(Expanded paper abstract as prepared for the Young Scholars Initiative Plenary Session)

Paper will investigate the possible implications and benefits of the implementation of a basic income policy from the perspective of child protection. It is known that across Canada, and particularly in the Western provinces, children from low-income families and First Nations children are highly overrepresented within the child welfare system. Furthermore, the majority of investigations of these families are for reasons of neglect rather than abuse, meaning that their conditions of contact with the system are highly correlated with poverty-level living conditions. A basic income could therefore lessen pressure on child welfare systems, both by providing an adequate living standard for families and by alleviating the stressors of poverty which often lead to abuse. It could also be useful as a tool in promoting broader system reform, by refocusing child welfare activities from apprehension to support. Resources which are currently used to apprehend children in situation of poverty-related neglect could be redirected to family support services designed to support cohesion. This would further begin to promote reconciliation and understanding between First Nations and non-First Nations communities through the child welfare vector, by recognizing the systemic, rather than personal, roots of the overrepresentation of First Nations children in the system. The presentation investigates these possibilities via a systematic examination of data from child welfare agencies as well as the experiences of families within basic income pilot programs. It suggests that child welfare agencies and workers, particularly First Nations agencies, should be brought on board as key coalition partners for basic income.

As a percentage of children currently in foster care or another aspect of the child protection system in Canada, Indigenous children are overrepresented to a significant extent across the country (Afifi et al. 2015). This effect is particularly pronounced in the Western provinces such as Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where First Nations persons constitute a higher percentage of the overall population. Though First Nations status is the most significant contributor to likelihood of involvement with the child welfare system, there is evidence of overrepresentation for other racial minority groups (Trocme et. al., 2013). In both cases, this is heavily correlated with the higher percentage of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous racial minorities living in poverty in Canada (Crossley & Curtis, 2006). Canada’s overall child poverty rate, according to the latest available statistics, stood at 13.3%, in the lower half of the OECD (Rothwell & de Boer, 2014; Statistics Canada, 2013). As compared to OECD nations with lower child poverty rates, Canada spends a significantly lower percentage of GDP on social programs, in particular on direct cash transfers to working-age adults and families (Adema, Ladaique & Fron, 2013).

In response to this overrepresentation in the system, a variety of strategies for reform within child welfare have been pursued. Most notably, these are in the area of Indigenous community control (albeit in a limited form) of child welfare services and related procedural reforms (Fluke et. al., 2010). These have included new training standards for workers, increased emphasis on culturally sensitive practice, “kinship care” and alternatives to child removal (Sinha et. al., 2013). Despite these reforms, some of which have been seen as effective and imported into the mainstream child protection system, there remains a persistent racial and poverty gap in involvement with child welfare services. Furthermore, controlling for ethnic background and First Nations status, there is still a significant correlation between family income and child welfare involvement. This is significant both for obvious reasons and because of the impact it has on child development. Instability of living arrangements and family connections as seen in foster care in many cases further contribute to differential life outcomes for children correlated with family income (Luby et. al, 2014; McEwen & Stewart, 2014). Particularly significant is the impact on educational attainment, where income status is correlated both with level of academic achievement in school and with level of school credentials obtained (Shaker, 2014).

The most commonly cited reasons for child welfare investigations in Canada are “neglect” and “exposure to intimate partner violence” (Afifi et. al. 2015). These are, again, heavily correlated with poverty, particularly feminized poverty in the latter case (McKay, 2001). This would seem to indicate more of a direct link between reasoning for child welfare involvement, in the majority of cases, and income than has been previously identified. It therefore becomes reasonable to ask about the potential effectiveness of measures to directly increase family incomes on concerns surrounding child welfare treatment and involvement.

Previous pilot experiences with basic income and “negative income tax” programs in Canada and the United States unfortunately did not include child welfare data in a selection of examined metrics. However, some related observations can be drawn from work by Forget (2011) and Frankel & Mulvale (2014) on the Manitoba “Mincome” program in the 1970s. Specifically, participants in the program reported lower levels of stress and better overall mental health, crime levels and hospital admissions declined, mothers spent more time with young children and there was an overall improvement on most public health metrics. All of these are related to the concrete effects both of persistent poverty in rich countries and those issues often leading to child welfare involvement (Islam, Minier & Ziliak, 2015).

Of course, there are still limitations to a basic income approach, within child welfare as in other fields. For one thing, though it does more directly target neglect-related investigations, an income-related policy intervention is likely to have only tangential effects on abuse-related investigations. Furthermore, though the effects are difficult to disentangle, colonialism’s impacts, intergenerational trauma, community isolation and other factors beyond income measures play a part in Indigenous overrepresentation. The same is also true of factors related to racial and ethnic discrimination for other groups. Depending on how a basic income program were administered, it could also continue to have an associated “welfare” stigma, which would limit both political sustainability and practical impact (Cremer & Roeder, 2015). Finally, there are countries with significantly lower child poverty rates than Canada that still continue to have systematic issues with child welfare, implying that the relationship is more complex that it may first appear.

With this said, the recent interest in basic income programs from a variety of governments, ranging from the province of Ontario in Canada to Finland, is a promising development in social policy thinking. Though most of the considerations of such programs have looked at them from a perspective of automation and declining workforce participation, previous experiments with these programs imply a wider variety of potential positive effects (Friedman, 2014; Zwolinski, 2015). The transformational potential of basic income as a method of both destigmatizing cash welfare and in terms of its restructuring of broader questions of work and life has been noted by a variety of scholars (Healy, Murphy & Reynolds, 2013; Lewis, Pressman & Widerquist, 2005). The link between poverty and child welfare involvement is well-established, but there is a need to move beyond piecemeal, “colouring in the lines” reforms in terms of policy approaches to both topics (Wiederspan, Rhodes & Shaefer, 2015; Seccareccia, 2015). A basic income program, properly conceived and applied, has the potential to lay the groundwork for this movement. The fact that advocates for child welfare reform have not been adequately engaged in discussions on basic income is unfortunate and testifies to a lack of gender and ethnicity-based analysis on such proposals. There is, however, great potential in an alliance between advocates for both causes, based on shared goals. Without broad-based coalitions, coming to the issue from a variety of perspectives, however, basic income risks becoming rendered as a “boutique” policy request or being “bottlenecked” for practical purposes (De Wispelaere & Stirton, 2012).