A group of social work students in Fredericton is working to ensure foster children have a set of luggage in which to transport their belongings.
As someone who has gone through the foster care system, Starr Arbing says foster children are often forced to carry their personal items in a garbage bag.
“It comes down to dignity,” says Arbing, a social work student at St. Thomas University.
“If you were a youth in care and you move many, many times, there’s trauma in that, and it puts more trauma on a child when you have to move your stuff in a garbage bag.”
She and her classmates were given the assignment to identify pressing social issues and identify what they could to create change.
“You got a sense each one of the groups grasped onto the exercise in really creative, imaginative and vital ways,” says professor Rory Crath.
What started as a class project is now picking up momentum, with Arbing and her group working to ensure that every foster child in New Brunswick has a set of proper luggage.
“The garbage adds insult to injury, so it makes sense,” says student Lauren MacNaughton.
“Bentley Canada has contacted us to say they will provide duffel bags at cost for $10, they’re about the size of a hockey bag, for all youth in care in the province for as long as need be,” says Arbing.
The group has also started an online petition in the hopes of raising awareness about the lack of luggage for foster children.
“If we can get it implemented here, we’re thinking of taking it on a national level because, as social workers, we all have this information and it’s something that needs to be heard in the House of Commons.”
They have collected about 3,300 signatures so far.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Nick Moore
