An adult and youth hand reaching for each other. Multiple organization logos are at the top. Text reads: Stop tearing families apart!

Challenge the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s culture of risk and surveillance

The family policing system in BC is destroying families.

Under the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s (MCFD) current framework, families are assessed for “risk” through clinical judgment, and tools like checklists and questionnaires.

The current culture, policies, training, and tools that guide the family policing system in BC are profoundly harming families. Risk assessment tools perpetuate and reinforce colonial, racist, ableist, misogynistic, and classist biases.

MCFD’s culture of risk and surveillance upholds ongoing colonization in the lives of Indigenous children, youth, families, communities, and Nations.

The risk assessment process unjustly blames families. It views family struggles as individual failings, instead of as reflections of the systemic failures arising from a chronic lack of housing, income and disability rates beneath the poverty line, and lack of mental health supports. This is creating intergenerational cycles of intervention and intrusion by MCFD in the lives of families across the province.

The risk assessment process also lacks accountability and transparency. Sometimes families don't even know they are being assessed.

This exacerbates an already vast power disparity between the state and families being assessed, and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for families to challenge their assessment as “at-risk.” Because of this, families often fear (for good reason) that they’ll be punished or ignored if they offer alternative understandings about their strengths and struggles.

MCFD has promised to reform and transform their approach. But small reforms are not enough. Every day spent tinkering with the system and ignoring the root cause of MCFD's culture of risk is another day where families are torn apart.

We call on the government to dismantle the framework for policing families in BC by:

Taking up transformative and accountable work with Indigenous Nations, communities, and impacted families to develop and affirm collective understandings of safety and well-being that uplift and support families in BC.
Addressing the structural problems that put families at “risk.”
Supporting processes and systems that help families and communities stay together and honour each family’s strengths and needs.

Now more than ever, we need to challenge MCFD’s culture of risk and surveillance. Join us in calling on the BC government to keep families together!

The time to challenge MCFD’s culture of risk and surveillance is now. Tell your MLA to stop tearing families apart!

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Dear [recipient name will go here],

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cc: Premier David Eby, Hon. Mitzi Dean, and members of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth (Kelli Paddon, Mike Bernier, Jennifer Rice, Susie Chant, Andrew Mercier, Karin Kirkpatrick, Fin Donnelly, Norm Letnick, and Henry Yao)

I am writing to you to ask you to urgently address the harms caused by the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s (MCFD) approach to assessing families for investigation, intervention, removal, and if and how avenues for family reunification are identified.

The current framework, culture, policies, training, and tools that guide the family policing system in BC are deeply flawed and rooted in colonial, racist, ableist, misogynistic, and classist biases. They uphold ongoing colonization in the lives of Indigenous children, youth, families, communities, and Nations.

Relying on checklist tools and clinical judgment has created a system that views family struggles as individual failings, instead of addressing structural failures, like lack of housing, income and disability rates beneath the poverty line, and lack of mental health support. This system unjustly blames and surveils families, and regards them as deficient, creating and perpetuating intergenerational cycles of intervention and intrusion in the lives of families across BC.

MCFD’s culture of risk and surveillance lacks accountability and transparency. Sometimes families do not even know they are being assessed. This creates a large power imbalance for families and makes it difficult or impossible for them to challenge their assessment as “at-risk.” Families often fear (for good reason) that they will be punished or ignored if they offer alternative understandings about their strengths and struggles.

Small reforms are not enough. Without rooting out the current culture of risk and surveillance and investing in the desperately needed structural supports for families, proposed changes to MCFD’s approach will continue the legacy of tearing families apart and profoundly harming them.

Alongside West Coast LEAF, Keeping Families Together, PACK BC, YWCA Metro Vancouver, BC Association of Social Workers, Raincity Housing, Sanctuary Health, Pivot Legal Society, Native Women’s Association of Canada, BC Complex Kids, and Single Mothers’ Alliance of BC, I call on you to dismantle the framework for policing families in BC by:

1. Taking up transformative and accountable work with Indigenous Nations, communities, and impacted families to develop collective understandings of safety and well-being that uplift and support families in BC.  
2. Addressing the structural problems that put families at “risk.” 
3. Supporting processes and systems that help families and communities to stay together and honour each family’s strengths and needs.

I strongly urge you to act now and act decisively. Families cannot wait any longer.

Sincerely,
[your name will go here]

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