First Nations perspectives and approaches to engagement in infant-family work: attending to cultural safety and service engagement

Abstract

First Nations child and family practitioners, Alison Elliott and Clarisse Slater, yarn here with Jenn McIntosh about the cultural fit and importance of including infants in family therapy. They bring years of experience from the ‘Workin’ With the Mob' clinical program at The Bouverie Centre to bear on building safe and respectful engagement with First Nations peoples and families. They share a First Nations view of the call of the infant and their ancestry and their power to join in bringing healing to parent and family systems. They discuss safe engagement in attempting to build safety in the present, especially for new parents who carry childhood wounds. The baby's capacity to help reframe these conversations into opportunity for new hope and healing becomes central to systemic safety, rather than something to be avoided.