Birth alert
Birth alerts was a practice in Canada, in which a social or health care worker notifies the staff of a hospital if they have concerns for the safety of an expected child based on their parents' history. This can include past instances of poverty, domestic violence, drug usage, and history with child welfare. Birth alerts are typically issued without the parents' consent, and often result in apprehension and placement of the child into foster care after birth.
Birth alerts have been considered a controversial practice, as they have been disproportionately used for Indigenous children. The Indigenous rights group Idle No More considers birth alerts to be one of the major "hardships" faced by Canada's Indigenous community. In June 2019, the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls recommended the abolishment of "the practice of targeting and apprehending infants from Indigenous mothers right after they give birth", as they were "racist and discriminatory and are a gross violation of the rights of the child, the mother, and the community."
Following the release of the report, the practice of birth alerts was discontinued in multiple provinces in the years that followed. The last province to abolish this practice was Quebec in 2023.
Usage
Alberta
ended birth alerts in 2019.British Columbia
In March 2018, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered that the Ministry of Children and Family Development return a child to their mother, and coordinate community support and supervision within the Huu-ay-aht First Nations. Under a birth alert, the child was apprehended after birth, with the mother only allowed limited visits. The court ruled that the MCFD violated the Child, Family and Community Service Act by not providing an adequate reason for the measure besides "her own mother's history with MCFD", and not providing the mother with advance notice of the decision.In July 2019, following the MMIWG report, Minister of Children and Family Development Katrine Conroy suggested that the province was looking into its recommendations, explaining that "we know there are far too many Indigenous kids taken into care", and that "especially in the Indigenous communities, we are making sure there are more supports in place and working in partnership with the communities so that those children have the support they need – that the parents have the support they need."
In September 2019, Conroy announced that provincial health care providers and social service workers "will no longer share information about expectant parents without consent from those parents and will stop the practice of birth alerts." She emphasized that "moving to a voluntary approach of providing early supports and preventative services to expectant parents will help them plan and safely care for their babies."