Aboriginal People's Family Accord
Happy and healthy children, like this boy and girl from the Interior, is the goal of the Aboriginal Peoples Family Accord. The APFA wishes to provide aboriginal communities a chance to shape changes to family services in their area. - Dan Odenbach photo
The Aboriginal Peoples Family Accord (APFA) is working towards securing more input for Aboriginal People, including First Nations, urban communities and the Métis Nation, concerning the well being of children and families within their communities.
The provincial government has moved back its implementation date, to the fall of 2007, for providing Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) services through five separate regions in British Columbia. Services include child protection, adoption, guardianship, youth justice, child-youth mental health, foster care, supported child care, youth services, special needs and Early Childhood Development (ECD).
Even though the APFA will give Aboriginal People more input into how services will be delivered for their children and youth, APFA Transition Coordinator Eliza Terbasket warns this transformation won't happen overnight.
"When the government throws the switch things will look a lot like they do today. But the difference being, there will be changes which will make a difference in the long run. Nothing this big gets changed overnight. It's a slow process, but it's an important process for Aboriginal People."
The APFA is governed by a board of directors who represent all aboriginal children within the Interior. The APFA Political Committee provides support for government-to-government relationships.
The geographic parameters of the APFA's mandate are the Interior region which stretches from Quesnel in the north, south to the Canada-US border, and from the Alberta-BC border to Ulkatcho, Anahim Lake, Lillooet, and Lytton in the west. The boundary is similar to that of Interior Health, but the APFA includes Quesnel.
The region covers approximately 220,000 square kilometres, nearly one-third of the total area of B.C. To ensure service design and delivery is controlled at the local level, the APFA established four service zones. These zones reflect a number of variables including historical working relationships, geographic barriers and road access.
The demographic parameters of the APFA's mandate are the approximate 42,000, Aboriginal People who live throughout the Interior. These persons live in a diversity of settings: on-reserve, off-reserve, urban, rural, etc.
These diverse settings have significant differences in population density and sizes across the four zones which comprise the region:
Ktunaxa Zone: - (16 communities; 6,500 Aboriginal People)
Okanagan Zone: - (11 communities; 11,000 Aboriginal People)
Lillooet-Thompson-Shuswap Zone: - (18 communities; 16,500 Aboriginal People)
Cariboo-Ts'ihqot'in Zone: (25 communities; 8,000 Aboriginal People)
While the Lillooet-Thompson-Shuswap Zone has the largest Aboriginal population, the North and Central Okanagan join Kamloops in having the highest densities per square kilometre. Of the 42,000 Aboriginal People in the Interior, the 0-17 population is approximately 15,000 (37%). This relatively young population, and larger sibling groups, creates increased future demands for child and family services.
Dan Odenbach