Meeting the needs of disabled Indigenous children

Navigating Manitoba’s disability services is difficult under the best circumstances. For Indigenous families, access is further constrained by geography, poverty, jurisdictional confusion, and culturally-inappropriate systems that do not reflect Indigenous approaches to raising and supporting children. Culturally-insensitive intakes, assessments, and treatments in Manitoba also contribute to misunderstanding, misdiagnosis, and inappropriate service responses across the province.

The consequences for Indigenous children with disabilities and their families are profound — they are forced into a system that does not recognize who they are, how they are understood in their communities or what they need to thrive.

Many First Nations families, particularly in remote and northern communities, are faced with the choice of living in their home community with limited or no resources for their child with a disability or relocating to an urban centre to access necessary supports. This further disconnects families from family and community support, connectedness to shared values and teachings and a child’s right to a sense of belonging.

Additionally, First Nations families living with a disabled child experience significant over-involvement with the child welfare system compared to non-Indigenous Manitobans. This is due to a couple of key factors, namely the differing perspectives regarding disabilities between the Western clinical and many First Nations world views and the prevailing systemic default that families be pressured to surrender their disabled child to child and family services care in order to access resources that are otherwise unavailable.

No family should need to make or be persuaded into making these types of decisions.

Children’s Disability Services have only recently become available to children living on reserve. This is the result of a 14-year human rights arbitration between a family from the Pinaymootang First Nation and the Manitoba government, from 2010 to 2024. Community Living disABILITY Services and adult services are still not available, leaving young adults with disabilities residing on reserve without vital services.

St. Amant, Manitoba’s primary resource for children with disabilities, offers the Jordan’s Principle Counselling Program, which serves Indigenous families who live on their reserve. Other provincial health entities, such as Shared Health, don’t offer culturally-specific children’s disability services. Other services, like those in urban centres, aren’t culturally appropriate for many Indigenous families.

Multiple Indigenous families who have contacted the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth for advocacy support said the lack of culturally-appropriate services in Manitoba’s disability system leaves them less likely to connect with support or to find it helpful due to its cultural differences.

This issue was echoed in a ground-breaking First Nations-centred project, the Cowessess Autism Report, which found that many First Nations children with autism never get a diagnosis because services are distant, difficult to navigate, mistrusted or culturally unsafe. Their families are not failing to engage; many are making deliberate choices to avoid a system that labels their children in harmful ways.

Recent federal changes to Jordan’s Principle, particularly stricter eligibility rules and new administrative requirements, are creating additional barriers for Indigenous children accessing disability services. These restrictions mean that some children face delays or denials for disability support, undermining their ability to receive timely care.

Jordan’s Principle is not a replacement for provincial services. Yet, Indigenous families in Manitoba need to rely on Jordan’s Principle to fill gaps in the province’s health and disability systems, rather than using it as the last‑resort safeguard it’s intended to be. In 2025, the federal government acknowledged this concern and directed provincial governments to do more to meet the needs of Indigenous children.

Indigenous children with a disability have the right to the best quality mental and physical health, without discrimination. These gaps and barriers preventing Indigenous children and their families from accessing disability services directly undermine those children’s human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Manitoba must move from fragmented, reactive disability supports toward a co-ordinated, Indigenous-informed framework that ensures young people with disabilities receive timely, equitable, culturally-appropriate and sustainable care.

This requires ongoing consultation with Indigenous communities to ensure that funding is based on a community’s needs, that service disparities are addressed, coordination between federal, provincial and First Nations governments is improved and long-term community investments are made.

Until these changes are made, Indigenous children in Manitoba will continue to face fragmented and inequitable disability supports. Sherry Gott is the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth. Her office supports, empowers, and uplifts young people and their families to ensure they have all the resources they need to thrive.