First Peoples Child & Family Review

A Journal on Innovation and Best Practices in Aboriginal Child Welfare
Administration, Research, Policy and Practice
Volume 1, Number 1, September 2004, pp. 63-71
First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada

Abstract

Child protection practitioners view
Aboriginal communities as victim,
adversary, participant, partner,
and protector of children. These
representations of communities
are derived from interview data
with 19 Aboriginal and nonAboriginal child protection social
workers in British Columbia,
Canada. The representations
of the community are informed
by the practitioner’s geographic
relationship to the community
and the length of community
residency (including whether
it’s the practitioner’s community
of origin). Practitioners view
communities as a victim or
adversary when no relationship
of trust exists with the community.
Practitioners view communities
having a participative or
partnership role in child protection
when trust has developed.
When communities take full
responsibility for children’s
welfare, practitioners view the
community as the protector of
children. No clear association
was found between the different
representations of the community
and the practitioner’s culture
or organizational auspices.
The practitioner’s own vision
of practice is believed to
significantly influence the
relationship that develops with
the community.

© Christopher Walmsley

First Nations Research Site
Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare

Talking about the Aboriginal
Community: Child Protection
Practitioners’ Views
Christopher Walmsley
Introduction
The community context has
significant effects on children’s welfare
and can represent risk factors to wellbeing
or contributions to resilience (Booth &
Crouter, 1999; Werna, Dzikus, Ochola,
Kumarasuriyar, 1999). Child welfare
theorists stress the importance of
community-based intervention to effective
child protection practice (Burford &
Hudson, 2000, Macdonald, 1997; Wharf,
2002). Family group conferencing, for
example, involves community members in
effective planning for the child’s welfare
(Burford & Hudson, 2000). Social network
intervention at the neighbourhood level
increases social support and decreases
the risk of child maltreatment (Fuchs,
1995, p. 121). Community empowerment
approaches to child welfare see solutions
to community problems coming
from the community and not “wellmeaning outsiders” (Brown, Haddock,
& Kovach, 2002, p. 147). Community
social workers, it is argued, enhance
community competence and create a
positive social environment (Fellin, 1995,
p. 264). While theorists and researchers
stress the significance of community to

practice, it is unclear how child protection
practitioners think about community in
practice. To what extent do practitioners
consider the community when practicing
child protection? More particularly, when
community is a minority within the
dominant society, and the practitioner
is a member of the dominant society
how is “community” represented in
the practitioner’s thinking? When the
practitioner is a member of the minority
community is it represented differently?
This article outlines five ways in which
child protection practitioners think
about the community in the context of
their protection practice with Aboriginal
children and families.
Method
Participants
The sample comprised 19 participants
recruited through the researcher’s
contacts with British Columbia (BC)
child protection social workers. The
participants met the following criteria: (1)
a completed bachelor or master of social
work degree, (2) at least two years fulltime work experience as a child protection
social worker, (3) employed by either

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Talking About the Aboriginal Community: Child Protection Practitioners’ Views

The study is informed by
the social representations
perspective that argues
social representations
structure and orient
practitioners’ thinking
about action, and thereby
constitute an important
conceptual guide to
practice action.

the BC Ministry for Child and Family
Development (MCFD) or an Aboriginal
child welfare organization in British
Columbia, (4) had job responsibility
to assess a child’s risk of harm and the
authority to remove a child from the
family, (5) had extensive professional
contact with Aboriginal communities.
Specifically, the sample included seven
Aboriginal women, eight non-Aboriginal
women, and four non-Aboriginal men.
Practice experience ranged from 2 to 20
years. Of the 19 participants, three had
MSW degrees and 16 had BSW degrees.
Six were first-level supervisors and 13
were “front-line” practitioners. Seven
were employed at Aboriginal child welfare
organizations and 12 were employed at
MCFD. The participants lived and worked
in small urban centres, rural communities
and reserve communities in British
Columbia, Canada. Eight local offices of
the BC Ministry for Child and Family
Development and four Aboriginal child
welfare organizations in the province were
represented.
Data Collection
Semi-structured interviews were
conducted at various work sites between
June 1998 and October 1999, lasting 1.5
to 2 hours following an interview guide
designed to explore, in part, the influence
of the community context on practitioner’s
thinking about practice (other practice
dimensions were also explored in the
interview).
Data Analysis
A professional secretary transcribed
the interviews and the researcher verified
the accuracy of the transcription. The
data were entered into the NUD*IST
software program, and coded using: (1)
the questions from the interview guide,
and (2) naturally emerging categories
from the data. Each interview was recoded a second time at an interval of 2
to 6 weeks and the new coding verified
against the initial coding. Reports were
printed for each code and the data

64

analyzed for similarities, differences,
variations, and negative instances. A
summary of results was written for each
code noting similarities and differences
as well as themes and silences. The data
were summarized and interpreted, and
a draft of the study’s findings given to
each participant to review for accuracy,
quality of interpretation and completeness.
Participants had the opportunity to
provide oral or written feedback. They
were also invited to participate in two
focus groups, one comprised of Aboriginal
social workers and the other of nonAboriginal social workers, to discuss and
validate the findings. Revisions were made
to incorporate participants’ feedback and
the data analysis process concluded.
The study is informed by the social
representations perspective that argues
social representations structure and orient
practitioners’ thinking about action, and
thereby constitute an important conceptual
guide to practice action. A social
representation is defined as “a system of
values, ideas, and practices that establish
a consensual order among phenomena”
and “enable communication to take place
among the members of a community by
providing them with a code for social
exchange” (Moscovici in Duveen and
Lloyd, 1993, p. 91).

Results
The Geography of Practice
Those interviewed for this
study live in a variety of community
contexts ranging from isolated reserve
communities to regional town centres. The
context in which practice occurs for some
is circumscribed within a 3 kilometre
radius of the office. Others practice within
a series of small communities found in
an 8 hour driving radius from the office
by gravel road. Some communities are
accessible only by air, whereas others
require a combination of air and road
travel. The differing geographical
relationships to practice impact the way
practitioners view the “community” as

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well as the community’s understanding of
child protection practice.

When practitioners and
community members live
in distant geographical
relationships to each other,
a level of social distance
and formality enters the
practitioner-community
relationship.

When practitioners and community
members live and work in close proximity,
the possibility of reciprocity in child
protection is enhanced. Informal, noncrisis oriented interactions are possible
as this Aboriginal practitioner in an
Aboriginal organization describes:
…we have very much an open door policy,
although, you know, we try to schedule
appointments and stuff, they never work,
people are always popping in, and I think
that’s really good and people are coming
in, they’re asking why we’re doing what
we’re doing and asking us to stand behind
our decisions and…not only questioning
how do we do the work that we do but
giving direction as to where we should be
going.

A MCFD practitioner in a small
community confirms this sense of
reciprocity:
…we even got to the point where families
themselves would be phoning and
identifying when they felt they needed
services or when they’d need respite or
they were feeling that they were slipping
and they wanted to come up with a plan
ahead of time and they felt comfortable
enough phoning us and talking to us
directly.

If the practitioner is a member of the
community, the sense of reciprocity is
almost taken for granted as this Aboriginal
practitioner in an Aboriginal organization
reports:
In the community we know everyone,
we don’t have to introduce ourselves.
We go in, we know what the background
is, we know the history…we go into the
home, we know the family, we work out a
plan…. With our community…everyone
knows us, and they know the job we do, so
the respect is there. The trust is there….

The Practitioner as Outsider
When practitioners and community
members live in distant geographical
relationships to each other, a level of
© Christopher Walmsley

social distance and formality enters the
practitioner-community relationship.
To the community, the practitioner is
the distant outsider who appears in the
community as the external “other” to
complete an investigation and determine
whether a child is in need of protection.
When the practitioner “goes in” for a
short period of time, the community tends
to view the practitioner as a temporary
visitor:
…a lot of time you’ll hear comments from
the community, “Well, oh yah, here they
come, flying in, flying out”.

The focus of work is the completion of
a task -- often the assessment of a child’s
safety and the negotiation of an alternate
care arrangement. But when the time
allotted for the community visit is 1/2 to
1 day, little time remains for relationship
development. The possibility of reciprocity
in the community-practitioner relationship
is much less when the focus of practice is
investigation to determine a child’s safety,
and removal to ensure safety—usually
outside the community.

The Practitioner as Community
Resident
When a practitioner resides in the
community, a different kind of child
protection relationship is possible. While
the practitioner knows community
members and is visible in the community,
the child protection possibility also
contains a paradox. The practitioner’s
increased visibility and accompanying
credibility brings decreased anonymity.
There is a loss of personal privacy. The
life of the practitioner is increasingly lived
“in a glass bubble” or “fishbowl” and the
distinction between public/professional
life and a private/personal life becomes
blurred. Life is lived with the community’s
full knowledge and this heightened
visibility creates stresses and demands of
its own.
Aboriginal practitioners who live
and work in their communities of origin

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Talking About the Aboriginal Community: Child Protection Practitioners’ Views

Within the community,
child protection is a
practice by outsiders who
investigate and remove
children when safety is at
risk. In this representation,
practitioners have minimal
relationships with the
community; the community
doesn’t participate in child
protection and has no
identifiable role.

describe opportunities for supportive
informal intervention outside the office,
and the possibility of bringing a lifelong
knowledge of the person to the interaction.
But the lack of anonymity places demands
on the practitioner for a lifestyle that
conforms to community norms and is
congruent with professional practice. An
Aboriginal practitioner describes it this
way:
…everything we do here is basically
seen by the communities. We are
like in a fish bowl, you know, the life
style we live in and outside the office
people see. It has an impact and, I
think that is also why we are looking
at the type of life styles people have
after hours. If they continue to go
and ‘party hardy’ with some of their
clients that doesn’t sit well with
who we are as an agency and come
Monday morning I have to deal with
that family.

One MCFD practitioner in a small
community describes his “glass bubble”
experience in a similar way:
…you’re working even when you’re
in the grocery store. You’re working
if you’re walking down the street.
You’re perceived as working, you’re
known as the social worker to the
town and your actions reflect on the
work that you do.

The loss of anonymity in small
communities creates opportunities for a
greater level of reciprocity in community
life as well as in the protection of children,
but it brings with it a loss of privacy. It
can also bring a strong sense of isolation
for practitioners who are ‘in but not of’
the community, and can be a contributing
factor to the high turnover of staff in
isolated communities
In summary, the practitioner’s
geographic relationship to the community,
and their status within the community as
either a lifelong community member, an
outsider, or a community resident informs
the social worker’s thinking about the
Aboriginal community and its relationship

66

to child protection. The balance of the
article describes practitioners’ ways of
viewing the Aboriginal community.

The Community as Victim
Some represent the community
as a victim in child protection.
They see a relationship of powerless
dependency to the state and view their
practice reinforcing the community’s
victimization. They find a lack of
community interest or participation in
child protection decision-making, and
neither community leaders nor members
take identifiable responsibility for
children’s welfare. A high level of internal
community disorganization may exist and
this translates into an absence of support
services and alternate caregivers in the
community. One community member
may use the intervention of an external
child protection practitioner as a threat
against another member --perhaps as an
expression of lateral violence. Within the
community, child protection is a practice
by outsiders who investigate and remove
children when safety is at risk. In this
representation, practitioners have minimal
relationships with the community; the
community doesn’t participate in child
protection and has no identifiable role. The
condition of victimization is re-created for
the community each time a social worker
parachutes into a community, makes a
brief assessment, and leaves with all the
children at risk. This form of practice
often reactivates the image of the “60s
scoop” in the minds of the community.
One MCFD practitioner comments:
…you’re going into these small
Aboriginal communities and
removing their children, you know. I
don’t like doing that, but you’re also
setting up or perpetuating something
that has occurred for generations
so the relationship that you’re
forming, well you’re not forming
a relationship, all you’re doing is
antagonizing what relationship may
be there….it’s just like a continuation
of the 60’s scoop….You’d get a
call, say in a more disorganized

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community…(that) a child’s at risk,
you go in and investigate. There
would be very little involvement
from community leaders, resource
personnel that might be in the
community such as a teacher or
nurse or alcohol drug counsellor, and
you’d be left to your own devices
basically to plan for the child.

With an absence of
community-based
resources, the child is
deemed at risk, and
the practitioner sees
no alternative but to
remove the child from the
community.

With an absence of community-based
resources, the child is deemed at risk, and
the practitioner sees no alternative but to
remove the child from the community.

The Community as Adversary
Some represent communities as
adversaries in child protection. The
community is perceived as closed to
outsiders, including the child protection
practitioner, and an adversarial
relationship with child protection
intervention exists. Usually this is
expressed as anger at the B.C. Ministry
for Child and Family Development, and
confrontation with its representatives. A
minimal level of reciprocity with the child
protection practitioner exists and there is
a formal relationship with the community
for the completion of investigation,
removal, and alternative placement
tasks. There are few opportunities to
establish working relationships. When the
community is represented as an adversary,
the practitioner may serve as a lightening
rod for the community’s anger at child
protection removals. An Aboriginal
practitioner employed at MCFD describes
walking onto a reserve in a community
that wasn’t her own:
There is a family that I have gone to
on reserve, it’s just almost the same.
“You’re coming here to take the
kids”. When I took the white social
worker to the reserve…they said,
“You’re not allowed on the reserve”.
And I thought, “Holy Cow”, but we
were able to calm them down and let
them know why we were there….

An MCFD practitioner describes her
experience in the following way:
…when I worked up north, it was a

© Christopher Walmsley

clear understanding…that you did
not go onto the reserve unless you
were invited and when they invited
us it was for a protection concern
and it always ended up as a result of
a removal. We weren’t ever able to
put in family supports or child care
workers or whatever.

Sometimes, the confrontation
becomes politicized as one MCFD
practitioner describes:
…when we do come out there…some
homes may say, “No, you’re not
allowed in”. “You’ve got to go get
the Chief or whatever”. And then
depending upon the family, if they
have political pull or not it will
depend upon whether or not the
Chief actually supports us and helps
us or if he says, “No, you can’t,
I’m making some phone calls”.
And then it goes from there. Some
families it depends upon who you
are on the reserves. Some of the
Bands don’t care at all about them,
you can do whatever with them, go
and investigate, but if there’s some
political pull, it takes a lot with the
lawyers and all that to get anywhere
near the children and parents.

This practitioner continues:
…in some cases they’ll go up the
higher ranks and then we have
to bow out and it becomes a big
political mess rather than just going
through the investigation. They
get a lot of the higher Aboriginals
involved, our management gets
involved and a lot times people
higher up may not know the actual
what’s going on…it just gets stuck up
in politics rather than where it should
be down below.

At its more politicized levels, the
adversarial confrontation involves the
police and the media.

The Community as Participant
Some practitioners represent
communities as a participant in the
protection of children. At its most minimal
level, this is expressed when community

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Talking About the Aboriginal Community: Child Protection Practitioners’ Views

members take responsibility to report
child protection concerns to an Aboriginal
child welfare organization or the Ministry
for Child and Family Development.
One MCFD practitioner describes this
occurring once trust has been established
with the community:

…because the family
relationships are so
intertwined and connected
and strong in this
community, we know that
the work that we do has a
rippling effect throughout
the community.

…the calls we were receiving to
investigate increased over the two
years that I was there so that’s also,
to me, saying there is an increase in
trust.

The community becomes a participant
in child protection when social workers
consult with the community in assessment
and intervention planning. Sometimes this
occurs through informal conversations
with Band leaders, the Band social
development worker, teachers, nurses,
or daycare workers. An Aboriginal
practitioner describes her approach this
way:
If I was going into a community I
would phone and say, “Well who do I
need to speak to about this?” I want
to get some information on this and
I am going to be coming out there in
a couple of days, who do I need to
touch base with?

At other times, consultation with the
community is more formal through the
organization of a case conference. The
community is involved in child protection,
but responsibility rests largely with the
formal agency, although there is the
beginning of a reciprocal relationship.
Reciprocity in child protection practice
can be expressed through community
initiative to find or create alternate care
resources. One MCFD practitioner
describes it this way:
…in some of the Aboriginal
communities, there’s a lot more
use of extended family in times of
crisis. There was, I mean, (a) lot of
people were drinking, there was
an acknowledgement that usually
there was somebody who was sober
enough and able enough to look out
for the kids…. There was somewhere
for the kids to go or some means of

68

protecting those kids…. We involved
a lot of our people in the community
in what we were doing.

The Community as Partner
Practitioners represent some
communities as a partner in child
protection suggesting mutual
responsibility for child protection, and a
reciprocal relationship based on mutual
respect. Child protection intervention is
acknowledged to have an effect on the
entire community:
…because the family relationships
are so intertwined and connected
and strong in this community, we
know that the work that we do has
a rippling effect throughout the
community.

Social workers make conscious efforts
to share decision-making with the
community:
We were going to follow through
on what we said we were going to
do, that our planning involved the
Bands, involved extended family, if
the family wanted that to happen,
and we’d involve the school in the
planning. So these types of things
would take place and the input was
valued and it was appreciated and
that if at all possible, if we had any
way possible of implementing it we
would do so.

Another characteristic of the partnership
is that members of the community contact
the agency at non-crisis times to discuss
child protection issues:
We have also had teachers phone us,
just to say, “You know, I think this
family needs some support here, they
need a visit from your office.

Sometimes children and youth contact
the agency directly to make their needs
known:
We have had kids come in here and
say, “Mom and Dad are drinking.
They are fighting. There is no food. I
am scared, I don’t want to go home.”
They are feeling safe enough to come

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Some communities have
developed committee
structures to enable the
community to have an
ongoing role in child
protection.

in here and tell us that and so we
would say, “OK, we will help, where
do you want to be?”…. We had a 17
year old come in and state that, “My
Mom has been drinking for the past
week. She parties and stuff. I need
places to go and rest where there is
no alcohol and no drugs”. So we say,
“OK, where do you want to be?” She
says, “Well I want to be out of the
community…where I can get some
quiet and some rest”. That is what we
try and give them.

When a partnership exists, the agency
and community share responsibility for
child protection such as the creation of
new childcare resources. An Aboriginal
practitioner in an Aboriginal organization
describes:
…before we place children in there to
ensure that they are going to be safe
and taken care and not abused and
used while they’re in their home…we
also get feedback from community
members. Like we usually go
through the Band social worker, and
check with them or if they have…
child welfare committees or social
development committees, we’ll ask
them if they would support this home
as a resource because it is going to
be within their community and they
will be best to know whether or not
that would be a good place for the
children to be in.

Some communities have developed
committee structures to enable the
community to have an ongoing role
in child protection. One Aboriginal
practitioner describes a committee and it’s
relationship to an Aboriginal child welfare
organization:
…they have a child welfare
committee…we have been meeting
with them a month at a time. You
know, once per month in which
they reviewed all of their cases that
were ongoing with us, as well as the
Bands GFA to find out if there are
some issues, who is doing it and what
needs to be done and, you know,
what recommendations could we
make…

© Christopher Walmsley

Here there is clearly a reciprocal
relationship between the community and
the agency to ensure the protection of
children.

The Community as Protector
Some practitioners represent the
community as the principal protector of
children with external child protection
agencies playing a minimal to non-existent
role. This representation is most often
expressed by Aboriginal practitioners, and
may re-create earlier representations of
the Aboriginal community’s approach to
childcare before child welfare legislation
was introduced. One Aboriginal
practitioner sums it up this way:
…traditionally, it wasn’t uncommon
for other members of the community
to look after your kids and basically
that’s all that we’re doing now.

Responsibility for children’s welfare
becomes a collective responsibility and
community members intervene to create
alternative care arrangements for children
as needed. Grandparents, aunts and uncles
are recognized as playing significant
childcare roles. An Aboriginal participant
describes it in the following way:
…long ago our community was
always community orientated. We
were always, you know, I guess a
community. Our connections are
there. We know everyone, we’re
related. We help out…. We always
knew how to look after our children,
our extended family would come
in, the grandparents would come
in. It always happened, I mean the
community got together and said,
“Hey, we have a problem here. Our
aunt over here needs a break from
her children. Can someone in the
family take over?” That happened.
We didn’t need a child welfare act
and all that stuff….

A non-Aboriginal MCFD practitioner
confirms this by describing how a
community intervenes to protect children
when the parents are unable:

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Practitioners’ thinking about
the community is influenced
by the community’s
openness to collaboration,
the availability of support
services, the distance the
practitioner needs to travel
to reach the community, the
practitioner’s vision of child
protection practice and the
practitioner’s relationship
history with the community.

Some of those families…still have
a far stronger traditional sense so
a number of things happen when
they see unseemly behaviour or
inappropriate behaviour. Mom and
Dad are drinking, Mom and Dad are
allowing a sexual abuser in the home,
they will speak to them because that’s
the role of the Matriarch or the Chief,
is they’ll have a talk with them. Ah,
you are not behaving properly, you
need to do this. This is your job. And
if the parents don’t respond, they’ll
take the kids and I’ll hear of it later.
They’ll say, “Oh, by the way, we have
John and Jessie’s kids now, in case
you are looking they’re here. And
they’re not getting them back until
they straighten out.” And you know,
the funny thing, John and Jessie never
say boo. They don’t go to court. They
don’t phone the cops, they don’t say
peep, you know, they go, “Oh, ok”,
and either they keep drinking or they
sober up real fast, but that’s a strong
family doing it’s traditional role, child
protection.

Conclusion
This study, an interpretation of
practitioners’ representations of the
Aboriginal community, suggests
actual relationships between child
protection practitioners and Aboriginal
communities are informed by these
representations. Practitioners’ thinking
about the community is influenced by the
community’s openness to collaboration,
the availability of support services, the
distance the practitioner needs to travel
to reach the community, the practitioner’s
vision of child protection practice and
the practitioner’s relationship history
with the community. The community is
often viewed as a victim or adversary
when a relationship of trust has not
developed between the community and the
practitioner. When there is a relationship
of trust, practitioners view community
participation and partnership as possible
in child protection. Practitioners may
view the community as the children’s
protector when a community takes full

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responsibility for children’s welfare.
In this study, no clear association
was found between the differing
representations of the community and the
practitioner’s culture or organizational
auspices. This suggests the ways in
which practitioners see the Aboriginal
community is complex and requires
further research. If the practitioner is
living and practicing child protection
in their community of origin, the
complexities of practice may not yet be
adequately understood. While this study
identified the loss of personal privacy, the
opportunity for informal intervention,
and the possibility of bringing a lifelong
knowledge of the person to the work,
it did not discuss the challenge of
dual relationships. To what extent do
practitioners’ relationships with extended
family members and the family’s history
within the community create situations
of conflicting loyalty for an Aboriginal
practitioner in their community of origin?
At the same time, if a non-Aboriginal
practitioner lives in a distant geographic
relationship to an Aboriginal community,
but has an approach to practice that
values community participation, is
a different community-practitioner
relationship possible? This study was
limited by a small sample, one semistructured interview for data collection,
and interpretation by a non-Aboriginal
researcher. Further research needs to
be conducted by Aboriginal researchers
focused on Aboriginal practitioners
working within their community of
origin to develop a fuller understanding
of the ways in which child protection
practitioners view the community.
An understanding of the significance
of community within Aboriginal
child welfare is important for all child
protection practitioners. Teaching the
significance of community to practice
is needed to introduce social workers to
different ways of protecting Aboriginal
children, and to develop a commitment to
the inclusion of community in practice.

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Number
1, July1,2004
First &
Peoples
& Family
Review,
1, Number
2004

References
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An understanding of the
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© Christopher Walmsley

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