Confessions of a Disillusioned Child Welfare Worker, Part Five: The North

The opportunity to go north came at exactly the right time. I was 25 years old and met the man who is now my husband. He was living in the far north in a small, remote community accessible only by plane. I applied for a position as a social worker and got the job. This was the beginning of two years travelling throughout the higher arctic as a child protection worker. In this part of the story, I will endeavour to tell you some truths about child welfare as I experienced it in the north. While the first half of my story may be titled “Losing Faith in People”, this phase may be titled “Losing Faith in Systems”.

I will admit I am finding this part of my story particularly difficult to tell. Perhaps because this chapter has not yet ended. It may be that some years will pass and I will draw different conclusions from all of this. For now, I will speak to you from the perspective of someone who is trying to bring closure to a time in life that is proving difficult to reconcile.

As a child welfare worker in the north, you are made to hold many things at once despite none of them fitting together. You are asked to hold the truth that you and your ancestors have been active participants in harming nations of people, tearing them and their communities apart from their roots. You are asked to form relationships where people bear their souls and allow you a glimpse into what it is like to walk in their shoes. It begins to make perfect sense why they may show up angry, sad, and hopeless. You take this in every day, never with enough time to process it.

You see poverty in ways that are not subtle or quiet. You see parents and grandparents being crushed by the weight of just getting by. You see systems of the south imposed upon the people of the north, despite the fact that these systems were never built with them in mind.

You also see a land and culture that transforms you. You are embraced into a community despite them having every reason to reject you. You see resilience. You see parents and children who love one another. You see generations that persist despite being failed by systems they were told they must rely on. You see people filling the gaps for themselves; you see people who resist.

And against that backdrop, you are given the authority to decide who gets to keep their children. You are granted the power to live out the legacy of your ancestors, now rebranded under new labels. You are asked to keep children safe by taking them away from their families as if you have certainty you can give them something better. This is the role you have been assigned and that society expects you to play.

You are tasked with convincing families that the systems in place would work for them if they would simply adapt and comply. You sell the story that the solutions are in their hands alone and have them sign case plans which reinforce that message. The parent will do this; the parent will not do that. The child protection worker may assist if the solution lies in helping you better navigate the systems that exist, or better behave in ways we have prescribed. As a worker, you may be able to continue like this for a while, so long as you never really open your eyes.

Working in remote communities, soon you find out that the service that family needs does not exist in their community, or it only exists depending on when you call and who answers the phone. Alternatively, the service exists far away from their home community if only they uproot their whole lives with no guarantee of what will be waiting on the other side. Perhaps even more often, everything that may truly make an impact seems beyond reach, like livable income, safe and stable housing, and adequate physical and mental health care. And yet, with the awareness that we did nothing of significance to help this family, every six months we take them to task for what they did not accomplish. The threat of their children being taken looms.

And what happens to the kids that are removed? Especially in small, remote communities, workers become aware no one there may be able to take them in. For the children who are then sent out of their community, we know the barriers they will face getting to see their families again: financial requests, approval processes, escorts, safety plans, courtesy visits, paperwork. Then a worker quits, they wait for a new worker, more paperwork. Suddenly, a year passes. Years pass.

All of this ate away at me after a while. As a colleague described it, we are all salespeople for Child & Family Services, and I had lost faith in our product. I found myself trying to meet people’s needs in spite of the system, not with thanks to it.  I found myself pulling pieces together to make it through each day, knowing I would have to start from scratch tomorrow.

Certainly, there were moments where it all felt worth it. There were many moments we saw our efforts amount to something: a family getting to go to treatment, a child back in school, parents healing their relationship with one another. Although I was only a small part of it, it gave me a sense that what we were doing mattered. Ultimately, those moments just became more and more difficult to hold on for.

I reached a point where the suffering, injustice, and uncertainty became toxic in my body. As someone tasked with protecting these children who I came to know and love, I lived with the awareness that all my options could do harm in one way or another.  That is heavy, and it is a weight I often felt I was carrying alone. I feel shame in admitting I can no longer carry it, and I am aware of the privilege I have in even having the choice to walk away.

This brings us to present day. This part of the story has yet to reach resolution and potentially never will. Perhaps we are meant to acknowledge that certain things in this life are irreconcilable.

This marks a turning point in our story. We know what has happened; now we must decide what to do with it.

Signed,

A Disillusioned Child Welfare Worker