Family Wellness

Our Family Wellness Team is dedicated to strengthening families, supporting the well-being of children and youth, and ensuring that families receive compassionate, culturally grounded care. Our work focuses on prevention, healing, trauma-informed support, and maintaining strong family, cultural, and community connections.

We provide guidance and advocacy for parents, grandparents, and extended family members, including those raising children within their family. Through our Family Wellness Navigation services, we help families access resources, understand their options, and navigate challenges that may arise when working with child and family services providers.

A key part of our work is advocating for the rights and best interests of Xatśūll children, youth, and families involved with, or at risk of involvement with, the child welfare system. We work to ensure that their voices are heard, their cultural connections are protected, and their needs are respected throughout the process.

We are also actively advancing Xatśūll’s Child and Family Jurisdiction work, exercising the Nation’s inherent rights and responsibilities in caring for our children, youth, and families. This includes working with provincial and federal governments and child and family services providers to ensure that decisions reflect Xatśūll values, traditions, laws, and the unique needs of our community.

Our programs and services include:

• Family Wellness Navigation: Guidance and support for parents, grandparents, and extended family members raising children within their families, helping them access resources, services, and prevention supports.
• Designated Band Representative (DBR): Advocacy and representation for Xatśūll children, youth, and families involved with the child and family services system, ensuring their rights, needs, and voices are recognized.
• Prevention & Family Support: Programs and resources that strengthen family relationships, promote healthy homes, address challenges early, and help prevent family separation.
• Healing & Trauma-Informed Support: Culturally safe, compassionate support for families experiencing trauma, disruption, or separation, with a focus on healing and restoring family connections.
• Repatriation & Reunification: Supporting the return of children and youth in care to their families and Nation, strengthening connections to family, culture, community, and traditional ways of life.
• Kinship & Customary Care: Supporting family-based and culturally appropriate care arrangements, including kinship care, customary care, and other alternative care options.
• Child & Family Jurisdiction: Advancing the Nation’s rights and responsibilities in child and family services, including the development of laws, policies, protocols, and service agreements that reflect Xatśūll values and priorities.
• Advocacy & Collaboration: Working with child and family services providers, government agencies, and other jurisdictions to ensure the needs and rights of Xatśūll children, youth, and families are respected.
• Planning & Ongoing Support: Participating in family care plans, safety planning, permanency planning, youth transition and aftercare planning, and monitoring service agreements.
• Youth & Young Adult Support: Helping youth and young adults transition into adulthood through continued guidance, resources, and post-majority support services.
• Alternative Dispute Resolution: Encouraging culturally appropriate approaches to resolving family matters, including circles and Indigenous-led processes.
• Legal & Systems Advocacy: Supporting the Nation’s participation in child and family services proceedings, receiving and responding to formal notices, and accessing legal resources when needed to protect the Nation’s interests.

Sabrina Charlie – Family Wellness Program Manager (Designated Band Representative (DBR))
familywelllness@xatsull.com