Vandna Sinha

University of Colorado Boulder | CUB · School of Education

The goal of this study was to examine the impact of Jordan’s Principle on the structure of services for First Nation children in Manitoba .

This article examines the conceptual and procedural aspects of substantive equality with respect to Jordan's Principle-a child-first principle intended to ensure First Nations children have equitable access to public services in Canada. We begin by providing a brief history of Jordan's Principle and outlining how it has been linked to the concept o...

This article examines the conceptual and procedural aspects of substantive equality with respect to Jordan’s Principle—a child-first principle intended to ensure First Nations children have equitable access to public services in Canada. We begin by providing a brief history of Jordan’s Principle and outlining how it has been linked to the concept o...

A series of recent legal and policy developments in Canada have potential to contribute to reconciliation efforts, particularly related to the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in child welfare systems. However, systematic collection, analysis, and synthesis of research knowledge—particularly, research that is locally grounded—on Indigenous...

In 2016 Canada was ordered to implement Jordan’s Principle by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. In response to the order Canada created the Child First Initiative to provide federal funding for provincial and territorial organizations supporting First Nation’s children’s health, education, and social service needs, including service coordination....

This chapter summarizes a series of published papers that used data from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS) to explore the influence of case and organizational characteristics on decisions to place Aboriginal children in out-of-home placements. The premise of the analyses was that these influences were consistent...

Indigenous children are overrepresented in child protection systems in the United States and to an even greater degree in Canada. Canada has recently passed federal child welfare legislation, Bill C-92, with the goal of affirming the rights of Indigenous Peoples and establishing guidelines with respect to child and family services for Indigenous ch...

The emergence of global development frameworks such as Education for All, Millennium Development Goals, and Sustainable Development Goals have expanded opportunities for Universal Basic Education (UBE) in Ghana and Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). In the three decades of their implementation, these frameworks have also stimulated a culture of research bas...

The current overrepresentation of Indigenous children in Canadian child welfare systems continues a history of government policies that have separated Indigenous families over the course of many generations. Political and legal developments in recent years are creating the possibility to both disrupt Indigenous children’s overrepresentation in chil...

The health and wellness of Indigenous peoples continue to be impacted by the harmful colonization practices enforced by the Government of Canada. While the long-term health impacts of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system are documented, empirical evidence elucidating the relationship between the IRSs and the risk of offspring experiencing oth...

First Nations children face systemic barriers in their access to health, education, and social services ordinarily available to other Canadian children. This article summarizes the findings of a research project initiated by, and carried out in partnership with, Pinaymootang First Nation, Manitoba between 2015 and 2017. Through this partnership, we...

Objective: This study represents an initial attempt to contrast behavioural and mental health correlates of shame as a result of physical abuse (PA) and sexual abuse (SA). Because they are distinctive forms of injury, it is possible that corollary shame from these injuries follows unique trajectories and ultimately results in different health chal...

This paper builds on the experiences of the first author in doing research on the overrepresentation of First Nations children in child welfare systems in Canada. Six lessons are presented: (1) overrepresentation is an inherently quantitative construct; (2) overrepresentation is an inherently comparative construct; (3) a focus on overrepresentation...

Internationally, the welfare of Indigenous children continues to be severely compromised by their involvement with child welfare authorities. In this context, there are calls for greater investment in early childhood programs to support family preservation and children’s well-being. This article reports on the findings from a critical qualitative i...

Differential response (DR) first emerged as one component of a child welfare paradigm that emphasized the need to engage communities in supporting families and children. However, the role of community in differential response has received little attention in recent literature. We examine the intellectual history of these ideas, tracing changes in t...

In Canada, Indigenous Peoples’ health and wellbeing is linked with the legacies of colonization. A social determinants of health model shifts focus from individual-level health contexts to broader socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental conditions associated with population health outcomes. Education is a key social determinant of health, closel...

A series of papers using data from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS) explored the influence of clinical and organizational characteristics on the decision to place Aboriginal children in out-of-home placements at the conclusion of child maltreatment investigations. The purpose of this paper is to further explore...

Jordan's Principle: Where a jurisdictional dispute arises between two government parties (provincial/territorial or federal) or between two departments or ministries of the same government, regarding payment for services for a Status Indian child which are otherwise available to other Canadian children, the government or ministry/department of firs...

Jordan’s Principle is a child first principle intended to ensure that First Nations children do not experience delay, denial, or disruption of services because of jurisdictional disputes. This article describes the development of a federally-led administrative response to Jordan’s Principle and recent legal challenges to this administrative respons...

The purpose of this paper is to both describe the major fi ndings from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, 2008 (CIS-2008), and to compare these fi ndings to data reported by Gilbert et al. (2011), who derived their estimates from the US National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. The CIS-2008 tracked 15,980 maltreat...

This study analyzed data from the 1998, 2003 and 2008 Canadian Incidence Study of reported child abuse and neglect (CIS) and compared the profile of children who were reported for an urgent protection investigation versus any other investigation or assessment. As a proportion of all investigations, urgent protection cases have dropped from 28% of a...

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First Nations (Native American) children are greatly overrepresented in the Canadian child welfare system, and disproportionality in the substantiation of maltreatment contributes to this overrepresentation. This study explores the factors driving disproportionality in the substantiation of maltreatment and, more specifically, neglect. Data from th...

This study contributes to the growing child protection placement literature by providing the first Canadian provincial longitudinal study examining when and for whom initial out-of-home placement is most likely to occur. Anonymized clinical-administrative child protection data were merged with the 2006 Canadian Census data for the province of Québe...

Rates of reported child maltreatment nearly doubled in Canada over the period 1998-2003, an increase that reflects growing awareness of the harmful effects of an expanding array of parental behaviors, including corporal punishment, lack of supervision, and exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). Some of these situations may benefit from volunt...

Aboriginal children are currently overrepresented in out-of-home care in Canada; this extends a historical pattern of child removal that began with the residential school system. The overrepresentation of Aboriginal children persists despite legislative and structural changes intended to reduce the number of Aboriginal children in care. Several rec...

Background and Purpose: In Canada, the persistent overrepresentation of Aboriginal (Indigenous) children in out of home care is well documented; it extends a pattern of child removal which began with residential school systems and continued under the auspices of provincial/territorial child welfare systems. Aboriginal control over services for Abor...

Objectives: The overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in child welfare systems in the U.S., Canada, and Australia is well documented, but limited attention has been paid to investigation-stage disproportionality. This paper examines the overrepresentation of First Nations (the largest of three federally recognized Aboriginal groups in Canada)...

During the 20th century, Nunavik’s Inuit population experienced social transformations which have manifested themselves in a range of social issues. Nunavik lies north of the 55th parallel in Quebec, Canada and is one of four regions in Canada that comprise Inuit Nunaat (Inuvialuit, Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, and Nunavut) – Inuit homeland. The Inuit are...

This paper describes the methodological changes that occurred across cycles of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS), specifically outlining the rationale for tracking investigations of families with children at risk of maltreatment in the CIS-2008 cycle. This paper also presents analysis of data from the CIS-2008 e...

Cet article decrit la composante Premieres Nations de l’Etude canadienne sur l’incidence des signalements de cas de violence et de negligence envers les enfants (EIC), la seule etude canadienne qui collecte et analyse des donnees sur les enquetes concernant la protection des enfants autochtones sur le plan national. Nous presentons un bref historiq...

Many districts are considering revamping the systems determining which schools students attend. These discussions are, inherently, about the fate of the neighborhood school. But this term has never been well defined. We develop a three-dimensional, theoretically, and empirically grounded definition of a neighborhood school. The authors’ two case st...