Ashley L. Quinn

Recent climate-related disasters underscore the importance of social work’s role in environmental advocacy. In Canada, there have been wildfires in several provinces and territories caused by highe...

The overrepresentation of Indigenous children within the Canadian child welfare system has been documented since the 1980s (Johnston, 1983; Sinha et al., 2011; Trocmé et al., 2004). In the Canadian...

While Indigenous children and youth are overrepresented in child welfare care in Canada, there are limited Indigenous foster parents to provide culturally affirmative care. This study addresses gaps in the literature by exploring the application and fostering processes from the perspectives of Indigenous caregivers in British Columbia. Five semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with Indigenous foster parents. Three key themes emerged: (a) motivations to become foster caregivers, (b) cultural barriers to becoming foster caregivers, and (c) experiences of Indigenous foster caregiving. Findings indicate that the well-being of children and cultural engagement are central to Indigenous caregivers’ fostering experiences. Meaningful cultural engagement addresses the sense of cultural connection and positive cultural identity development, often absent for Indigenous children and youth in care.

The aim of the current paper is to present Contextual Action Theory and the Action Project Method as a comprehensive methodological approach for examining how individuals, groups, and institutions engage in coordinated, goal directed efforts to achieve a shared goal. Contextual Action Theory conceptualizes human action as intentional, relational, and embedded within layered contexts of meaning, strategy, and operation. The Action Project Method operationalizes this theory through the systematic study of observable behaviour, participants’ reported thoughts and feelings, and the shared social meanings guiding action over time. In this paper we outline the conceptual foundations of Contextual Action Theory and delineate the core procedures embedded in the Action Project Method, emphasizing participant involvement, joint action, and real-time data collection. These approaches align closely with social work values, including empowerment, relational accountability, cultural responsiveness, and epistemic justice. A case example focused on culturally engaged foster caregiving with Indigenous children illustrates how the method captures collaborative processes, structural constraints, and justice-oriented goals without reducing action to individual traits or deficits. By centring action in context, this approach offers social work researchers the tools to explore how change efforts are enacted, sustained, and shaped by power, culture, and systems. Integrating Contextual Action Theory and the Action Project Method strengthens the field’s capacity to conduct research that supports ethical practice, informs intervention, and advances social justice.

Based on a critical rapid review, this article examines the developments and limitations of implementing An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families, S.C. 2019 (CAN) (Bill C-92) in Canada and among Indigenous communities in Ontario. Despite progress made by First Nations communities reclaiming sovereignty over child and family services since Bill C-92 became law on January 1, 2020, many challenges related to national standards, jurisdiction, funding, accountability, and data collection remain. Findings related to the history of child welfare services for Indigenous Peoples in Ontario, the context of legislation and implementation of Bill C-92, and the principal limitations of implementing Bill C-92 are presented. This review revealed limited results of studies completed in the province of Ontario. While Bill C-92 is a step towards addressing the systemic discrimination of Indigenous Peoples, there are still significant challenges to be addressed that ensure its effective implementation.

Alexandra Valint’s Narrative Bonds: Multiple Narrators in the Victorian Novel is an ambitious study of Victorian novels that contain multiple narrators. Narrative Bonds expands the study of narratology by promoting “multinarrator structure as a distinct type of narration” (18). Furthermore, Valint demarcates specific types of multinarrator form including back-and-forth, quick switch, patchworks, permeable frame, returning, and nonreturning. Divided into five chapters and an epilogue, Narrative Bonds surveys the different variations of multinarrator structure in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853); Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883); Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860), The Moonstone (1868), and The Legacy of Cain (1888); Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847); Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897); and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). Each chapter connects the different type of multinarration to the plot and content while also exploring the distinctive bonds created between narrators. In doing so, Valint relates the...

This paper presents a method for how grounded theory can be used to bridge Western and Indigenous approaches to research, and how these epistemologies may complement each other. The objective in presenting this method is to contribute to the ongoing conversation on how best to integrate these two frameworks. As historically in social science research western methodologies have been preferred over Indigenous methodologies, this integration serves both to further reconciliation and to enhance methodological rigour.

While the Coronavirus (COVID 19) presents unique challenges to everyone in our Vancouver, Canada communities, these challenges are exasperated for Indigenous children and youth currently in and agi...