- Introduction
- Aboriginal Advisory Group
- F&ST in Aboriginal Communities
- Voices of those involved with Aboriginal F&ST:
INTRODUCTION
Families and Schools Together Canada (F&ST Canada) is a program designed to nurture family ties and build strong family support networks, to promote healthy living and help children succeed in school while the whole family builds positive relationships with school staff.
The program recognizes the important role that community connections play in education and prevention, and helps parents learn how to access community services to support their family.
The F&ST Canada approach is based on the notion that all parents love their children and want a healthy, happy life for them. At the same time, it recognizes that all families and communities have unique needs.
Together with Aboriginal communities and the Aboriginal Advisory Group, Family Service Canada is working to promote the flexibility of the F&ST program to ensure that Aboriginal communities adapt it to be culturally relevant and suitable to their particular needs.
Notably, F&ST embraces a holistic understanding of family, recognizing and valuing the important roles played by diverse members of the community, such as Elders, in strengthening the family itself. Families and Schools Together has been adapted by a number of local communities across Canada to work with Aboriginal people, on and off reserve.
This advisory body to Family Service Canada is comprised of representatives from Aboriginal communities across the country that have experience with delivering the F&ST program, trainers who have worked with Aboriginal F&ST teams and Family Service Canada staff.
The group provides advice, guidance and contacts to support the development of a strategy for expanding F&ST to Aboriginal communities in Canada.
Family Service Canada is grateful to the Public Health Agency of Canada for providing funding to train Aboriginal leaders in the F&ST program, to document cultural adaptations of F&ST and to support implementation of the program in four pilot sites.
F&ST in Aboriginal Communities
F&ST has been implemented in several communities where a large proportion of the population is Aboriginal, as well as in First Nations communities.
Some of these are in urban areas with large Aboriginal populations (such as Winnipeg, MB) and others are in more isolated, rural environments (Pinehouse Lake, SK).
Each of these communities has different needs and has access to different resources, and therefore faces unique challenges and opportunities in working to bring a program like F&ST to their families.
F&ST has been embraced precisely because it has the flexibility required to allow each community to decide how to adapt the program to their needs, while remaining true to the central principles and proven, research-based theories that are the basis of F&ST.
While the core structure of the program remains the same in all communities, many Aboriginal communities involved with F&ST have chosen to incorporate cultural traditions and practices, such as song, dance, drumming, art and prayer.
Here are some of the voices of those involved with F&ST:
Barry Mckenzie is a social worker of Ojibway heritage based in Wanipigow School in Hollow Water, MB. He has trained F&ST teams in his local community school as well as in Winnipeg, MB; Bloodvein First Nation, MB; and Pinehouse Lake, SK.
In a 2005 interview with Family Service Canada, Barry says that he first became involved with F&ST while working with the Bloodvein First Nation. After sitting in on his first F&ST session in a Winnipeg elementary school, Barry thought it would be great for his community.
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Barry helped to adapt the F&ST program to ensure that it would be more culturally relevant for Aboriginal families and communities. The F&ST program with the Bloodvein First Nation, for example, included traditional drumming performances and a smudging ceremony for the adults. An Elder gave a blessing in Ojibway before the meal.
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Barry explains that because F&ST has a holistic approach which works with families instead of just with individuals, it is particularly suited to Aboriginal communities, most of which value the important role played by the extended family. If healing, intervention and prevention are to be feasible and sustainable, the community must be involved.
By working with the whole family and the community, Barry says that F&ST helps generate community pride.
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Rhonda Chegus has worked as a community partner and certified trainer with a number of F&ST teams in Aboriginal communities, both in urban school settings and fly-in reserves. When she started working with the F&ST program, her main concern was to assess whether the program would have enough flexibility and cultural sensitivity to respond to the diversity in the schools and communities in which she was working.
Together with Barry Mckenzie, she has worked with the communities to determine how best to implement the program in their community. Now, 10 years later, she says:
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Rhonda is careful to point out that not all Aboriginal families live the same lives or have the same needs. For her, F&ST works because is able to locate a ‘universal sameness’, or common ground, that everyone can identify with.
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Rhonda believes that while a lot of damage was done to Aboriginal families during the residential school era, healing can now happen through the schools – and this is changing relationships, she says. Because so many Aboriginal parents were hesitant about sending their children to an institution where their experience was negative, Rhonda says the challenge is to “…shift parents from feeling on the outside, feeling different.” She says she thinks that goal has been met.
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Alana Martin is a F&ST team leader and parent liaison who has worked with Métis and Aboriginal communities in Calgary, AB.
She was introduced to the program when she was invited to a friend’s F&ST graduation.
After speaking with an Aboriginal woman who had really enjoyed the program, Alana thought it would be great for the families with which she was working.
She explains that, in her experience, Aboriginal families have been happy with the program and have not wanted to make significant changes. However, she notes that cultural traditions and adaptations “are very welcome.”
In the past, the F&ST groups she has worked with have incorporated elements such as an opening prayer, and have replaced the family flag-making activity with one in which families build a willow hoop and decorate it with leather and other natural materials.
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Alana explains that one of the most positive impacts of F&ST that she has witnessed is the strengthening of relationships between students and teachers. As the children build new connections with teachers and make new friends, Alana says families build a lasting and important community support network.
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Jo-Ann Henry of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, ON has worked as a teacher and acting principal in Aboriginal communities for 20 years. Her school has completed its fourth F&ST cycle and also has an active F&STWORKS group.
Jo-Ann believes that it is important to have F&ST in her community because, as many parents have had negative experiences with schools in the past, they are reluctant to send their children to an institution they do not trust.
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However, Jo-Ann says that parents are always impressed when they see evidence of their children succeeding. Because many of the families who come to the program are the most in need, it is important that parents feel that they are able to advocate for their children.
She explains that the parents who complete F&ST are much more likely to be involved in their child’s education and feel comfortable with the school and its staff.
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Jo-Ann says she has seen proof that in addition to building positive relationships between families and the school, F&ST strengthens bonds among both the immediate family and the community at large.
She says that because of the importance of extended family among her people, parents were not always used to focusing so much attention exclusively on parent-child relationships. So, while they have made some changes to incorporate the importance of extended family, she says F&ST families also come away realizing “Yeah, this is my family and we do need to do some things together.”
At the same time, Jo-Ann says that F&ST, and the follow-up program F&STWORKS, has helped families to reach out beyond their own family group and get to know people in the community they would not otherwise meet.
Both children and parents make lasting friendships, she says. Jo-Ann believes that this is a part of building a larger community support network. She feels that one of the most important aspects of the program is around helping parents to learn about services they can access in the school and in the community.
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Toni Cooke first became involved with the F&ST program in 1998 when she worked as a team member in a Saskatchewan inner-city school where the population was 98 percent Aboriginal.
Twelve families began the program and all of them graduated. Like many of the school’s other families, some had recently moved from a reserve to the city. Toni was impressed by the way the program helped families adjust to this change and enhanced support networks.
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Years later, Toni has worked as a F&ST Canada certified trainer in various communities with large Aboriginal populations. She strongly believes that F&ST is a program for all families and all communities.
In September 2006, she trained a team on the Muskoday First Nation reserve, outside Prince Albert, SK. The team included Elders along with the principal, vice principal and other schools staff, an addictions worker, an RCMP officer and a public health nurse.
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Toni explains that most of the Elders and Aboriginal community members who are involved with the program are very happy with F&ST and do not feel the need to make significant changes. The adaptations they have made – such as including prayers or songs in their own language, dancing or drumming at graduation, or building a ‘family teepee’ instead of a ‘family flag’ – are most welcome.
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Toni has seen high success rates in every site she has worked with. She believes that one of the program’s most significant impacts has been the building of support networks for parents and families.
She relates the story of one police officer, now a sergeant, who has been involved with the program for many years. The officer now believes this was the best thing she has ever done to engage with families. Long after they have finished the program, families call her for help when they encounter a justice problem.
Similarly, community resource workers say that families who have gone through the program are likely to self-refer for support services, something which rarely happens otherwise.
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Toni explains that by helping parents build on their strengths and by creating a supportive, non-judgmental environment where parents can develop their skills, the program changes both the way families relate to each other and the kind of lives the parents lead.
She tells one story of a F&ST team that was determined to recruit a family that had for years declined to become involved with their children’s school. The family did join F&ST and graduated. Afterwards, the mother started volunteering in the library once a week and soon was coming every day. One day she came in to ask for help on an application to take a library technician’s course. She took the course, graduated and was eventually hired on by the school district as a library technician.
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