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INFERTILITY   ADOPTION   POST-ADOPTION   FAMILY TREE   Adoption Resource Central    Heart of Adoption Articles to inspire   International adoption guide   You can order Family Helper publications		Natives gain control of child care in Manitoba BY ROBIN HILBORN, Family Helper editor
		(Nov. 25, 2003) Manitoba First Nations and Métis gained control of their own child and family service agencies on Nov. 24, 2003. A new law, the Child and Family Services Authorities Act, created four agencies, one for Métis, one each for First Nations in northern and southern Manitoba, and one for everyone else. Children in care will be transferred to the agency which can provide culturally appropriate care, to ensure they grow up with a connection to their communities. The split into four agencies ensures that foster and adoptive parents are chosen with the child's cultural background in mind. Several aboriginal agencies have provided on-reserve care for aboriginal children for the past two decades. Now on-reserve agencies will also care for their children living off-reserve. Grand Chief Dennis White Bird said this begins to correct the wrongs done to aboriginal people through the residential schools system, which sought to assimilate First Nations kids. In a Nov. 25, 2003 editorial the Winnipeg Free Press said that the new child welfare system is "intended to resolve the chronic pattern by which Métis and aboriginal children taken into care were often raised by non-native foster or adoptive parents and lost their cultural identity." There were 5,533 children in care in Manitoba in 2002-2003. ________________________________________ You may reproduce this item with the credit: "Source: Family Helper (www.familyhelper.net)"