Children and Youth — Issue No. 5 — Thursday, June 14, 2007 (HTML)

2007 Legislative Session: Third Session, 38th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH
MINUTES AND HANSARD

Katherine Whittred, MLA
Chair

Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Clerk Assistant and
Committee Clerk

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH



CONTENTS

		Page

Joint Special Report: Health and Well-Being of Children in Care in British Columbia: Educational Experience and Outcomes		40
	M. Turpel-Lafond
	P. Kendall
	R. McPhee

Office of the Representative for Children and Youth		63
	M. Turpel-Lafond
	A. Robinson

Committee Business		69

Chair:	* Katherine Whittred (North Vancouver–Lonsdale L)
Deputy Chair:	* Leonard Krog (Nanaimo NDP)
Members:	* Bill Bennett (East Kootenay L) * Ron Cantelon (Nanaimo-Parksville L) * Dennis MacKay (Bulkley Valley–Stikine L) * Mary Polak (Langley L) John Rustad (Prince George–Omineca L) * Jagrup Brar (Surrey–Panorama Ridge NDP) * Maurine Karagianis (Esquimalt-Metchosin NDP) * Nicholas Simons (Powell River–Sunshine Coast NDP) * denotes member present


Witnesses:	Dr. Perry Kendall (Provincial Health Officer) Rob McPhee (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth) Andrew Robinson (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth) Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (Representative for Children and Youth)

K. Whittred (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I am going to call the meeting to order. Welcome to all the committee members, some of whom have travelled a good distance to be with us this morning. And of course, welcome to our guests, who are going to be presenting a report that I am really looking forward to and await with great interest.

We have with us this morning Dr. Perry Kendall, who is the provincial health officer, and the children's representative, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. I will leave it up to you folks to introduce your staff.

Our first item on the agenda this morning is, in fact, the presentation of the joint special report Health and Well-Being of Children in Care in British Columbia: Educational Experience and Outcomes. With no further comment, I am going to turn this over to our guests.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for assembling on what I know is one of your first weeks away from regular sitting time.

I wanted to just take a few moments to review what material has been provided, to make sure that you have the material before you. We'll go through some of it this morning.

You would have an executive summary of a first report that was prepared on health outcomes of children in care. Then you would have a copy of the special report that we recently issued on education outcomes. You will also have a copy of the PowerPoint presentation that we'll be reviewing today.

I've also circulated to you a copy of a letter from the Information and Privacy Commissioner about some of the issues in the report around linking data that is considered to be acceptable and appropriate in terms of privacy and information issues.

Finally, you will have some information, which we'll speak to at the end of the presentation, on the education outcomes of children that may not be in care but who are placed in the home of a relative. We have done some addendum research around the education outcomes and characteristics for children in the home of a relative. We want to speak to that this morning at the end of the presentation. That didn't make it into the report, but we think it may also be of interest to the committee.

I would like, with your permission, to introduce some of these staff that I have with me today. Of course I am very pleased that we have Dr. Kendall. Dr. Kendall and I did release this report — Dr. Kendall not being my staff but a colleague. We have been working quite closely and collaboratively on a number of issues. This is one, and there will be two additional reports that we will issue.

The next report will be on justice issues for children in care and the extent to which they come in contact with the criminal and civil justice system. The final report will be on mental health and addictions issues for children in care. I can't tell you exactly what the sequence will be at this point. We're still working out the time lines.

This morning we discussed possibly collaborating a bit on a report that Dr. Kendall is preparing on aboriginal health and aboriginal outcomes for infants — maternal fetal health.

With respect to the staff, there are a few people I'd like to introduce to you that are here with me. First of all, we have Andrew Robinson. Andrew was appointed as the Deputy Representative for Children and Youth. He is the deputy representative for advocacy, aboriginal and community relations. Andrew is a member of the Nisga'a Nation. He resides in Prince George, and he will be heading up our new Prince George office.

He is currently the band manager for the McLeod Lake Indian band. He has experience developing a wide variety of strategic working relationships. He begins his assignment in July, although he has already been down and meeting with our team to develop a strategic plan. He participated in a very significant event that we had in Prince George with the Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council, with the hereditary chiefs and elders and others from the region, to ask permission to open an office there and to work closely with them for the issues of concern for their children.

I'm very pleased that Andrew could come down today. I know he has been busy sandbagging and dealing with issues around the floods — probably the things that John Rustad is dealing with, because he's not here today.

I also have with me Su-Lin Shum. Su-Lin was appointed in May as the executive director of monitoring, review, auditing and reporting. I understand many of you may have met Su-Lin in her previous position with the Auditor General.

In addition to her audit experience, Su-Lin has worked with ministries of Social Services and Human Resources, as they were then called, developing policy, preparing budget submissions and evaluating programs. We're very pleased to have her as part of our team now, as well, at the representative's office.

I also have with me today Cory Heavener. Cory has been leading our corporate planning and operational priorities since April, when she came over to our office on a temporary assignment from MCFD. She has many years of senior-level experience in MCFD. Also, with her background, she's performed a number of critical roles in terms of the child-serving system as a front-line-protection social worker, as a manager in the area of policy and as an acting director of child protection for the province. I've been greatly assisted by having her as part of our team. I'm very pleased that she's here today.

Up at the front I have Rob McPhee, who I've brought before. Rob has been leading our monitoring activities. He was the lead coordinator for the report on education, and he was critically involved in the report

on health and will be involved in the other reports. He certainly has played an important role in us being able to get the data analyzed, which we'll be presenting today.

I also have with me from my staff a summer student, Ashley Ridyard. He is a student at the University of Victoria faculty of law. He is spending the summer working on issues around the UN declaration of the rights of the child and British Columbia's policies and practices, and whether or not the convention might be of use in looking at that.

Finally, I have an adviser with us today, and that's Maureen Nicholls. Some of you will know Maureen Nicholls, as she has had a very distinguished career in government, including as a deputy of a number of ministries. Maureen was also the senior leader of the Hughes review, and she has been advising us with respect to our strategic plan and our collaborative work around improving the child-serving system.

So that's the team. I hope I didn't forget anyone. That's the team with me today. With that, Madam Chair, we are prepared to move into the presentation.

Joint Special Report:
Health and Well-Being of Children
in Care in British Columbia:
Educational Experience and Outcomes

M. Turpel-Lafond: As I said earlier, we're pleased to present you with the second of four reports. The first one was produced by the provincial health officer and the child and youth officer, Jane Morley. It was released in September last year, and that was the report on health and well-being of children in care. The report today is on education outcomes.

Our series of special reports is one of the most extensive documentations of outcomes of children in care in Canada and possibly even in the world. The project came about because there was a lack of fundamental information regarding the health and well-being of children in care. We had no answers to such basic questions as: are they graduating from high school? Do they need social assistance as adults? Do they have distinct health concerns? How do their outcomes differ from other vulnerable populations and from the general population?

Government has a particular and special responsibility for children in care. Like a concerned parent, government needs to know how well they are doing, and it needs to be accountable for their health, well-being and preparation for the future.

These reports linking existing administrative databases — so far the databases are from the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Children and Family Development — are one way of seeing what is happening with children in care. They provide us with benchmarks to set goals and measure progress.

The B.C. Children and Youth Review, or the Hughes review, recommended that our office have the statutory authority to work with linked data sets for the purposes of monitoring and evaluating the services provided to children, youth and families. As Hughes wrote: "Better research can lead to better programs and services."

P. Kendall: Thank you for the opportunity to appear here and present this report with Mary Ellen. Before Mary Ellen goes on to discuss the findings, I'd like to start by acknowledging that children in care are obviously a vulnerable group whose challenging life experiences will influence their health, potentially adversely, and their school performance.

As with an individual's health status, a child's educational attainment is influenced by many factors. For children in care these can include their experiences before coming into care; the emotional trauma of being taken into care; instability of home placements and in their schools; and for aboriginal children, cultural devaluation.

With our report on health outcomes, we saw that being a child in care is associated with increased health risks. Children and youth in continuing care often start with medical or health problems or developmental disorders.

They're diagnosed and hospitalized for common childhood conditions or mental health conditions like depression, anxiety and ADHD, and are prescribed medication in greater numbers and for longer periods of time than children never in care. They also have higher all-cause mortality rates, although these rates have been dropping steadily over time.

That report concluded that we needed to think differently if we're to improve the health of children in care. Its findings strongly support a population health approach, which views health not as an end state but as a capacity in which one can meet life's opportunities and challenges. From that perspective we could see that to improve the health of children in care, we really need to focus on areas that are at the fringe of the curative health care system — in prevention, in health promotion, but particularly in early diagnosis and interventions.

Other areas that require work if we're to improve health outcomes are actually outside the health care system altogether. For example, there's a growing body of evidence to show that early childhood development, from birth to six, is an important determinant of health.

Similarly, this study of aggregated educational data of children in care suggests that we need to think somewhat differently about how we meet the educational needs of the children in care.

M. Turpel-Lafond: So what did we find in our report? We found that in each of the key areas of school readiness, school completion, aboriginal children in care and children with special needs, there's an improvement needed.

First we start with school readiness. Children in care are two to three times more likely than children in

the general population to be unprepared for entering kindergarten. Fewer than half of the children in care meet provincial standards on reading and numeracy when measured in grades 4 and 7. Those are the FSA measurements.

A growing portion of children in vulnerable populations, including children in care, is not being assessed on reading, writing and numeracy. There are increasingly no benchmarks to determine how well these children are doing within the school system.

School completion. Almost 80 percent of children in care do not graduate from high school. I just pause on this point to say that this is an exact flip side of what we see across the education system in British Columbia. As I've indicated before in an appearance, British Columbia has one of the best education systems in Canada, if not the world. It's considered to be a superb public education system with a rate of graduation that is actually the envy of many other provinces and territories in Canada.

But for this vulnerable group it's the complete flip side; 80 percent do not graduate, given the data that was analyzed in preparing this report. Of the 21 percent who do, few graduate with the courses or grade point averages required to directly enter post-secondary institutions.

Another interesting point is that children who have been in temporary care experience outcomes as poor as those who have been in continuous care. In some cases their outcomes are worse. Only 18 percent of children who have been in temporary care will graduate from high school.

There is evidence that completion rates are the effect of cumulative disadvantage across the school years. This is a very significant finding, in our respectful view. The percentage of children in care who were behind a grade or more in the school system was 8 percent at grade 4, had doubled to 17 percent by grade 8 and had doubled again to over 36 percent by grade 10.

By grade 12, 48 percent of children in care were a grade or more behind in the school system. In contrast, only 14 percent of the general school-age population was a grade or more behind by grade 12.

I just highlight that point because the interventions that have been designed, particularly around the high school aspect…. This study indicates that there's much more cumulative impact. It doesn't just suddenly pop up in high school. It's something that has accumulated over a period of time.

In terms of aboriginal children in care, 16 percent of aboriginal children in care graduate from high school — a rate slightly lower than the overall graduation rate for children in care. Aboriginal children in care are identified with special needs at a slightly higher rate — 64 percent — than non-aboriginal children in care, which was 58 percent.

When measured at grades 4 and 7, aboriginal children in care show lower reading, numeracy and writing scores than other children in care.

The experience of being in care is a significant factor to consider in assessing education outcomes for aboriginal children. The reason why we emphasize this point is because when you look at the period that we studied of approximately a decade, one in seven aboriginal children has been in care at some point in their life. So if one in seven aboriginal children has been in care and their education outcomes are poor, that's a very significant group when it's generalized across the entire aboriginal population.

Moving on, in terms of aboriginal children in care. I'd like to move on to the special needs area. In terms of special needs, 61 percent of children in care have been identified with special needs by the age of 16, compared to 13 percent of children who have never been in care. Education outcomes for children in care with special needs are worse than for most children in care. Only 12 percent of special needs children in care graduate from high school, in contrast with 36 percent of special needs children from the general population. So that is the gap, between 36 percent in the general population and 12 percent in this group.

While the most common special needs category for the general school-age population is the gifted category, the most common special needs category for children in care is intensive behavioral intervention and serious mental illnesses. Children who are or have been in care make up one third of the students identified by educators as having behavioral or mental health issues, and 29 percent of children in care are in the category of intensive behavioral intervention or serious mental illness.

P. Kendall: There are several reasons why we should be concerned about these findings. As the Hughes review remarked, safety is about protection from abuse and neglect, and well-being is about a child's social, educational and developmental progress. Government as a foster parent has a positive obligation to promote the well-being of children in care, as well as taking care of their safety.

It's not simply a matter of protecting them from immediate harm. That fact is recognized as a guiding principle set out in the Child, Family and Community Service Act, which states in section 2 that this act must be interpreted and administered so that the safety and well-being of children are the paramount considerations.

Education is one of the primary social determinants of health and well-being. Other factors like income, employment and the social environment also impact, and research shows that the social determinants are the best predictors of individual and population health.

Social determinants, as you know, actually interact with each other to either expand or limit life's opportunities and to structure lifestyle choices. Ultimately, they can produce good or poor health.

We also know that the social determinants impact particularly on the early years, where they are very, very, very important in preparing children for their voyage through life. Resilience, adaptability and coping are capacities that seem to be developed — or not — in the human brain in the very early years from birth to age six.

Research done in British Columbia has shown that the educational attainment influences future health and

well-being. Charles Ungerleider at UBC and Tracey Burns at the OECD found that if you look at youth who graduate and compare them with youth who drop out, the dropouts are less healthy. They have poorer family functioning, they're more than twice as likely to end up in jail, and they're more than five times as likely to end up on income assistance.

High school graduates, on the other hand, experience employment stability, higher incomes and more opportunities for lifelong learning. It's also associated with increased life expectancy.

Because it's so central to positive life chances, the right to education and at an even more basic level the right to development are guaranteed by the UN convention on the rights of the child. For the purposes of our study, it's important to remember that the convention obliges us to ensure that education both fosters the development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential, and prepares the child for responsible life in a free society.

The B.C. School Act in its preamble echoes the UN convention and states that the purpose of the British Columbia school system is to enable all learners to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic, pluralistic society and a prosperous, sustainable economy.

Our report shows that by these measures, we are not fulfilling our obligation to these children and youth in care. We believe this study is the first step towards improvement. Now that we know how children and youth in care are falling behind and how educational attainment can influence their adult opportunities — and possibly the life chances of their own families because this can be multi-generational in a cascade — it's time to see how we can help them to do better.

Our educational outcomes data has led us to make nine specific recommendations for action. We'd like to review each recommendation now in the context of the new evidence on how children in care are doing in British Columbia.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Recommendation 1. We recommended that MCFD, by September of 2007, know the number of school-age children who are or have been in care. They should also know the school districts in which these children are enrolled. We recommended that they immediately begin the process of collecting personal education numbers for every child in care. This will allow MCFD social workers to track the progress and create an education plan for each child at an individual level.

We recommended that by October 2007, using aggregate data, MCFD publicly report on the education attainment of children in care. This should be the first of annual reports on the educational attainment of children in care. By October 2008, we've recommended that MCFD report on changes in the educational attainment of the above children. This and each annual report should also continue to report on the educational attainment of children newly taken into care.

Using the indicators available — including the early development instrument, EDI; the foundation skills assessment, FSA; and graduation rates — we have found through our study that children in care are at risk of lifelong marginalization. That risk emerges very early on.

More than half of the children in care were not ready for school when they entered kindergarten, yet on an ongoing and individual basis, it's been difficult for MCFD to monitor and plan for the education of the children in its care because information does not flow between the child welfare and education systems.

MCFD needs to monitor, track and report on the health and general well-being of children in care. At an individual level, it needs to know whether a child needs extra supports to meet his or her education goals or whether school moves are having a negative effect. At an aggregate level, the ministry should use data to inform and assess policy.

The Hughes review made similar recommendations. Its final report recommended that MCFD establish, monitor and report on measures that can determine the real and long-term impacts of its programs and services. It also recommended that MCFD work with other ministries to set common measures and linked data sets and the resulting data be "used as a tool to support operational and management decision-making, program evaluation and policy development."

Recommendation 2 is that the Ministry of Education implement the early development instrument for every child in British Columbia at initial school entry, whether in kindergarten or grade 1. Early childhood is receiving a lot of attention at the moment. Study after study suggest that providing high-quality early childhood programming to disadvantaged children or vulnerable children will result in long-lasting benefits to those children and to our society as well.

The landmark study here is the study of the Perry preschool program, which tracked participants for a period of 40 years beginning in the 1960s. It determined that compared to a control group, preschool provided to disadvantaged three- and four-year-olds resulted in reduced time in special ed programs, fewer grades repeated, better literacy scores, better graduation rates, less crime, fewer teenage pregnancies, higher employment rates, higher incomes and less welfare dependency. That's the evidence-based analysis which I'm sure you're all very familiar with — the Perry preschool program.

Our study confirms the importance of the early years in the development of the child. Table 7 in our report — I hope you can read it all right; it's also in the written report — shows that at school entry, compared to most children, children who have been in continuing or temporary care are 3.1 times more likely to be vulnerable in physical health and well-being; 2.8 times more likely to be vulnerable in social competence, which means things like self-control, self-management, following routines; 2.8 times more vulnerable in emo-

tional maturity, which often shows itself in the lack of attention span or aggression; 3.0 times more likely to be vulnerable in language and cognitive development; and two times more likely to be vulnerable in terms of communications — meaning articulation, understanding and being understood, and general knowledge.

Slide 10 from the study shows that children in care do not overcome that poor start. We see the cumulative effect of early disadvantage, which becomes most visible around grade 9, perhaps because failure to acquire fundamental skills in the earlier grades makes it more difficult to master advanced concepts coming into high school. For too many disadvantaged children, education deficits are deeply rooted by the time they arrive in kindergarten. It is a positive thing, in the view of the representative's office, that researchers, policy-makers, legislators and voluntary agencies here in B.C. are turning their attention to early childhood development, with programs like Success By 6; Ready, Set, Learn; LEAP; and StrongStart.

However, we want to make sure that the energy directed toward early childhood is paying off. The only way to do that is, again, by measuring. The metric we are recommending is the early development instrument, which was developed as a population-based tool for measuring child development and is currently administered provincewide but on a sample basis only.

Each year, beginning in 1999-2000 children in one region of the province have been assessed using the EDI. We would like to see all children assessed at school entry. It is also essential that the EDI be administered in a culturally sensitive way. This means training teachers, testing the EDI for bias — against first nations children, in particular — and introducing into the EDI content that takes into account first nations experience, language and culture.

P. Kendall: With our next recommendation, which again is on measurement, it is using the foundational skills assessment on all children. We recommend that the Ministry of Education (1) assess all children in the province on their reading, writing and numeracy skills, and (2) report on the foundational skills assessment results for the total number of children at grade level and not just for those who wrote the exams.

The foundational skills assessment has been administered to children in grades 4 and 7 every year since 1999. It's designed to evaluate how well students are achieving basic reading, writing and numeracy skills and then to use that data to make plans to improve student achievement.

We agree that the FSA is an important tool for measuring individual and aggregate process and identifying needs. Measuring progress and identifying areas that require attention are specifically and especially important for vulnerable populations, including children in care, aboriginal children and children with special needs. However, there is a really disturbing trend towards less participation in the foundational skills assessment, and that trend is the most pronounced among the most vulnerable populations.

This graph just shows you the participation rates year upon year, and for the most vulnerable populations they've decreased significantly as they have decreased somewhat for the general population. The more vulnerable you are, the less likely you are to be taken into consideration in the measurement of the FSA assessment.

The second part of our recommendation on the FSA refers to the method used by the Ministry of Education to report on these results. Currently the ministry reports the percentage of students who meet or exceed provincial standards as the number of students in a grade who meet or exceed the standards, divided by the number of children enrolled, minus the children who are excused from assessment, not represented or have given no meaningful responses. This means that you're actually inflating the success rates.

We recommend that the denominator should include all children in the grade, and that's the method we have used. When you actually look at the difference between these two reporting rates — and this is for aboriginal children…. This is the current reporting, which would seem to show a slight improvement over time. This is if you report on all children, including those who didn't even participate, and you can see that a very different picture emerges. We think that if you're going to manage something, you need to be able to measure it. To measure it well, you need to include all children in your test.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Moving on to recommendation 4, which is on the evaluation of special needs resources. We recommended that MCFD, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health assess the adequacy and effectiveness of resources dedicated to the special needs of children in care, using a framework developed in conjunction with the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth. We have recommended that they report back on the results of this audit evaluation to the representative by June 30, 2008.

We know that the resources dedicated to children with special needs are substantial in British Columbia. In 2006-2007 MCFD will spend over $85 million on supports for children with special needs and another $34 million on supports for children with autism.

We estimate that the Ministry of Education spends $279 million on children with special needs — $48 million of that on children who were or had been in care. But we don't know whether the resources are being used in the most effective way to improve education and social outcomes for children with special needs, whether or not they are in care.

We have seen that the majority of children in care have been identified by the Ministry of Education as having special education needs — 61 percent by age 16 and 74 percent for boys in care, as shown in figure 5.

So there are important questions to ask on their behalf. In particular, the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth would like to know: are children with special needs receiving appropriate services

in and out of school? Who monitors their progress and sees that they are receiving the supports they need in and out of school? Are there proven services that should be provided to children with special needs? Can the resources available be used more effectively — that is, to produce better outcomes for children with special needs? Can resources be coordinated more effectively between and among the ministries?

To find answers I will be independently reviewing Community Living B.C. and federal spending on special needs for aboriginal children. I would also like to work with MCFD, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health to establish a framework for government to use in evaluating the resources dedicated to special needs children.

I would like to spend a moment on one of the more prevalent special needs categories among children in care. The health outcomes report issued in September showed that 65 percent of children and youth in care have been diagnosed at least once with a mental disorder, compared with 17 percent of the general population.

The education system has categorized 29 percent of school-age children in care as having special needs due to serious behavioral problems or serious mental illness. Given its prevalence among children in care, the behavioral and mental health special needs category is one that deserves coordinated cross-ministry attention and planning.

As recommended previously by the child and youth officer and the provincial health officer in the report that you have the executive summary of before you today, I would like to see MCFD use the child and youth mental health plan to review the way children in care are identified and treated for anxiety and depression disorders. I would also like to see a set of best practices developed and implemented to ensure that children in care are being diagnosed and treated promptly and appropriately.

The next recommendation is recommendation 5 regarding school moves. This is a three-part recommendation. When a child in care transfers from one school to another, we recommended that the Ministry of Education inform MCFD within 24 hours, that MCFD reduce the number of school moves for children in care, and that school boards mitigate the adverse effects of school moves by requiring that sending and receiving schools cooperate to support and assist the child when school moves are unavoidable.

Our report indicates that children in care are one and a half times more likely to change schools than the general population of school-aged children. The slide on the screen, slide 17 from the report, shows that by age 18, children in care have been in an average of almost 6.6 different schools. For the general population, the average is just under four.

We can expect to see at least three school moves for all children, given planned transitions between elementary, middle and high school. Unplanned moves for children in care are likely to be the result of their families moving, a change in foster homes or a transfer to an alternative school when regular school is not working for them.

We need to reduce the number of school moves for children in care. Many studies have shown that frequent school moves are associated with a higher probability of dropping out or poorer school attachment. New and important research, including research being conducted in British Columbia, emphasizes the importance of school engagement and school attachment in reducing dropout rates.

For children in care, a stable school environment may also provide a much-needed sense of belonging, support and community. In fact, when Dr. Kendall and I released this report publicly, we released it at the Hastings School in Vancouver, which is an example of a school that is very committed to attachment, outreach and support for vulnerable children. We specifically released it in that environment to shed light on some of the superb work that is being done, in that case by the Vancouver school board, through community schools initiative in that school.

The next recommendation, recommendation 6, is on joint education plans. We recommend that MCFD take the lead in ensuring that a shared education plan is jointly developed with the Ministry of Education for each child in care.

The development of each individualized plan should include the child's care providers, family members and support professionals. The plan should detail what specific supports will be available and who is accountable for providing them. MCFD should establish a monitoring mechanism to ensure that each child's plan is reviewed at least twice during the school year.

The two ministries should establish a protocol to ensure that MCFD receives the report cards for all children in care and is able to follow up with schools as required to ensure that children in care are meeting targets and expectations established by their plans. Where they are not, the ministry should address gaps at the individual and systemic level. For example, are there barriers preventing children from getting the supports identified in their education plans?

These recommendations, I think, are fairly self-explanatory. The Ministry of Education requires schools to develop individual education plans for all children with special needs. MCFD is required to identify and plan for the education needs of every child in care, but there is no formal mechanism to coordinate this planning.

We're recommending that that be changed. Education planning should also be more than just paperwork. Education planning speaks to the need mentioned earlier to attend to the well-being of children in care and their preparation for adult life.

In 2001 the B.C. Children's Commission found that only 29 percent of education plans for children in care were current and up to MCFD standards. I would hope that should we look into that again, there would be an improvement.

There should also be qualitative improvements to ensure that education planning for children in care is positive, identifying specific supports rather than

just diagnosing deficits; ongoing and goal-oriented, meaning directed toward education outcomes that will prepare children in care for their futures as independent, successful adults.

Next recommendation is recommendation 7 on aboriginal children in care. We recommend that the Ministry of Education, school boards, MCFD and aboriginal communities work together to devise a strategy using the enhancement agreements that now exist, which take into account the higher number of aboriginal children who have been in care.

That strategy should identify problem areas for children in care that need to be addressed, develop an action plan for addressing those problems and set out specific targets that measure improvements over the next five years.

Targets for aboriginal children in care should include a higher percentage with grade-appropriate reading, writing and numeracy skills and a higher graduation rate.

We know that at any given time, the majority of children in care are aboriginal. An October 2005 statistical snapshot shows us that one in seven aboriginal children between the ages of six and 18 had been in care at some point in his or her life. That compares with less than one in 50 non-aboriginal children. Slide 20, shown here, shows how many children in each age group have ever been in care as of October 2005.

MCFD numbers may even underestimate aboriginal children in care due to difficulties in identifying aboriginal children at intake. The one-in-seven number also fails to account for the large number of aboriginal children who are in alternative care arrangements such as kith-and-kin arrangements or the child in the home of a relative program, which is administered by the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance.

We have already mentioned that over 50 percent of children in care are aboriginal, but also 40 percent of the children in the home of a relative are aboriginal, and more than half of the children in kith-and-kin arrangements are aboriginal.

Adding up the numbers, we find that approximately 10.4 percent of B.C.'s aboriginal children are in some form of care. I'd like to note here from Rob McPhee's preliminary research that outcomes for children in alternative care arrangements closely parallel those of children in care. For example, whereas the graduation rate for children in care is about 20 percent, the rate for children in the home of a relative is about 38 percent — only marginally better.

The experience of being in care is one that profoundly affects aboriginal children and, because of the numbers, their communities. Knowing what we do about poor health and education outcomes for children in care, we should be alarmed, but education outcomes for aboriginal children in care are in fact worse than for non-aboriginal children in care.

The slide that's up now — slide 21 from the report — shows that compared to non-aboriginal children in care, aboriginal children in care have a lower graduation rate of only 16 percent, have poorer FSA scores, have even more school moves, and a small percentage more identify with special needs.

While we are encouraged by recent federal and provincial initiatives to improve aboriginal student achievement with achievement contracts, with aboriginal enhancement agreements and with the education jurisdiction framework agreement between first nations, B.C. and the federal government, we want to see those initiatives emphasize improving education outcomes for aboriginal children in care specifically.

The experience of being in care is so significant for this group of children and its impact on achievement is so great that effective strategies to improve education outcomes for aboriginal children and youth must address it.

In particular, we recommended that there be developed strategies to address the low graduation rate for aboriginal children in care, to increase the number of aboriginal children who meet grade-level standards in reading, writing and numeracy, and to address the cultural needs of aboriginal children in their education environments.

P. Kendall: Recommendation 8 is focused on aging-out issues. In the health report we found that the health problems of children in care didn't magically finish when they were age 19. They went on into their early adulthood and later adulthood as well.

Here we're recommending that MCFD provide financial and other supports for youth leaving continuing care at age 19 to assist with ongoing education, training, upgrading and life skills development, and that the Ministry of Advanced Education work with MCFD, the Ministry of Education and post-secondary institutions to reach out to attract and mentor youth from care. The goal should be to increase the number of youth both attending and successfully completing post-secondary educational programming.

Our findings, as I say, add support to the health outcomes recommendation for a cross-ministry plan to support youth leaving care. In our society most parents continue to provide emotional, practical and financial support to their children as they become adults. If we consider that youth leaving care have far fewer personal resources than most youth, are quite likely to have special needs including mental health needs and are quite unlikely to have graduated high school, we can see how important this is for this group. Yet their supports mostly disappear when they reach 19.

Increasing access to post-secondary education for youth leaving care will require that government fund non-financial supports within the community and at educational institutions. A cross-ministry plan for post-majority supports for youth leaving care is required to help youth leaving care successfully manage the transition to adulthood. Without these supports, accessing the opportunities for learning that are available is more difficult.

For example, the youth educational assistance fund, YEAF, is a joint Victoria Foundation and MCFD

program of bursaries administered by the Ministry of Advanced Education for youth aged 19 to 23 who have aged out or been adopted from continuing care and are enrolled full-time in a post-secondary program that will lead to a certificate, a diploma or a degree.

Since its inception in 2001, 340 youth have received post-secondary funding through this program. We're concerned that only a small percentage of youth leaving care can take advantage of this funding to pursue post-secondary education.

Between 2002 and 2006, only 7.5 percent of youth leaving care, between the ages of 19 and 34, received YEAF funding. This is a minute proportion of children who potentially could apply. Slide 23 shows what types of programs these youth registered for.

The issue of post-majority support is one factor influencing post-secondary participation rates of youth from care. Another is school achievement. The importance of educational planning, discussed in recommendation 6, is evident here. In order to raise rates of participation, we need to improve the skills development of children in care through the elementary and secondary years.

In addition to the FSA results we looked at earlier, our study compared the graduating GPAs of children in care with those of the general school population. We also looked at the mix of courses taken by the two groups of students.

We found that children in care who graduated from high school had grade point averages about a third to a half point below the general population, which translates to approximately a letter grade. Few children in care who graduate do so in an academic stream which prepares them for university. Just 7 percent of children in care were eligible for what is called an academic GPA, compared with almost 40 percent of the general population.

As we've already mentioned, the graduation rate for children in care is 21 percent. Indirectly, all of our other recommendations lead to the point of being able to prepare children in care for a better life as responsible adults. This brings us to our final recommendation, which Mary Ellen is going to present.

M. Turpel-Lafond: That's recommendation 9. This is on innovation. We recommend that the Ministry of Education pilot and evaluate a number of innovative programs to support better educational outcomes for children in care and, by extension, other vulnerable children. For all children and youth in care, it's time, in our view, to try something different.

As I said earlier, B.C. has one of the best education systems in Canada and in the world, but the experience of being in care and the circumstances that cause children to come into care are difficult ones. We might expect those experiences to give children in care different needs when it comes to education.

The question we have to ask now is: what can we do differently to help them succeed? Programs to improve education outcomes are available for every age and level, from pre-kindergarten to high school completion. Initiatives that have been proposed and tried in various jurisdictions include intensive preschool and full-day kindergarten. Some are enrichment programs, dropout prevention programs with specialist teachers for at-risk youth, culturally sensitive parent outreach to show parents how they can support their adolescent children in school, and community programming such as school-to-work programs.

There is no shortage of possibilities, but we need to evaluate how well these programs work, keeping in mind that as the educational risk factors are varied, the interventions that work will likely be mixed as well.

As an addendum I would like to speak to the parallel group, which is the group of children in the home of a relative, to just highlight — in light of some of the comments we've made around our findings and recommendations — how some of them may or may not be applicable to this other group of children. The separate handout that we provided to you on education outcomes of children in the home of a relative — I would just propose to very briefly highlight a few points in that.

First of all, a point of background. The children in the home of a relative program was originally delivered by the Ministry of Social Services until the ministry was split into MEIA and MCFD. When it was split, it went to MEIA and became an income-support-oriented program.

All other programs for children, except for children in the home of a relative, became the responsibility of MCFD. The CIHR program is designed to assist families where there are no prior child protection concerns. Although there is no income or asset eligibility test, most caregivers are low income. MEIA does not assess the suitability of the care provider or assess whether the placement is in the best interests of the child. MEIA's role is strictly financial.

In terms of the CIHR numbers in British Columbia, the current caseload is 4,700 — so 4,700 children — and 72 percent of the CIHR children come from families that have been on income assistance. There are approximately 14,000 children in care in a kith-and-kin agreement or in the home of a relative in B.C. in any given month. Of those, 6,700 are aboriginal children.

This is quite a significant finding, when you look at the entire province, in all of the areas. One in ten aboriginal children does not live with their parents in any given month. Less than one in a hundred non-aboriginal children does not live with their parents in any given month.

You can see the table breaking down these numbers. The number of children in kith-and-kin arrangements is 70 in British Columbia.

Next page, the education characteristics: 55 percent of the children in the home with a relative never make it to grade 12. You can see the difference between the children in the home of the relative and the children in care. It's almost an exact mirror, whereas across the population it's only 12 percent.

Only 30 percent graduate from high school. So that's a slight improvement — a 9-percent improvement over the rates for children in care — but still a

Forty percent are aboriginal — slightly lower than the numbers of children in care but still a substantial number. Fifty-five percent of children in the home of a relative have been identified with special needs.

Again what is interesting in the findings for children in the home with a relative is that the very similar special needs categories are present. The predominant special needs category for children in the home with a relative is the intensive behaviour intervention/serious mental illness category. That's almost 26 percent, compared to 30 percent of the children in care. Moderate behavioral support/mental illness is the second-largest, at 12 percent. So it tracks quite closely the characteristics of children in care.

Children in the home with a relative struggle in many similar ways as children in care with reading, writing and numeracy. In the grade 7 snapshot on the FSAs, 46 percent of children in the home with a relative met expectations on the numeracy component of the foundation skills assessment, in contrast to 37 percent of the children in care and in contrast, then, to 74 percent of all the children in British Columbia.

There is a similar gap for reading in grade 7. Forty-three percent of the children in the home with a relative met expectations for reading, in contrast to 38 percent of children in care, contrasted out with 70 percent in the general population.

You can see in the tables that we've provided — tables on special needs categories; numeracy, grade 4; reading, grade 4; and writing, grade 4 — that there is some very similar tracking going into 4 and 7 for characteristics of children in the home with a relative and children in care.

We just raise that as an addendum because the original report did not capture this group of, say, 4,700 children today and didn't study them over the entire period of time. We thought it would be of interest to look at them. We can see that probably many of the children and their vulnerabilities, having tracked the vulnerabilities of the children in care, would benefit from some of the recommendations. Exactly how that would happen is something that we haven't presented for you today, but we're reflecting upon.

P. Kendall: If I could just make one final comment to sum up. These children — children in care, children in the home of relatives — spend a significant amount of time in school. One thing the study shows is that despite difficulties, almost three-quarters of them will spend 12 years in school.

They may not graduate. They may not reach grade 12, but they are there as a captive population. I think we have an opportunity to ensure that we make the best of those 12 years for those children, to give them as much help as we can, tailored to their individual needs, before they leave that opportunity. That, I think, is the purpose of our recommendations as a whole.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you very much — a report very well presented. Much, much information for all of us to absorb. We now, of course, open the floor to questions.

N. Simons: My first question is just to clarify. When you talk about aboriginal children, can you give us a breakdown on what percentage are represented by first nations with delegated authority versus what aboriginal children off reserve…? Essentially, what is the breakdown with on-reserve, off-reserve children for CIHR and other forms of care?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I'll attempt to answer, and I'll ask Rob to correct this in case I'm inaccurate.

We can't break it down by which delegated agency. We can do it by region. In terms of who carries responsibility for the children, that's another piece of work that can be done. But knowing the school districts in which the children are in provides us…. Their request to have MCFD identify the school districts within which they're in gives us an idea of where they're located.

In terms of on and off reserve, the majority are off reserve. With respect to the aboriginal status — if they're first nations, Métis or Inuit — the data suggest that the majority are first nations.

N. Simons: Can I just follow up with that? I don't know. Officially for children in care and continuing care, I think that something like 87 or 90 percent are represented by bands that do have delegated authority. With that in mind and with the comments of the Attorney General that representative's authority may not in fact include first nations programs, I think we have a potential jurisdictional issue to deal with, especially if we're going to be dealing with cross-ministerial cooperation. We need to make sure that we have cross-jurisdictional representation as well.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Just in response to that, in preparing the report, Dr. Kendall and I have had an opportunity to consult with and engage the First Nations Education Secretariat, for example, and spent quite a bit of time working on that. I think that's a very significant body as part of the First Nations Summit that's working on education.

They have endorsed the report, if you like, and endorsed the recommendations and support it. In particular, they've been supportive on the issue of data, because there are some suggestions that perhaps this data may be problematic or may not be conducive to solutions. They've been very supportive of data and to understand where the children are and how they're doing and how their education outcomes are supported by current programs or not.

The point that you raised, though. One jurisdiction that obviously we can't intrude upon — we can only reflect upon it — is the federal component. But the Ministry of Education, through the tripartite agreement and so on, is certainly able to engage on those issues.

M. Karagianis: I have three questions. Maybe I'll present all three questions and then give you a chance to answer each of them.

My first question is with regard to recommendation 8, where you actually talk about children in care making the transition to adulthood. But I didn't hear any mention of the number of children living on youth agreements. That is an area that probably bears some examination.

Children as young as 15 are now living on youth agreements. It would be interesting to see what their education and health outcomes are, both in the years prior to the transition to adulthood and, of course, post-majority.

In addition, I know when you talk about the recommendations here…. Looking at the kind of support systems, you don't include housing in that. I would suggest that housing is another fundamental aspect of looking at the overall security for youth, especially for those in youth agreements and in the post-majority situations and their ability to then move on to post-secondary education.

My second question is with regard to children in the home of a relative. I'm actually really happy to see this particular group of children included in your considerations and, in particular, your comment here that MEIA does not assess suitability of the care provider or assess whether placement is in the best interests of the child and, therefore, doesn't quantify outcomes for those children.

Is there any consideration of making recommendations about children in the home of a relative being moved back into the care and responsibility of MCFD?

My third question is with regard to resourcing. Certainly, I think the report is excellent, and you make a series of really excellent and supportable recommendations. But many of them look at additional resources for the ministries involved — the Education Ministry and MCFD. As budgets are already set and approved only just in the past couple of weeks, what impact do your recommendations have on budgets and resources, especially given some of the time lines that you've indicated you'd like to try and meet — as early as September '07 for some recommendation responses? Maybe you could comment on all of those.

First question, with respect to youth agreements. The data — the 32,000 children looked at over approximately a decade — didn't break down the children in terms of whether or not they were on independent living arrangements, because some of those policies are of more recent orientation. So we couldn't look at this entire cohort through that lens. But certainly it is a matter of interest to the representative's office to look at the independent living arrangements and how they may encourage or create incentives or disincentives to school attachment. I think that's an important area.

The one significant finding in the report, though, is again the cumulative effect of the education difficulties for children in care. They may demonstrate some very significant education deficits in grade 9. If they are in independent living arrangements without support to encourage school attachment, it will be very difficult to overcome those deficits. That is a concern.

I think that the proposal to move forward on the recommendations, perhaps through the creation of a working group with the ministries and our office, would allow us to certainly put this forward, to say: how does this factor into school attachment, completion and supports for children in care?

On the second issue, with respect to housing, a couple of points. One is that the nine recommendations that were made in this study were recommendations we felt — and Dr. Kendall can speak to this himself…. We were very clear that we wanted our recommendations to be driven by the data in this report. It is entirely conceivable that from a social policy perspective, the ministry and others could come before the committee and say: "Well, a best way to improve outcomes of kids in care is that there be permanency planning, that they have better housing, that low-income families be supported differently." All of those are open, if you like. We're certainly not saying that's not significant or that's not important.

What we tried to do, though, is take our recommendations from the data that we analyzed. Now, whether it will suggest other types of policy review…. We're certainly encouraging that. But permanency planning and family stability…. These things are all correlated to good outcomes. The nine recommendations we tried to frame, I guess, as narrowly as possible based on the data.

The third question, around children in the home of a relative. A couple of points. With respect to the representative's office, the authority to review children in the home of a relative as a program under the act requires a regulation, and that regulation is nearly complete.

The issue of the program is one that I understand is under review. Our office is looking at it carefully, because it is 4,700 children and so on. I won't go into a lot of detail today, except to say that clearly the vulnerabilities are there, and I think there is some work that can be done. I think there is some work that's being done, but I wouldn't want to report on that because I haven't got a complete picture of the work that's being done on it — for instance, within the government of British Columbia. I know there is work being done on it.

The final question, which was about budgets and resources and so forth. Again, our recommendations were fairly confined. As we prepared the report, we have had an opportunity to brief ministries in advance of the release of our report — brief ministers, brief the executive team from ministries to allow them to reflect. Do they embrace the recommendations? Are they workable, and what would be the implications for them?

I can certainly itemize for you that the work…. On that point, we've had very positive opportunities to do that. I guess the language is that the report is workable. The recommendations are workable, and they will be carried forward.

Some very specific recommendations, like the one for September 2007 and the one for October 2007…. Those are tight time lines. But it's really a data

exchange, and the database exists. The challenge was whether the ministries can share a database.

One of the reasons why I've filed with you the letter from the Information and Privacy Commissioner is that there was a sense that perhaps this can't be done. Clearly, it can be done. It's not an enormous piece of work to do it, because it's linking data sets.

The education planning and other activities require some reorientation within the ministry to put an emphasis on the education outcomes of children in care. We haven't broken down what the implications are. I think that would be the responsibility of ministries in responding to it.

P. Kendall: If I can make just a short, friendly addition to that. If we look at the money that's spent between the Ministries of Education and Children and Family Development on special needs, it looks like it's close to $400 million in a year. We don't really know if that is being spent as effectively as it might be on best-practice programs to address those children's needs or the needs of vulnerable children.

It may cost something to find that out, but I think it would be a worthwhile exercise. There's some evidence that some of it is spent well-intentionally in reducing school classroom size, for example, but that may not actually address the needs of kids sitting within a smaller group who aren't getting their needs attended to.

M. Polak: First let me say that I'm really glad to see the emphasis on moving forward with an expansion of the use of the early development instrument. In education there has tended to be a focus on the more substantial, full battery of psychoeducational testing, which really slows down the process of what you want, which is an initial identification that says: "We need to do something. We need to intervene."

I wanted to ask a little bit about the method used to identify, first of all, aboriginal students and, secondly, those who are special needs. The background I will provide is this. I'm aware — for example, during my time in a school district — that although the intentions were very good around developing a means of identifying aboriginal students, the implementation was less than stellar. The question asked when students enrolled was: "Do you have any aboriginal heritage?"

As an example, my own child, when she was enrolled in school…. Well, we answered yes because way, way back in the family tree there had been a person of aboriginal ancestry, but it was so far removed and so slight in our family that certainly one wouldn't have considered her as part of this data set. Nevertheless, she would have been reported that way.

It was quite common, because of the self-identification aspect and because of the criteria being provided to parents on which to make that decision. That's the first question.

With regard to special needs, I'm aware, from the same sorts of experiences, that that has trended up, down and all sorts of different ways, very often dependent upon the method the ministry is using to determine funding levels. Some of that, I suppose, is human nature.

If a district is looking to qualify for greater funding, they're going to find, or maybe be more flexible with respect to, definitions. But for our purposes, the identification of those individuals becomes critically important when we're wanting to target resources to them and not dilute the resources across a less vulnerable population.

I wonder if you might comment on that and any discussions that you've had with districts or with the ministry around identification.

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, on identification, the impression certainly is that the self-identification process…. Is it the most rigorous process? No, but it really isn't a bad process. There are very small numbers that identify but don't have a strong ongoing aboriginal kinship attachment.

Also, on the school registration, there is a requirement — particularly for those who have Indian status, whether they are on or off reserve — to provide proof of status. I know that copies of a certificate of Indian status are provided for children. I mean, they're not registered. They don't have it. But it is required, and it is submitted.

I think that the categorization…. There is an element of self-identification, but I don't think it presents and skews the issues at all.

M. Turpel-Lafond: No. It's very minor. There would be some minor aspects. If anything, the concern would be more that it's not comprehensive enough. It's under-inclusive rather than over-inclusive when you look at it. That's one point.

The issue around special needs. I think what Dr. Kendall and certainly our findings indicated was the concern about the envelope. There is an envelope that's quite significant in British Columbia — compared, say, to other provinces and territories — around special needs. But not having a complete understanding, at this point, of how that envelope translates into supports for these children….

I think your observations are extremely astute because while our recommendations are to the ministries, much of the funding and supports to children come through a process of school boards, principals, teachers and classrooms. We are making recommendations to the ministries, particularly the Ministry of Education, but you'll also note that some of our recommendations go to school boards. The ongoing work that is required is work that needs to trickle right down into the classroom setting.

A school knows that a child in care is coming into the school — what their needs will be, additional efforts at school attachment and school support. The

child might be traumatized in some form. To what extent can the teacher and class respond appropriately to that?

Getting over privacy and information issues but also allowing people at the street level of the education system to do support…. We don't know all of the reasons why, but there is another very good success story. A number of years ago the Ministry of Education did a report on aboriginal education — How Are We Doing? — which found some very deplorable graduation rates.

They developed greater awareness, targeting aboriginal students as a designated group to report on, and so on, and raised the profile of the issue within the school system throughout British Columbia, and graduation rates actually went up. There has been a steady increase. There could be a variety of factors, but at least the identification, the targeting, the priority…. These mechanisms appear to have had a significant impact. We can't say with certainty what happened, but the focus of attention on it by first nations, the ministry, school boards, teachers and others has had a very significant impact.

What we are proposing in a way with the report is to say, particularly for the aboriginal children: "Let's take that group and make sure that children in care are specifically understood in that group as having unique needs and circumstances." There is a bit of a story that has happened in British Columbia that is very positive and that we can learn from here.

M. Polak: Two quick other ones — at least, I hope they're quick. I'm not sure which slide. It's page one of the list anyway. It says that there are increasingly fewer benchmarks for vulnerable children.

Why is that? I would think that with all the attention toward early childhood education and all the rest of it, we'd be seeing a larger number of benchmarks.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Two reasons. One, the EDI is not mandated, and it's on a cycle, so that's a benchmark. It's a very significant benchmark to know about these five varied aspects of school readiness and so forth — not just school readiness but early childhood development. So having a mandated tool is a really important way.

The difficulty that we've articulated in the study is the fact that the children in care are excluded from FSAs through various processes. It is significant that FSAs be comprehensive, that all children participate and that children are not excused through informal mechanisms from FSAs, particularly vulnerable children like children in care.

M. Polak: Lastly, in recommendation 6 you say that the Ministry of Children and Family Development should lead in developing a common education plan for each child in care. You've used the term "lead," but would you see that as being more of a collaborative affair? I ask it thinking back to a time when there used to be a requirement — and I guess it was a means of getting to this — that before a child began to receive service, they had to have sign-off from — tick the little box — this ministry or that ministry. There were oftentimes delays just because you didn't have the right people signing off.

I'm just looking for some clarification as to the role of MCFD, given that it is, up until now, primarily something that develops within a classroom situation between parent or caregiver and teacher, etc.

M. Turpel-Lafond: A couple of points there in terms of the framing of the recommendations. Generally, the philosophy behind the recommendations is that there was a time where the government responsibility for children in care was perceived more as: "We will provide a shirt on your back; we will provide a roof over your head." That was a philosophy for a long period of time in this area.

The reports on the needs of these children suggest that a very significant part of preparing them to do well and their children to do well is to take care of things other than just the shirt and the roof, and that would include education. In many respects, the way child protection and other services are delivered may need to be re-evaluated, and I think that came out of the Hughes review.

To operationalize this within the ministry…. These are matters that we will hope to collaborate on closely with the ministry in the months ahead, and I certainly would encourage you to invite them to respond to the report and speak to you directly about it. It's things like: how do you create incentives for foster parents to make this a priority? The agreements with foster parents — whether they be emergency, temporary, ongoing, going into adoption and so forth…. To what extent are education supports to the children built into that structure?

Certainly on a more anecdotal basis, I can say that in meeting in my role with foster parents, many I've had the opportunity to speak with around advocacy or around these issues have suggested to me that they never made a priority on education because they were never certain if they could or could not. They may have a child for a few months and be told, "Well, you only have this child for a few months," and then it turns out to be a year. Then it turns out to be five years, but they never engaged because they didn't know what role they'd play.

The ministry, of course, contracts through to the foster parents, if you like, and then they provide the supports. But as I say, it's not just the clothes and the roof. There's another component to it.

What Dr. Kendall and I are proposing is that we get away from the old model and into a new model, which is a population health model, which is supporting them. But if we do that, we quite possibly support other vulnerable children that may not be in care in the system but could also be caught and benefit from this. The way in which the relationships exist for people who are paid to care for children can be built with strong incentives to support their education. That requires focus — whether it be a plan, better attention to things like permanency and support and some sight-

I think your point is very well taken that, as you said, it's a collaborative affair. It is very much a collaborative affair. The foster parents would have to be a part of that collaboration as well, if you knew you had a stable placement. If you had an emergency placement or, in some of the cases of these children, ten or 11 placements, it becomes very challenging to plan.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Thank you to the presenters this morning. Some of the things I'm going to say may seem somewhat provocative this morning, but that's because I see my duty to get the questions answered that many of my constituents ask from time to time.

One of the things that I think is important in this, and I'm wondering if you can respond…. There are essentially two reasons why children go into care, as I see it. They go into care because their parents can't care for them, or those children are difficult in nature and their parents don't feel they can care for them in a sense. I mean, there's almost a voluntary and involuntary delivery.

I'm just wondering if you have any idea of what the numbers are in terms of the children in care in B.C. Are they there because the ministry has determined their parents can't parent, or are they there because their parents are acknowledging that this child may be suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or some kind of issue like that?

M. Turpel-Lafond: It's very difficult to generalize at this point. I would suggest that family breakdown is a primary reason. Family breakdown may be related to a number of issues: addictions, other questions that exist within a family.

In terms of the abuse that children may experience which leads them to be taken into care, the newer approaches to child protection that are being evaluated in British Columbia are matters that we are looking at within my office — the early development response model and so on. All of these things that can give us some insight into: are there patterns around children…? Certainly, there has to be fairly clearly demonstrated abuse for children to be taken into care temporarily — or, of course, into more continuing care.

The numbers of children that would be, in effect, given to the state because the parents are overwhelmed by the children would be a very small group.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): The reason I raise that issue is because it seems to me that if we focus on a solution aimed at the child when in fact the issue is the home…. This comes back to the point raised by my colleague Ms. Karagianis. It's around housing. It's around all of those things.

The other issue that you mentioned this morning and which I'm very conscious of, having practised in this area, is the number of times that children are apprehended and the lack of continuity in care for them. They are in several foster homes. They're in and out of their parental homes. A number of my constituents have said: should we be talking about institutional settings or staff-run facilities as opposed to the situation now where so many children are moved around and around? There's no continuity; there is no care.

Are there any studies to indicate whether that makes more sense in some cases than others? I have seen some awful cases where children don't know from pillar to post, from day to day almost, where they're going, who cares for them, who loves them, who the social worker is, what home they're going to be in, what school they're going to be in. It's back and forth all the time.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think that some things are quite telling. These are broader issues.

The issues with respect to aboriginal children in care and the profound numbers like one in ten aboriginal children are not with their parents are very significant. If we just look at Vancouver Island as an example, there are a little bit more than 1,000 children in care. There are close to 1,200 children in the home of a relative on Vancouver Island, and there are ten children in kith-and-kin.

With respect to aboriginal children, if there are some goals to build aboriginal community supports and keep family connections and so on, the data itself would suggest to us that there could be some challenges there because here's a device that's really not being engaged for whatever reason. We're certainly interested in finding out what those reasons are.

The report, again, was intentionally focused on nine recommendations that can be supported by the evidence. Broader issues are broader issues that our office is certainly looking at over a multi-year plan, but preventing children from coming into care in the first place is a great way to support their education outcomes.

However, if the prevention plan is to place them in the home of a relative and not bring them into the system, there may be some concerns as well. What is prevention? Is prevention just placing them with a relative but not providing supports? We're not sure. I think we have to evaluate that from another perspective, around what supports the well-being of children.

Again, I come back to the point that, for instance, early childhood education, early childhood supports catch not only these children but other children. There are other benefits to other children that may not come into care but have similar vulnerabilities too.

P. Kendall: If I could just add to that as well. In the first report on health and well-being we put even more emphasis on the primary prevention in the early childhood years. Supporting any parent in community is improving the lot of all children and hopefully reducing the number of vulnerable children who subsequently come into care. So we do recognize that.

We were again focusing on analyzing the administrative data sets to show that by using these data sets

the current people who are managing the system have a wealth of information there with which to plan, just even within that limited box.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): With respect to the children in care with special needs, the number indicated that 61 percent of children have been identified with special needs by the age of 16 and that while the most common special needs category for the general school-age population is the gifted category, the most common special needs category for children in care is intensive behaviour intervention/serious mental illness.

What are the numbers around what is referred to as behavioural intervention versus serious mental illness? There is some evidence now that we're overmedicating children who in my generation just would have been called "bad kids" and who would have gotten through the stage without that kind of intervention.

We now know that there are other medical impacts of the medications we've given children. We know that perhaps there's a relationship between increased childhood asthma or adult asthma and the prescription of antibiotics. There are a number of things.

I know that I'm putting you on the spot in some sense today. But as I said way back when with this committee, I think we have an opportunity to do something important here, and I'd like to provoke a lot of discussion that applies not just to your office but across the ministries.

When we're talking about that, again, do you have some concept of how many are serious mental illness? Is that best dealt with in an institutional setting? Is it best dealt with in the home? Is it best dealt with by increasing supports for mental health? I mean, how does this work?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think it's important. I think Dr. Kendall can speak a bit more to this. I wasn't here, but unfortunately, we didn't have the advantage of this committee when the health outcomes report came. I know there was a recent report in Ontario that looked at psychotropic medication on kids in care. In fact, the health outcomes report that was issued in September probably has the best data in Canada on that point. It shows that there is dramatic use of psychotropic meds for kids in care in British Columbia.

The concern is, of course, whether the psychotropic medications are being used as a crutch to help the children and the adults that support them through the system or if it really is going to address their issues around well-being. There are the issues that Dr. Kendall can speak to about the impact of psychotropic medication on a developing child, on their physiology and how it may affect them in the long term. Those are obviously concerns.

The core relation between prescribing psychotropic medication to allow the child to sit still in school or what have you: is that an effective strategy? Will that promote good outcomes? Will that promote learning? These are unknowns, but these are very significant points that must be evaluated.

The data is good in British Columbia. The questions are relatively new. But even permitting, as I said earlier, people to focus on what is the educational plan of this child…. What is a serious mental illness? It might be post-traumatic stress. A child may have observed a very heinous crime in the home and been removed. The child's serious mental illness may be post-traumatic stress. How that is responded to will have a very significant impact on that child's life. If it isn't treated, it will have a significant impact. If it is, it could have a very positive impact.

That's the whole point. This is not being looked at in terms of how is their health outcome and how is their education outcome. It was looked at more historically from the shirt-and-roof approach. What we're suggesting is that there certainly are opportunities in British Columbia, even with some immediate steps, to allow us to look at it and perhaps learn something about this.

In developing an education plan and looking at this, we certainly need to look at the intersection between the health status of a child and their education readiness and capacity. Those are not linked. A child in care may have a health issue but require a very long period before they can get diagnosed. That will be a concern. Can we improve that?

I think these are very linked issues, but in order to move them forward, we have to break them down into pieces that can be collaboratively addressed.

P. Kendall: I don't have a lot to add to that. Obviously, there are overlapping children with concurrent disorders.

The other thing we found was that the frequency or the prevalence of these disorders increases with age. Certainly, in the previous report…. Mental health issues, suicide attempts really peak around age 15 or 16, as does the prescription of medications.

This is similar. We've got a comprehensive picture of all children in care. In Ontario they just did a random sample of five Children's Aid Societies and found the same thing. I think it's going to be the topic of a national forum of child protection officers in the fall.

We do have resources, researchers here. One of the recommendations in last year's report was that the ministries could work with these mental health researchers to actually do some of this investigation, tease out some of the numbers, look at best practices and see whether or not their treatments are appropriate.

I think there's a general sense that for children in general, there may even be some under-ascertainment, and their needs aren't being met. Whether this higher use in these kids reflects a genuine need or whether it reflects chemical restraints in the classroom, it's really difficult to say with the data we have, but it's something that could be determined. We could come to know that.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): If the Chair will indulge me one more time. We know that the majority of children in care are aboriginal. This sort of follows on what Nicholas had to say. Do we have any concept of how many are coming from reserve as opposed to off reserve?

M. Turpel-Lafond: We do, and I can certainly provide further information for you to break that down if you'd like to see it. These are moving matters, but we can see that. The study here was on 32,000 children in care over a long period of time. But on a daily, monthly snapshot, yes, you can certainly identify that.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): The reason I raise the issue is because it seems to me that some of the recommendations, or the approach to the solutions, will obviously be different. Having been raised in a very small community myself, which was fairly stable, certainly in those days…. Fortunately or unfortunately, reserves are like that to some extent, and those aboriginals living off reserve live in a very different kind of community — if it's in Vancouver or wherever.

I just want to hear your response to what solutions you think will work best in those given situations.

M. Turpel-Lafond: That's a very large question, but it's a significant question. It's a significant question for the office of the representative, because it's a point that comes clearly from the Hughes review, which was that we have to look at this and do better. But again, as I indicated earlier from the Hughes review, better research may provide some illuminating things. Certainly, the data has illuminated some matters.

In terms of new arrangements that might be put in place — prevention services, other things that could be put in place — the primary issue from the representative's office is that whatever the program, whatever the thought of how to address the issues for aboriginal children, the focus of our office is going to be on how those children are doing and demonstrating if they're being supported and improved. We can build all kinds of arks, if you like, but that doesn't mean you're going to escape the flood.

The point is: how are the children doing, and are they improved? The focus of our office is child-focused, meaning that it's not designed to serve whatever other exigencies might be out there. It's designed to see how the children can be doing better.

If there is an initiative that's being promoted, under whatever auspices, to change how services are delivered, I think we're fairly agnostic about that. But what we need to be very insistent on is seeing if that is improving the situation for children. If it isn't improving the situation for children, then we need to evaluate it or we need to learn how we can have it improve. That's fundamentally the philosophy of the work we're doing.

In terms of the research agenda and this report and the other two reports that will come before you, it's to really give us the picture of: are children being served? I think that the overwhelming message of this report is that we have grave concerns about how the education needs of these children are being met. Those grave concerns that we have are actually shared by many people in government, out of government, in the community, in the aboriginal community, and so on.

The point is: how do we address it? I think that is a more complicated matter, but we need to address it in a way that we'll have evidence and data to demonstrate if there are improvements. We need to see that they're doing better. We need to assure ourselves that if there are, say, psychotropic medications being prescribed, those are medically necessary and they're not way off the scale of what they would be in any other population.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): I want to thank you for answering my fairly big-topic questions. I do that only because I think the committee that hired you has great expectations, not that we wish to place unnecessary fear or burden on your shoulders to remind you of that. You are in a unique position in a unique office. The opportunity, I think, to do some wonderful things is there. That's why I will continue to ask those bigger questions — because I'd like to think this committee has a broader view than other committees that have been appointed historically.

There are significant problems out there amongst British Columbia's children. As someone who has seen the results, through the legal system in particular, of children who end up there, as opposed to leading fruitful and productive and happy lives, I would like us in this time of prosperity to seize the opportunity to perhaps create a generation of British Columbia children who have a far greater possibility of succeeding in life than there has been in the past.

I want to thank you this morning, and I look forward to working with you in the future on this.

J. Brar: Thanks for the meaningful presentations. I have a few questions — the questions have been asked before and partly answered — which are related to the implementation as well as, probably, to the recommendations. It could be a gap, or it could be part of the recommendations that I didn't hear.

The first one is about human resources. You mentioned short-term recommendations — putting together some information. You also mentioned that you met the particular ministries responsible for that. I would like to hear from you whether those ministries have the capacity to provide that information in that time frame.

M. Turpel-Lafond: The indication I have at this point is that they do. In terms of knowing the number of children in care that are in school or not in school and the school districts that they're in, my understanding is that that is a fairly simple data exercise.

Issues like 24-hour notice of a school move — that's another matter that they're evaluating. My understanding is that the first demand we placed on them, if you like, in the recommendations was one that we were mindful of their capacity to respond to. I think that it would certainly be up to you as a committee to have them indicate to you if you wish to hear from them directly around that.

I know that the ministries are formulating their response to the report. At the same time, we are working with them and trying to assist. Their initial concern

was that this is a privacy and information issue, but that has now been allayed.

J. Brar: A few more questions. As you mentioned, over 50 percent of the children in care are from the aboriginal community. I strongly believe that in order to get positive outcomes, which we want to achieve here by implementing the recommendations we have, we must have a staff which is reflective of the community where the children are coming from.

I didn't hear what the gap is at this point in time. If it's a huge gap, how are we going to address that, and who is going to address that? It's not part of your recommendations here. Do you see it as your role to ensure that the staff is reflective of the community the children are coming from, particularly the aboriginal community?

M. Turpel-Lafond: That's another issue, but I think it's a significant issue, which is the workforce — the extent to which aboriginal social workers and others have been engaged in this initiative to support aboriginal children.

There is a very significant process now of engagement around the new relationship, reconciliation, coming into the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Funding and support, as I can see it…. Again, I'm not presenting a final report, but my cursory review of it is that there has been substantial support given to training programs, e-learning programs to get more aboriginal people trained and engaged in the process. They're not there yet by any means, but there are some very significant initiatives to do that.

The challenge exists with creation of new regional authorities, like the Vancouver Island aboriginal transition authority that was officially announced last week. There are demands. I mean, transition authorities will have demands on the same personnel as perhaps MCFD and others, but I think that there certainly is a trend. The trend is upward; it's increasing.

I think it is quite significant that everyone, no matter what cultural, linguistic or other background they have in British Columbia, can have a good understanding of the needs of aboriginal children so that more aboriginal people are engaged in the system and are involved in providing prevention supports and so on, but also so that all people understand better the challenges the aboriginal community has experienced with respect to the breakdown of their families and their communities. There has to be anti-racism education in the schools so that the children who do come in don't have issues with racism. I mean, that's got to be right across the system.

There are things off the corner of this report that are very important, that are ongoing. There are many initiatives that are ongoing in that regard. Certainly, we're very supportive of that, and I think that's all part of it, but it doesn't matter what the background of someone is inside the school system. They can understand and support an aboriginal child as well as they can support any other child, provided that they are trained, supported and given information.

If they don't know that these children are in care or what have you, they can't respond to it. They need support, as well, to do it. My indication, in speaking with front-line people in the education system, is that they're very willing to do that and very supportive of that.

J. Brar: I'm asking you this question out of my personal experience. My sister-in-law is a foster parent. She has been in that position now for almost five, six years. One of the children who was placed in her home was from a community which I belong to, from the Punjabi-speaking community.

The most difficult child for her was that child, partly because she understands that culture very well. With the perspective the child had of foster parents and the attachment the child had for her grandmother, it was very, very difficult for the ministry to deal with that child, as compared to other children — which I observed at that time.

At this point in time, if you can mention that…. Is there any gap or are there any targets to achieve of numbers of people from the aboriginal community? Do we have any targets?

M. Turpel-Lafond: There were some targets set with respect to recruitment, for instance, of social workers and so on. Whether or not those are met…. I can't report back to you about that at this point. It's something that we have a strong interest in but that we don't have an accurate read on. Because of who's employed by the ministry, an agency delegated by the ministry or now a Crown corp, it's difficult to tell exactly what category people are in. But it's something that we can report back to you on.

The foundational point, I guess, that we're making is: it's important that the community that serves children be representative of the children served, but also that anyone should be able to support, with appropriate training, the needs of the children.

J. Brar: My second question. If we look not from the expert opinion but from a commonsense point of view, the children fail in the system because they're not with their natural parents. They're placed into a foster care home or a kith-and-kin situation, so there's a gap of care between the foster parents and the natural parents. There is a gap. How big that gap is, I don't know. How can we narrow it, bring it down? I think that is the philosophical goal — to make these kids succeed in the system.

Having said that, in these reports or in your vision, what do you plan to do to basically make the foster parents very close to the natural parents? One of the incentives, I think, which we can use, particularly when we talk about academic achievements, is a financial incentive to those parents for kids going up in grades. Is there anything you guys have in mind?

M. Turpel-Lafond: There are a number of programs that exist in British Columbia. One that I can just speak of a bit is called the Seventh Generation Club. It's an aboriginal-based program that was set up by the First Nations Education Secretariat. It is a club for children that are in school, and then there's a separate club for parents. Children earn points and awards for good school attendance, and the parents earn awards and recognition if their children go to school and have good school attendance. The whole model is on creating incentives and rewarding both parents and children for getting the kids to school.

Does that apply to foster parents? No, not necessarily, but there's a very interesting extension of it. And can it? I think that creating incentives — this is significant, and rewarding it — is quite possible. But it has to be raised as a very significant issue, to say: "In terms of the well-being of a child, we want them to be school-ready." At the same time, we want the schools to be able to encourage their attachment and support as well.

Creating incentives across the system for the children to do better may, in and of itself, have a very positive impact. We have to then evaluate that and think: what are the incentives? On the other side, the bigger concern is: are there disincentives now for foster parents to emphasize academic achievement for children?

J. Brar: One of the challenges which I see foster parents facing, when it comes to the proper care of kids — you mentioned that — is the placement of the children — right? It's almost uncertain all the time. They don't know what to do next. How long will that be? All that kind of stuff. I think that the longer the placement is, the better the outcome should be. Is there anything in these recommendations which is towards that?

M. Turpel-Lafond: We didn't feel it was appropriate, based on the data that was analyzed here, to make recommendations around permanency planning because those recommendations don't flow specifically from this data. From an integrity perspective — I'll let Dr. Kendall speak to this on his own — when a report is prepared based on a pool of data, I think it's only defensible if the recommendations come from the data.

Now, on the issue of permanency planning, I would say that this study doesn't jump out and say that you must do that. Clearly, taken from a more holistic perspective — the health study and so on — permanency planning for children is a very significant issue to support their well-being, with that permanency planning also including adequate supports within the arrangement. For aboriginal children, permanency planning within a kinship community base could be a very significant support to break some of the trends.

At this point, I can't with confidence say that it should be X, Y, Z, because we don't have that level. But we certainly can, coming out of the Hughes review, say: what initiatives are underway to promote permanency planning? Are they effective, etc.? When I look at kith-and-kin numbers, as a form of permanency planning or stable planning for aboriginal children, the numbers are so low. There are less than a hundred for the entire province.

If that was a technique that was devised, it certainly isn't being used. I'm not quite entirely sure why. On this side the evidence is that the children should be placed with kin and then supported so that they don't have the cultural devaluation and trauma. That can also compound their academic success.

I can't answer with the whole reason at this point, but I'm certainly very interested in the issue.

J. Brar: My last question is about the whole paradigm. I know that your mandate is basically to deal with the kids who are displaced from the family and, of course, looked after by the government. In other words, we are dealing with not the cause but the effect of the cause.

You mentioned prevention briefly. Who is responsible, and who should be responsible? Is your office responsible in any way to respond to the root cause issue which Maurine mentioned, whether it's housing, addictions, parenting, education — all those issues — so that we can at least address these things at the beginning?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it's important to note that fundamentally, with respect to the development of policies, programs and support for children, it's the government's responsibility. The independent office was created, in part, in the post-Hughes environment, to look at how to improve the child-serving system in British Columbia — how to collaborate, how to support, how to look at it again with some fresh eyes to see what can be done.

I think this report shows that process. Other reports will have different recommendations, but one of the key priorities around health and well-being is education. Dr. Kendall spoke earlier — and maybe he might even elaborate on it further — of the correlation between education achievement and health, and intergenerational disadvantage.

Even when you have the cumulative effects of education gap in grade 9 and someone leaving school, there is some evidence to suggest that reattaching that person to school where there's a day care and health support — whatever — will have an impact for them. But it could very well have an impact for their child. They may be a single parent.

We have to have a notion of what the impact of this educational support is for the individual, for their earning potential, for all types of other things around their health status and their lifespan — addictions and so forth — but also for their children. One of the reasons why we've paid a lot of attention to putting an emphasis on education is because it is a bit of a linchpin in that whole process.

P. Kendall: Under the Health Act I do have a mandated responsibility to report out on the health of the population or segments of the population and then, by inference, on factors that we know impact on the health

of a population. We know very well, and we have since 1972 with the Lalonde report, that the health care sector is only a component of that — maybe 25 percent. The rest of it comes from genetics and the socioenvironmental, cultural environment in which people grow up.

You say: "Whose responsibility is it?" I think it's a joint responsibility with, clearly, government, the business community, NGOs, communities and individuals themselves. Government has a role in setting the environment in which other components can actually work so that the healthier direction becomes the easier direction and we have fewer impediments to good health.

I'll try to be very brief. First of all, I want to go back to recommendation 8, where we talked about providing financial and other supports for youth leaving care at age 19.

I have a question. How long after age 19 do you propose to carry on with financial and other supports for children after they have left the education system? I could see that becoming a lifelong career for some students, if you're looking at the life skills development, given some of the challenges that these students face. Do you have a proposed end date for that?

P. Kendall: If I can go first for that one. I think we probably are spending money there now, but we're spending it in terms of jail time, hospital time, mental health and addictions, through the court system, through unemployment, etc. One of our next reports is going to try and actually quantify that.

My other suggestion is…. (1) We are spending the money. (2) We might be able to spend that money better and in a more focused fashion. Certainly the focus of all our reports has been to move as far upstream as we can, because intervening earlier and effectively generally saves money, rather than waiting till later, when the problems are worse and harder to ameliorate. We heard that back from the education folks in spades.

One way of finding out what would be effective, or how effective, to spend money on in the transition would be to launch a series of pilot projects which you closely monitor to find out what is the most effective way of providing supports to a particular group of kids and when you can stop.

This is something that we can't answer right now, but we could tell you what we are currently spending ineffectively, and maybe some pilots could be launched that could monitor that to say how you effectively, efficiently and responsibly provide supports.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Just to add to that, I think the challenge is…. Right now the program goes to age 23. So the YEA — youth educational assistance — fund goes from 19 to 23 for children who have aged out and are in a certificate, diploma or degree program.

There is a great deal of experience around administering post-secondary programs to know what is the capacity, what is the appropriate time line, what would work and so on. There can be parameters set. It's not impossible. The parameter is not lifelong learning, but I think there can be some reasonable parameters.

The problem is now…. There is a limited program with no uptake, which is a challenge. I would just say anecdotally, following on Dr. Kendall's comment, which is that you can pay now, or you can pay later…. When we were in Prince George announcing Andrew Robinson's appointment as my deputy and opening an office there, I went for breakfast one morning to the jail. I met with the boys in the jail and spent some time meeting with them and talking to them about things.

First of all, I was deeply impressed, because every one of the children in the jail had a detailed education plan. They have an excellent school resource. Most of the children only come through there for three or four months, but they have a principal and a vice-principal, and 60, 70 or even 80 percent of them are not in school. When they leave, they get a school placement.

Here's a jail — very expensive, $60,000 to $70,000 expenditure per kid — and there is an education component mandated, whereas all the other children in care that aren't in jail don't have a plan. So that was one bit of an eye-opener.

The second eye-opener was, in talking to the children — the young people, the youth — all, with the exception of one, had been in care. We will report more on the trends about this. All except for one had been in care. One of the boys who had been in care for over 12 years and had five siblings who were also in care was extremely excited to tell me that he was graduating. Having been preoccupied, myself, with this study, I was like: "Oh my goodness. You're graduating. Isn't that wonderful?"

He was graduating on Friday to serve the remainder of his sentence at the adult jail because he was turning 18. He had, when I talked to him and his teacher…. He was about a grade 3, and he had very poor school attachment — probably 30 school moves for the time he was in school. Of course I was extremely upset, saying to him: "That's not what I want to see for you. I don't want to see your idea of what is a success for you to go down the street to the adult jail as an 18-year-old boy in care who had some special needs." I still think: how is that boy doing at that facility?

I also think: what is the enormous cost of that? That is a huge cost. He is probably not going to be coming out and reconnecting with school. I think that is a very significant thing to consider, as Dr. Kendall said: you will pay in other forms, whether it is in terms of corrections, social assistance or other ways.

There will be resources multiple times what education resources would represent. I'm not sure what the

return on the investment is. Certainly, the evidence-based analysis is that the return on the investment isn't very good in terms of civil society.

D. MacKay: Having said that, would it be safe, then…? I'm looking at a recommendation that you put forward that the financial and other supports start at age 19 and go to age 23. Is that what you're saying?

I understand that there are other social costs associated to this, but we're dealing with education of children in care and children in the homes of relatives. So is it 19 to 23?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think at a minimum. First of all, it can't end at 19. The idea is that it be there and that it work. This only has 7-percent uptake, so that's not very much. Considering we know that only 20 percent are graduating, and then only 7 percent are taking advantage of that, that gap is too large. Is it the design of the program? Is it because…?

If we had an education plan earlier, and we created incentives earlier, we could say: "Okay, here is a plan for you." By the time they got to 19, it would be fulfilling a plan. Now at 19 it's done. A very small proportion may apply to go on and do some additional funding. But the question is: should the state, the government, create and support programs to foster their education achievement post–age of majority? The recommendation says yes.

What are the parameters? I can't tell you today that it must be 23 or it must be 21 or 22. I think it has to be evaluated. But substantial policy work has been done on post-secondary programming and parameters to run those programs to ensure that they're properly run and supported. I think that that can be looked at.

I can't give you an exact age, because it's not a one-size-fits-all scenario. Someone may be trained to become a plumber. It may take them some additional time to catch up in certain areas, but we still want them to hit that end goal. If they make it at 23½, we don't want to see them thrown out for the last half-year so they can't make the goal. You have to support secondary supports for this group. You have to have flexibility around what the plan is. Is the plan reasonable, and can it get to an end point?

D. MacKay: So it's not an automatic…? The child will have to apply for this continuing funding and…?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. The recommendation we would have is that the pool be there to support them and that the strongest possible pool be there so that they have a financial incentive. They may reach a point in their lives where they're very amenable to going back to school, particularly for the at-risk, maybe street-involved older children.

A lot of our recommendations in this report…. I'm very mindful of this — the nine recommendations, early childhood and so on, so forth…. Yet of this cohort of children in care, a lot of them are in the teen years, so we don't just want to say: "Well, we'll just dispose of these children and now work on these." This group certainly can be supported very effectively through incentives to address their education deficits post-majority.

D. MacKay: Okay, thank you. Recommendation three, where you talked about the assessment of children in the province on reading, writing and numeracy. I think I did read a story in the Vancouver Sun or one of the Vancouver papers that you supported the FSA testing. Then today you mentioned the fact that children in care were excluded from…. Could you explain that? Do you understand? Or can you explain it to me?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, I can, and I think Dr. Kendall can also speak to this. Dr. Kendall and I have had discussions about this. I can't speak for him, but I feel very strongly that FSAs are essential. We will not know how we're doing without FSAs.

What FSAs are used for is another matter. They are designed for and should be used for one purpose. If they're used for another purpose, which is whether this is a good school or not a good school, that's not an appropriate purpose. I'm not commenting on that.

But on the issue of having reliable data about grade level and the performance of children across British Columbia in the system at grade 4 and grade 7 — and I'm promoting the EDI, so the kindergarten, grade 1 — they're essential.

The practice in British Columbia is that some children get excluded from the FSAs for whatever reason. The evidence indicates that in part, perhaps, they're excluded because they don't want the test results to go down, so you exclude this vulnerable group. It's essential, if we are to make progress in this area, that we have benchmarks. All children need to be included.

One of the key parts of this recommendation is that it be mandated that all children are included and that the exceptions, if they exist at all, be for very specifically and appropriately controlled purposes. Unfortunately, that doesn't exist now, but we're strongly promoting that it be addressed. The Ministry of Education is very supportive of this recommendation, from our early indications.

D. MacKay: Do I understand that you're suggesting that grades 1, 4 and 7 be included in FSA testing?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Right. The early development instrument that has been used on a sample-only basis was developed by the Human Early Learning Partnership with the ministry, and it was used across British Columbia to give us an idea about the readiness to learn and other domains of development of children.

It has been used — again, not mandated — on a three-year cycle. We want it mandated and used for all children so we have an early-development idea of how they're doing. When we looked at this cohort of children in care, what we found was that where they did participate in the EDI — not all of them did, but when they did — we could see from the EDI, which is

kindergarten and grade 1 to grade 4, what happened between kindergarten and grade 1. We saw a cumulative gap. Then we saw what happened between grade 4 and grade 7. Then we could see grade 7 to either dropout rates or graduation rates.

That provides us with some really significant, strong indicators of how we're doing, and we need indicators. There will be people who suggest you don't need indicators, and that's fine. From an evidence-based analysis approach of how we can know we're improving the system for children, you need indicators. So those are some key indicators that need to be entrenched, if you like.

D. MacKay: I'd just like to close off with probably more of a comment than a question, just to follow up on Leonard Krog's statement about the number of aboriginal children in care. Again, I'm going to talk about my lifelong experiences with native children, the fact that I've been in the province now since 1961 and spent 28 years in the RCMP, ten years as a coroner and now my six years as an MLA. I've had a great deal of interaction with native communities, and I continue to this day to have a great deal of interaction with native communities and young aboriginal children.

I find it so gut-wrenching when I see the challenges that so many of these young native kids face. It's not the education system that's failing them. The education system is doing, I think, a very admirable job, given the challenges that they have in front of them. The problem I see is the social life. The family life at home is where the problem starts. It's like trying to close the barn door after the horses are out. It is so difficult to say….

I look at the statistics that you spoke about today when you talked about the challenges and the percentage of failure rate within our school system, based on the statistical reporting that was provided to you. I don't know if it takes into account the young native children who are suffering from FASD. That's a lifelong death sentence for a lot of those kids.

When I travel through the riding that I represent, which has a large native population, it's not uncommon to talk to school teachers that tell me 60 percent of the native kids in their classroom are suffering from FASD. The likelihood of those children ever graduating and having a job is severely limited.

I don't know — maybe Dr. Kendall's better able to explain it to me — how we address the problem of children who are suffering from FASD. You're including them in your statistics here, and I think sometimes we're maybe getting a distorted fact here because it's not the education system that's failing. It's the social fabric in the homes that is failing.

We still have young women who have children in the K-to-12 system, on-reserve schools, who come to school for parent-teacher interviews, are intoxicated when they show up there, and they're pregnant. So we're going to have another child who is going to suffer from FASD. I hear this problem all the time that we've got another lost generation of children coming into our society that we're going to have to look after.

Maybe what we should be doing is spending a little more time on the social side of people who continue to abuse their bodies, continue to get pregnant and drink in that first trimester. To me, this is where the challenge is. It's not the education system.

I guess, as I said, that's more of a statement than a question, but I just throw that at you. That's my lifelong learning experience dealing with aboriginal people in the province in the last 40-some years. Thank you again for listening.

P. Kendall: FASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, is the most common preventable cause of developmental disabilities in North America, probably. Certainly, B.C. isn't exempt. People's brains are wired differently. If you're exposed to alcohol as a developing fetus, your brain does get wired differently.

There is evidence that with good assessments and interventions, which is why we talked about early intervention and remediation, you can actually manage that so the outcome is not inevitably a ruined or a wasted life.

You may never achieve the potential of someone who doesn't have FASD, but there certainly are programs that if you can identify kids early, bring them into help and put the help around them, secondary prevention can work and can improve the lives and the outcomes for those kids. And we do pay less, in the end, because they're less likely to end up in jail or become pregnant and have a second or third or fourth generation. We could do that. One place to do it would be preschool, obviously.

The issue of communities that have been damaged severely, culturally, by generations of the residential school system is a big issue, I think, and it's something that we jointly have to address with the first nations, with those communities, with the health system. I think that we're on the way to setting the way in which we can do that in British Columbia with a transformative change accord. I think we're looking at a new way of working in partnership, which is the only way, really, to try and address some of these problems, which have to be owned by the communities if they're going to be addressed, as well as being owned by the rest of us too.

I think the EDI measurement is important, because it's not only predictive…. So if we can see communities where we have high rates of failure of EDI, we know that that's where we should be targeting some of our resources for primary prevention. It'll also give us a sense of our time, as to whether we're succeeding or whether we're failing, and we ought to know that.

The same with the foundation skills assessment. I think we ought to know whether we're able to make a difference in what we're investing in, as a good management practice, if nothing else. I also think we owe it to the kids who are most vulnerable to find out if we are creating environments in which they can maximize, or at least optimize, their potential or not. Those are my comments.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Just following up on the issue around children with special needs and particularly the

category of children that have fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. I think in looking at this report and looking at the children in care and what the category was that was reported, when we think about targets for these children in care, I think we should at least look at the generalized population.

If you look at British Columbia, 36 percent of the special needs children in the province graduate, but only 12 percent of the special needs kids in care graduate. So that's the same kind of group. I think that should tell us, well, maybe it's not going to be 80, but can we bring it up to some comparable level with other children.

Children have FAS, and they're not in care, and they graduate in British Columbia. Children in care have FAS, and they go to university, and they get PhDs. It's not impossible. It's not common, but it's not impossible.

FASD is a spectrum. In some ways it's executive functioning. In some ways it's more profound. It depends when the drinking was, how intense it was. The number one risk factor for a child with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is remaining in a hectic, chaotic, alcoholic environment. If you change the hectic, chaotic, alcoholic environment, you can have a good outcome. Or there could just be only one FAS baby born, not two, because there was an intervention.

There's a lot of very significant work being done on FASD in British Columbia, as you know, including in the aboriginal community from the research side and so on. But the important thing is that the children are not disposable. You can address these needs, but one of the reasons our recommendation was framed the way it was around special needs is that we really don't know…. We know if you're diagnosed with FASD, nothing comes with it. If you're diagnosed with autism, something comes with it in the education system. This leads to this. If you have an FASD diagnosis, this doesn't lead to anything unless you have a bunch of other — IQ and what have you….

There's a good example of let's look at children in care. What are their needs? What resources attach to them around those needs? From a school-based view, you could have a very overwhelmed teacher and so on — and I've certainly been in those environments and seen that — but you could also have an environment where there are different supports.

I think that one of the ongoing pieces of work we have with this report is to say: special needs mean what in British Columbia? Half a billion dollars goes to what in terms of these children with these needs, and can it be done differently?

When we said "pilot," there's an example. Let's pilot something around FASD that supports the children and also maybe works on prevention with the moms.

Again, evidence-based studies in the United States, which are broader than here, suggest that day care and home visits are really significant to support children that are vulnerable to get out of those vulnerable circumstances. What types of programs exist in British Columbia to address these? Are they effective? Are they working? That's the ongoing role that we're playing here — to look at that.

My quick view of it is that I think there are some very significant things that are working. I don't know the extent to which it's been brought to attention and why it works. I think we have to reveal that, but I would like to see ministries, school boards and others focused on it to say: "Can we do better? How can we do better? And what's working?"

Again, the school that we visited to launch this project is one where they have a number of special needs children, and the children are doing quite remarkably well. But then a school just a few kilometres away isn't. So we need to see how we can support that.

B. Bennett: I have a few specific questions and then a more general question.

On recommendation number one — and I'm sorry if I missed this — you said, Mary Ellen, that you want to know how many children in care are school age, and you want to know that by September '07. Then you want the annual report on educational attainment levels to commence by October '07. I just wondered if you'd discussed that with the Ministry of Education and if we know how possible that is.

M. Turpel-Lafond: We've proposed it, and they're looking at it. They may come back with a different time line, and I invite that. I don't think that we should set time lines that are unrealistic. If it can't be met, for whatever reason, we will engage with them, and we will assist them and support them.

Point number one, which is to know the number of school-age children who are or have been in care, is pretty simple. It's data; it's a piece of paper — analysis. It takes people, but it's matching a couple of data sets, knowing the school district in which they're enrolled.

The other thing that I proposed to the ministry is that if this is too big of a piece to do, perhaps what they can do is tell us the number of children that are not in school, then — the number of children in care who are school age that are not in school. I mean, where the obverse…? Maybe it's the whole package you have to look at to know both sides. At least do one part of the puzzle. If they wanted to pick children in continuing care versus children in temporary care, it might be more possible for them to do that.

Certainly we've engaged with them to say: "Look at what you can look at, and do what you can on it." We don't want to whip the ministry with this report. That's not our goal. Our goal is to focus attention, to collaborate and to see what we can learn. Even when they get the data and we start looking at it, we'll learn something different, perhaps, than what we saw for these 32,000 children. Perhaps the sightline at this point is that by the fall, know the number of children in care that are school age, at least in continuing care and the school districts that they're in.

We would like to see them do that. Now, whether they can or can't, it's up to them to report to you on it, but we'd like to see that.

B. Bennett: Okay, thank you. That would be one of the things that we can find out from the Ministry of Education when they come to this committee.

I was interested in figure 25: the grade 1 cohort grade-to-grade transitions. You can see that when the children in care get into grade 9, the gap really seems to increase tremendously from there on straight through the grade 12 age. I know this may be a tough question, and maybe you don't have the evidence, but I'm curious to know whether that is typical of children who are that age, if all children that age are more likely to struggle, or if there are other factors that cause that big leap to start in grade 9.

M. Turpel-Lafond: That's a very good question. We haven't got an absolute answer to it, but I think I can ask Rob to address it further. I think the important point in the study and what the data revealed was that the anecdotal impression in the community that cares for children who are not in their parents' home was that they do fine, but then all of a sudden they stumble when they become pubescent. They go to high school, they act out, and they can't stay in school — whatever. Something suddenly happens so that they can't stay in school.

The interesting thing about the evaluation of the data is that something has been happening all the way along the system. So grade 9 wasn't where it just happened, but it became apparent in some form. It wasn't that they had complete academic progress and normal grade level and achievement and then suddenly detached from school for social or whatever rebellious reasons. In fact, they're really fundamentally struggling educationally all the way along. The educational struggle becomes very pronounced at that time where you see school attachment breaking down.

B. Bennett: Is that the major factor, you think? School attachment? That's what causes this bigger difference?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, they're not near grade level, and that's the other difficulty. They're not at grade level, so you have to think that the challenge…. Think of it from the perspective of a child, I guess, coming into grade 9, who all of a sudden is in an environment that demands a certain level of analysis and rigour and attendance but, also, self-management and so on. It's so far beyond what they're capable of doing, but they've gotten to grade 9 somehow. Beyond it, it's the exit ramp that starts to be very appealing.

The point that we need to look at from the view of the state's responsibility is that the intervention needs to be much, much sooner. The tracking of academic progress shouldn't be in grade 9. It should be back at readiness to learn, prekindergarten, grade 4. If you see this between kindergarten and 4, the gap hasn't been closed. If there was a gap, then we had better act, because between 4 and 7…. We're now understanding middle years are very significant, but then in 7 to 9 we really see a drop-off.

That doesn't track the general population. I'll ask Rob to talk about it, but it doesn't track any trends in the general population, from my understanding.

R. McPhee: Actually, this graph here does track what's going on in the general population. I think what's happening in grade 9 is something very significant. That's about when these children are hitting age 16 — grade 9 and grade 10 — so that's a legal thing. They're allowed to drop out of school. That's one element that's going on.

Another element that is going on is that I think their teachers cannot in conscience, at that time, pass them on to another grade because of the fundamental failures to acquire reading, writing and numeracy at the earlier ages.

This graph is actually very significant in terms of the EDI and FSA, because if we took a look at this and saw that this cohort of children…. If we take a look at the first grade 7 up to grade 8, they're moving relatively in concert, moving from grade to grade with the general population. If we were just to take a look at this metric, we wouldn't know that anything was going on in the earlier grades. What the EDI and FSA reveal to us is that there are significant difficulties going on in those earlier grades, and it's not just suddenly in high school that things suddenly start to go awry.

B. Bennett: Have any of the provinces, including us, done any tracking of these adults at 19 and what happens to them by the time they're 30 and 35?

M. Turpel-Lafond: No. When we started out, we said this is…. The health study and this study, I would say, are probably the most comprehensive studies in Canada, and possibly even internationally, because you're matching data sets, which have health data, children in care data, education data. You're linking data sets around the children's well-being. It's extremely rare to have good data, which we have in British Columbia, and to be able to link it and analyze it.

Again, I come back to the Hughes review which was: "Do this so that we can think about social policy." I think — particularly, just the response to this report out of province — there is a great interest in doing it. Other provinces probably don't have the data sets to do it. We're very fortunate to have it, which is why we can have some insight from how we're doing. I think that's why British Columbia is unique. We're very lucky to be able to look at this and to understand within the education system how various children perform and do well.

We also have the unique opportunity to engage around vulnerable children because we can see where the vulnerabilities are. Even the children who may not be in care but might be vulnerable, some of the responses we have to the children in care may very much help those children as well. That's one of the other advantages of having this type of data. From a planning perspective, it allows you to do a different type of policy analysis and have better insight into what might actually be happening inside your education system.

P. Kendall: Going back to figure 25. If we tracked this a few years ago, we might have found more kids being held back a grade. I think the tendency is not to hold kids back, because it's bad for them. It doesn't seem to do very much except damage their self-esteem, but moving them on without addressing the gaps doesn't do very much for them either. It just keeps them moving through the system until they hit grade 9, and then either their frustrations boil over and they leave or they can't hit the rigour of the academic system. There is a gap that's not being addressed.

B. Bennett: I want to speed it up a little bit because I'm taking up too much time. With regard to the FSA and the fact that fewer and fewer students are taking it and particularly fewer children in care are taking it, what's your opinion of why that's happening?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I can't say for certain. I think, though, it's some of the pressures on the FSA in terms of what it's used for, purposes for which it wasn't designed — like school rankings. It wasn't designed for that. Unfortunately, it is relied upon for that by some people apparently, and it wasn't designed for that purpose. It was a different demographic analysis that wasn't supposed to be related to school choice.

It could be that children are selected out so that the school may appear more attractive. It may appear to have better at-grade-level rates than it actually has. I'm not sure. I can't say for certain. It's not my role to really look at that. All I know is that there's a large group of these children that are not being included, and they must be included.

P. Kendall: There may be philosophical objections to testing in that you teach to the test as opposed to trying to bring out all of the functions that you're trying to do in a school system. But again, we're just commenting on the fact that these kids aren't being measured on some of the fundamental skill sets that we think they ought to be measured on so that we know whether we could improve those.

B. Bennett: Right. Your recommendation is that we make sure that more students do the FSA and in particular more children in care.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, we recommend that they all do it. Now if the FSA itself as a tool can be improved, yes. We're not commenting on that. Is it perfect? No. No tool is perfect. But do you need a tool? Absolutely. You can't have a benchmark without a tool.

On education plans. You commented that they're not up to date. Again, I just wonder: do you have an opinion on how that has developed or why that's developed?

M. Turpel-Lafond: We only have data around…. For the purpose of this study, which is a large cohort study of data matching, we didn't look at the microlevel of every one of the current children in care and whether they have an education plan that's up to date. What I referred to in my speaking notes was a 2001 evaluation of education plans of kids in care that found less than 30 percent actually had plans.

The ministry needs to know what school they're in and to review their education status. I suspect they probably don't have plans. I don't know that for sure. I'm not saying: "Oh, just go do a plan." I don't think that's the goal.

The goal is to have a more holistic approach and improve their education outcomes. You can have a plan and no resources or initiative to support a plan. So you can have a plan without a foster parent or without a school. Someone could just write a plan, or a school could just have a plan without engaging a social worker or anyone. So the plan has to be a real plan.

B. Bennett: This is the more general question that I threatened you with. I hope I can ask it, because I don't quite have my head wrapped around it. I'm struck with the importance of preventing children from going into care in the first place. When you look at this report…. I think we all recognize that levels of education have a direct bearing on a human being's success in life, and I use the term "success" in the broadest possible way. I'm sure we all get that. You can see that there is this compounding effect that takes place with children in care from your report, which I find very interesting. So there is, I think, a natural reaction, at least in my case, to focus on children in care and what we can do to have them do better in school and to help them go into adulthood more effectively, which is what the report's all about. But I still am struck at how important it is to address the root causes of putting children in care in the first place.

My question is: is there any way to measure or even have an opinion about the impact of that initial cause on that child, and whether the die is cast at that point? With regard to the priority of government resources and the difficult choices that governments have to make in these situations, where do you get the biggest bang for your buck — pardon me for that expression in this context — at the initial situation that might prevent the child from going into care in the first place, or later on over the next 50 years?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I can just make a brief comment, and I think Dr. Kendall can probably address it from the broader viewpoint. First of all, children in care in British Columbia are in care for a reason. They're not just in care for no reason. The children have experienced abuse, they're traumatized, there's genuine breakdown. That's the number one point.

The number two point is: can we reduce the number of kids in care? Well, we can, but we have to do a lot of other things to do that. Will a society always have children in care? Some. What is the appropriate ratio? I don't know. I'm not even sure that there's a science around that.

The point of the matter is that we have these 9,000 children — and maybe these 4,700 kids in the home of a relative that aren't in care but have some similar vulnerabilities. There may be other vulnerable children that never even come within the system.

The goal, however, is healthy development. One thing we certainly know is that if a child in care can get through high school, there's a much greater likelihood that their child will not be in care. There's a very good prevention technique. Obtaining high school is very core-related with that. Post-secondary is even more core-related. We also know that their child will be more healthy. They will be associated with other very specific positive outcomes.

It's one way to look at it. It's not the only way; it's one way. A government might have a variety of interventions to prevent removal of children, and so on. I completely applaud and support that. I need to do my work based on evidence-based approaches, the evidence of what works. You know, one could certainly say, "There may be some evidence in this report to you that some of what exists now doesn't work," if this is important.

Let's think about it another way, from a short-term view but also from a long-term view. If we look at these 32,000 children over this period of time and we see this, is there anything to suggest that if we don't do anything the trend is going to somehow improve? No. Could that mean that we'd have 20,000 kids in care, because they're all doing it at this rate? What other models or projections could you do? I don't know, but I think this is certainly a bit of a warning system, of saying: "Here's an area of engagement that we know will have a massive impact."

To get the British Columbia graduation rates to 80 percent, where they are now, has taken coordinated, effective action by all kinds of people including government, school boards, teachers, parents — everyone. It's one of the reasons we have one of the best systems. The irony is that in British Columbia we have one of the very best systems, but we have this challenge. Certainly, we have the strength of having one of the very best systems, which means that probably of anyone we should be equipped to deal with this problem.

If one of the outcomes is the best at-grade-level rates and completion rates, we probably will have an impact on apprehensions in the future. I would be very surprised if we didn't. There are other investments that can make a significant difference, which we're not talking about today. The broader social determinants of health approach that informs our report is important. It's not the shirt on the back and the roof over the head that provide for the child. Those are important, but when the state becomes the parent there's something else that the prudent parent must do to see that the child succeeds.

P. Kendall: I'd just briefly add that Minister Reid did receive a report from Fraser Mustard, who was a founder of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, on early childhood development in British Columbia, which did suggest that about 23 percent of children in B.C. between the ages of four and 11 were vulnerable to less than optimal development. The number was so large because a significant percentage of them were actually in the middle class. They weren't all in the lower socioeconomic groups.

He cites the World Bank report, saying that well-executed and well-targeted early childhood development programs are one of the better investments you can make for social and economic well-being. In four parts it would be healthy pregnancy, birth outcomes programming, improved parenting and family supports, strengthened early childhood development and stronger communities — those would be the four pillars for that.

K. Whittred (Chair): Nicholas has begged for one last question, and we are going to then break for lunch for a few minutes and resume to finish up our business.

N. Simons: With all due respect, Madam Chair, I didn't beg for a question. My original question was simply a clarification, and I have a number of comments that I would like to make.

First of all, I appreciate the work that you've done. I have been working in this area for a long time, and I have a sort of personal perspective on it that may or may not shed any light.

One thing I noticed in this whole discussion today is that we've mentioned social workers once. Ultimately, the connection between the child, their foster home and their school comes from their social worker. Their attachment to their new family or their old family or their relatives and to their new school comes from the social worker.

In fact, the social worker may be the only person with a continuous relationship with the child. I'm not going to say anything that is too partisan, because governments — plural — have failed children in care. They have failed in a lot of areas. What we see now, the questions that we are asking now…. What are we going to do to improve? We wouldn't be cutting child care programs for young parents who are taking high school courses to finish, and we are. That's what our government is doing.

We wouldn't be cutting after-school courses so that kids who want — who are maybe latchkey kids — somewhere to go to do their homework…. We wouldn't be cutting programs like that. We need to be able to take a step back collectively, as 79 MLAs, to look at…. We use a stethoscope to diagnose a problem. We know what the diagnosis is. We've known what the diagnosis is for a long time.

We know that children who are in care or children who are vulnerable are not going to be as successful because of that vulnerability. We need to increase their strength. We need to increase what they call their resilience.

Just to answer Bill's question, and Dennis's, regarding how we keep the kids out of care. I totally agree that that is the question we need to look at. But I'll tell you that as social workers go about their duties on a daily basis, 95 percent of the kids they come across do not end up in care. We're talking about a very small minority of kids whose parent for one reason or another is unable or unwilling to look after their child.

I have a bit of a problem with this idea that there was a time when it was a roof and a shirt. There was a time, when I was a child, that I would go to school and there was a nurse there, or I would go to school and there was a home and school coordinator there. When I was a social worker, I could barely get a child care worker or a counsellor for a child who had been sexually abused, removed not only from their home, but their community, and placed in an entirely new community. I couldn't get support for that.

There is fundamentally a problem here. I'm not going to tell the child who's in grade 4 that the reason they are not doing well is because the school is somehow not meeting their needs. The fact is that perhaps they're in their third foster home. Perhaps they were born addicted to drugs, and a number of other factors. We need to look at those. Definitely, we need to look at those and start to look and recognize that we now have statistical evidence to support the fact that we're failing children who are our wards. They are wards of the state. They are wards of us.

I agreed with Dr. Kendall. We need to be the concerned parent. I don't know of a concerned parent who…. Because of the restrictions placed on me, I am unable to tell my child it is a good idea to go to school, or bring them to school, or sit with them in school, or take them to lunch during school. What social worker today, in this day and age, has the ability to take their kid for lunch? That was cut. So was their ability to buy a present for $100 upon their graduation.

Let's not talk about whether or not we should be measuring children's success in school. We should be. We should be caring, but every single social worker I have ever met in my life cares whether their child graduates or not. If they don't have the tool necessary to assist their one of 35 children or 45 children on their caseload to not only get to school, but to enjoy school, to participate in other programs, maybe even have a measurement for well-being in school….

We seem to be ignoring that to some degree. Unless the social worker has the time and the resources available, they are just going to be sitting there at their desk being ignored in this fundamental problem again.

I say to give the social workers the tools. They want those tools. They want every child on their caseload to be successful. If they have those tools, they're the ones best positioned to do that. I would recommend that government take a serious look at these recommendations, realize that they fit and that they actually have a direct and personal impact on children.

The policies of this government have direct and personal impact on children. I know these children, I know their mothers, and I know their fathers, and unless we recognize that the decisions that we make in this building can have an effect next year, this year or in September, in fact, we're ignoring the fundamental depth of this problem.

I'm saying: good. It's great that this is actually being talked about. We didn't talk about 20-1, the funding that provides first nations with money only if a child is in care, not if the child is not in care. This is something that the province and the federal government have allowed to continue — to pay an agency based on how many children they have in care — over the consistent complaints and opposition to a fundamentally immoral, I would say, and I use that word very rarely….

N. Simons: With due respect, that's fine. I'm sure you've heard the most important parts.

K. Whittred (Chair): I just remind committee members that there are some issues that are more appropriately raised, I think, with ministries in the appropriate forum.

That having been said, I would like to thank Dr. Kendall, who very kindly spent time this morning presenting this report along with Mary Ellen.

With that, we will break. Is it the committee's consensus that we would break for 15 minutes, get our lunch and then resume and complete our business? Thank you.

K. Whittred (Chair): I'm going to move on to the second item on today's agenda, which is an update from the Representative for Children and Youth to provide us with the work that's going on in her office.

I'm going to ask everybody to be mindful of the time, because I really would like to get to number 3 today on the agenda, which is just to put some framework around the plans of the committee. We always seem to run out of time in terms of looking after our own committee business.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I wanted to just do one final thing today with respect to an update for the members of the committee.

One is to provide a bit of an operational update around where the office is, and the second is to address the Hughes review. There was a report on the Hughes review that was posted on the MCFD website three weeks ago, I think. I wanted to address that. Those are

Just to bring you up to date on where we are with respect to the representative's office. We've obviously been very busy the past few months as we worked toward becoming fully operational. I'm glad that Andrew Robinson is here with me today. I wanted to give him an opportunity to at least speak briefly to the committee about some of his plans and our collaborative work in the north, because this is a very significant part of the mandate of our office.

The other deputy who has been hired is John Greschner. He's not able to attend today. He will be the deputy representative for monitoring and, in the transition period, also for critical injuries and death reviews. He will begin his appointment on July 4, 2007, and he'll be based in the Victoria office.

John is currently the Deputy Minister of Health and Social Services for the government of the Yukon. He has significant experience managing children's issues in B.C. and was the deputy commissioner for the former Children's Commission. He sends his regrets today, but he will be starting around the same time as Andrew, around the fourth of July.

With your permission, Madam Chair, I'd like to give Andrew an opportunity at least to introduce himself more formally to the committee and to speak briefly about the importance of the work of our office in the north.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you, and we welcome your introductions. I am personally looking forward to a little bit of a description around your office in Prince George.

A. Robinson: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you very much to Mary Ellen and the rest of the staff at the Representative for Children and Youth for the province of British Columbia.

I look forward to the opportunity to expand the office's area into the northern regions, which some of you represent, and into the western part of the province up north — the Smithers area. I look forward to building some real concrete relationships with the communities, especially the aboriginal communities in the north that you guys have been discussing through a variety of your materials today, and to looking at children in care and at educational and social issues, works with social workers, health — all these different types of things are very holistic — and encompassing those in the objective of that northern office.

Looking at how children and youth are impacted by the decisions of the government in its different capacities with each of these — the urban children and the transition from the rural to the urban — is a very interesting thing that we've all seen in the north, especially in the vicinity of Prince George, which has a very large migratory population of aboriginal children from the surrounding communities in the schools up there. They also have a very active Aboriginal Education Board, which has some very interesting information in regards to the success and the challenges of aboriginal youth.

At the same time, I really look forward to providing a northern perspective to the representative's office down here in Victoria and to working with the advocacy group in Victoria and in Vancouver. There's definitely a lot of information that I'm absorbing as we speak. It is quite the learning curve, and I do look forward to it.

At the same time, I do look forward to bringing forth the knowledge of growing up in the situations that you were discussing earlier with Mary Ellen. I think that far too many times when you talk about advocacy and a voice that is unheard in the province, it is our voice as aboriginal people.

Far too long we have stated that we do have solutions to a lot of these things. If we could start to evaluate them on a community level and as a society, then the answers will be put in front of us. I'd like to bring that perspective to the table and share that with all of my co-workers and with everybody that I get to participate with.

I've learned a great deal from my communities and from the communities that I've got to live in. I'm very community-oriented. I look forward to working with all the children across the north and listening to their voices and providing that perspective back to you and to Mary Ellen.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you very much, Andrew. I know we're going to get to know you a lot better over the next coming months and years.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I'll just continue. As you know, our initial budget and planning to set up the office contemplated a complement of 30 FTEs, or 30 staff. We're currently at 20 staff. As well, we have three university students working with us over the summer months.

I'm very pleased, to date, with the outstanding individuals that we've recruited. I feel confident that we're developing a team in the representative's office that has the expertise, wisdom and commitment to thoughtfully oversee and support change, when necessary, to the child welfare and child-serving system in British Columbia. We're going to continue to actively recruit further staff in the coming months so that we will have a full complement to be able to do all of the work required.

As you know, we're operating from three locations: Victoria, the lower mainland and Prince George. In Victoria we have 12 staff, with three university students. The focus of the Victoria office is on corporate planning and monitoring, and we are also doing some advocacy out of the Victoria office.

In the lower mainland we have seven staff in place. The office houses a number of our advocacy staff and our critical injury and death review and investigation team. We are planning to relocate our Vancouver office from downtown Vancouver to a storefront location in Burnaby in early September.

I'm also very excited about the new office in Prince George and having Andrew involved in that. We will be providing advocacy services, with a focus on reach-

ing out to children and families — in particular, aboriginal children and families who reside throughout northern British Columbia. The office in Prince George will also serve other parts of the province, including southern parts.

I just wanted to report, particularly, that on May 23 Andrew and I attended a very special event in Prince George. John Rustad also was in attendance at that event, which set the tone of respect and cooperation for our work in the north. The Carrier-Sekani Family Services and the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation welcomed me and the staff to their traditional territories. Their elders and hereditary chiefs and others had a very elaborate and important ceremony with us about the work that we're doing and invited us to work specifically on some important issues for their young people.

It was a traditional ceremony — a very moving performance by a group of young people that have a drum group in the north and will be supporting us on an ongoing basis. In our coming months our key priority really is in the developing of a multi-year service plan for the office. Our service plan is going to be guided by Ted Hughes's review. The plan that is under development will include, of course, our vision, mandate, goals, strategic priorities and action plan.

I look forward to bringing our service plan to the committee in the fall. It will also propose, essentially, work over a number of years and some priorities around that work, taking into account, of course, the mandate and authority of this committee to refer matters to the office and to address those matters as they may come up over the next years.

I'd like to also report that as of June 1, 2007, all parts of the Representative for Children and Youth Act have been proclaimed into effect, including part 4, which was not yet proclaimed at the last appearance I had before this committee. Part 4 provides for reviews and investigations of critical injuries and deaths. We're currently developing our corporate policies and procedures to guide our operations and our responsibilities in all areas.

In terms of the key functions of the office, I want to speak briefly to the issue of advocacy. As you'll recall, the advocacy function was recommended by the Hughes review. Recommendation 3 stated that the Representative for Children and Youth should be mandated to support and advise children, youth and families who need help in dealing with the child welfare system and to advocate for change to the system itself. The advocacy function has been operating since April 1, 2007.

The range of advocacy services for children, youth and families is being provided in keeping with a child-centred approach that brings forward the rights, views and interests of children and youth. The function has played a significant role in informing the public on the overall mandate of the office. For example, we've developed two new websites, one for adults and one specifically designed to engage youth, as well as various other materials that are being distributed to provide information on who we are and what we can do.

The demand for our advocacy services has been very high. This is very positive to us. Our challenge in the near future will be to meet the demand, as the cases that are coming in are complex and require intense action, often with several ministries, to resolve issues. We anticipate a great number of additional matters coming in through the north.

In terms of the monitoring, review and audit function of the office, this function was also recommended in the Hughes review to address public concerns about the government's overall performance accountability in delivering children's services. Ted Hughes felt that an independent monitoring function was necessary, certainly for the initial five years of the office's mandate. At that point, it was recommended that the function be reviewed for its continued relevance.

Until then, I envision a number of products or services to be provided to the committee or to the people as a part of monitoring with respect to my office. The type of work you will see will include additional research reports similar to the education report that we reviewed this morning. This is the second of four studies, so there will be two more specific reports coming out.

However, we want to provide a broader range of products with respect to monitoring, in order to be effective. We believe it is important that the Legislative Assembly have the information it needs, to know whether or not the system is working well and how it can be improved. The best way for us to provide this information to you is in different forms, depending on the issue at hand.

For example, we want to provide what we call watching briefs. These will be short overviews of important issues we are monitoring. An obvious one for us is the progress being made on the Hughes report. Here we are undertaking a watching-brief approach. I'll speak to this again in a moment, but we expect to be producing short, one- to two-page summaries identifying key issues in relation to the recommendations.

We will also provide larger-scale reviews and audits as necessary in order to more comprehensively assess the delivery of children's services for you. One I would suggest here is…. The recommendation from the education report contemplated that we would develop a framework for looking at special needs with ministries. We may develop that framework. We may get that report back and then make a decision as to whether or not there needs to be a more comprehensive review and/or audit of that area. I just use that as an example.

Also, there has been an emphasis on using alternative programs of care such as kith-and-kin agreements for vulnerable children. We would like to know how well those programs are working. One approach will be to do a program evaluation to see if these programs are being well managed in line with their objectives. In this role we want to inform you not only about things that need improving but also where things are working well.

People delivering services to children do not, of course, deliberately set out to fail a child, so we plan on providing you with a well-rounded view of what is happening to ensure that the health and well-being of

children are protected when they're in government care. We believe that tailoring our monitoring work across a range of products and deliverables for the committee will provide the best value to you and the public.

The final area of our operations is the critical injury and death review and investigation. In the Hughes review there certainly was a suggestion that the representative play this role from a preventative perspective. The function of the death and injury review in our office is different from the role of the Coroners Service, whose investigative focus is on determining who died and the immediate circumstances of the death. The focus of our reviews and investigations is squarely on the life of the child and what we can learn to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Further to Hughes's recommendation, we've established a Children's Forum. That includes the Coroners Service, Ombudsman, public guardian and trustee, and the provincial director of child protection for MCFD.

So far we've had two very productive meetings of the Children's Forum. The forum is preparing a briefing document through my office for this committee on the area of critical injuries and deaths and how this work is being integrated as appropriate and becoming operational in British Columbia.

I would respectfully submit to the committee that it might be appropriate to extend an invitation from this committee to members of the Children's Forum at some point in the late fall or winter, when we can attend and report out to you, including with this briefing, on the practices, procedures and integration of child injury and death review in British Columbia. We see ourselves working towards a document that will be available for all members of the public but particularly through the legislative committee — this committee — to see how all the pieces fit together post-Hughes. I think that would be quite useful as well. With respect, that's one thing we would propose.

The Children's Forum did recently meet with Theresa Covington. She's the director of the Center for Child Death Review in the United States, and she came to one of our forum meetings to talk about best practices for death review — looking at what happens in a variety of different states and countries.

We talked about our approach in British Columbia and various aspects — from the Coroners Service, our side, the director of child protection and others — of how we may be guided by best practices. We had a very interesting discussion with her, and she certainly was extremely positive about what is happening in British Columbia as we make operational this new area.

We're developing a process of reporting which will include not only the critical incident reports from the ministry but also reports from physicians, mental health workers, youth, justice and other service providers. The reporting process will ensure that incidents that may not have been reported to the ministry are indeed reported and examined.

One example I give you there is where children in the home of a relative are injured. That's not now a reportable circumstance, but we are promoting an approach that it would be reported.

Again, we're working collaboratively with stakeholders and service providers to craft recommendations around the critical injury and death area designed to improve service delivery and, of course, assist the lives of children. We are in the process of identifying and recruiting members of a standing multidisciplinary team. The team will include members from the ministry, law enforcement, mental health, medicine, nursing and first nations communities, and other communities and sectors as appropriate. The team will also review individual cases and data aggregated from injuries and deaths of a similar nature.

We are also discussing at the Children's Forum the extent to which we may use a common roster of individuals for multidisciplinary review so that when one group — say, the Coroners Service — has a multidisciplinary team, the representative's office has a multidisciplinary team. We can build from common strengths on that, as appropriate. There may be some independence issues, but as appropriate.

As a result of our investigative work around critical injuries and deaths, I envision periodic reports on subjects such as addiction, youth suicide and the challenges of caring for children with serious chronic illnesses. Our team has already begun work on the review of the deaths of the four children referred to us by this committee — the historic deaths. We expect to be able to report back to you in the winter about these deaths, following the completion of the inquests.

Subject to any questions on that — the report thus far — I'd like to turn, then, to the Hughes review.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Just a question arising out of this morning as well as what you've said this afternoon. With respect to recommendations and reports you make from time to time, I'm wondering if you have any views on how to involve the various ministries to whom those recommendations are made with respect to the ongoing work of this committee.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I do have some views that I'd like to share with you and, with respect, suggest that you take under consideration. The representative's office will prepare reports. Occasionally those reports will have recommendations. The approach I have taken as representative, as well as the deputy representative's, is one where prior to the release of a report we will engage with responsible ministries.

We will provide them copies of reports in advance. We will endeavour to have executive briefings, ministerial briefings and collaborative work around issues so that when a report comes out, there has been lead work done on it. We feel that's very important in order for us to be successful, particularly in the spirit of the Hughes review, which was on improving the system.

However, after we've completed that process, we feel that it is important for us to release our reports —

if at all possible, giving time lines — to this committee. In the case of the education report, it wasn't released directly to the committee first because we had a bit of difficulty getting the committee together after the end of a fairly lengthy session, where you're all very tied up for good reason.

We did release it before the end of a school year. We wanted to have a school event release very close to the release. We weren't able with the timing to do that, but my preferred approach would be that reports be released through this committee.

That's a form of reporting and accountability to the people of British Columbia with respect to the operations of my office and also this subject area. It is my view and the view of our office that the responsibility rests, as well, with this committee to lead this, in terms of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.

I would suggest that in the future we would release reports to the committee. We would have done work with ministries and other stakeholders prior to the report being released, but I would also suggest that you consider an approach where you may call witnesses to respond to some of the recommendations as you see appropriate.

We would monitor the recommendations, as well, and be involved in working on them, but I think it would be very beneficial if the committee played a role to request the subjects of recommendations and also to address their reactions or engagements and so on around that. It may not be on every recommendation, but some larger areas. I think that would assist overall in the project of strengthening the child-serving system in British Columbia.

K. Whittred (Chair): I just want to add for the benefit of the committee…. Some of you know this, but there was an attempt to get the committee together, you'll recall, right at the end of session. That was for the purpose of receiving this report. It all came together with very short notice. That was simply not possible, and that is partly why we're meeting today.

If we do have time to get to item number 3, then item number 3 on the agenda is a recommendation or a suggestion to the committee that we have a follow-up meeting with representatives from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Children and Family Development in order to discuss the recommendations that came out of today's report. That just sort of brings you all up to speed, I think, on that matter.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think, Madam Chair, with the permission of the committee, we would be very pleased to work on an ongoing basis with the Clerk's office. I know that Ms. Ryan-Lloyd will be off attending to important maternal responsibilities soon, but we would look forward to working with the Clerk's office, as well, so that we can establish a more formal process where reports are issued and that becomes perhaps more entrenched as an expectation for how business will be conducted with respect to the reporting and accountability of my office to the people of British Columbia through this committee.

I leave it with you to consider that as well. I think probably our recent experience has given us a good idea of how that process can work, thanks again to the work of the Clerk of this committee.

I'd like to move on, then, to the Hughes report, the Hughes review. The child and youth transition steering committee — which was comprised of Allan Seckel, the Deputy Attorney General; David Morhart, the Deputy Solicitor General; and Lesley du Toit, the Deputy Minister of Children and Family Development — released its final report on the status of the recommendations made by the B.C.Children and Youth Review, the Hughes review, on May 29. I take it that members of the committee have had an opportunity to receive that as well.

With its final report, the transition team has concluded its work, which was to coordinate the implementation of the Hughes review recommendations. Part of that work was assembling all the pieces that needed to come together in order for me to do my work — amendments drafted, regulations deposited, briefings prepared, etc.

I would like to say publicly that I'd like to thank the transition team for their dedication, certainly their attention. The united political will of the people sitting around this table in the House of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia has allowed us to make a very good start toward improving not just services for vulnerable children and youth but also their lives and outcomes.

Certainly, upon reflection, in a very short period of time a great deal of work has been accomplished to get legislation through and regulations required to begin the work. I think that's a very positive point that needs to be publicly recognized.

Before I address the details of their report, though, I want to explain the role of our office with respect to the implementation of the Hughes recommendations. I believe that I have two responsibilities. First, as the Representative for Children and Youth, I am directly responsible or have a large role for ensuring the 11 recommendations related to the responsibilities of my office are implemented in a timely and effective manner. I am fortunate to have the guidance of the Hughes report, which informs the legislation that was endorsed by the government and the opposition, as I lay the foundations of the office and begin implementing my legislative mandate.

Secondly, as part of my oversight role, my office is responsible for monitoring the performance and accountability of services being delivered for children and youth. In that sense, my second role with respect to the Hughes recommendations is to observe and encourage implementation of the recommendations and report back to you and the general public, through you, on the progress being made.

In total, the Hughes review made 62 recommendations. The 11 recommendations related to my role and office established the legislative authority, mandate and operations for my office as an independent office of the Legislative Assembly. All have been implemented except for two, which will continue in progress as the office carries out its mandate.

One, which is recommendation 16, speaks to recruiting aboriginal staff at all levels in the representative's office and, in particular, one of the deputy representative positions. I can report that when we last checked, Andrew, sitting beside me, is a member of the Nisga'a Nation. Of 20 staff in our office, 30 percent are aboriginal, and that number is increasing. I want to further increase this so that we can deal particularly with the vulnerabilities around aboriginal children and families, particularly in the north. So that's one that we need to continue to meet.

The second is recommendation 56. Recommendation 56 of the Hughes review speaks to collecting linked data to inform our monitoring role and to ensure that the highest privacy standards are met in using that data. Clearly, the report that we gave this morning is an illustration of linked data between information around children in care and the education system. That's one example.

The recommendation from the Hughes review has an ongoing element to it. As we roll out this function, we are in the process of developing information-sharing protocols with various ministries and in consultation with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner on an ongoing basis. We want to see the recommendation implemented. We're not quite at the point to have it fully implemented, so I wanted to report out to you on that. That will be an ongoing process.

The remaining recommendations. The final report of the transition steering committee indicates that of the 49 other recommendations, approximately half, or 25, of the recommendations have been completed, with the remaining 24 in progress. To put these figures into context for the committee, a number of the recommendations made by the B.C. Children and Youth Review require a medium- or long-range view. They are not all items that can or should be achieved in the space of a year. For example, recommendations concerning the delegation of responsibility to aboriginal communities are multilateral, ongoing projects whose success depends on community capacity and readiness.

Given this context, I intend to take a watching-brief approach to more fully understand the progress made on, in particular, some of the completed recommendations. I know I need more information before I can say to you that I fully agree that each of these recommendations has been completed. There are about 17 recommendations that I need to look into further to satisfy myself and report to you that the system has improved.

Among them are recommendations concerning (1) a strong, centralized, quality assurance program with effective standards, practices and policies; (2) effective monitoring, auditing and reporting systems; (3) an effective complaint resolution process within the ministry; (4) an accountable, internal critical injury and child death review process; and (5) appropriate information-sharing and data collection.

These are all matters that have to do with improving the performance and accountability in delivering services to children, youth and families. I'm not suggesting to the committee that they have not been completed. I just don't have sufficient information at this point to say that they have, in fact, been completed, and I will look into it further.

In terms of the matters in progress, most of the recommendations that the transition team has indicated are in progress also deal with important components of the performance and accountability framework, including decentralization of governance to aboriginal and regional bodies, service transformation program evaluation, internal conflict resolution processes and disclosure of information. These are also matters on which we will play a role with the ministry on an ongoing basis.

In conclusion on the Hughes review, I want to just reiterate that I believe a great deal has been accomplished on these recommendations, whether or not they are considered completed or in progress. The committee may again, with respect, want to be briefed on the progress being made by the transition team or the staff of various ministries responsible for these recommendations.

Just to wrap up, then, Madam Chair, as you can see, we're working on many issues. Not only are we going full steam ahead to set up the office, but we are making fast progress on our mandated operational functions as well. For example, as I indicated earlier from our education report, we are forming a working committee with the ministries and would like to continue to come back to the to the committee to offer our views on the progress that is being made or will be made on those recommendations.

We will present our office's strategic plan as well as the development of the broader children's plan that we previously discussed with this committee in the fall.

I thank the committee today certainly for your time and appreciate the opportunity to brief you on the many issues and priorities underway within my office, and at this point, I certainly am prepared to answer any other questions that you might have on the brief update that has been provided to you.

One additional item that I might just raise for your consideration, which arises from the in-camera discussions we had last day, was that we raised the issue of the critical injury of a child and whether or not the matter would be referred to the office for a review. The matter was tabled for further deliberation because of confidentiality matters. That matter has now come into the public realm, not on account of anybody around this table or our office but through normal processes it's come into the public realm.

I would just seek your direction in terms of our workplan as to whether at this point or following this meeting you would be prepared to make that formal referral of that historic case to our office — again, being mindful that a review only engages after all of the other processes are completed.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you. I think that my sense is that the committee probably does not need to further discuss that case. We discussed it at some

length, and we did correspond with the representative, and I think at this time simply a recommendation for referral is in order.

M. Karagianis: I would so move that we refer that case to the children's representative. Do you want me to actually spell out that it's baby Cody?

K. Whittred (Chair): The Clerk is just bringing to my attention that there is a wording of the terms of reference, if you would like to refer to that.

M. Karagianis: I would move that, pursuant to its terms of reference, the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth refer to the representative for investigation the critical injury of the child known as baby Cody.

K. Whittred (Chair): I will now open the floor, and we are going to make this very brief. This is going to be at the discretion of the Chair, because I do want to discuss the further committee business.

B. Bennett: I just want to provide encouragement to the representative and her team. I think that there has been obvious progress made, a lot of progress made, and the report was very good work. This is, I think, an exciting committee for the Legislature to have up and running.

K. Whittred (Chair): Seeing no other hands in the air, we will then move on to item 3 on our agenda.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think what I'll do is wish you well with the rest of your deliberations. I'm about to move into a house across the street from the one I now live in, so I think I'll go back and fill up the wagon, if that's all right with the committee.

Thank you very much for your attention today, and I wish you well with the rest of your proceedings.

K. Whittred (Chair): The Clerk has just distributed two items for your information and overview. One is a draft agenda but could be a possible second meeting arising out of today's business, and I simply ask the direction of the committee on where you wish to go with this.

This would be a meeting in which we would call witnesses from the Ministry of Children and Family Development who could possibly direct us on two things. One is the overview of the Hughes report and, secondly, the items arising out of today's report. I suppose a third is the overview of the ministry itself. I have sort of put those all together. For arising out of today's report, we would also hear from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Advanced Education, including the representative and the provincial health officer and, of course, Lesley du Toit, the deputy of Children and Family Development.

M. Polak: Given the ongoing nature of items number 1 and number 2 versus the more immediate interest around item number 3, and given that we've just received the report from the representative, we might be better off placing item number 3 as our first item. The others will be ongoing and not altered, to my mind, significantly with a wait. The other is fresh in our minds, and I think it would probably be appropriate first. That would be my suggestion.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): I wish to concur with the recommendation of my hon. friend. That does make sense in terms of the committee's time and priorities.

K. Whittred (Chair): All right. Is there any diverging opinion on that matter?

R. Cantelon: I don't know if the report on the Hughes recommendations might be as straightforward as the one we just heard from the children's representative. It might easily be handled within one meeting perhaps. I mean, it might just be point, point, point, and then we move forward to item 3.

I just throw that out for member's consideration. I'm not unhappy with the recommendation, though. We can do it whichever way you want. Since they'll be there anyway and their time is valuable, maybe we can kill three birds with one stone.

K. Whittred (Chair): That is of course another matter. My own experience around committees — and I've had experience on a lot of them — is that sometimes it's very difficult to find the time frame. I do know that in some cases the most expedient way to deal with business was simply to have one big all-day meeting and kind of get all this stuff done. That is one possibility. The other possibility would be to break this into two meetings.

The third question I want to put to the committee is: how soon do we want to do this? We could try to do this in July — I know to do it in August would be of no avail — or we could leave it and schedule it for September. I am open to your pleasure on both of those suggestions.

M. Karagianis: I would say that in both cases I imagine there will be as extensive a number of questions and complexities discussed as we discussed today. So I would bear in mind that probably both instances — with the Hughes recommendations as well as discussion with the various ministries on the implementation of the recommendations that were put

I would actually recommend two separate meetings, just given the fact that the information becomes very weighty. In the case where we're talking about the joint special report, we're looking at a number of different presenters that we may have considerable questions for.

Here we are at this point after several hours, and if we had only managed to get through one half of the body of work, I think there'd be some frustration there. So I would say that breaking it into two separate meetings would probably be more practical and logical.

I would also say that perhaps the sooner we dealt with the recommendations coming out of this report, the better. In the case of the Hughes recommendation implementation, much of that is ongoing, so I don't necessarily believe that there is any critical time factor in us discussing that.

I do think that in the case of the recommendations coming out of today's report, where there is some expectation of deadlines possible as early as September '07, it would be appropriate for us to meet as soon as we possibly can put a meeting together in order to assure ourselves that those deadlines are doable or may need to have some amendments made to them to the children's representative.

That would be my view. I certainly know that in the case of the Hughes recommendations, the report is posted on the website for the MCFD right now, so members can certainly avail themselves of that report and have some time to look at it. But again, I think that those questions would be as easily answered in September as they would in July.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you, Member. I see other members sort of nodding their heads, so I am going to just assume that there is general agreement for that suggestion. I am going to ask our Clerk if she can facilitate what would be number 3 on this draft agenda, the meeting to discuss the outcomes of today's topic, as soon as is possible, with the knowledge that sometimes it does get difficult to get the right people in the right place when you want them. But I do know that some of these people have already been approached, so they know that this is in the works.

Then I think I hear you saying that the second meeting, with the Ministry of Children and Family Development, to discuss the general ministry organization and the update on implementation of Hughes, could be done in September. I will ask the Clerk to try to set these up accordingly.

J. Brar: I just want to comment on this. I don't know when this draft agenda was put together. There was, in addition to the report, an addendum report presented today which includes the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance. I wondered whether we needed to bring them in as possible witnesses or not, because they also have part of the file.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you, Jagrup. That is an excellent question. I'm going to ask Kate to also make that inquiry.

R. Cantelon: One point on the timing: the sooner the better. I agree with the timing, but I will be away the third week in July for a week, in Winnipeg. I hope we wouldn't go that late. I hope we would be earlier than that.

The second item you have is a media scan. It's a simple question. This is something that our researcher, Jonathan, has put together for us. He would simply like to know if members would find this useful. Would you like this sent on your e-mail?

J. Fershau: To clarify, everything here is hyperlinked. We can send you an e-mail document that would…. When you click on it, all the PDFs would link. So it's all indexed. This just has the files there, but we do have an electronic copy of this that would give assistance.

J. Fershau: I didn't do this one. This was done by a co-worker, and it takes about an hour.

M. Karagianis: If I may, under the category "other business…." The Chair and Ron Cantelon and I attended a conference of the federation of children's services here in British Columbia. There was a request made about whether or not their organization could approach this committee for presentation and discussion. I imagine that there may be other organizations like that that also are wondering what their ability to approach this committee is. We did have some dialogue with them on that.

I wanted to bring it up here for discussion as to what we see our role is as far as organizations like that approaching us or presenting to us or accessing in any way information or input into our role here as the standing committee.

R. Cantelon: If I may comment. The way I took it was that they wanted us to report to them at their annual meeting. Wasn't that the specific question — that they would like to hear what we had to say at their AGM? That's what I heard them say.

M. Karagianis: I thought that there were some overtures made to us as to whether or not they could present to us, much as they do the Finance Committee

— whether or not this committee would travel. In fact, I think we addressed that — that this is not a committee that would go out and seek any of kind of consultation like the Finance Committee. But I thought they were expressing some desire to come to the committee and perhaps present to us. So that's really what I'd like to open for discussion here.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): In our very early and initial discussions around this committee I think we talked about a list of witnesses, and we all made various suggestions about those people. I would personally just see that as part of the same thing. If they want us to report to them, that's another matter in terms of expense — where that's going to be and all of those things, and how it's done. But in terms of bringing people to this committee to assist all of us to do something important here, I think that's very useful. I would just see them as part of the education of all of us.

K. Whittred (Chair): You are right, Mr. Deputy Chair, that we did talk about that earlier in our mandate. I think this is something that we need to let evolve over time.

I do agree that we ought to be able to listen to organizations. I think it's important that those organizations be fairly, if you like, high-level, umbrella-type organizations and that the kind of work they do should be relevant to what we have some ability to influence, if I am being, hopefully, clear enough on that.

I think we are not a committee that is going to advertise in terms of who comes before us, but I'm not sure that we shouldn't deal with these on a one-on-one basis if in fact they do approach us. That would be my feeling about that. It probably would be best if those were left to when we're in session and are together with a greater ability to bring ourselves into association as a committee.

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Committee Staff:	Jonathan Fershau (Committee Research Analyst)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH