Indigenous mothers’ experiences of power and control in child welfare: Families being heard
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary There are upward of 11,000 Indigenous children and families in the Manitoba Child and Family Services (CFSs). Many factors coalesce as contributors to these high rates of care, including oppressive histories of Canadian settler colonialism, governmental policies and the Indian Residential Schools, and mass apprehensions of Indigenous children through “the 60’s scoop.” Although a process of “Devolution” began in Manitoba in 1999 to address Indigenous overrepresentation and improve cultural safety for children and families, the voices of women whose children are in care often remain silenced and marginal. Findings Utilizing an Indigenous Research lens, this qualitative study explored the stories and experiences of 12 Indigenous mothers involved with Manitoba CFS. The mothers’ stories revealed dynamics of power and control outlined in five core themes: (1) Being “set up to fail”; (2) Confronting “normalcy” and navigating case plans; (3) Dealing with tactics of intimidation; (4) Experiencing judgment and being labelled; and (5) Emotional politics. The mothers’ stories suggest that the CFS system continues to reflect colonial structures of oppression and that the “Devolution” did not fully have the intended impact on daily practice. Applications The womens' shared experiences highlight several areas for change, such as: enhanced family supports and worker relationships; utilization of capacity building frameworks; better institutional collaborations; increased efforts to maintain family relationships and units; and greater access to and quality of Indigenous cultural supports for mothers and children, including ceremony, healing, and access to Elders. Suggestions for more efficient and family-centered service provision are also offered.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.021 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".