“Children of Adversity”: Disabilities and Child Welfare in Canada from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The needs of particularly vulnerable children and youth have long tested Canadian parents and communities. Youngsters with mental and physical impairments have historically experienced a wide range of conditions that are always negotiated in the context of cultural assumptions, existing social supports and barriers, and available technologies. Both institutionalization and inadequate domestic substitutes have a long history, like birth families everywhere, of devastating youngsters beyond their original impairments. The construction of that predicament and its relationship to the use of institutions, fostering, and adoption in Canadian child welfare practices is the concern here. This article begins with a review of the commonplace evaluation of disabled youngsters in English-speaking Canada, next considers the vulnerability of families, and turns finally to institutional and domestic alternatives to birth family care. Although the story in each case is mixed, youngsters with disabilities remained vulnerable into the twenty-first century.