Kin Care
Twelve years ago, Susie Moose's baby grandson became her son.
Susie and her husband Howard were empty nesters in Vancouver, when late one night their daughter called.
Moose grew up in foster care during the Sixties Scoop. She was one of about 20,000 or more First Nations, Métis and Inuit children taken from their families by child welfare agencies and adopted into non-Indigenous households. It was a fate she did not want anyone else in her family to endure.
She is not alone in stepping up to keep her grandson out of foster care. Around 13,000 children under age 19 are being raised by grandparents or other relatives in British Columbia, according to a conservative estimate in a 2020 report. Without kinship caregivers, these children would likely be growing up in foster homes. Research shows that children thrive more when raised by relatives with close cultural connections than they would in foster care.
She and Howard have been trying to get their grandson's sisters out of the foster-care system as well.
He is our life. Not only him, but all of our grandchildren.
Kinship caregivers and their children face unique barriers. More than three-quarters of children in kinship care in B.C. have physical, emotional, or behavioural challenges, and just as many have experienced trauma. But kinship caregivers are ineligible for many of the supports and benefits available to children in the foster-care system.
David struggled in early elementary, so a teacher advised getting tested for ADHD. Susie was able to find support for him through his school and Jordan's Principle, a federal program mandated to provide services for First Nations children.
Susie used to tell her children she had eyes in the back of her head. Now that she is older and parenting again as a grandparent, she feels more worried.
"I find myself thinking more about tomorrow, of my grandson being out there in the world," she says.
I know he'll be a good man when he
grows up, because he's got so many talents.
We're each teaching him, not only me
and my husband, but all my kids.
Built with Shorthand