Study of Budget Needs and Funding in the Amended Draft Agreement for Long Term Reform of FNCFS Program
Press Release
Executive Summary
In July 2024, the First Nation Child and Family Caring Society (the Caring Society) contracted EngageFirst Management Consultants, a leading consultancy with a background in First Nation’s child and family services (FNCFS), to analyze the funding needs of small First Nations and the adequacy of the funding proposed in the Amended Draft Agreement for the Long-term Reform of FNCFS Program (the Draft Agreement). For the purposes of this study, a small First Nation was defined as one with a total population below the median population of all First Nations in Canada, which is 1054 members.
Over a period of nine months, EngageFirst had discussions with five FNCFS providers, researched and conducted data analysis culminating in this report. We would like to thank all the participating FNCFS staff and leadership whose contributions provide invaluable insight into the experiences of FNCFS providers. We researched published works from various sources including Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), Assembly of First Nations (AFN), The Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy (IFSD), and The Caring Society.
To answer the questions of interest for this study, the funding needs of FNCFS providers operating with self-jurisdiction and the proposed funding in the Draft Agreement were analyzed using a robust financial model that enabled multivariable analysis.
The study met the objective of conducting an exploratory analysis to better understand the interplay between the variables in the Draft Agreement and the corresponding operational budget needs of small FNCFS providers operating with self-jurisdiction. There were information gaps and challenges in achieving a representative sample, as a result the study is limited by the number of reasoned assumptions and inferences that were made, although in all instances care was taken to mitigate the impact on the findings and conclusions.
Key Findings
1. The holistic, culturally relevant, culturally connected, person-centered, multi-generational, relationship-based approaches that characterize the five FNCFS providers establishes a foundation for organizational success. It could be inferred that the success that we observed in the five FNCFS organizations is due in large part to the overarching approach that is unique to FNCFS providers and a leading practice.
2. Opportunities exist for First Nations and FNCFS providers to incrementally build organizational capacity that supports the skills, competencies, tools and practices of culturally based prevention and protection services. With their connection to the culture and the land as a foundation, the FNCFS providers can also gradually enhance their functional capacity in data and analytics, financial management and leverage technology to optimize CFS delivery to remote and sparse populations.
2. The categorization and separation of prevention and protection services and funding thereof, primarily for the purposes of managing resources and data, is not aligned with the way many FNCFS providers intend to serve their people. A block funding approach for prevention and protection services better conforms to First Nation’s traditional world views, where the safety and well-being needs of children, youth, families and communities are interconnected and not separated into arbitrary categories for administrative convenience.
2. The funding for prevention in the Draft Agreement is based on on-reserve population. Members who reside off-reserve would not have access to prevention services from their own First Nation. Given that most First Nations intend to provide services to members living off-reserve, adequate funding to support off-reserve delivery and well-articulated and well understood reciprocal service delivery agreements between Provincial/Territorial governments and FNCFS providers are crucial.
2. The baseline funding as defined in the Draft Agreement would be better structured to incentivize keeping children at home and reducing the number of children in care. As defined in the Draft Agreement, the baseline funding is not actually a baseline. FNCFS providers who can reduce the number of children in care to zero are destined to lose their baseline funding and top-up funding.
2. ISC’s rationale for establishing the minimum guarantee of $75,000 adjusted for inflation is not clear in the Draft Agreement, except that it may fund a full- or part-time prevention staff in very small First Nations. This may work for a Band-delivered prevention service for a very small First Nation, however, it does not consider the direct cost of support to families and other realities of staffing, such as backfill and vacancies. It also appears that the minimum guaranteed funding is not available for a First Nation if it is not part of an amalgamated FNCFS agency.
7. The minimum operational model to serve populations up to 175 members with self-jurisdiction is about 6-7 full-time equivalent positions and approximately $1.2m in annual operating budget. Our analysis indicates that the Draft Agreement only supports approximately 45% of the funding needed for a FNCFS agency of this size.
7. There appears to be a pathway to financially sustainable operations for small FNCFS agencies through amalgamation. FNCFS agencies who meet the threshold of 1150-1300 in total population with or without amalgamation, and with 90% on-reserve population, may receive funding that adequately supports their vision of self-jurisdiction.
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