Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society - History

History

The formation of VACFSS began in June 1988 as the Mamele Benevolent Society with a mandate to develop Aboriginal Child Welfare and in-home support programs for urban Aboriginal families. Four years later, the Mamele Society was reincorporated as the Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society.

The core program and focus of VACFSS from 1992 to 1999 was family support services. This program advocated for and gave assistance to families involved with the Ministry and for whom there were risks of becoming involved in the child protection system. VACFSS also provided cultural support to children-in-care and cultural awareness to caregivers through the Cultural program. In 1996, after a series of community consultations, VACFSS received support from the Aboriginal community to assume “designation status”, providing advocacy to families and notifying Bands when their children were removed from member Aboriginal families living in the Lower Mainland.

In 1999, VACFSS started a Guardianship Pilot Project while starting negotiations with the Ministry to enable it to deliver delegated services. The negotiations concluded in September 2001 with the signing of the Delegation Enabling Agreement ("DEA") on December 14, 2001, which allowed VACFSS to provide a full range of delegated resource and guardianship services and non-delegated services through the Aboriginal Family Preservation and Reunification Services.

Immediately following the signing of the DEA, Guardianship was created, with residential resources following a year later. In 2004, Family Support was renamed Family Preservation and Reunification to reflect the society's mandate to use all avenues to preserve family units. VACFSS continues to grow and evolve toward the goal of full delegation.