. Routinely, our words are derogatory, punitive, dehumanizing, violent and, simultaneously, taken for granted in their normality. 

During this session, we shared examples of everyday child welfare language and explore their implications. We invited participants to share their truth about language, what it communicates subtly (and sometimes overtly) about the purposes and functions of the child welfare system and the value of communities, families and children who receive its services.

5. becoming white: the practices of child welfare identity stripping —

Imagine how our history might have been different if child welfare workers supported families and children and stood together with them in the fight for decent paying jobs, affordable housing, daycare and a healthy environment... 

This conversation was premised on the idea that the greatest barrier to child welfare change lies in the practices of white supremacy. It is impossible to address issues of racism and equity in the child welfare system without first understanding and identifying the systemic entanglement of Whiteness. Can workers reject Whiteness? But before we try to answer that question, we asked, can workers see Whiteness?

Whiteness is a topic that we seem to mask with a dominant ideology of what is right and what is fair or safe within the child welfare system. To keep this conversation manageable, we looked specifically at our own experiences of Whiteness: what are the ways we have harmed, been harmed or both in relation to child welfare involvements. We invited participants to think differently about some taken for granted ways of operating and wonder with us about the possibilities for a different future.

6. breaking the child welfare code of silence —

Silence in its purest form builds and supports the bonds of our shared humanity. Add a dash of fear to silence and it becomes a tool of oppression that destroys the connections among us. Fear-based silence erodes our innermost selves; it spills out and infects our relationships with the families, children and communities we serve in child welfare… CWTTC, 2022.

Silence is not ‘golden’ in systems of child welfare. It damages the people who need services and it damages the people who deliver them. Yet, the ways that the child welfare code of silence is maintained are ubiquitous, expected and costly for those who deviate. Its outcome is the preservation of a status quo which we believe, must be questioned and challenged.

7. the fog is lifting —

The final session in this series was devoted to debriefing key takeaways from the learning series and the truth telling experience(s).

We talked humbly together about our next step in the journey toward social justice and reconciliation.