continuing the conversation

Because these summaries are of past conversations, please note that not all information may be currently accurate.

under the threat of child removal: parent-worker relationships in child welfare —

A seasoned child welfare worker arrived to our BSW classroom to tell aspiring child welfare workers about the reality of doing the work. “I always say to clients, we can do this my way or the hard way -- you decide” she declared as though, somehow this not so veiled threat should be held up as an example to be emulated. In this moment, we knew that these words represented a gross misuse of power. But these words were also a window into a taken-for-granted reality about doing child welfare work. Parent-worker relationships in child welfare unfold under the threat of child removal and this threat never really goes away.  

Evidence tells us that young people are best protected in the midst of a strong relational context. Parents, siblings, extended families, friends, and other community members (including kind professionals who can build trusting relationships and unlock needed resources) can play a central role in tending to the safety needs of young people.  But in practice, parents enter child welfare systems as suspects to be investigated by workers. In fact, there must be a requisite number of investigable facts associated with their story or they don’t get through the door. What are the implications of this suspect – investigator relationship for the safety of young people? 

We know that child welfare workers do more than remove children but the reality is that the ever-present threat of child removal is central to the relationships that we build with communities, parents and children. We seldom talk about the impossibilities of finding a magical balance between coercion and care, and we don’t talk about how the persistent threat of child removal undermines authentic relationship building. 

Through the parent (suspects) and worker (evidence-gatherers) dichotomy, we explored the ways we are pressured to threaten removal to gain compliance and their implications. As workers, we are accountable for the ways we facilitate, nurture, and breathe life into the threat of child removal to achieve compliance sometimes overtly, as our guest speaker reminded us and sometimes subtly. And these are not easy truths.

what we say and why we say it: critically examining worker ‘talk’ —

We use words to communicate, to describe what we see and do. We have language for all situations that includes particular words that we use with our friends, our loved ones and in the work place. The words we use to describe child welfare families and activities elicit more meanings than we realize.  

What words do we use to describe the families who come to the attention of child welfare systems? If you are a worker reading these words, we invite you to think about the language that you have used to describe fathers, mothers, and young people. We generated a long list of words in our discussions. Many of them we are not proud of (“she’s a hot mess”, “that” family, “revolving door”, “client”, “case”, “crack baby”, “run-away”, “AWOL”, “product of the system”, “losers”). 

We also became more conscious about the everyday language that we use to describe child welfare activities.  Our talk is laden with taken-for-granted military language (intervention, mission, protection, compliance, frontline, apprehension). We say that we want to be inclusive and anti-oppressive in our practices but our language says, among other things, that adversarial relationships and practices of separation are everyday norms.

We are accountable for these words and for the ways that they frame our thoughts and our ensuing actions. What words should we be using instead? 

protecting whiteness in everyday child welfare practices —

Whiteness is not just about skin colour. Whiteness is a social identity and an ideology that is embedded in our history, social norms, and child welfare institutions. It is multi-layered, ever-present, and, at the same time, elusive. Whiteness is often invisible because it is perceived as normal for those who are privileged by it. It is a default way of living in society and of doing child welfare work. As workers, we tend not to be in the habit of questioning Whiteness in our everyday child welfare policies and routines. This failure is dangerous because it is the source of White supremacy, oppression, and racism. 


The institution of child welfare actively protects and perpetuates Whiteness. We are in the early stages of becoming conscious about child welfare’s obsession with protecting Whiteness and the implications of taken-for-granted assumptions that the ‘one-size fits all’ mandate and methods are good and right for all children, families, and communities. We need to work with intentionality, recognizing the ways in which we may be upholding Whiteness. But first, we need to talk openly and with accountability about our role in these realities.

stripping away original soil identities —

‘Original soil’ is a gardening metaphor adapted from the work of Robbie Gilligan who asked the question - does a child have enough emotional soil to successfully transplant to a different home? Research has shown us that our identities are highly important to our well-being, emotional health, and, generally, who we are as people. How do child welfare processes nourish original soil identities? We are becoming conscious of how child welfare processes actually do the opposite. Rather than nourishing original soil identities, they are stripping them away. 

We know that when young people enter non-kin foster care and adoptive homes, the loss of identity tends to become a central experience of their lives. The stripping away of original soil identity is evidenced by the overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous children in the foster care system, especially those in homes of people who do not share their ways of being.  

But sometimes identity stripping is subtle. It is in the way we plant the idea that something is wrong with the child’s original soil. It might be in a facial expression that communicates our disapproval of a parent in the presence of their child. It might be in how we ask young people questions about the way their parents treat them.  Sometimes it is in how we tell the stories of people who have experienced child welfare systems, rewriting and repurposing the stories that represent their identities. Importantly, identity-stripping processes are not limited to those families and children who experience child placement.  

We are talking openly about the strategies that we have used that strip away identities, why this happens, and how we can be accountable

honouring the 215 children —

& Monster — A residential school experience

-Dennis Saddleman

All our ancestors are grieving…

                                                  Liz Akiwenzie, Indigenous Knowledge Keeper

In May 2021, the former Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, uncovered a mass grave of 215 children. Since May, thousands of stolen children have been found in unmarked graves on former Residential school grounds across Canada. For decades, Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities and placed in government-run school systems. These schools were created with the intention of indoctrinating the children in Christianity and white-dominant culture. We want to remember the estimated over 4000 other children who did not return home from their time spent in Canadian residential schools. 

As child welfare workers, we wrestle with our history in the Indigenous residential/boarding school systems, as well as our complicity in the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the child welfare system. These acknowledgments are not easy, neither is recognizing and resisting the ongoing colonization that is working in our systems.

Listen to the words of Dennis Saddleman!

MONSTER, A RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL EXPERIENCE

https://www.cbc.ca/playerplay/1904877123726

By Dennis Saddleman

I HATE YOU RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL

I HATE YOU

YOU’RE A MONSTER

A HUGE HUNGRY MONSTER

BUILT WITH STEEL BONES           

BUILT WITH CEMENT FLESH

YOU’RE A MONSTER

BUILT TO DEVOUR

INNOCENT NATIVE CHILDREN

YOU’RE A COLD-HEARTED MONSTER       

COLD AS THE CEMENT FLOORS

YOU HAVE NO LOVE

NO GENTLE ATMOSPHERE

YOUR UGLY FACE GROOVED WITH RED BRICKS

YOUR MONSTER EYES GLARE           

FROM GRIMY WINDOWS

MONSTER EYES SO EVIL

MONSTER EYES WATCHING

TERRIFIED CHILDREN

COWER WITH SHAME           

I HATE YOU RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL I HATE YOU

YOU’RE A SLIMY MONSTER

OOZING IN THE SHADOWS OF MY PAST

GO AWAY LEAVE ME ALONE

YOU’RE FOLLOWING ME FOLLOWING ME WHEREVER I GO     

YOU’RE IN MY DREAMS IN MY MEMORIES

GO AWAY MONSTER GO AWAY

I HATE YOU YOU’RE FOLLOWING ME

I HATE YOU RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL I HATE YOU

YOU’RE A MONSTER WITH HUGE WATERY MOUTH     

MOUTH OF DOUBLE DOORS

YOUR WIDE MOUTH TOOK ME

YOUR YELLOW STAINED TEETH CHEWED

THE INDIAN OUT OF ME

YOUR TEETH CRUNCHED MY LANGUAGE      

GRINDED MY RITUALS AND MY TRADITIONS

YOUR TASTE BUDS BECAME BITTER

WHEN YOU TASTED MY RED SKIN

YOU SWALLOWED ME WITH DISGUST

YOUR FACE WRINKLED WHEN YOU         

TASTED MY STRONG PRIDE                                               

I HATE YOU RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL I HATE YOU

YOU’RE A MONSTER

YOUR THROAT MUSCLES FORCED ME

DOWN TO YOUR STOMACH       

YOUR THROAT MUSCLES SQUEEZED MY HAPPINESS

SQUEEZED MY DREAMS

SQUEEZED MY NATIVE VOICE

YOUR THROAT BECAME CLOGGED WITH MY SACRED SPIRIT

YOU COUGHED AND YOU CHOKED       

FOR YOU CANNOT WITH STAND MY

SPIRITUAL SONGS AND DANCES

I HATE YOU RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL I HATE YOU

YOU’RE A MONSTER

YOUR STOMACH UPSET EVERY TIME I WET MY BED     

YOUR STOMACH RUMBLED WITH ANGER

EVERY TIME I FELL ASLEEP IN CHURCH

Your stomach growled at me every time I broke the school rules

Your stomach was full You burped

You felt satisfied You rubbed your belly and you didn’t care       

You didn’t care how you ate up my native Culture

You didn’t care if you were messy

if you were piggy

You didn’t care as long as you ate up my Indianness

I hate you Residential School I hate you           

You’re a monster

Your veins clotted with cruelty and torture

Your blood poisoned with loneliness and despair

Your heart was cold it pumped fear into me

I hate you Residential School I hate you           

You’re a monster

Your intestines turned me into foul entrails

Your anal squeezed me

squeezed my confidence

squeezed my self respect          

Your anal squeezed

then you dumped me

Dumped me without parental skills

without life skills

Dumped me without any form of character       

without individual talents

without a hope for success

I hate you Residential School I hate you                             

You’re a monster

You dumped me in the toilet then       

You flushed out my good nature

my personalities

I hate you Residential School I hate you

You’re a monster………I hate hate hate you

Thirty three years later         

I rode my chevy pony to Kamloops

From the highway I saw the monster

My Gawd! The monster is still alive

I hesitated I wanted to drive on

but something told me to stop     

I parked in front of the Residential School

in front of the monster

The monster saw me and it stared at me

The monster saw me and I stared back

We both never said anything for a long time       

Finally with a lump in my throat

I said, “Monster I forgive you.”

The monster broke into tears

The monster cried and cried

His huge shoulders shook          

He motioned for me to come forward

He asked me to sit on his lappy stairs

The monster spoke

You know I didn’t like my Government Father

I didn’t like my Catholic Church Mother           

I’m glad the Native People adopted me

They took me as one of their own

They fixed me up Repaired my mouth of double doors

Washed my window eyes with cedar and fir boughs

They cleansed me with sage and sweetgrass         

Now my good spirit lives

The Native People let me stay on their land

They could of burnt me you know instead they let me live

so People can come here to school restore or learn about their culture

The monster said, “I’m glad the Native People gave me another chance     

I’m glad Dennis you gave me another chance

The monster smiled

I stood up I told the monster I must go

Ahead of me is my life. My people are waiting for me                   

I was at the door of my chevy pony         

The monster spoke, “Hey you forgot something

I turned around I saw a ghost child running down the cement steps

It ran towards me and it entered my body

I looked over to the monster I was surprised

I wasn’t looking at a monster anymore              

I was looking at an old school In my heart I thought

This is where I earned my diploma of survival

I was looking at an old Residential School who

became my elder of my memories

I was looking at a tall building with four stories     

stories of hope

stories of dreams