I'm Back

I’m back. After two days of nearly straight traveling from Iceland to Seattle and back to Kamloops, I’m ready to start working again at this project.

Before I left, I spoke with Jacques Goutier with the Kamloops Ministry of Children and Family Development. In addition to his work at the ministry, he also teaches a social work class at Thompson Rivers University. 

I met with him in his downtown office. He’s a middle-aged man of European descent with salt and pepper hair and an energy that relaxed the more we talked. His job is to work with social workers and managers on complex cases that deal with First Nations children and families. For nearly his entire career, he’s worked with First Nations families and hopes to bring that context and understanding to other ministry workers.

I talked with him about his role as the regional aboriginal practice consultant with the ministry and why he felt it was critical to have a collaborative approach to child welfare practices when dealing with First Nations communities.

It was interesting to hear his perspective on his role because the Ministry of Children and Family Development often gets a bad rap for the work that it does because issues of child safety can make people defensive and combative.

In my experience dealing with social workers, including Goutier, they do the best they can with heavy workloads and many divided interests, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t make mistakes. Historically, child welfare practices led to issues like the Sixties Scoop, which put huge number of First Nations children into foster care and fractured already distressed First Nations communities. This is why Goutier wants to work with First Nations communities rather than dictate to them. 

Of the things that struck me in our conversation was Goutier’s belief that the best course of action when dealing with First Nations communities was that the ministry should continue on the path that is it currently on. He said that the changes in attitude towards collaborative practice had changed dramatically in the 40 years that he has been working with First Nations bands and that change has been for the better. 

“It’s been a slow process over time. It’s complicated in a lot of ways because we have, you know, legislation and there is a lot of different ways the ministry does its work. It’s transitioning to more and more collaboration with the Aboriginal community and there’s really a very, very strong focus on collaborative process and that is the focus of the ministry is moving, and has been for some time, away from an intrusive practice to more collaborative strength-based practice,” he said. “I’m quite excited about the changes that are occurring.”

When I asked him about what he felt social workers needed to do to better deal with First Nations families, his advice was this: “ensure that people are constantly developing positive working relationships with the Aboriginal community so that your relationship as a child welfare worker is not crisis driven necessarily, but that you are actually actively developing a relationship.”

I believe that advice holds true not only for social workers, but also for journalists. It’s important that journalist are not just covering the bad news that happens in First Nations communities and even when we do, it’s best to do so when there are existing relationships in place.

In doing this project, I hope that I’ll have a chance to build those relationship up now so that I can tell new and exciting First Nations stories that come not from conflict, but from my relationships.