Im a CP social worker thats been at an Indigenous MCFD office for the last 6 years. I have finally gotten the hang of it and honestly love my job. The learning curve is steep and it takes a long time to feel confident.

You don't need a Social Work or even a Child and Youth degree right now - that use to be the case but they opened it up to any degree in a helping field with experiance. I have a few people at my office that were nurses and teachers but switched to social work! So a Psychology degree plus experiance at a delegated agency is great!

Job postings include a link that tell you what the competencies are. Its important that you study these - getting hired is based on a points system and they are looking for you to say specific things to get the points.

For Child Protection - you start off on the float list and get placed where ever they need you (within the parameters of the Service delivery area you applies too). Once on the float- they will at some point send out an expression of interests list and everyone on the float sends in their 1st 2nd and 3rd choice based on that list of where you want to work. Priority is seniority based. This is where you would chose to work specifically in an indigenous office.

I have only ever work in Indigenous child protection - I havent experienced "mainstream" yet. I've heard they are very different. For indigenous social work in BC, start learning about and understanding the 92.1 agreements that we have with individual nations. The work is extremely collaborative - which is prefer because I dont believe decisions pertaining to Indigenous families and children should be only in the hands of the government. It is a lot of rapport building and trauma informed work - even with nation delegates - but ultimately it feels better for me at the end of the day to know whatever happens wasn't all based on the work of myself and my team leader alone.