The Nova Scotia government has announced it will end its use of birth alerts, joining most other jurisdictions in Canada in ending the controversial practice.
Birth alerts involve child welfare services flagging expectant parents when “significant risk issues are present” — potentially removing the baby from the parent’s care after it is born. Nova Scotia issued 80 birth alerts in 2020-21.
The practice has been criticized for targeting Indigenous parents and other marginalized groups. The final report from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has recommended putting an end to it.
In a release Tuesday, the province said they will follow the inquiry’s recommendation and end birth alerts effective immediately.
“I recognize the troubling concerns with birth alerts and how they have a disproportionate effect on African Nova Scotian and Indigenous families and other marginalized women,” said Karla MacFarlane, Minister of Community Services.
“Going forward, we will have a stronger focus on connecting expectant parents and families with supports to ensure the best possible start for children.”
The release said the Department of Community Services has created a new family connections co-ordinator position to help support expectant families who are struggling or have multiple needs placing them at risk.
“This new role is part of the move to a more preventative child welfare system that places a stronger focus on supporting families as early as possible and in their respective communities,” it said.
These supports include counselling, parenting programs, prenatal supports, food, housing supports and connection to medical services.
Involvement with the co-ordinator is voluntary. The department said it will continue to work with families who have needs after the child is born.
The release also said the province is putting more funding in community-based child, youth and family-centred prevention and early intervention programs. The increase is expected to be $7.7 million by 2022-23.
In the release, Executive Director of the East Preston Day Care and Family Resource Centre, Trina Fraser, said communities need to work together and look out for each other, including expectant parents and those who may be struggling.
“There have been many hurts over the years, some of which we may never be able to get past,” said Fraser. “However, with the right supports in our communities and from our communities, there can be real and meaningful change.”
Most other provinces have discontinued birth alerts. New Brunswick announced it will no longer issue them last month. Birth alerts are still being issued in Quebec.
Wellness Within (WW), a non-profit organization that serves women, transgender and nonbinary people, said they do not believe a single person in the family connections coordinator role is enough to address what they expect to be at minimum 100 clients a year.
This is why the organization is calling on the province to properly resource this initiative.
“A single person cannot province the culturally-safe, harm reduction-oriented, feminist support that will be required to turn this situation around,” Wellness Within said in a release.
Wellness Within is also calling on the province to keep and publicly release “comprehensive data” about birth alerts and the new coordinator role “so that the public can tell whether this initiative is making a meaningful difference in people’s lives.”
-With files from Aya Al-Hakim