Cultural permanency planning : colonization and its legislative impacts on historical and current trends in Indigenous Child welfare practice

Child protection services in British Columbia play a large role in supporting children and families and are governed by the Child, Family, and Community Services Act (CFCSA) that is intended to ensure children are protected from harm through permanency planning. For Indigenous communities, the idea of permanency requires social workers to look at culturally relevant permanency plans. This concept of cultural permanency focuses on a child or youth’s right to continue to experience meaningful relationships with their community and culture, which includes family and extended family (Bennett, 2015). The CFCSA includes legislation that references ensuring Indigenous youth, families, and communities are included in permanency planning that takes into consideration Indigenous cultures. The need for culturally relevant permanency planning and the factors that influence it can be viewed through the Socio-ecological systems theory (SST) to develop an understanding of the worldviews, history, legislation, and current practices that impact a social worker’s ability to deliver culturally relevant permanency plans. The literature reveals that a lack of funding, training, and resources, along with large caseloads, continue to provide substantial challenges in delivering effective services to Indigenous communities and is essentially a modern extension of colonial child welfare practice.