St. Thomas University social work students are again making waves with a social action project, this time for a petition to treat children in foster care with more dignity.
Nearly 1,500 people have signed their change.org petition in support of giving foster children in the province suitcases, which is already in practice on P.E.I.
Other STU action groups have recently gained recognition in the province for promoting ideas like voting reform and expanded alternative education.
Zo Bourgeois is one of four students at the school in on the push to help oft-uprooted foster children. Having bounced between foster homes as a youth herself, she wants to ensure no child has to come home to find their possessions in trash bags.
“These children are put through so much. A lot of them move in and out of foster homes like its nothing, and their stuff is always being put in trash bags,” she said.
In P.E.I., luggage company Bentley Leathers sells two-piece luggage sets to the foster care program for $35. The N.B. government website says there are about 1,000 children in foster care in the province at any given time.
Bourgeois knows the toll being shuffled around takes on a foster child. Her mother suffered from mental illness and alcoholism, and wasn’t able to take care of her all the time. Bourgeois lived in six different foster homes between stints living with her mother. She was adopted when she was 15 years old.
There are many reasons why foster children have to move on from a foster home, and there is often no one at fault.
“It ranges from foster parents not being able to look after the children properly, to them not being a good match,” Bourgeois said.
“Foster parents have their own personal life… they are like any normal person, so they could have issues like divorce, unemployment, and money issues which could create problems for looking after the children.”
Bourgeois hopes the province takes up the initiative. She wants to contact and bring together Bentley Leathers and the Department of Social Services to keep the idea moving forward.
“This would help create more meaning in to the child’s life,” she said. “Something they can have of their own and bring with them to every different place they go to.”
