Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society

Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society is a Vancouver based non-profit society that provides free social services to Aboriginal people living in the Metro Vancouver area. The society was incorporated in 1992, providing advocacy, support and encouraging cultural awareness for Aboriginal children and families involved in the child protection system of British Columbia. In 1996, the society was designated by the Vancouver Aboriginal community to take on responsibility for providing child protection services for Vancouver Aboriginal children and families, and on April 1, 2008, the society became fully delegated as a provider of Child Protection services.

History

The formation of VACFSS began in June 1988 as the Mamele Benevolent Society with a mandate to develop Aboriginal Child Welfare and in-home support programs for urban Aboriginal families. Four years later, the Mamele Society was reincorporated as the Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society in 1992.

The core program and focus of VACFSS from 1992 to 1999 was family support services. This program offered advocacy and support to families involved with the Ministry and to whom there was a risk of becoming involved in the child protection system. VACFSS also provided cultural support to children-in-care and cultural awareness to caregivers through the Cultural program.

In 1996, after a series of community consultations, VACFSS received support from the Aboriginal community to assume “designation status”, providing advocacy to families and notifying Bands when their children were removed from member Aboriginal families living in the Lower Mainland.

In 1999, VACFSS started a Guardianship Pilot Project while starting negotiations with the Ministry to enable it to deliver delegated services. The negotiations concluded in September 2001 with the signing of the Delegation Enabling Agreement (DEA) on December 14, 2001. This allowed VACFSS to provide a full range of delegated Resource and Guardianship services and non-delegated services through the Aboriginal Family Preservation and Reunification Services.

Immediately following the signing of the DEA, Guardianship was created, with Residential Resources following a year later. In 2004, Family Support was renamed Family Preservation and Reunification to reflect the society's mandate to work through all avenues to preserve family units.

VACFSS continues to grow and evolve toward the goal of full delegation.

Departments

Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society works out of three offices located throughout East Vancouver. Services are divided under four umbrellas: Child Protection, Family Preservation & Reunification, Residential Resources, and Guardianship Services. Some clients require services from multiple, or even all the departments, while others will deal with only one department.

Child Protection

VACFSS is responsible for child protection services for Aboriginal children, youth and families for Vancouver. This includes:

• Providing services that will help strengthen Aboriginal children and families;
• Providing service to the parents or others who are responsible for the care of such children; and
• Reviewing, assessing and investigating reports of child abuse, neglect and exploitation of children.

Child Protection social workers use cultural practices and supports to help families overcome their challenges. They also practice least intrusive measures in supporting a family with their child protection needs. As part of this, they use internal and community supports. Some of these are:

Family Group Decision Making - FGDM coordinators help families experiencing child protection issues by setting up conferences which allow families to prepare a plan for dealing with their challenges. It is a non-adversarial alternative to court.

Family Development Response - FDR workers provide intensive support to families experiencing child protection concerns by connecting them with the community supports they need.

More more information:

http://www.vacfss.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=218

Family Preservation and Reunification

Family Preservation and Reunification provides clinical services to referred Aboriginal families who are experiencing situations that may place their children at risk. These services are based on an assessed need and are meant to prevent children from coming into care as well as foster lasting and meaningful reunifications of families whose unique struggles necessitated the temporary removal of the child or children.

Family Preservation: provides in-home services for families

Family Reunification: reconnects children with their families through involvement of the child’s caregiver. The role of caregiver is encouraged to be filled by an extended family member or friend, thoguh it sometimes will be filled by an outside foster parent.

Emergency Family Response: provides short-term crisis-orientated service to ensure children have immediate support. It also is designated to decrease the length of time a child is in care.

The Strengthening Family Program is a service provided for families who need assistance or education to help with the challenges of maintaining a safe, healthy and healthy home environment for both children and families. It is an evidence based program that is family focused and culturally sensitive. It is intended to strengthen parenting skills, family relationships and children’s social skills and life skill. It is available for families with children ages 6–11 years.

VACFSS offers Aboriginal Family Preservation & Reunification Services to:

• Children
• Youth
• Families
• Caregivers
• Children and youth with CCO status

Intensive Family Preservation and Reunification Services involve parents, caregivers, children and youth. It is delivered primarily in the family home, caregiver’s home or a site preferred by the family. Each family referred to the service works with a primary Family Preservation Counselor to ensure continuity of service. The service is time-limited ranging from two (2) to six (6) months and may be extended depending on the circumstances.

The Aboriginal Family Preservation and Reunification Services are for immediate and extended families to develop a plan that will address child protection issues to prevent children from being removed from the family home. The Program also assists in the reunification of families by providing:

Assessment and integrated service planning; Services to address concrete needs; Individual and parenting training and education; Therapeutic interventions with individuals, couples and families; Linkages to formal and therapeutic interventions; Specialized individual therapeutic interventions; and Specialized assessment.

Associated Aboriginal Family Preservation and Reunification Services:

Group-based therapeutic intervention Child and youth care intervention Self help/mutual aid Volunteer mentoring Supervised visitation In-home services (homemaker services)

For more information:

http://www.vacfss.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=208

Residential Resources

The Resources Program is responsible for approximately 200 foster homes. The Resources team recruits, trains and monitors foster parents in caring for children and youth in continuing and temporary custody. Foster parents receive manditory cultural training. In addition, VACFSS' Inclusive Foster Care policy works to maintain a connection between children and their biological parents where appropriate while in care.

For more information:

http://www.vacfss.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=212

Guardianship

The Guardianship Program is responsible for appriximately 300 children and youth. It supports children and youth in care with their day to day lives and helps them make connections to their culture and extended families, where appropriate. The Touching the Land of Our Relations program helps children in care return to their home communities so that children who have grown up in an urban environment can develop and maintain links to their Nations, families and culture. The Lifelong Connections Worker also works to seek out and foster connections between children and people of support in their lives who will help them as they transition out of care.

For more information:

http://www.vacfss.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=202

External links

• VACFSS Home Page [ http://www.vacfss.com/ ]
• VACFSS Employment Section
• VACFSS Newsletter 1
• Ministry of Child and Family Development [ http://www.gov.bc.ca/mcf/ ]