Aboriginals and Adoption

Aboriginals and Adoption

The social issue I chose to take on was that of the rising percentage of aboriginal children being put into foster care and the effect this has on the future society of Native Americans. To begin with, in recent years the number of aboriginal youths being released into foster care is staggering. There are a total of 66,000 children in foster care within Canada, 40% of which are Native American. This it seems is largely due to the low quality of life within the Native American population. For instance, studies have shown that 45% of Aboriginals are illiterate; this implies that the average individual living with a Native American society may not have the education necessary to find work and raise their standard of living. This in turn may have a negative psychological effect on the individual in that it will cause this person to lose hope for a better life for themselves as well as their family. This in turn may make any individual living under these circumstances feel as though they are unfit to raise a child and therefore the child is surrendered into foster care.

Secondly, it is a sad fact that many aboriginal people suffer from drug and or alcohol problems. This can be a major factor the government takes into account when deciding whether or not an individual or individuals are fit to raise children, and in many cases the children of these individuals are taken into foster wards as permanent placements and will never live with their biological family again. Studies have shown that 57% of aboriginal youth suffer from either drug or alcohol related problems. This may seem hard to believe but when the fact that 26,400 aboriginal youth are growing up in foster care with no real positive role models to guide them through life is taken into account it makes the numbers easier to understand. This will have serious ramifications with regards to future generations of Native Americans as we have already seen, and something must be done to lower these numbers drastically.

Thirdly, many of the children who are brought into foster care never make it back into society to positively influence future generations. This is because of horrifying suicide rates among the Native American youth, the average suicide rate among Canadian youths is 18 per 100,000, and the average suicide rate among aboriginal youths is 108 per 100,000. Many aboriginal children also suffer from a disease