Five people who spent time in the child services system share their thoughts on its future. Collage by The Tyee.
Excerpt from The Tyee by Tracy Sherlock July 2025
Across Canada at any given time, more than 50,000 children and youth are living in government-paid placements through the child services system. Most of the 50,000 children live in foster placements, and others live with extended family or in congregate settings called group homes.
Children are placed in the child services system when their parents can’t take care of them. It’s traumatizing to be separated from one’s parents and removed from one’s family home.
Throughout their lives, children and youth in the child services system may be moved several times for reasons outside of their control; changes happen in paid caregivers’ lives or within group homes, there may be a poor fit, or health or other issues might arise, all causing the child to move. They are often forced to change schools and torn away from the relationships they’ve made.
The experiences of those who grow up in the child services system are often misunderstood or underreported. Based in Vancouver, Spotlight: Child Welfare is a national collaborative journalism project that aims to address some of the gaps in media coverage of the child services system by rooting the work in a trauma-informed approach to journalism that centres and prioritizes the experiences of those with lived experience of the system…