Open Collections

Abstract

The Canadian child welfare system, more accurately termed the family policing system (FPS), heavily dominates child protection discourse by asserting that it acts in the best interest of vulnerable children. One way this narrative is sustained is through record-making. While records assist FPS agents in service delivery, they harm reported individuals in numerous ways. Records silence the voices of children and youth, control the narrative of child protection, secure our continued belief in the necessity of FPS services– which rely on the sustained displacement of children from their families and communities– and discourage us from envisioning alternative means of protecting vulnerable children. As a queer, Albanian immigrant, youth-from-care, and adoptee, I join a growing conversation that challenges the existence and authority of the FPS and questions what it does and could mean to act in the best interest of children in the context of child protection. Through a desire-focused, queer Child and Youth Care (CYC), autoethnographic social fiction imagination, I queer my FPS records to create a new record. I show how records can (un)know, (un)do, and (un)become their authority, fixedness, and harm, and know, do, and become stories that imagine alternative, more dynamic, collective, and liberating ways of supporting the well- being of our communities. In queering my FPS records, I imagine, create, and present five vignettes that (re)story moments of desire from my FPS records into new stories detailing the lives of two sisters involved with a futuristic Canadian FPS. Each vignette explores and reveals the complexity involved in stories of desire and child protection, offering new insights to readers. Through its (un)becoming, this thesis demonstrates the possibilities of records and a desire-focused queer CYC autoethnographic social fiction imagination to radically transform our understanding of acting in the best interest of children. It invites readers to consider the research, practice, and policy potential of this approach and to join the movement to imagine beyond the FPS.