Joint Submission in response to MCFD’s Social Work Oversight Engagement

Alongside Rise Women’s Legal Centre, Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS), Feminists Deliver, and individual signatories Frances Rosner and Meena Dhillon, West Coast LEAF made a joint submission to the Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) to provide input into the ministry’s work on social work oversight.

In our submission, we urge the ministry to take this opportunity to align MCFD social work practice with the province’s commitments to advance reconciliation and implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). That includes centering four key objectives:

• Acknowledging and addressing the longstanding and ongoing colonial harms of social work on Indigenous parents, families, and children
• Upholding family and parental rights and recognizing that the maintenance of family and cultural ties is essential to the well-being of children
• Accountability and transparency to families, Indigenous Nations, and communities
• Establishing a timely and responsive complaints process in the Child, Family and Community Service Act (CFCSA)

Read the full joint submission (PDF, 294 KB).