My name is James Mineau. I am an author, advocate, public speaker, and the Founder and Managing Principal of Mineau Advisory Group. But before I became any of those things, I was a child in Saskatchewan’s foster care system trying to survive institutions that were supposed to protect me.

 

Years later, I fought to obtain more than a thousand pages of government records documenting my childhood. What I found in those records forced me to confront not only what happened to me, but how much was known, how much was documented, and how often the voice of a child could exist on paper while still going unheard.

 

That discovery became A Childhood on Record—my memoir, my advocacy platform, and ultimately a commitment to making sure those records do more than sit in a government file.

 

Today, I speak about foster care, childhood trauma, institutional accountability, survival, and the extraordinary consequences that occur when systems stop seeing the human being behind the file number. I do not share my story because I want people to feel sorry for the child I was. I share it because children are still depending on adults and institutions to listen, to act, and to protect them.

 

I cannot change what happened to me. But I can make damn sure my voice is heard now—and use it to fight for the children whose voices still are not.

A Childhood on Record, takes audiences beyond the policies, statistics, and case files of the child welfare system and into the lived reality of what happens when a traumatized child is treated as a behavioural child.

 

Using my own experiences alongside more than a thousand pages of government records documenting my childhood in Saskatchewan’s foster care system, I show how trauma can present through behaviours that are too often labelled as defiance, aggression, manipulation, or simply a “problem child.” I teach audiences how to begin recognizing the critical difference between a child who is deliberately behaving badly and a child whose behaviour may actually be communicating fear, trauma, instability, or an unmet need—and why systems and organizations must learn to recognize those warning signs quickly and act even quicker.

 

But A Childhood on Record is not simply about what happened to me. It is about what we can learn from what happened and how that knowledge can change the way we respond to children today.

 

I have transformed my experiences into advocacy, writing, public speaking, and professional advisory work. Through Mineau Advisory Group and A Childhood on Record, I challenge institutional complacency, advocate for people navigating complex systems, and work to strengthen accountability and trauma-informed practice.

 

My message is ultimately about changing the question we ask when a child is struggling. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with this child?” we need to start asking, “What happened to this child, what is their behaviour trying to tell us, and how quickly are we prepared to act?”

 

Because when we understand the difference between a behavioural child and a traumatized child, we can change the response—and sometimes, we can change the entire course of a child’s life.