Family Well-Being Coalition

About the project

The BC Family Well-being Coalition extends the work of West Coast LEAF’s 2021-2023 Communities of Practice project, which brought together impacted people and advocates concerned about BC’s family policing system.

With funding from a three-year grant from the Law Foundation of BC, we intend to continue building out spaces for systemic advocacy that challenges the current family policing landscape in BC and centers family well-being. This advocacy can include:

• skill-building
• campaigns
• research
• Other strategies yet to be determined

Our intentions are to uplift and amplify the wisdom and expertise of Indigenous leaders, families, Elders, and advocates to support the ongoing work to transform, re-envision, and reclaim the system from what’s currently an ongoing colonial intervention system to a system in which all children, families, and communities will thrive.

Building on the Communities of Practice project

The Communities of Practice project focused on facilitating spaces to come together and learn from one another about family policing advocacy and to challenge the system. West Coast LEAF, alongside community partner organizations, focused on parenting and disability, kinship caregiving, and gender-based violence, including work specifically directed at exploring how BC’s family policing system (also known as the child welfare system) could shift from a colonial system of apprehension into one that supports families, promotes prevention, and prioritizes child and family wellbeing. 

The work done during the first iteration of the Communities of Practice project is now guiding our work with the Family Well-Being Coalition.

Over the course of the project, we worked with three working groups and a steering committee to address barriers and inequities within the family policing system. Some examples of this work included:

• Creating and promoting the documentary Kids Are Only Kids Once with parents and advocates
• Working with community partners on various law reform projects, including submissions and open letters to government
• An impactful three-part webinar series on family policing and the legal system

Want to learn more about our prior work on family well-being? Check out these strategies:

• Litigation as intervenors in a complaint before the BC Human Rights Tribunal about discrimination in the family policing system.
• Development of the Pathways in a Forest: Indigenous guidance on prevention-based child welfare (2018) report.
• Development of the High Stakes: The impacts of child care on the human rights of women and children (2016) report.

Want to join?

Coalition members include and are not limited to:

• Grassroots groups and collectives
• People who work in and represent front-line organizations that serve families involved with the family policing system
• People who work in the legal system, including those who represent parents, caregivers, directors, and Nations
• Allied researchers
• Indigenous Nations
• Allied advocacy organizations

Want to join the coalition? Once you have reviewed the Terms of Reference, please take our short prospective membership survey.

Get in touch

For questions, please get in touch with Sharnelle Jenkins-Thompson (she/her), project lead and manager of community outreach at West Coast LEAF at community@westcoastleaf.org

This project was made possible by generous funding from the Law Foundation of BC.