Across Ontario, Indigenous children are dramatically overrepresented in the child protection system. Too often they are removed from their families not because of abuse, but because of poverty, inadequate housing, and systemic discrimination, patterns with a direct line back through Canada’s colonial history: the Residential School system, the Sixties Scoop, and decades of child welfare practice that treated removal as the default. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s very first Calls to Action address child welfare for a reason. Every Indigenous child deserves to grow up surrounded by love, cultural identity, language, and community, and that conviction shapes this part of our practice.

What is Customary Care?

Customary Care is the care and supervision of a First Nations, Inuit, or Métis child by a person who is not the child’s parent, according to the customs of the child’s band or community. In practice, it usually means a child who cannot safely remain at home is cared for by extended family or community members, chosen with the community, under an agreement rather than a court-imposed foster placement. The child stays inside their circles of kinship, culture, and land, and the arrangement is voluntary and flexible rather than adversarial.

Two laws support it directly:

• Section 80 of the CYFSA requires children’s aid societies to make all reasonable efforts to pursue a plan for Customary Care for an Indigenous child who is in need of protection, before resorting to other placements.
• The federal Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families affirms Indigenous peoples’ inherent jurisdiction over child and family services, establishes national standards centred on the child’s best interests understood in cultural context, and directs that prevention and family unity take priority over apprehension.

What a sound Customary Care arrangement involves

Because these arrangements are agreements, the details matter: who cares for the child and where; how parents remain involved and how their time with the child works; the role of the band or community representative; the supports and funding that accompany the placement; and how the arrangement is reviewed and ended as circumstances improve. Families are entitled to understand every term before signing, and to have their community’s customs drive the plan rather than an agency template.

How we help

We take a rights-based, trauma-informed approach: promoting Customary Care as the first alternative to removal, ensuring parents, caregivers, and community representatives are heard at every stage, holding societies to the CYFSA’s requirement of the least disruptive and most culturally appropriate course of action, and making sure any agreement is legally sound and centred on the child’s best interests as their community understands them. We work alongside band representatives and service providers, and we treat continual learning about the communities we serve as part of the job, not an extra.

Helpful starting points: What if CAS takes my child? from Steps to Justice, and the Best Practices Guide on Customary Care Processes in Ontario. As that guide puts it, it is time for First Nations children to come home. We are here to help make that happen.