Children and Youth — Issue No. 6 — Thursday, June 28, 2007 (HTML)

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

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		73
	M. Sieben
	E. Dosdall
	M. Turpel-Lafond
	T. Vincent

Child in the Home of a Relative Program		97
	C. MacDonald
	A. Wharton
	M. Sieben

Update on Implementation of Hughes Report Recommendations		101
	M. Sieben
	M. Turpel-Lafond

Other Business		103
	M. Turpel-Lafond

Joint Special Report: Health and Well-Being of Children in Care in British Columbia: Educational Experience and Outcomes		103

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

Clerk:

Kate Ryan-Lloyd

Committee Staff:	Jonathan Fershau (Committee Research Analyst)

Witnesses:

Bob de Faye (Ministry of Health)
Dr. Emery Dosdall (Deputy Minister of Education)
Susan Kennedy (Ministry of Education)
Cairine MacDonald (Deputy Minister of Employment and Income Assistance)
Rob McPhee (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth)
Dr. Moura Quayle (Deputy Minister of Advanced Education)
Mark Sieben (Ministry of Children and Family Development)
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (Representative for Children and Youth)
Tom Vincent (Ministry of Advanced Education)
Andrew Wharton (Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance)

K. Whittred (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I feel like a bit of a celebrity up here. We have so many people around the table. It's quite an unusual occurrence for a legislative committee to have such a group to present on any one occasion.

I want to remind all members that this is a formal meeting. Therefore, everything that we discuss is recorded in Hansard.

I almost forgot about introductions. We'll start with Mary and perhaps just go around the table.

T. Vincent: Tom Vincent, ADM, students and learning, the Ministry of Advanced Education.

B. de Faye: Bob de Faye. I'm chief administrative officer for the Ministry of Health.

C. MacDonald: Cairine MacDonald. I'm the Deputy Minister of Employment and Income Assistance.

A. Wharton: Good morning. I'm Andrew Wharton, the Assistant Deputy at the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance.

R. McPhee: I'm Rob McPhee, the principal investigator for the Representative for Children and Youth on the education report.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I'm Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the Representative for Children and Youth.

M. Sieben: My name is Mark Sieben. I'm assistant deputy minister for integrated policy and legislation in MCFD.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk Assistant and Committee Clerk): I'm Kate Ryan-Lloyd. I serve as Clerk to the committee.

K. Whittred (Chair): I'm Katherine Whittred, MLA for North Vancouver–Lonsdale and Chair of this committee.

To put this in context, we had, a week or so ago, a very thorough report from Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond on the joint special report that was prepared by her office and the Ministry of Health, entitled Health and Well-Being of Children in Care in British Columbia: Educational Experience and Outcomes. All of you are aware that what we have today is an assembly of all the various groups that are referred to in that report and have some responsibility and will add substance to the material that we heard a week or so ago.

I believe we're going to ask Mr. Mark Sieben to take the lead on this. He's going to give a little bit more background, and then the other ministries will follow with their presentations.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I just wanted to formally send regrets from Dr. Perry Kendall. He wasn't able to attend today. There is a family illness, but he said he would review the Hansard.

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

M. Sieben: Good morning. As was noted and with permission of the committee, what we'd like to do is provide a little bit of context and information about children in care themselves — who they are, where they come from — the legal authorities associated with the work that we do with them and, overall, our mandate to provide services with that group in order that we can speak to the recommendations in some form of context. The first pile of slides in the handout that's been prepared address that topic.

First of all, on behalf of my colleagues, the deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers and others, it's a pleasure, and we very much appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak to a topic such as the outcomes and well-being for children in care. It's certainly a topic that is close to my heart and to colleagues in MCFD.

Prior to being the ADM for policy and legislation, I spent some time as the provincial director of child welfare for the province. There is a direct relationship between the director's role and children in care, given that children in care are in fact in the care of the director under the Child, Family and Community Service Act.

There are six directors in the province, in fact: the provincial director, a designated director in each of our

five regions, and one director who has responsibility for guardianship services and Community Living B.C.

With that said, we're very appreciative of the representative's report and the work done relating to educational outcomes for children in care. Anytime awareness can be raised relating to the well-being of children in care and opportunities and initiatives to improve those outcomes, it is a good thing. We very much welcome that conversation.

I recall a phrase used by our former officer for children and youth relating to the relationship that government has with children in care being a special responsibility. That's certainly one that we take seriously and look to build on through our own ministry's work and through cross-ministry work too. With that said, both at a community level and in our involvement with parents and family themselves, it's very much a shared responsibility in terms of us being able to address outcomes such as educational outcomes.

What I'd like to do for a few minutes, with your permission, is talk a little bit about how and why children come into care and the relationship that they have to government, because it's different from status to status to a certain extent. Then amongst our group here we'll try to speak a little bit to a number of the cross-ministry initiatives that this area involves.

I'll invite you to take a look at slides 2 to 4 while I talk a little bit more about children in care. It's safe to say that generally children in care are not a static group, as outlined on slide 3. On a regular basis we have children coming into care and coming out of care.

Within MCFD we receive approximately 40,000 requests for service, inclusive, in that group of around 30,000 protection reports each year. The result of that, after all the work in individual cases is done, is a little over 4,000 children coming into care over the course of this past year. That's relatively stable for the last few years.

Correspondingly, pretty close to 4,100 children are discharged from care too. This occurs perhaps after one or two days or a week or two in care or a few months or a few years or, if the child is in care until the age of majority, when they turn the age of 19. Generally, it is the experience of a child in care that they go home. A much greater majority of children that come into care end up exiting care and returning to their families and their communities.

To foreshadow a little bit our discussion on the recommendations, what some of this information impresses upon us and what I hope you'll take the opportunity to take a look at as we go through the rest of the CIC slides is that while there is a very strong relationship between having been or being a child in care and having, as the report describes, poorer educational outcomes than the children who haven't come to the attention of the director, it's a far-reaching conclusion.

Certainly in discussion with individuals from the representative's office — Rob and others…. The report does not say or it is not the case that there is a causal link between being a child in care and poor educational outcomes.

In fact, there are many reasons why children come to the attention of the ministry and end up spending some period of time with us, and they come into care for varying lengths of time. If there is a central message in the report, in my mind from my particular perspective, it's that during that period of time there is a substantial opportunity for us to improve those outcomes. That opportunity somewhat varies depending on the nature of the legal relationship we have with the child and the length of time that they are in the director's care.

On slide 4 we've provided a bit of a trend line for you to see how things are going as far as the numbers of children in care in our province. It's been relatively stable over the course of the last three or four or five years. We currently have approximately 9,300 children in care.

With that said, this too is not a static experience. CIC numbers are seasonally adjusted, and they are influenced by things such as school years and summer holidays and vacations. For example, our child-in-care population traditionally drops 50 to 100 children by the time June or July rolls around.

By the time we get to October, we see an increase of children in care again. That stays relatively stable until we get close to Christmastime. Then quite often the case is that children go home again for some periods of time. While the drops are not dramatic, it is enough that it's something we plan for in our cycle of business in our regional offices.

On slides 5 and 6 we provide a little further information about our numbers of children in care and specifically that proportion of children who are aboriginal and first nations. It is true that over 50 percent of the children-in-care population is aboriginal first nations, and this is very much out of proportion with the overall number of children in our province who are of first nations, aboriginal heritage, which I understand to be around 8 percent.

There are reasons for this, however. That perhaps might be the source of some other briefing and some other meeting, because we could go on about that for quite some time.

An example, however, is that the funding relationship that the federal government has with our province and delegated agencies only kicks in at this point, once a child is in care, so there isn't opportunity in many cases for funding for delegated agencies without there being a child in care. That is a source of discussion between our province — particularly the western provinces — and the federal government in order to seek some change in that.

We're also finding that we're becoming a little bit better at determining, sometimes after the fact, the children who are in fact aboriginal. What we're seeing as an increase now in the numbers of aboriginals in care has more to do with us taking a look at our files and going and speaking with families and finding that a child who hasn't been listed as aboriginal is in fact an aboriginal child. So the children have always been in care. What's changing, though, is a change in status from being a non-aboriginal child to an aboriginal child as far as our system is able to recognize.

What slides 5 and 6 indicate is that we have children who are cared for both in delegated agencies and in MCFD who are aboriginal children. INAC pays for 783 children who are in the care of the director as of March 31. This number changes on a weekly basis, but as of March 31 it was close to 800 children who were funded through INAC.

The funding rule for a child to be funded through the federal government is that if the parent from whom the child was removed habitually resides on reserve, then the funding source for that child is the federal government. Other children are funded at the cost of the province.

I'd also note — just in relation to slide 6, which describes a little bit further the location of children in care and basically the split that we have of male/female. Children receive care in MCFD through social workers delegated by the director under the authority of the Child, Family and Community Service Act. That work is done through our district offices throughout communities in B.C.

They also receive guardianship services through 24 delegated agencies. The delegated agencies, while not within MCFD itself…. Their staff, their social workers, are also delegated by the provincial director under the Child, Family and Community Service Act. Those children's status is children in care under the authority of the director.

Then, finally, the guardianship services for children in care are also provided to children who are receiving out-of-care services through Community Living British Columbia.

As of March 31, once again, in the interior region there were 1,784 children in care. In our Fraser region, which is the largest region, we had 2,461 children in care. In Vancouver coastal, which includes not only urban Vancouver but the Bellas, 921; Vancouver Island, 1,679 children in care. And in the north there were 981 children in care.

Twelve children are cared for directly through the provincial office. This is usually as a result of what we refer to as our migrant services — children who might be provided care as a result of arriving in Canada through Immigration Canada and aren't able to stay with parents for some reason. Some 1,433 children are in the care of our 24 aboriginal agencies, and I'm pleased to say that's a number that is rising in our overall proportion of aboriginal children who are being cared for through aboriginal agencies.

I'll invite you now to take a look at slides 7, 8 and 9. What I'm seeking to do here is describe a little bit more about the whys and hows that children come into care. In the pie graph that you see displayed on slide 7 are the categories of care that are available under the Child, Family and Community Service Act. The numbers that you see underneath those terms are, as of March 2007, the number of children in care under those categories.

Beginning at the top, we see that 603 children are in care of the director under voluntary care agreements. A voluntary care agreement is an agreement offered between the director, a social worker in a district office and a family member for a relatively short period of time — usually anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Depending on the age of the child, the agreement might be extended up to two years, but no more than two years. Generally, they are of shorter duration.

The custody and guardianship responsibilities associated with a child being in care under a voluntary care agreement are that while through the agreement the director provides day-to-day custody and care — through a foster home arrangement in most cases — the parent remains the legal guardian for the child.

Similarly, when a child is in care through a special needs agreement, the guardianship relationship once again remains with the child.

Special needs agreements, by their very term, are used in circumstances when a child has a special need that makes it extremely difficult for the child to receive care through the parents' home. They, too, can be extended. They can go on for longer periods of time, often for a number of years. Of the 380 children who are in care through special needs agreements, the majority of those children — close to 300 — are cared for through Community Living British Columbia.

I'm going to drop down a slice of the pie here and speak a little bit about children who are under the removal category.

If a child is removed under the authority of the Child, Family and Community Service Act, then within seven days a social worker is responsible to present those circumstances to court. At that initial hearing, subject to that hearing being adjourned for some reason, a court then makes some form of interim order — either having the child returned to the parent or placing the child in the interim custody of the director in most cases.

Until that is done, however…. When this snapshot was taken, we had close to 300 children who were in this removal category. Under that removal category, which thankfully doesn't last very long — usually a few days and sometimes, when adjournments occur, perhaps closer to a month — while the director has responsibility for the ongoing care of the child, the actual custody arrangements and the guardianship remain with the parent.

The interim orders occur shortly after that initial first cause hearing. Once an interim order or a temporary custody order is made, then the director under the CFCSA is for legal purposes the custodial parent and is able to exercise custody and most guardianship rights associated with looking after the child other than the responsibility to consider plans such as adoption.

There are exceptions to that, however. A court can order, under section 47 of the CFCSA, that a parent retains certain rights while a child is in interim or temporary custody. Two primary areas of responsibility that are addressed by the court, if this order is made, are religious upbringing and educational planning.

Lastly, what you can see and what I'm going to speak a little bit further about in the next few slides is children in continuing custody. This is a relatively cold

bureaucratic term under our act, unfortunately, for children who remain in the care of the director and of the province until the age of majority. These are our permanent wards. These children are who I would submit are our greatest opportunity in order to influence the educational outcomes for children in care.

As mentioned, the legal authority associated with a child coming into care affects the relationship that the director and the CFCSA has with that child as well as the parent, and those relationships differ.

As mentioned, under the course of an agreement — whether it's a voluntary care agreement or a special needs agreement — the parent remains the guardian. While foster parents and social workers are necessarily involved with teachers and counsellors at schools, there is an obligation on us to also involve the parent. As the parent remains the guardian for that child, the parent at the end of the day is the one who has specific responsibility and specific opportunity to give some form of direction regarding such plans as educational plans.

When a child is in temporary care, and anytime we're talking about a child being in care by agreement or under an interim or a temporary custody order, our focus is on having a child return home or return to community.

Our responsibility then — and what I'm hopeful that you in your roles and constituencies would hear — is the work that we do with families in order to facilitate those returns home in a way that makes the best sense for children in a safe and stable environment, subject to the mandate under the CFCSA.

Every child that comes into care is required to have a plan of care developed for him or her. We have a standard in our collection of guardian standards that speaks to this responsibility on behalf of the director. Child-in-care standard 11 speaks to assessments in planning for children in care and sets out requirements for social workers to meet.

An initial assessment of a child's needs necessarily has to occur within 30 days. This interim plan is then informed and built upon. Within six months, if a child is in care for that period of time, our social workers are required to have what we refer to as a CPOC — a comprehensive plan of care — for a child.

Plans of care are then required by policy to be reviewed at least every 90 days. A fuller review occurs after six months. For the purposes of our discussion here, I'd note that there is an educational component within formal plans of care.

Education is a significant and specific component of a child's plan of care. Where possible, social workers looked to receive input from teachers and other school professionals in order to inform that plan. The objectives of assessing a child's education are determined if the child's educational achievements match his or her ability, the child is acquiring special skills and interests, the child is participating in a wide range of activities and that adequate attention is being given to the child's education. This in turn is a responsibility that is shared through the social worker's relationship with foster parents and the child's natural parents, depending if the child is in temporary or continuing custody.

I would note, however, that the best policy does not necessarily a CPOC make. I'm pleased to say that in approximately three-quarters of cases we find our hard-copy CPOCs in plans. Sometimes they are done less completely than we would like, although we certainly find indications of very fulsome plans. Within those CPOCs, an issue that the report notes, there is certainly work that can be done in order to improve the educational components of those plans.

Unfortunately, rollups of CPOCs are not possible. I cannot provide information to you that says specifically how fulsome or how many of our comprehensive plans for our 9,300 children in care have the educational component done in a way that we would think is better rather than needing improvement. We audit our CIC files on a regular basis. Each office is audited once every four years. But that is an area that we're looking to improve and get more information for the sake of ourselves and others who are interested in such issues through, hopefully, a new, modern and more useful information management system.

Similarly, as the legal status for a child in care changes, so does the director's opportunity, responsibility and mandate to be involved and informed and participate in the development of an educational plan for a child. Stated simply, for a child that is in temporary care, the responsibility is less than if the child is in long-term or continuing custody. Where the child is in temporary custody, then we would seek to discharge that responsibility, once again, in consultation with the foster parents as well as the child's parents and family.

I'm going to flip now to slide 11 and invite you to take a look at slides 11 and 12 in this package. I'm going to talk a little bit more now about children in the continuing custody of the director. These are children who stay with the director and in the government's care for longer periods of time.

As your coloured slide shows, once again, as in the overall child-in-care population, there is an overrepresentation in the numbers of aboriginal children who are in continuing custody. This has been a relatively constant theme over the course of the last few years.

I would also note that approximately 500 youths age out — it's the term we use — of being children in care. In other words, about 500 children each year reach the age of majority. Upon that occurring, while there are still some responsibilities associated with being the director, they are no longer technically children in care.

Slide 12 provides specific information about the age distribution for children in care who are in continuing custody. As you can see by the bars, they tend to be older children. It is not too common, although certainly possible, for a child to come into care as an infant and stay with the director until the age of majority. That is, thankfully, something that is relatively infrequent, although not unknown.

It is more common for children who are in continuing custody of the director to come into our care when they are older. Sometimes they have been in our care before. It is fairly common for children and families who are working with MCFD to receive services for some period of time, perhaps under a temporary care agreement for the child to come into care. A child goes home again once initial risks or the initial service plan makes it appropriate for the child to do so. But other vulnerabilities associated with the environment or the child's relationship with the parent may result in the child coming back into care. However, as a general rule of application, children who are in continuing custody of the director tend to be older kids.

Slide 13 provides the limited information that we have on moves of children in care in foster home arrangements. We are not able to accurately track the number of moves on an aggregate level for children in care over long periods of time. However, we are able to track relatively accurately what happens within the course of an individual year. Generally, what this slide shows is that most kids stay in one home and don't go through the disruption associated with a move. However, a smaller number of kids might in fact go through a number of homes. As a result, our mean average indicates that while moves for children in care on an annual basis are not relatively high, those moves are significant for a smaller group of children.

Once again, where this action occurs, quite often we are dealing with children who are a little bit older as opposed to a little bit younger. Our placement rates for children that are younger in most cases — there are exceptions, but in most cases — are more stable than for teens.

Slide 14 provides specific information on the time that children generally stay in care. As you can see by the bars, the period of time appears to be getting a little bit longer. Once again, for aboriginal children it appears that they stay with us for longer periods of time. With non-aboriginal children we're more successful in moving them back to their families and back to their homes and communities in a shorter period of time.

Generally, children may stay with us, on an average basis, for up to two years. This average is inclusive of children who are in continuing custody, who are with us for longer periods of time, which the next slide is going to show.

It is often the case that an initial involvement with a family and a child may require an in-care stay that often lasts a period of months. An individual front-line caseworker will tell you that six to nine months is likely fairly normal, particularly if we have some form of court involvement. If matters can be addressed within a temporary or short period of time, then that's what it takes. On the whole, however, our average for children being in care is around two years.

In contrast, the amount of time that a child in continuing custody is in care is a little bit longer. For aboriginal children who are in the director's continuing custody the average is 8.3 years. For non-aboriginal children the average is 6.4 years. Once again, these eight and six and a half years generally tend to be the older periods of childhood.

Slide 16 seeks to provide you with a little bit of information for children who are involved with the ministry but who are not in the care of the director. So it's children who are in kith-and-kin agreements, for example, or children who are in temporary custody arrangements through the CFCSA that are placed in the temporary custody of another person, and children who are on youth agreements. In these circumstances the director is neither the primary custodial caregiver nor the guardian.

A kith-and-kin agreement is technically an agreement between the parent and an alternative caregiver — a family member — whereby they agree that the child is going to be cared for by the family member. MCFD's involvement is specific to providing some form of support funds and some support plan and services that hopefully would facilitate the child's return home. In these circumstances, though, the director isn't involved in, let's call it, the guardianship responsibilities associated with planning the long-term events of a child's life.

Foreshadowing one of the questions that I recall seeing in Hansard during the initial committee discussion on the educational outcomes report, youth agreements are a relatively new phenomena here in B.C. We've had them available since 1999, and we see that they are, increasingly, an effective means by which we can provide services to youths who are 16 to 19, who traditionally do not receive services well through foster home or family care home–based agreements.

However, children who are CCOs might benefit from a similar type of service. Usually that's done through our independent living program for children in care. At any one time we tend to have about 300 children who are receiving services on an independent living basis, in comparison to the 453 youths that you see reflected here, receiving services through a youth agreement.

The focus for most of this work, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, occurs at a local level. It's individual social workers working with individual school counsellors and school teachers on the education side and locally based, contracted-agency support staff. Often, when we're talking about youths, we're in independent living or youth-agreement circumstances.

One of the great opportunities that the report offers us is to be able to take a look at the aggregate-level data that is available through the Ministry of Education and ourselves and is a fine opportunity for discussion at our most local level so that social workers might know more of the trends and be able to apply some of that learning to their individual casework.

However, there is a difference in what we're able to do provincially from what our social workers are able to carry out on a day-to-day basis. We look to inform that work through some of our cross-ministry initiatives as well as how some of the recommendations play out when you take into context some of the information that we've provided here associated with being a child in care.

With that, perhaps I'll sum up. There are a number of opportunities, as we address the individual recommendations, for our colleagues from other ministries to participate, relating to their own individual mandates as well as a number in the cross-ministry work that we do.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Going back to slide 3. Obviously, there are a great number of people returning home when they're discharged, but I'm just wondering how many are repeaters. You know, the phenomenon of the child who goes back home, is reapprehended, back into care, back home — do we have any statistics on that?

M. Sieben: I don't have that with me, but yes, that's relatively easy to produce. I'd agree with you that it likely represents a significant amount of that number — probably not a majority, but still a significant number.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): That leads me to the next question, which is around the average length of time in care. I'm just wondering again: do you have numbers that indicate average length of time in care? I mean, is that the totality of their time in care until they're the age of 19, or were you talking about the average time in care on an individual basis or a one shot?

You might see a child that's in care perhaps a total of five or six years, but it's five, six or ten different apprehensions. Therefore, of course, the chances of them going into the same foster home or getting the same level of care or the same person — the same continuity — might in fact be impossible to achieve. They're simply not going to get it.

That's the kind of thing I'm interested in. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

M. Sieben: Sure. I take your point. It's not uncommon, let's say, for children to come into care a number of times.

I'd bet relatively strongly that the likelihood of a child being removed and apprehended five, six or ten times is likely low. I don't recall seeing a case like that. However, it's quite often that a child might be brought into care through a care agreement once, twice or perhaps even three times over the course of a period of four or five years. At the end of the day that circumstance simply may be untenable, in which case a child may be removed and then brought into care under the authority of a court order.

The figures that you see here are specific to individual entries in care. They do not include the cumulative time a child is in care over the course of their childhood. I'm not able to confirm that we're able to get that, although it may be possible.

J. Brar: If you look at slide number 4, what we see is a trend here going up — the number of children in care — if we look from April '98 to almost August '01, and then sliding down particularly significantly between '01 and February '04.

M. Sieben: A number of things happened. I'd suggest, for the sake of focusing on the reason at hand, that this might be the subject of some further briefing too. I'll keep my comments relatively brief. There's more to it than what I'm going to offer here in a couple of bullet points.

It was noted around 2000…. Well, going back to 1998, for example, what we were dealing with at the time was the aftermath associated with the Gove inquiry and also the introduction of a new piece of child welfare legislation here in B.C. — the Child, Family and Community Service Act — which was consistent with and modelled after child welfare legislation brought in, in other jurisdictions, particularly in Canada.

However, anytime there is a change that is that fundamental as well as common across Canadian provinces…. In any event, anytime there is some form of public inquiry related to child welfare, we often see a relatively dramatic increase in the numbers of children in care. This usually takes a while for it to work through our system, and it takes concerted effort on behalf of a child welfare authority in order to be able to address that and make sure that social workers are able to focus specifically and balance out the needs between child safety and the risks that they have in their home environment.

It was these factors that influenced a lot of policy decisions around 2001 — the introduction of mechanisms such as kith-and-kin agreements, family conferencing, for example — where we began to see a bit of a drop.

The other quick point that I know is that some of it is attributed simply to demographics in certain areas.

I might invite the committee to consider whether or not they would like to receive further information on this at another time in order that we might also focus on some of the educational points that are raised in the report.

J. Brar: I would like to put it on the record that we would like to have further information on this particular issue.

My second question. Although you're not responsible for this child in the home of a relative, if you look at the slide, when it comes to the number of children, from 1992 to '05 and after that has been going up significantly. There's no downward trend here; but here there is. Can you tell me if there's any understanding of that — as to why there are two different trends going on?

M. Sieben: There is some understanding. Some is probably more speculative, while some is probably more certain. Roughly stated, I'd certainly look for opportunity from my colleagues from MEIA. The gate in for services for being a child in care is quite a bit different than the gate in for the child in the home of a relative. It's simply a different form of service.

Child welfare is focused on the safety and vulnerability associated with being a child that necessarily requires, under child welfare legislation, some form of intervention, whereas CIHR is a service that, at the end of the day, is requested between parents and family members. It would be best if my colleagues from MEIA might speak to that.

K. Whittred (Chair): If I could just remind members that we are going to be hearing from the other ministries. At this point, if we could just confine our questions to the background data that Mark has been kind enough to bring to our attention.

J. Brar: If you look at slide 7, where the majority of the children are under the category of continuing care, that's where the biggest opportunity we have is when it comes to better outcomes relating to the education of a child. Although you mentioned that there's probably no specific data to indicate how many moves a child makes on those longer-term permanent placements, if there are any data, I would like to know that.

The question I have, over and above, is: when the child moves — because it's a long-term placement — what kind of transitional plan between a social worker to the other social worker is there so that the continuation of the existing plan is incorporated into the next if there's any change?

M. Sieben: That's a very good question. Quite often a child might move, and the social worker stays consistent. Particularly on guardianship caseloads, it is more common for there to be fewer social workers than on an intake or investigation file — not that changes in social workers is unknown, because certainly it isn't. You'll hear that directly from children in care themselves.

With that said, when there is a move, say, from a family service team to a guardianship team, a full file review and summary are done and usually one or a number of meetings occur between the different social workers involving the child and usually the caregiver and service providers too.

E. Dosdall: Just if I can add to that — on the individual education plan that would be developed at the school level in consultation with the social workers. If there is a move, that individual education plan moves with the child. So there is a planned-in continuity aspect to that part of the educational development of the child. That moves with the child in all cases.

M. Karagianis: I'll keep my questions brief. Mark, I don't see any statistics here for the number of children in care that have gone into adoption. Do you actually have those numbers and the impact that adoption has had on the reduction of the number of children in care?

M. Sieben: We do. I'd be pleased to provide them. Over the course of the last three or four years, roughly speaking, about 300 children per year in the care of the ministry have received adoption.

M. Karagianis: And those children are then considered no longer in care, either under MCFD or under the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance?

M. Sieben: That's right. However, it is fairly common these days — in fact, in the majority of cases — while children are no longer in care of the director, for the adoptive family to be in receipt of some form of post-adoption assistance from our ministry.

B. Bennett: I'm a bit confused, actually. We have a report here that contains nine recommendations, and several of those recommendations are for Children and Family Development. I thought that what we were doing here today was asking ministries to come forward and tell us how they were proposing to address the recommendations in this report.

I appreciate the background information and all the charts and so forth. It's very interesting, and it's useful. It's not that it's not useful, but now, unless I'm misunderstanding how this meeting is organized, we're faced with you having basically used up your allotted time. Frankly, I would like to hear from you about every single recommendation that goes to your ministry specifically.

K. Whittred (Chair): That is actually where we're going. What the plan is, is that Mark, through the agreement of the ministries, assumes the lead on the discussion today. Mark has provided the committee with some background material. Now we're going to move on to each recommendation, and each ministry will comment on how they perceive addressing the recommendations in the report.

M. Sieben: Yes. We're pleased to do that. It's difficult to speak to the recommendations individually unless there is some context associated with children in care. We're very much ready and looking forward to doing that now.

B. Bennett: Okay. I appreciate the fact that you've given us the context. That's great, but personally, I'd like to get on with how the ministry intends to address the recommendations. I hope that you will address all of the recommendations in the report that go to your ministry.

M. Polak: With respect to recommendation 5, and I guess it's number 2 under that, you mentioned that there aren't typically a large number of home moves for a child in care. But we know that the number of school moves is a problem.

Are the school moves, then, reflective of issues unrelated to moving the residence? Are they related more to issues of behaviour or other things like that that would cause a transfer from one school to another, or do we know?

M. Sieben: We know somewhat anecdotally. Often a school move reflects a move in the child's living arrangements — what part of town they might be living in and moving to. Often for many of these kids it may reflect them seeking admittance into school a number of times and social workers working with school authorities at a local level in order to facilitate that plan.

I should qualify, too, that the data that I was limited in being able to provide around the child's moves were limited to one year. Even with the mean average being 0.83, I think it said, over the course of a number of years, that's still too much. What the report rightly identifies is that over the course of a number of years, there are a number of school moves for a child, and that is something that we would certainly hope to address.

M. Polak: Just as a follow-up to that — and it may actually be more appropriate for Mr. Dosdall — how well are we doing in terms of producing useful data from school districts that can be utilized by MCFD in tracking this kind of thing beyond just, say, the number of moves and getting at what kind of causes there may be?

E. Dosdall: We track the children as well as we can through our PEN numbers, which we'll talk to in terms of recommendation 1. The question really is in terms of sharing that information on an individual basis, as you would know, from the social worker to the learning resource teacher to the classroom teacher. That in many cases is the area in which we have the concerns in terms of tracking information from school to school.

K. Whittred (Chair): Now we're going to move on. You will see in your package that each recommendation is restated directly from the report, and the appropriate ministries are going to respond, as I think is the plan.

M. Sieben: I'm pleased to start off speaking to recommendation 1. I'm hopeful that some of the context might inform where we're thinking about some of the greatest initial opportunity for us to apply this recommendation. I recall seeing a suggestion from the representative in the initial standing committee meeting that was somewhat on point to this too.

It would be, in our view, prudent to begin to look at whether or not we might be able to apply this recommendation specifically to those groups of children for whom we have the greatest opportunity to influence educational plans — those being children in continuing custody.

The September and October time frames are ambitious. However, we're feeling that subject to how some of the underlying policy and some of the systems issues may play out, this is certainly doable by the end of this calendar year.

E. Dosdall: If I might, Chair, add some information to what Mark is saying. First of all, as we go through the recommendations…. I think in the Ministry of Education we're really quite pleased with the spirit of the recommendations and have in fact commented to the principals throughout the province with respect to these recommendations and tried to make sure that they have been brought to their attention.

There are a number of actions inferred from the recommendations that we think would be helpful to us in terms of ensuring the best life chances for these young people.

The first thing is that when we're looking at the first recommendation, the Ministry of Education has what we call personal education numbers, or PENs as we refer to them. They're really critical to the collection and analysis of the data we have about the child in a number of different categories but most specifically their development academically. I believe we're the only province that has this information.

The minister assigns a PEN or a PEN number, if you will, to students that are enrolled in public as well as independent schools. With the legislation that we had this past year, we're also now available to assign PEN numbers to preschool children who would be participating in our early learning or StrongStart centres which are being developed across the province. That would be through the boards of education.

As well, through the legislation this year, the PEN numbers would also follow these students into a transition into post-secondary, which is really quite important in allowing us to track these students and their movement.

Parents or legal guardians — and in the case of children in care, this would be the social worker — would have access at the school level to the school-age student's PEN number just as they would have access to any other records that the student would have or any kind of academic records that we would have. This allows them to have a pretty good understanding or profile, if you will, of all the academic achievements of any individual child.

At the same time we're talking about this, we certainly understand that we have to take every precaution to respect the privacy of the individual kids as well as their families. But the School Act describes the PENs and how they can be used with respect to school-age children. With your indulgence, we'll just quickly identify those.

We use the PENs to determine operating grants to boards of education. On the basis of that, because we do most of our funding on a per-pupil basis, this allows us to track that in determining the enrolment of our independent schools, in researching and evaluating — this is the one that I think is most relevant to the discussion we have today — the effectiveness of boards, francophone education authorities, independent schools and programs about the curriculum that is being developed.

In many cases, we would provide the PEN numbers of different groups or collections or cohorts of students and make that available as a PEN number without the individual name attached so that various researchers or people from our universities can use this to study, to make recommendations and observations and to provide evidence-based decisions that would be helpful to us in our continuing policy development. As well, we use the PENs for administering examinations, transcripts, bursaries — you name it.

Lastly, as I said, was evaluating the student transitions from a K-to-12 system to post-secondary. The PEN number allows us that kind of tracking. The key now for us is to find ways in which, through the Privacy Commissioner and through our discussions with our colleagues in the other ministries, we can collect that information in such a way so that we can present it in a cogent way that not only can be useful at the school level with the social workers and teachers but might be useful to us in producing any kinds of reports or other kinds of ways in which we want to display that kind of data.

K. Whittred (Chair): What I would like to do as we go along, because I think it will work better, is ask for questions on each recommendation. Does that sound like a reasonable plan? Then we can do one and move on to the next.

B. Bennett: I heard what the Ministry of Children and Family Development had to say about the dates, September and October. Mr. Dosdall, I maybe missed it, but what was your specific response to those dates?

E. Dosdall: We would agree with our colleague that those are very ambitious dates. We don't think that we're going to be able to meet those in terms of this first year.

Probably by calendar year we should be in a position in which we can have the data available. We're going to work towards them as hard as we can, but we don't necessarily believe that we're going to be able to meet these dates. It's the end of June on our calendar, and it's going to be, we think, almost impossible to meet the September 30, '07, date.

B. Bennett: How confident are you that you could have this done by December 31?

E. Dosdall: All things being equal, we're actually quite confident that…. If in fact we are allowed to share the information and we have the opportunity to work across ministries and we're also allowed to use this in a way that we can aggregate the data from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner so that we're not violating any of those rules, then technically we think we have the resources to have this available by December 31.

M. Sieben: I'd follow up that it is likely that the greatest application of this information is going to be more at the provincial level, let's say, for the sake of informing policy decisions and looking at any issues that we might use to improve outcomes generally. It's likely to be of less use at a local level for individual caseworkers and teachers working with individual kids in care.

K. Whittred (Chair): I have a question, and it relates a little bit to the privacy issues that were raised. More specifically, who actually is the gatekeeper of this information?

To my knowledge, when a child registers in school, regardless of the age, nobody asks the question: are you in care? The people that know whether or not a child is in care — I think I'm right — are in fact the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The Education Ministry has the PEN number; those have to be matched up. Am I correct in that statement?

M. Sieben: You are. At a local level, however, if a child comes into the care of the director, they're necessarily involved in an educational plan. It is regularly the first stop of instance for the social worker's involvement with the school in order to facilitate the completion of the comprehensive plan of care that I referenced, as well as discharging the responsibility associated with custody and guardianship of the child.

At a local level there is direct contact between social workers and teachers on a fairly regular basis.

K. Whittred (Chair): Mary Ellen, if there is any point at which you want to make a comment, please feel free to jump in.

E. Dosdall: We're really quite pleased that in British Columbia…. I think we're the only province that has the ability to have this kind of universal measure of early childhood development. We're also ecstatic about the kind of….

As we've been using the EDI, we're really quite impressed with the richness of the data. We see this recommendation as a very appropriate recommendation, so we are working in coordination and collaboration with MCFD as well as Health and other ministries who would want to use the EDI as an indicator, to consider the merits and feasibility of increasing this on a yearly basis.

We think it is very appropriate, and it is just a matter now of identifying with the university people that in fact they can carry this out for us, and that resources be

made available through our budgets to do that. We think the recommendation is most appropriate, and we look forward to the implementation of it.

All right. Moving right along, then: recommendation 3, which I think is also the Ministry of Education.

E. Dosdall: This is a pretty significant area for us. The Ministry of Education has legislation and guidelines that set out the expectation, which states: "All students are expected to participate in the foundation skills assessment." These FSA, as we call them, assessments are really for the reading, the writing and numeracy. We do them in grades 4 and 7.

Recently, as the Chair would remember, at one point in time we did them in grade 10. Now that we have other kinds of final tests with the new grad program, they're now administered at 4 and 7.

All students, as is indicated in the act, must participate. Only students that cannot participate because their English or their French is not well developed enough or for some reason, because of their special needs, they can't participate even with such adaptations provided like scribes or computers or other ways of accessing the information…. It is the intention and the expectation of the ministry that all students would participate in it.

As the Chair and members of this committee will know, this has certainly been an area that has not been without a lot of controversy, particularly this past year. We've indicated to boards that we are monitoring the participation rates in the FSA, and we're going to be continuing to hold boards accountable for their implementation of this particular recommendation.

At the same time we're doing that, there has been considerable pressure put on by the British Columbia teachers union, which has indicated that parents should not participate in these particular tests. They have sent correspondence out to school districts that indicate these tests are in opposition to the FSAs. They have encouraged parents to withdraw their children from writing these particular tests.

They have used that as a campaign that has gone out to teachers themselves — not to participate in administering the tests unless so directed. They have participated in terms of ads in papers and communications to parents that somehow these tests would be detrimental to their children's development and, as such, to keep them home and not participate in the tests. So that is part of the concern we have.

We will continue to follow up with local schools, because we do have the participation rates, school by school. Clearly, it's our intention that we would follow up and have an opportunity for those principals to explain why kids are not participating. We would also follow up by looking at the tests themselves to see if there are better ways in which we could administer this particular test.

One of the things that we've contemplated — and all things being equal, we hope we're in a position to move towards — would be to administer the test earlier in the year. The reason why we would move to things like a February administration is that it would then allow us to have it marked, so that in fact this test could be more focused in terms of assessment for learning — to be able to use the test as a basis for a better analysis of the child's learning and the areas in which the child may be deficient in their learning. The teacher would then have an opportunity to concentrate on those particular areas. That is something we're looking at.

If it was administered in February, we'd be in a position that it could be marked and the results back on an individual basis to schools right after spring break. So they would have the last term to really focus on these particular examinations.

All that being said, Chair, we expect this to be an area which there'll be continually some political discussions about. We will monitor this, and we will do the best within our efforts to ensure that every child writes the FSAs and that those results are reported.

Just one last thing that we are contemplating. We also believe that there should be a record to every parent of how their child has done and that if they have not participated — on the rubric that is used or in other words, "exceeding expectations," "meeting expectations" or "not meeting expectations" — their report would report that they had not met expectations for that course.

M. Polak: You mentioned some of the efforts that have been ongoing, to a certain extent, with respect to combatting the foundation skills assessment by certain organizations. It's been going on for a number of years. Do we have any way of knowing how significant an impact that kind of action has had?

As a follow up to that, when parents request an exclusion, who makes the decision? If boards are making improper decisions…. I know we've heard for years that there's speculation that boards will exclude students in order to skew results. If that's ever found to be the case, what would be the consequences to a board?

E. Dosdall: If I might, Chair. First of all, we do monitor the participation, so we know the participation rates year over year. Obviously, we don't have this year's participation rates yet, but we will have that during the course of the summer. We'll be able to, as we've done in the past, monitor that.

We know that participation rates also vary from school to school, from district to district. Through the efforts of our superintendents of achievement, we hope to be in a position to give boards a better opportunity to understand that these are the rules and that this is the law and that they should certainly be having an opportunity to follow the law. So we will be making that much more explicit over the course of this coming year and following up.

The other part is following up, I think in many cases, with all those individual schools where there has

been an impact, where somebody in that school has made a decision that kids don't have to participate. The law says that it is the decision at the school level that you will participate unless those conditions are that you don't have enough English or French in order to participate or if you're handicapped in some other way. Those are the only exceptions there in terms of that order.

E. Dosdall: The decision has been made for the school principal in the law. Secondly, the school principal in some cases has not fulfilled the order of the law. Those would be the things that we would want to follow up on.

E. Dosdall: There are a number of consequences that we would have. Obviously, the first consequence is that we would hope that as professionals they would follow the rule of law. We would want in the first instance, as I said before, to have those discussions with them and to give them the opportunity to participate fully next year. Then there is a range of things that the minister could decide to do following that.

R. Cantelon: Just a couple of questions. What, generally speaking, are the participation rates — what range? Among those non-participants, can you tell me if you have any evidence to support how many of those might be children in care? Are they higher or lower than participation rates for the general school population?

E. Dosdall: If memory serves me correctly, I believe that the participation rates are relatively high — 90 percent to some level. They're relatively high. There are pockets where we find they're not participating.

I would also have to make a generalization. The generalization is that I would believe that there's probably a much lower participation rate among those children in care than there would be for the general population. I don't have the statistics to support that, but that would certainly be my educated guess with respect to that cohort.

B. Bennett: Madam Chair, given the fact that the committee has accepted the recommendations from the report and given what Deputy Minister Dosdall has said about the challenges of encouraging school boards to make sure that these tests are done, I wonder if it would be appropriate for you as the Chair of this bipartisan legislative committee to send a letter to all of the school boards in the province — just alerting them to this report and to the fact that this committee has adopted the recommendations, and encouraging them to make sure that these tests are given and taken.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I just wanted to address the issue of the rates. Just to come back to the report again, we actually assess the rates of participation. In terms of the cutoffs, generally it's approximately a 90-percent compliance rate with the FSAs. We look at grade 4 FSAs. In the grade 4 FSAs what we saw over a period of time, from 1999 to 2005, was that for the children in care, their participation dropped to 68 percent.

There's a definite correlation between vulnerable children and children who are not taking FSAs for whatever reason, by whatever decision-making process might be on the ground. That was a fairly quick decline. At one point around 1999 it was as high as 75 percent for that group, and it's been on a steady decline, which is why we are concerned that whatever measures of compliance can be taken are taken.

We didn't recommend it, but it is of course also possible that you just mandate it for everyone, and if there's a language deficiency or a language concern that there be a special category extruded there. There are other techniques that could be used to include everyone in the FSAs.

Whether or not the list that is there now is too open, I'm not sure. I think it is a matter that could be addressed through a number of techniques, including the techniques that the deputy is identifying, which are better compliance and so on. The concern that we raised in the report was what efforts there are at compliance and that there be some efforts taken, including outside the ministry and across government, to see that compliance.

K. Whittred (Chair): Just for the information of the committee, I seem to recollect that when we heard the report from Clyde Hertzman, he also had some data around the compliance rate. I think his data was more related to schools that wished to make their marks look better than they might be, so that's something you might want to have a look at.

As for Bill's recommendation, actually, the committee has received the report. We have not adopted the recommendations, so that is something we might more appropriately discuss, I think, at the end of today's meeting. Thank you for the suggestion.

Were there any more comments or questions around recommendation 3? Moving on to recommendation 4.

M. Sieben: On behalf of MCFD, we're looking forward to a little more dialogue with the representative's office regarding what the report said and where the recommendation is framed. At issue for us is whether or not the recommendation speaks to the special educational needs that might be addressed in order to have, again, better educational outcomes or whether we're talking about the educational needs for special needs children under the care of the director. It may be either or both. There's good work to do in both cases.

If it were the latter, then that would involve, to a greater degree, our colleagues in Community Living B.C. However, we're pleased to speak with the Ministry of Education and the representative in order to do work in this general area of special needs for children and educational outcomes.

E. Dosdall: Just to add to Mark's comments. We've had a number of discussions with our colleagues in Health and MCFD looking at the development of a common framework on a range of issues, including: can we collectively make services to children with special needs and their families much more coherent, evidence-based and accountable?

A framework that we're in the initial stages of developing is really looking, first of all, in terms of improved access. Improved access is talking about ensuring that these kids are getting the right services at the right time, so we're looking at what that looks like in terms of the framework.

The second part is the effectiveness of the services themselves as they're receiving them. From there we're looking at: what are the high-quality services? When we're talking about high-quality services, we're saying: what evidence do we have, or what evidence can we assemble, to ensure that we have some way of determining how effective the services really are? I mean, it's got to be more than an anecdotal kind of statement, "I think this was really good for them," or "Gee, that looked pretty good," or whatever. What are the other kinds of pieces of evidence we can assemble that would provide that kind of evidence to us?

The third part is ensuring that there is coherence within the systems, and that is talking about looking from ministry to ministry to see how well the services are integrated and coordinated between them. Those are things from operations that we have within individual schools and how those schools coordinate and work with the social worker as they're developing individual educational plans to how they work with service providers within the health regions as they provide those kinds of services back to us.

That overall coordination of those services is something we're looking at. It's a huge task, but I think the work that has been done and the frameworks that we're starting to assemble have some glimmer of hope for us being able to be much more effective in terms of, as I said, the improved access, effective services and coherence of the systems that we have developed between the three ministries for special needs kids.

M. Polak: For some time the issue of in-school support services for students with special needs has been challenging in part because it typically does or can involve a number of different ministries, especially in cases of a severe disability of some type. What kinds of things do we still need to do to improve that circumstance?

I know, for example — I was going to say controversy; it's probably the wrong word — questions arise around the appropriateness of support for learning versus remediating a health problem. Where are we at? I know it's always been a challenge. Are we getting better at it?

E. Dosdall: Those are exactly the discussions that we're having. You get into it, and you say: "Okay, fine. We can do an assessment. We understand that this child is not performing at school." But that really limits the assessment that we would maybe have from a school perspective. So we don't know necessarily.

Then the social worker comes in and starts explaining some of the things from home. Then how do we get to the health provider, which may mean in fact that it's a hearing problem? That's an overstatement, but you know what I'm saying. It may be some other kind of thing that we're not aware of.

How do we coordinate those professionals to make sure that they're all focused on that child at that time and it's not focus from one ministry on that child at that time, and then we don't get to them for another year or two years? By that time the child has lagged behind in her development. How do we get on-time coordinated services?

I think the biggest thing is communication. We're trying to find ways to better communicate. These people are very busy on the ground. They're all doing excellent jobs, but how do we make sure that we coordinate and have them understand that a priority of their work is to coordinate with other professionals in other ministries? That, I think, is something we can do by bringing that to their attention in a more focused way and for us to look at how that would roll out on the ground as they're working from school to school and with kid to child with these special needs kids.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Just a couple of points on this recommendation that I would like to bring forward. First is that this is a very good example of a recommendation where interministerial work is required. One of the reasons why this was highlighted was that the recommendation was phrased to allow some work to be done, but within a framework, and that the independent office of the representative would assist to provide a framework.

Of course, under the legislation — the representative's act — we can do an audit. But we wanted to have a framework because we feel that this is an opportunity to look at interministerial integration around one issue. This is a very important part of bringing together thinking and drilling down to the level of a child as to how children are served specifically by these resources in three ministries.

I'll just bring back an example that we used in the report, which was that special needs funding that sometimes flows from the Ministry of Education goes to school boards. School boards can use that money to reduce class sizes. While that is a laudable and important goal overall in the education system, to what extent does that relate to addressing the special needs of children or children in care who are in that class or overcoming whatever education obstacles they might face?

I'm more convinced of the necessity of this recommendation being fully implemented after last week when the Auditor General for British Columbia released a report on The Child and Youth Mental Health Plan, which they recognize as a very positive and important plan. It was reviewed very positively. If you haven't received copies, I'll ask that the Auditor General send it to the members of the committee. It was considered to

be a very positive plan. It was evaluated as a plan. It hasn't been operationalized.

Some of the areas that were identified of concern are the issues of dual diagnosis. So a child has a learning disability and a mental health issue. Again, what we've seen from the health status of the kids in care in the previous study with Dr. Kendall was that a number of these children — very high rates of these children — have what you call dual diagnosis. But even inside the child and youth mental health plan — that's one ministry — there's a silo. So the child here may not get this resource. Even within the ministry there may be a silo.

I'm not suggesting that the ministry is unconcerned about working on it, and I know they're very committed. It's an excellent plan. To make it operational so that these silos don't happen even in the ministry will be a challenge, but then the three ministries working together….

I just raise the point to say this is an example of where, from the representative's office, interministerial work is required with some independent component. It doesn't necessarily have to be a full audit, but some independent component that keeps a child focus.

You may meet the performance measures of each ministry and still not have the child focus of being able to drill it down to the level of the child. The recommendation of the report was to be able to look more down to the level of the child who might be in care or who has come through the care system to see how they have been supported or not by these resources.

K. Whittred (Chair): Do any of the people from the ministry want to respond before we move on?

M. Karagianis: I think that Ms. Turpel-Lafond actually answered one of my questions in that. I didn't actually hear in the presentation of this recommendation whether the joint ministries of Health and MCFD and Education see this time line as doable. What form will the independent audit take? How is that going to be done?

I agree totally with the children's representative that the independence of this audit is really important, especially given all the variables that should be included, like the Auditor General's report on mental health for youth. So is it doable, and how is it going to be done?

M. Sieben: I'll start, perhaps. As the deputy noted, this is an area of work that is currently receiving cross-ministry focus and attention through the Ministry of Health and MCFD and Education. We respect the role and the mandate of the representative to express interest in these areas and therefore would necessarily look forward to further discussions about how our approach might be framed up that made sense.

Once again, the December 31 deadline is ambitious for the sake of reporting back, let's say, or what such a framework should be in. But with that said, we very much look forward to further discussion regarding the actual cross-ministry work and any form of interest or review that the representative's office would like to have.

J. Brar: When we talk about special needs children, one of the challenges I have found visiting schools is, as Mary Ellen mentioned, the class size and the support available to students in the class.

My question is: is class size part of the goals we have established? And do we have any established targets to reduce the class size to ensure that these children are well served and meet the established goals of the educational plan?

E. Dosdall: As members know, this government has brought in Bill 33. In Bill 33 there clearly have been some defined limits, etc., with respect to class size. The class size is, I would suggest, but one factor. I think that class size itself is really talking about a learning condition. In many cases it's more important as a working condition.

What we're focused on is the learning condition, and in some cases it is the other kind of supports and learning resource teachers or literacy teachers or those other supports that can be made available to the classroom teacher.

Even though we do have some specific limits, we try not to prescribe everything from Victoria with respect to how to meet the needs of these particular children. We're more interested in ways in which we can provide resources to the professionals in the school districts so that they can better assess the specific needs of individual kids and the specific needs of groups of kids and, on the basis of that, make decisions.

Yes, class size and composition are a consideration, but they're only one consideration that is made by the professionals in the field. We continue to look at it, but I think our scope is much broader than that.

B. Bennett: For the Deputy Minister of Education: I hear from teachers that a low class size is obviously important. It's actually more important how many — I won't get my terminology correct here, and I apologize for that — students with special needs and students who are perhaps on that borderline that may not fully qualify as having special needs but who still take extra attention….

It's how many of those students you have in your classroom that's more important to the education that all the students in the class receive. That's what the teachers tell me, and that makes sense to me.

Is it fair to assume that until we can get all students in those classes being tested, we really won't be able to meet this particular recommendation? This one looks like a tough one. Is that a fair thing to say?

E. Dosdall: I think we certainly hear that from teachers in terms of the composition of the students. That's why within Bill 33 the administrator of the school has the opportunity to consult with the teachers. They look at the makeup of the class, and within the resources that are available to them in individual schools, they then try to come up with what's the best decision. Up to the grade 7 or grade 8 level, they can

make those…. There's the consent of the teacher with respect to how many special needs kids would be in a particular class.

At the high school level, one of the things you have to remember is that when you start focusing in on only composition or class size, one of the effects of that, which we saw from before, is that it limited the choices that were available. As such, the kids could only take the core areas, which I think was really not giving them a full educational opportunity. There are always going to be those kinds of trade-offs.

The other thing is: how many kids are tested, and how many kids are not tested? I mean, we keep pretty good records of the children in terms of the assessments. Yes, there will always be waiting lists because there are always going to be more and more kids that are going to be submitted to have this problem or learning disability or behavioral disability — whatever the case may be.

I think the school districts do an admirable job in terms of keeping a profile of those children, following the development of those children. There is, I think, excellent consultation that takes place in most schools between the principal and the teachers in those schools on how the makeup of those particular classes should be.

Would we like smaller classes and fewer kids with special needs? To all of those things I think teachers would say yes. But within the reality of what we have, the way they're set up today, I think there are good decisions being made as a result of what we have in Bill 33.

B. Bennett: But in terms of the recommendation here, we actually…. I think it's pointed out in the report that our statistics for achievement may in fact be skewed if there is a high proportion of special needs students that are not taking the test.

E. Dosdall: Right. That's true. Will that have some impact on some of those results? Yes, but I think as we demonstrate the results in terms of participation levels and achievement levels, we should be able to make a better determination. Can we bring back that information by June 30? I think the answer to that is yes.

K. Whittred (Chair): With your permission, the Chair has a question. Actually, I think Mary Ellen might want to address this.

This recommendation talks about assessing the adequacy and effectiveness of resources dedicated to the special needs of children in care. My question grows out of a conversation I had just yesterday with a person who has just been named to a position in the school district where I reside. He is developing, along with some staff that has been hired, a program for aboriginal children that is based on developing trust and attachment, which I think we would agree are important for children in care.

My question is: given this recommendation, how would you anticipate evaluating that kind of program?

M. Turpel-Lafond: A couple of issues to respond to there. Obviously, there are others more expert in it, but I can just identify some of the questions that the representative's office….

When we look at this area, what are some of the questions that come to mind? Are the children in care receiving appropriate services for their special needs in and out of school? Who monitors their progress and access to special supports in school and in care? Are there services with known effectiveness that should be made available to children with special needs, which are not? Or are they only available in certain areas?

Are the resources being provided capable of supporting better outcomes for children in care? Could the resources for children with special needs being provided by the Education, MCFD and Health ministries be better coordinated for better outcomes?

What we're asking is a number of questions that we want to see coming down to this group and how they are served. What frameworks are in place in each of these ministries that are not output-based but outcome-based? What vehicles are being used to deliver the programming? What incentives are being created to capture these children?

While we've talked about children in care, and I appreciate that you've heard a presentation on all these little boxes…. There's this box and this box, and everybody has a different box.

Again, from the representative's view, the idea is that there are vulnerable children. Quite a few of them may be in continuing care. They may be in temporary care. They might be in the home of a relative. They might be in other categories.

We would like to get into that group of children and see how this funding is assisting them. When we looked at the EDI data that's available now, we could see there are a lot of vulnerabilities even outside these classes. We want to see what supports are there, because I think it will help another group.

I think there's a very common lens on this issue by other ministries. I know that in my discussions with the Ministry of Education in particular, there's a common commitment to get to this. The Ministry of Education just has one piece of it — the Ministry of Health and MCFD….

The idea of the common framework around what works, the evidence-based solutions…. I think that is another thing we have a great interest in, which is why I know we'll talk about it more in recommendation 9. We suggested that there be piloted innovative programs that reflect some of what we've learned from this data-matching study and other evidence-based approaches.

Again, we're interested in evidence-based approaches wherever possible. The middle school attachment, which is being dealt with in the lower mainland…. That's very evidence-based. That's a program that, again, from the representative's office…. There's something we'd like to see. Let's pilot some innovation while we're also evaluating this to see what can succeed, and we have seen some success.

That brings us back to recommendation 9. We've recommended piloting innovation. This framework assessment might help us think about what innovation could be successful or is already successful somewhere in the province of British Columbia.

K. Whittred (Chair): Moving on to recommendation 5. Just to remind the committee that we have discussed this to some extent in previous questions.

E. Dosdall: Just on the Ministry of Education. We don't keep current information about the number of moves of children to each school. We receive data on enrolment only twice during the year, so we're not in a position about the number of individual moves, nor would that be something that we'd be collecting specifically on these kids. Just to point that out, if I can, Chair.

R. Cantelon: Based on some of your earlier comments, with PEN numbers being matched up to school districts and indeed to individual school numbers…. Computers and database check systems are wonderful things these days. Would that not be, if not straightforward, at least a technically feasible thing to do — to then produce the data on a regular basis once you've put that algorithm into place?

E. Dosdall: What we would look at is the possibility that that could be brought in. It's about how you collect the data and how often you collect the data and how many different collection points you have, because it's a great administration, out of 1,800 schools, to have all of that coming in. Then how many times does it come in? To put out a report each time a child or X number of children move would be, I think, quite difficult or quite a bit of extra burden that would happen at the provincial level.

To be able to track these children more appropriately at the school-by-school level is probably a way which would be more effective. Then we can determine, maybe by the end of the year, to do the provincial data, to maybe track to see the accuracy on some of the other files. We could do audits on files.

M. Sieben: To build a little bit on the deputy's comments, another question that deserves asking when applying the recommendation is: how would the data be used? The force of the recommendation and where it deserves to have the most application and would deserve the most benefit is at the local level, at the individual case level.

My experience as a child protection social worker, as well as a policy guy these days, is that it in fact occurs directly between schools and social workers and foster parents. Our trick here, where we might find some additional value, is to find some means by which we might be able to collect data in some form of an aggregate level for some other purpose.

It would be exceptional if a child in care were to move schools, and the social worker and foster parent responsible for providing that care were not aware of that.

M. Karagianis: If I may, I did hear Mr. Dosdall say that because the Ministry of Education is not keeping that kind of data, at this point there is actually some amendment to the recommendation here that's being proposed. Is the ministry agreeing to this, or are they saying: "We're not capable of doing this"?

I'm a little bit unclear between the comments, between both ministries. I understand MCFD as saying: "We will know via social workers if a child is moved." But I hear the Ministry of Education saying: "We don't keep that kind of data, so we're unable to supply that from our end."

E. Dosdall: What we are indicating with respect to their recommendation is that, as my colleague has indicated, the social worker — and at the school level — would know that.

What we will do, and what we have already begun to do through newsletters to our principals, is reinforce with them that such information needs to be shared on an appropriate basis, to make sure that they collect the information at the school level and that the information is shared with the teachers. Not only is it collected at the office with the principal, but it is shared with the individual teachers and, as a result, also is shared, to the extent possible that we do, with the social workers and to other workers who would be there from the other ministries that might have contact with the school.

M. Sieben: One of the great values that the report and its recommendations provides is the opportunity for us then to go and have discussions with our staff that work in the region and encourage them in turn to have discussions with local school officials about how to do better in each of these recommendation areas. That's a commitment I'm pleased to make on behalf of MCFD.

E. Dosdall: A thing that we are really concerned about is just in terms of reinforcing with the principals the concerns we have when a child comes new to a school, particularly a child in a vulnerable state, so that there is an understanding in the school community — within the professionals in that school and in that school community — that that child is coming to this school and needs those kinds of appropriate supports, which may not be the same kinds of supports a child in a normal situation that is transferring in and out would necessarily require.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Just to reiterate, the reason why this recommendation was made was because we don't know the placements of the kids in care in the schools. The not knowing has an impact.

I appreciate that the ministries can't just do this overnight. They can facilitate the process to have it done because there is a local level, but the merit in having

the information…. While the social worker may know where they've enrolled a child, MCFD has no way of knowing that. That is the challenge — to respond to this appropriately.

The view behind the report is that we have to make it a priority to know it because, when we come to the next recommendation, which is on an education plan, if we don't know it, we can't then step back and look at it.

I'm also particularly concerned about where there are children who are hard to place in schools. When you look at those youth, that particular group that has maybe been in care in ten years — maybe they have moved numerous times in those ten years, and they're not placed in schools — we don't understand. Are they hard to place? Why are they not being placed? What is the obligation on school boards to accept them? Is there a need for alternative programs for children that are more at risk?

If we don't have the data, we won't know. I appreciate that the ministries are open to getting the data, but to say that it will just be left at the local level…. I think we will lose an opportunity if we don't aggregate it up and if we don't find a way to facilitate it effectively up to the provincewide level.

J. Brar: Madam Chair, my question is relating to part 2 of this recommendation. I think we still have to hear the comments a little bit. Until then, do you want me to ask the question?

J. Brar: Okay. The key goal here is to reduce the number of school moves. My question is: looking at the information we have, we heard before that…. Are we going to establish some targets for different categories, or is it going to be an overall reduction in numbers?

M. Sieben: We look forward to further discussion with the Ministry of Education and the representative's office regarding what in fact could be done, and then the form of targets that make sense given the information that is currently available and that which we might be able to produce or make available in the future. But I'm afraid I don't have a specific response to that question right now.

J. Brar: I appreciate your comments. My concern is that…. One of the key opportunities we have in the bigger slot where we have children in care on a permanent basis…. Until we know how many moves, what percentage of moves are taking place now, it will be hard to go back and check whether we made any improvements or not.

M. Sieben: I very much agree and appreciate your comments and look forward to being able to find some means by which we could locate such data and then use it appropriately.

B. Bennett: Just to follow up on part 1 of this recommendation for the Deputy Minister of Education, is there not some way that we could make either the boards — or through the boards, the principals — responsible for tracking students coming in and out of their schools and sharing that information with MCFD?

E. Dosdall: We would be pleased to follow up with respect to that. I think the hardest part is that because the child's record does follow, when a child moves, as soon we get notified at the school level….

A child can move whenever. Overnight the child is gone. We don't necessarily know why they're going or where they're going. We then get a request for records about that particular child. The receiving principal is then informed of which school they're at. One of the things we might do then is also indicate on the file that goes to the new principal that in fact this is a child who has been moved once before. It's cumulative information that would then go to that principal.

That way is a tracking. Whether in fact that is a very good tracking in terms of being able to actually assist the child, I'm not sure at this point in time. We could do that part of it. We could add that to the sharing from school to school.

B. Bennett: I'm sorry; I missed a couple of minutes here. Is this something that the ministry could work on, on a continuing basis with the representative?

E. Dosdall: We'd be pleased to continue these discussions with the representative on it. If there's a way to do that without adding too much bureaucracy to the schools and regulations, we're really pleased to do that with the representative.

M. Sieben: Just to reiterate, I'm not aware of a specific problem on a case-by-case basis where MCFD social workers aren't aware of a child in care moving between schools.

The real value — and the opportunity here, as the representative noted and as somewhat noted by the member across — is to find some means by which to harness this information already available on a case-related basis and to use it on an aggregate level in order to inform strategies such as the focus of the next recommendation.

R. Cantelon: Well, we've heard this comment before. Apparently, the social worker knows virtually on a daily basis — correct me if I'm wrong on that interpretation — of what's happening with the child with respect to moving schools and other recommendations. But the aggregate information doesn't move forward to where it could be used by the representative, and that's a concern of this committee.

Now, is that a privacy issue — that you don't move forward with the names tied to the PENs all the way to the top? Or is there an administration problem, burden or other problems that block this information from moving to an aggregate level? If there is, how can we solve it?

E. Dosdall: Chair, that's a discussion that we're prepared to have with the representative, and if there's a way around it through Mr. Loukidelis's office, our offices and the representative, then we'd be pleased to continue those discussions and find a way with Mary Ellen that we can do that.

M. Sieben: Perhaps I'll start. As I noted in my introduction, each child in care, particularly those that are in care for longer than one or two months, receives a comprehensive plan of care as part of the planning and tracking function that social workers use in their management of the file. Inclusive in that comprehensive plan of care is an educational component.

At the same time, individually, within schools there are independent educational plans for children. Where I see the opportunity and particular value in this recommendation is in harnessing those two separate processes going in to make sure that they are more closely coordinated and that both the social workers and teachers at a local level have an opportunity, to a greater degree, for input into what each of the other is doing.

E. Dosdall: At the ministry level, though, we don't have access to the progress reports for any of the students. These are shared by the boards with parents.

We can certainly look at the guidance that we provide the boards of education to ensure that they're providing social workers with the copies of progress reports, which I think is being done right now. We would be glad to just reinforce that statement with our boards of education.

We're also very interested, I think, in joint planning between schools and social workers for any of the students that are children in care. For example, at the present time with any child who is a vulnerable child or a special needs child who has an IEP, or individual education plan, they are obligated to have those discussions with the parent or the guardian of the student. On the basis of that…. That provides that kind of educational guidance, if you will, to the parent on what's happening with their particular child and the development of that child on an educational basis.

M. Sieben: I'd agree with the deputy minister. I'm not aware that social workers and foster parents aren't in receipt of individual report cards, particularly for children that are in continuing custody, for children that are in care under agreement and under temporary custody. While it's important and necessary for foster parents to be a part of that process, I'd reiterate that there's an issue of mandate here, and also a right of parents to participate and receive those materials, given their remaining guardianship responsibilities and rights relating to their children.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): The recommendation has a lovely ring to it, but I'm just wondering how it would work on the ground. Are we considering time limits? I mean, if we're going to develop this common education plan jointly, is it going to be developed seven days after apprehension? Or is it two weeks, two months or three months? When you contrast that with the amount of time that children are generally in care…. It's a very practical question: what's it going to look like?

M. Sieben: We'd look forward to further discussion with staff and the representative's office based on what their learning is underneath the data that they saw, as well as the Ministry of Education.

My view is that our best opportunity here is, as I noted, in the coordinated efforts at a local level between teachers and social workers in developing the plan that's school-based and the educational component of the comprehensive plan that is child welfare–based. I believe the report is right — that more can be done in that area to make sure that there are greater levels of participation, although that occurs now, and that it's done perhaps more systemically.

I'd reiterate that the biggest opportunity that we have here is to take the learnings and the recommendations from the report and make sure that they're available for discussion among superintendents, regional directors, local supervisors and school principals.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): I guess I'm not trying to nail it down in too difficult a way. I'm putting you on the spot, but what do you contemplate? I mean, are we talking days, weeks or months in terms of developing an education plan jointly?

M. Sieben: We'd look forward to discussing for the representative what they'd see as an appropriate goal here. I don't anticipate us asking our staff to develop educational components of their comprehensive plans of care. My bet is that the Ministry of Education and school districts are unlikely not to want to have a separate education plan for a child receiving schooling. I'd hazard to risk asking staff on both sides to do yet another form of plan, collaborative or otherwise.

I do think those plans done for separate purposes…. Couldn't they speak to one another and influence one another to a greater degree? That would be the focus of the work that I see being done here.

M. Polak: This is more of a comment, I guess. Well, you can take it however you will. If a question comes out of it, that's fine as well.

Having had the report in hand now for a time and being able to consider recommendation 6 and in the context of some knowledge on my part with respect to how difficult it is to ensure that individual education plans are living documents and are really used at the school level, I would be encouraging all those who are involved in developing an instrument, or developing a way in which to utilize an existing instrument, to consider primarily the goal that is set out.

This is to ensure that everyone is being actively involved in supporting the child's learning and achievement and success, rather than what, unfortunately, has

been a huge challenge for school districts, which is trying to create a document that is complete and explicit but at the same time is not so onerous or bureaucratic, to use the deputy's word, that it becomes simply "Make sure you've ticked the appropriate boxes," but that it becomes that document that is used to guide practice as opposed to just meeting a requirement.

Perhaps that means a new instrument that encompasses all the above rather than a separate one. I don't know, but I would just highlight that and encourage you all to that direction.

J. Brar: My question's a simple one. We have a plan, and the plan is reviewed twice a year. I think it would be simple to establish a forum where the social worker goes in and reviews the plan every six months.

My question is: if there are significant gaps identified under those reviews, how do we monitor those? If there are additional resources required, will that be part of the response as well?

M. Sieben: The plan is reviewed once every three months, on a regular basis and in a comprehensive manner. The standard requires once every six months. An area of work, an influence, I think, that the recommendation can lend a shoulder to, for example, is…. I don't recall our policy necessarily requiring our staff to share the complete plan, or that educational component, on a regular basis with school staff, for example, although I'm certainly aware that that happens on a regular basis.

I'm thinking that there is benefit to making sure, perhaps, that the corresponding plans would be in the possession of one another for the sake of addressing the gap issues that you've identified.

M. Turpel-Lafond: A final comment on this point, if you will, for the committee and the ministry representatives. One of the reasons why the report was framed in the way it was, was to say that for children in care who have come through the care system in whatever category, but particularly for that large cohort of children that are in continuing care, understanding what is in the best interests of a child, in light of what we know about health and well-being and how health and well-being are so impacted by education attainment…. This has to become a major priority within how we think about what is in the best interests of a child.

You'll recall that at the last hearing I indicated that the old model of the shirt on the back and the roof over the head for the child, where the state is the prudent parent, may not be adequate any longer. One of the challenges in this recommendation is to say: "You have an individual education plan that might be inside a school. You have a care plan that may or may not include an education component. To what extent are those real for the experiences of these very vulnerable children?"

I can't answer that question. However, I think we could make it a more real process by having a plan which includes a range of people but also very clear goals, tasks and responsibilities — that go to a child, that go to a teacher, that go to a caregiver, that go to MCFD — that require in-school supports and out-of-school supports. So if you need speech pathology — let's say that's an issue — speech path can be given out of school, but you have to have a plan with clear, assigned responsibilities and so forth.

The challenge that I see is that these plans don't have that degree of integration at this point. If you even want to take a discrete subset of this cohort that I'm concerned about — let's say the 5,200 or 5,500 kids in continuing care, even for them — and say, "We will do it for this group…." Because as Dr. Kendall and I said earlier, you have eight, nine, ten, 11 years inside the education system. What impact is it having?

What the report is suggesting is that it's not having a very significant impact in increasing their education outcomes. It's not the fault of ministries, but is there a way that we can more effectively use this time and the resources to see better outcomes?

The planning piece is something that I realize is a challenge, but to make it, as Mary indicated, a real plan is important. That requires those types of deliverables, including clear responsibilities, monitoring and sharing information. It requires a culture shift around what is considered the best interests of the child. A good education outcome is fundamental for the best interests of the child.

If that culture shift can be put onto the ground, we may see some of the movement. But I think that the uptake on this recommendation is important, because that's, again, where we have to drill down to the front line to say that we all want to work on this in concert.

K. Whittred (Chair): I note that we are going over our anticipated time. I just wanted to inquire whether people…. Is there someone that has a big time constraint?

T. Vincent: If you wouldn't mind, if we could do recommendation 8 out of sequence, I would very much appreciate that.

K. Whittred (Chair): All right. I would be happy to do that. Let's move on, then, to recommendation 8.

T. Vincent: Recommendation 8 deals with the need to take action to increase the transition of former children in care to post-secondary education. There is a program funded by the Ministry of Children and Family Development which is described in the report. It's called the youth education assistance program. It's designed to facilitate exactly this. It is a good program, but it is not used as intensely as any of the ministries would like to see it used.

There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the number of children in care and former children in care who are post-secondary eligible is relatively low.

That's a problem in and of itself, but an area where we think we can make some efforts to do better is to raise the awareness of the program in the first place. That's something we can certainly do to address this recommendation.

You'll see in the slide deck toward the back, in the last couple of slides — slides 27 and 28 — a quick description of a number of programs that are fairly generic for student financial assistance, to lower financial barriers to pursuing post-secondary education. We're working pretty hard to raise the profile of those for prospective students when they're making the decision about whether or not to pursue post-secondary education. All of those programs have relevance to children in care and former children in care.

I was intending, if I may, to leave with you a piece of work that's been done jointly between the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, the Ministry of Advanced Education and the Ministry of Education that seeks to do exactly that through the planning 10 curriculum. It provides curriculum for planning 10 students.

It also includes DVDs where new post-secondary students are describing to planning 10 students in an interactive way what it was like for them. In essence, it's trying to make three points: (1) you'll be better off for the rest of your life with post-secondary education than without it; (2) it doesn't cost as much as you probably think it costs; and (3) if you can't afford it, there are lots of programs that are available to assist you in being able to afford it.

Then I noticed, in reading Hansard, that Perry Kendall was suggesting some pilot projects to attempt to increase the transition into post-secondary education for children in care. We are quite enthusiastic about the idea of trying some pilots in that area. We would need to rely pretty heavily on the office of the representative and our colleagues in other ministries to know how to build such pilots, but we are quite enthusiastic about having a lash at those.

R. Cantelon: I wonder, Tom, if you could be more specific about eligibility requirements and how that's affecting people applying?

R. Cantelon: For that particular program. For the youth education assistance funding, which you mentioned was underused. You indicated that the eligibility is a barrier to people taking this.

T. Vincent: I don't know that eligibility is a barrier. I think information is a barrier, and I think the number of students….

What I mean by eligibility is finishing high school or being post-secondary eligible, not meeting some set of criteria about: were you a child in care on thus-and-such a date, or how old are you? I mean, are you someone who would meet the entrance requirements for a post-secondary institution? Sorry. I should have corrected myself on that at the outset.

R. Cantelon: So we're not having enough qualified students apply. That's essentially it. Part of it is that there are not enough qualified students, and the other part of it is that those that are qualified are not applying. Is that the assessment?

T. Vincent: I'm not sure if the issue is a lack of information, but the cost of increasing the availability of that information is pretty low, so it's worth having a try to see if we can increase uptake through increasing communication of the availability of the program.

R. Cantelon: If I read this correctly, $2.4 million has been distributed to 369 youth. What would be a budget allocation anticipating…? What did you anticipate that the demand would be? Or did you?

T. Vincent: We didn't. We didn't at all. This is a program that had $2 million put into it on one occasion and a further $3 million put into it on another occasion in a blend of an endowment — by the Ministry of Children and Family Development, I should say…. The money sits with the Victoria Foundation, and it is sort of a blend of an endowment model and an annuity model. The amount of the awards, as a result of the uptake having been relatively low in the early years, has increased from $2,500 in 2001-2002 to $5,500 now. It is a demand-driven program.

M. Sieben: As Tom has noted, the issue isn't so much the eligibility criteria going in, as far as the program is concerned, frankly, at a practical level — and I'm sure that the representative and her staff would agree — as it is having kids that go through our system who are CCOs that express an interest in post-secondary or vocational opportunities. That's our real challenge: to increase educational outcomes to the extent that there is greater interest amongst this group exiting care to use such programs.

R. Cantelon: One last question, and this is because you've sat so long, Tom, and had no questions. We'll give you lots now.

There's 369. Is that the cumulative, or is that the annual? Secondly, what does 369 represent against the number of children in care, etc., or custody, that have graduated with eligible requirements for university? How much are we missing the mark by?

T. Vincent: You're going to have to correct me if I'm wrong, Mark. I believe that is a cumulative number. I'm stretching my memory here, but I think that the

number of children who are post-secondary eligible who are former children in care is about 25 percent and that 7.2 percent actually go into post-secondary education.

R. Cantelon: In absolute numbers that number would be — instead of a percentage…?

T. Vincent: So 0.0725 times 0.25 times the base, and I'm sorry; I don't know what that number is.

M. Sieben: Perhaps I could try to comment again. As I noted in the introduction, approximately 500 children per year exit the care of the ministry at the age of majority. Tom's absolutely correct. The total there for YEAF over the course of the last three years is cumulative. There's a lot of work here to do. This is where the work is.

T. Vincent: The reason I say it's a good program is that for those who get in it, they complete; they do well. They do well in their programs.

K. Whittred (Chair): Did you want to speak now, Mary Ellen, or wait until the questions are…?

M. Polak: When we use language such as "post-secondary," our traditional view of it, as a society, has been that of university proper or college proper. As we know, in the last number of years, post-secondary opportunities have expanded to the extent that you now have many successful dual-credit programs for those entering the skilled trades. The number of skilled trades into which someone can be certified has increased. Those opportunities have proven to be, when they're accessed, really good ones for those who typically wouldn't have been university-bound. It has been a challenge in the mainstream population to have parents and students and indeed counsellors at school recognize that that is a legitimate post-secondary experience.

I'm wondering what we've done to target those who work with these particular students to make them aware that these opportunities exist beyond what would be typically thought of as a post-secondary opportunity and to what extent are we focusing on making sure that information gets to them. I know, for example, that the dual-credit programs are particularly successful for students who are at risk, and indeed, having the financial opportunities that can be provided would really open up a lot of doors. What are we doing specifically to get that information to those people who would work with those young folks?

T. Vincent: This is now a pervasive element of communication to children in the K-to-12 system about the potential of post-secondary education. In fact, a significant majority of the students who have been in this youth education assistance program have been in vocational and trades programs rather than in academic programs. This perspectives work that I've mentioned from the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation and the two education ministries hits trades and vocational training at least as hard as it hits academics.

It's as important to address the expectations of parents in this regard as it is to address the interest of students. Frankly, that's a tougher task than getting at the students.

M. Polak: It is. I guess, to that point, just as a follow up…. When we're dealing with children who've been in care, obviously we're not necessarily dealing with parents. We're dealing with guardians.

I'm not sure. This may be a question to you, Mark. Have we made efforts to ensure that those who are providing the decision-making in those instances are also being made aware of the value of vocational training? I say that because in the past we've often felt squeamish about saying: "Well, we're going to encourage vocational training because it sounds like a second-best option." Are we certain that those working with these young people are aware of the value of this and not perhaps artificially dissuading someone because it's not seen as being as valuable as university?

M. Sieben: Sure. I'd be pleased to respond. I'm fairly certain that isn't the case. In fact, we'd see an increase in vocational training as a great degree of success. There is not a specific focus on targeting for greater post-secondary opportunities. I wish we had that luxury.

There is a more basic level that the report rightly identifies and perhaps here at its most forceful. We simply need to attain better results on an education basis for children in continuing custody — higher rates of graduation, higher for those that don't graduate, greater opportunities to come back and make it up later so that they might make avail of such opportunities as through YEAF. I'll endeavour to go back and confirm that that in fact is the case, but I'm quite certain about it.

M. Polak: I would think especially with the dual-credit options. Very often that entices a young person to stay in high school because they are beginning the next part of their life and it gives them an area of engagement and some interest too.

M. Sieben: My colleagues at MEIA remind us from time to time the extent to which we have children who graduate or go through care and end up on income assistance relatively soon afterward. This is an area

that is the focus of cross-ministry work between ourselves, MEIA and Advanced Education.

J. Brar: I'm very pleased that you actually have more resources, and the program is underused. Usually it's the other way around.

Keeping that in mind, I have a couple of questions. The first one is: will it not make sense to make this program part of the plan which we're talking about here so that there's a smooth transition from that plan to this program? As you mentioned, we need to provide more awareness about this program. But if we tied this to the existing plan and there's a transition plan to this program, that's one thing, I think, that will make sense. It may already be being done.

The second part is: is this program also open to the child in the home of a relative when they go out of that age?

T. Vincent: I am going to be leaning on you for the second part of this question, Mark.

In response to the first part: tying the program to the educational plan. I don't know whether that occurs. It's a very good idea if it isn't occurring — making the student and the guardian aware of the existence of this program. An incentive to complete high school, if for no other reason, is a very good thing.

Are children who are in the home of a relative eligible for the program? Mark, do you happen to know that?

M. Sieben: The answer is no. That reflects the relationship between the state as guardian and the special responsibility associated with continuing custody children. Children in the home of a relative continue to be looked after and their guardianship responsibilities discharged by their families. However, they would have opportunity for the other post-secondary and vocational programs that Tom's provided to the committee.

B. Bennett: If you look at the provincial programs to lower financial barriers to post-secondary education, all or most of them require the person to have grade 12, I would think, to get enrolled into something after high school.

It seems to me that that's the problem. Many of them turn 19, don't have grade 12 and aren't going to get grade 12, necessarily, through adult basic education because of the way it's delivered so formally in a classroom — as I understand it, and I may be wrong, in a fairly conventional classroom context.

We have a program where I come from in Cranbrook called Kootenay learning services which is housed in an old school that the board would actually like to tear down — but that's an aside. It houses a junior program and senior program for kids that just need a different approach to education. It also has the home-schooling — and I know you don't call it home-schooling anymore, but I can't remember what you guys call it know — part of it.

B. Bennett: Distributed learning. It's got all the different kinds of alternative education approaches under one roof. What they're finding is that many of these young people — and some of them are not so young — would not be able to finish their grade 12 in any other context, under any other circumstances other than what they can provide there, which is very, very flexible, very comfortable, lots of physical space, no pressure.

To me, it seems that if we're trying to get kids that have been in continuing care — young people who have been in continuing care — once they're 19 into post-secondary education, it's that transition that we probably ought to focus on.

T. Vincent: The observation is an accurate one. There is one of these programs that is targeted specifically to adult basic education students — the adult basic education student assistance program — and that is to assist students who are pursuing adult basic education, to defray the cost of their tuition, books and transportation. It's the one that's two-thirds of the way down the page — $5.7 million.

There are a number of approaches taken. I can speak more articulately of the approaches in the college system than in the K-to-12 system, but there are some very effective programs to deliver adult basic education to students who didn't succeed going through the K-to-12 system the first time as children.

Often they'll start by suggesting that the student needs to define a goal for themselves other than completion of grade 12. Would you like to be a welder or a framer or something like that? So the objective isn't the paper; it's a future. From that they'll build an education plan that may or may not include completing grade 12 but that gets them where they're hoping to go.

B. Bennett: Obviously, there are more flexible ways of delivering adult basic education than what I'm familiar with. I'm glad to hear that, but I still suspect that there are lots of people who come out of continuing care that are more likely to succeed if they have these more flexible opportunities that I just described with the Kootenay learning centre. That might be an idea for some pilots in the province — to duplicate that in other places.

T. Vincent: I think you're right. In the case of colleges, some of the more successful programs with people we might consider higher risk to not complete an adult basic education program are more successful when they're combined with other programming — for example, combining adult literacy or adult numeracy programming with a trades program.

The reason for learning what's required — which they would have seen before as academic and not really relating very strongly to what the rest of their lives holds for them — is now very strongly related. It might not cover off examining symbolism in Hamlet particularly well, but it covers off figuring out how to cut a piece of plywood to fit a particular piece of floor very well.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you. I had Leonard down, but he has gone for a moment, so Mary Ellen.

First of all, I think this is an opportunity to do some creative thinking around these issues. Regrettably, only 7 percent of the cohort take advantage of this program, for whatever reason. The comment about the education plans, including some sight lines toward post-secondary, I think is really of value.

Some of these recommendations hang together; some of them can be taken apart. A couple of issues. The way the program is framed — 19 to 24 — may be a challenge because of the fact that at post-majority a lot of these kids may end up homeless, without supports, what have you, and it takes them some time to come around to post-secondary or even ABE and so forth. There may be some other challenges within the design of it. They're may be some financial disincentives in it.

I think it's also important to highlight and just report that there are other non-financial issues that are significant — at least non-financial at the level of the student — and that is that the post-secondary institutions, whether they be colleges, universities, etc., have a responsibility, I would suggest, to engage with this group of students.

I have met with Don Avison and others with respect to the post-secondary institutions to encourage training, support. It might be elders assisting. It might be better attachment issues with respect to those programs, making up for deficits in their high school graduation where they didn't complete proper Math, Science, English programs and so on. So there's a broader mission.

I do think it's important though to come back to what the demographic is of this group. In the group we're looking at, more than 50 percent are aboriginal. Half are male. We really see very poor uptake by the males with respect to these programs.

Certainly, for aboriginal post-secondary — Tom or Emery, who are more expert on this than I am by a long shot, can correct me…. You know, the typical profile of the aboriginal post-secondary student in British Columbia is a 27-year-old female with children, so she would not hit this program if she came through care.

She'd only have to be in continuing care at the point of graduation, yet what the study has shown is that kids who were in temporary care, which may have been several bouts of temporary care, or children in the home of a relative do as poorly or still show the same challenges. On the post-secondary side, it's a very interesting program, but I think there's a need, again, to come back to it.

Piloting. I think the idea of pilots…. I'm very encouraged and have had, I can report, very good discussions with both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Advanced Education around how things can be done differently — and also with the first nations because I think they have a strong interest in this area.

I can give you just one example from the study of what clearly cries out for doing something differently. It would involve support from high school graduation to post-secondary for that child coming out of care, but also with a housing–child care component so that there's an early childhood education for the child because, likely, the person is a parent.

That cluster of supports to complete high school into a post-secondary program, coupled with housing and with an early childhood development focus for the children, is one that really is evidence-based. Certainly, there must be an opportunity to do something which would then highlight different themes inside this report.

I think there is a chance to go forward and talk about this and maybe…. While we didn't set any time lines around this recommendation, there might be an opportunity to report back to the committee in the future on what types of innovations can be informed by some of this work.

E. Dosdall: If I can make a comment, Chair. One of the things we do in Education, which is now starting to spread across Canada but is something that we've done for some time, is de-aggregate the data for our aboriginal students.

What that means is that when children come to school, to kindergarten, they identify whether they in fact are of aboriginal or first nation ancestry, and as such, we de-aggregate their achievement data on an ongoing basis so we can determine how well our aboriginal cohort, our aboriginal children, are doing in comparison to other children, including things like ESL children or whatever the case may be. We do de-aggregate the data.

If I might, the reason that the information was de-aggregated in the first instance was because of a request — and, indeed, pressure — from the aboriginal community. Basically, as I understand it, their argument was: "We want the information de-aggregated." I think that in some provinces they have not done this because they feel that it was segregating out the aboriginal population. It was causing problems.

Our aboriginal community says: "We want it de-aggregated so that we can see how well our children are doing." On the basis of that, you can no longer hide them, if you can use that term, within the general population, so you have to do something specifically about it.

In terms of this recommendation, we are very conscious of those kinds of requests from our aboriginal community and are working very hard to try to increase the achievement.

One of the things that we do not agree with the report on is that we believe that our aboriginal students, our aboriginal kids, should do as well as any area. It's

not a matter of saying that those targets should be lower. I think that in keeping with the Kelowna accord, the transformative change accord, we have the same and, I believe, should have the same expectations for our aboriginal students as we would have for our non-aboriginal students.

Just one other thing, if I can. We are trying to find ways in which we can adapt the programs within our schools in such a way that our aboriginal population can be more successful. I think that has been a focus we've had for a number of years.

One of the ways we're trying to do that is through things like the enhancement agreement. The representative mentions in the report the use of enhancement agreements. The enhancement agreements, for us, are extremely important because we need to recognize that the problems of racism and of, in some cases, not providing the same level of respect are still very much concerns.

What we are trying to do is…. We've set the goal as a ministry that we want to have enhancement agreements for every one of our districts. We have the districts working on those enhancement agreements. In some cases we've slowed down those enhancement agreements because, as much as anything, it's not just the signing of that agreement. The process that you go through and the understanding and the respect that we suggest will develop through the process of coming to the enhancement agreement is as important as the enhancement agreement itself. As background, if you will, that is clearly part of what we're attempting to do.

I can indicate that there are a number of other things we're trying to do specifically. As I think the representative knows and others know, we're trying to take things like…. What we've done this year, on a pilot basis, is our English 12 — keeping the same level of objectives or outcomes there but referencing the English 12 to literature that is on a first nations basis so that it can reflect the respect for the culture but, by the same token, keep the high level of expectation for any one of the courses.

We're not trying to find a way to water down the courses to pass these kids through. It is to try to find better ways in which we can serve these kids so that, in fact, they will have the same expectations and the same high educational outcomes as we would expect for any group of kids within our province.

R. Cantelon: Certainly I had the pleasure of attending the signing of the second enhancement agreement in Nanaimo. They were the first, and they had achieved terrific results. It was very encouraging. It was anecdotal, but the comments from the first nations there were very, very encouraging.

I appreciate what you're saying about absolute targets and not lowering the standards, but isn't it possible to set goals on improvement? In other words, you wish, year over year, to see improvements in the results and set specific targets for improvement that need to be met and that don't water down the absolute goals that I think need to be maintained.

What we do is, with the legislation that has been passed and in fact was part of what we did in our accountability contracts in the past…. The new achievement contracts would be negotiated district by district. In those, we would say, "This would be a target that you have for this year," but would always remember — that's why I always come and maybe overstate that particular point — that we are not accepting a watered-down course. But yes, "Your target this year is to reach this point and next year to reach this point," etc.

I don't think that is out of line with what the representative is saying in the report. I just wanted to make sure that we made the point that we do not believe these students in any way, shape or form should have a watered-down program or be passed along in that particular way.

R. Cantelon: Just to follow up, then. These are relatively new, these achievement agreements. How are they administered in the ministry now?

E. Dosdall: As part of Bill 20, which was passed this year, the achievement contracts will be negotiated district by district. They will be negotiated with the superintendents of achievement. They will negotiate those with the superintendent in the local district, to be signed off by the board of education with the district.

E. Dosdall: They will be followed up by the superintendents of achievement. That was reported. If they're not, if in fact the superintendent of achievement believes there is no effort and there is no follow-up on the contracts that have been signed, it is within the powers of the minister, as per the legislation passed this year, to put that board under administrative direction, which means that the minister could then direct….

It basically sidelines the board of education and the superintendent, and it allows the minister to then direct the educational decisions within that particular district.

R. Cantelon: And you're certainly happy to share those goals insofar as it affects the Representative for Children and Youth, I presume?

E. Dosdall: Those individual agreements for each one of our 60 districts — in fact, we make them public. We think that those agreements should be public because education is a community affair.

Part of that, if I might — expanding just for a minute — is that we're also asking for district literacy plans, and those district literacy plans should also include these kind of targets and agreements. When we say community literacy plans, we're talking about not only the K-to-12 but what we're doing in early childhood and in communities, libraries, municipalities and rotary clubs — you name it. Everybody should be part of a kind of literacy culture, if you will.

That's clearly one of the challenges we have: how do we build that into our aboriginal community and get them part of it and feeling part of it? It's taking that enhancement agreement and making that part of the mainstream. I hope that'll also be part of the transition that we go through.

M. Sieben: On MCFD's behalf we'd look forward and appreciate further discussion relating to strategies that might contribute to better educational outcomes for aboriginal children generally, as well as aboriginal children in care. It's a challenge to address such outcomes on a sectoral basis — an education base as opposed to, say, a child welfare base or social base.

Many of the issues that the representative referenced in response to some of the questions around the previous recommendation really speak to that — the need to address housing, the need to address capacity within communities. To that end, MCFD is engaged in significant dialogue in initiatives with first nations, aboriginal leaders and their communities relating to the delivery of services for first nations and aboriginal peoples by first nations and aboriginal peoples.

I also appreciate and accept the force of the recommendation relating to the responsibility of senior policy-makers in respective ministries to take on this problem, with a caveat. Our experience and my experience personally at this point is that there is necessarily a prominent role for first nations and aboriginal leaders to participate in such discussions. The time for such strategies and targets to be set, apart from those discussions involving them, is past. If they are to occur, then we'd look forward to their involvement in such discussions.

M. Karagianis: I understand in listening to Mr. Dosdall that there is a current system in place which addresses, largely, the aboriginal community as a whole within the education system. But this recommendation is particularly around aboriginal outcomes for aboriginal children in care, and I'm wondering about the third point of recommendation 7, which is about setting specific targets that can be measurably improved, and whether or not the capacity is there to measure outcomes and look at that over a five-year period and at ways to improve those outcomes. That's the way I interpret this.

In recognizing the comments made about not watering down targets or anything and, in fact, setting goals and targets for aboriginal children in care that can be measured so that at all times we're looking at those outcomes and analyzing whether or not they need to be improved…. If the policies and strategies that have been put in place need to be amended or updated, is the capacity and the agreement there within both ministries, but certainly the Ministry of Education, around setting those targets and having that measurement device in place?

E. Dosdall: Very much so. We've actually put out a report. It's called How Are We Doing? It's a report that's put out yearly about our aboriginal students.

It de-aggregates it even further: how we are doing in terms of male students, of female students, at grade 7 FSA, at grade 4 FSA — so overall achievement. It has a whole number of different factors. We monitor that. We look at that on a longitudinal basis, and those clearly are the measures we use as we look at year-over-year improvements. Yes, we are in the process of that, have been in the process of that and will continue to be focused on that.

M. Karagianis: I understood that to be all children within the school system. When I heard you talk about the ways the information is analyzed and measured, I didn't hear anything talking about children in care, and that really is the focus of this report and recommendation — and the poor outcomes that we are seeing. How would you see fitting that in as a category to also be targeted and measured?

E. Dosdall: I appreciate that. That goes back, I think, to the first or second recommendation, where we talked about how we get the PEN numbers for those particular kids and the ability to provide that information. That is a focus of the discussions we'll be having with our colleagues in MCFD.

As we are able to de-aggregate that particular subset, we will make that information available. We indicated in recommendation 1, I think — or is it 2? — that we couldn't do it by October of this year, but we hope we will be in a position by the end of this calendar year to have some kind of report related to that for this subset.

K. Whittred (Chair): I am very conscious of the time. I am very appreciative of the patience of Cairine and Andrew, who have been sitting throughout this meeting to report to us on the child in the home of a relative.

We still have recommendation 9. There have been a number of allusions throughout our discussion about various innovative programs, so I'm simply going to ask you, Emery, if you have any that you really want to highlight, if we can do that with great expediency, and then perhaps we can move on.

If I can, the one that I would point out is what we're doing in terms of StrongStart B.C. This is a program that the minister has initiated. It started off as a pilot program. We have about 25 sites up and running at the present time. We will have 80 to 85 sites operating during the course of this particular calendar year. I think that is one that the committee should be aware of, if they're not already.

We also clearly, in a number of cases, have full-day kindergarten for our aboriginal students. We're monitoring those full-day Ks to see how successful they are.

If I can, just one other point. It was referred to by Mr. Bennett earlier. That is that we do have a number

of projects or programs called alternate learning sites, which you'll find in Nelson, Cranbrook, Mission, Surrey, Langley. There are a number of places where these programs are operating and are really quite different from the bricks-and-mortar kinds of schools that we've known in the past.

Those are being monitored. We think they have good opportunities, and we're seeing some positive results from them. Most importantly, as those StrongStart programs develop, I think they have great potential in terms of what they can do for our young people.

K. Whittred (Chair): In conclusion, I just wanted to share with you, Emery, and the committee a point I raised with the representative privately after the last meeting. That was around attendance. I was very surprised that attendance wasn't one of the measures that were used in this report.

I simply say that because as an ex-teacher, a very long-in-the-tooth educator, that is the very first thing I would look at, because for the most part, a student who attends school is successful at school. Therefore, I would really hope that maybe, in further discussions, you would look at attendance as one of the measures that you would look at. I leave that to you folks.

Cairine, do you wish to proceed immediately, or do you wish to take a two- or three-minute break? What is your pleasure? I am completely at your disposal.

C. MacDonald: It strikes me that a two- or three-minute break would be very appropriate.

K. Whittred (Chair): I'll now call on the Deputy Minister, Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance, Cairine MacDonald, who is going to give us a description of the Child in the Home of a Relative program.

C. MacDonald: I'll just make a few introductory remarks, and then I'll turn it over to Andrew Wharton to actually go through our slide deck.

We were invited to come and speak specifically to the recommendations of this report. As you will have seen, there were no specific recommendations that relate directly to this ministry. What we have brought to you is a context piece, very similar to what Mark presented on MCFD, that talks about the child in the home of a relative, because it is a continuum of care.

This is a significantly different program. It operates under different legislation. Unlike even the voluntary care agreements that you have in the MCFD programs, there is in fact no care agreement here. The child is placed by the parent, and the benefit is strictly financial.

This is a program that is in transition, and as has been identified in our service plan report both for last year and for the current year, we will be transferring this program over. Both ministries are agreed that this program will transfer, effective with the '08-09 budget, to MCFD and will be administered there.

I'll get Andrew to walk through the presentation fairly quickly and at a fairly high level, and then we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

A. Wharton: As Cairine said on slide 1, the Child in the Home of a Relative program provides financial support to children who are placed in a relative's home by their parents when their parents cannot care for them. We have about 4,700 children in B.C. receiving child in the home of a relative assistance, and there are about 190 starting cases each month. Fewer leave each month, so the caseload has been slowly growing over a number of years.

About two-thirds of CIHR cases have only one spell on assistance, so it's a fairly stable placement from that perspective. Slightly under 30 percent have two to three spells, and only 3½ percent have four or plus. About 18 percent of our CIHR caregivers receive income assistance, but over 60 percent have incomes above the low-income cutoff, which is sometimes referred to as the poverty line.

A significant number of those children, however — and this is not in the presentation — do come from income-assistance families, so these are vulnerable children that we're talking about. There's an overlap of about 20 percent with the children in care system, either in the year prior or in the year following receipt of assistance.

On slide 2, if you look at the caseload time series, there's been slow growth over that 15-year time period. If you actually looked at it further back, you'd see a slow growth over a much longer time period, perhaps 25 years, as well. There's a slight seasonality in it because we don't de-seasonalize the data as MCFD does, so there's a relation where the school year and Christmas affect this, as they do children in care.

When you look at the percentage of B.C. children receiving CIHR assistance, on slide 3, it has risen fairly significantly over that time. Those percentages actually do vary quite a bit by region. We have five regions in our ministry that relate to the health authority regions. In Vancouver Coastal it's about half that provincial average, and in the north it's about double.

When you look, on slide 4, at age and gender, it's almost an equal split between male and female, and it increases with age. These are fairly long-term placements by the parents, so you expect the proportion to rise by age. We do see an uptick at about age 14 of new starting cases, which we believe is of children who are having trouble in their teenage years with their families.

When you look at CIHR and aboriginal children, a high percentage of children in the home of a relative are aboriginal children. Based on the representative's

data, it's about 40 percent. We do not collect that information. We are not able at this time to collect aboriginal status, because it's not a condition of eligibility. On a data-match basis, the representative's office has been able to do that. It's important to note that our numbers do not include those on reserve, unlike children in care, or education. There's a separate, parallel program run by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada called the guardian financial program. There are about 1,550 on average in that program at the moment.

When you look at rates, B.C.'s rates in this program are the most generous in Canada. Some provinces do not have a program like this. Some provinces give a small annual or monthly amount, but they only allow payments if the child is in an income-assistance family. It's also important to note in those the child tax benefits. The relative is eligible to receive those as well. They can be up to as much as $404 a month for those kids who are under six. Rates for low-income families are comparable to foster-care rates.

Historically, this program…. The first reference we can find in the legislative files is 1937, so it's been around for about 70 years in a similar context. The current regulatory framework was brought in during 1974, so it's 33 years with the current structure that exists. When the two ministries parted ways in 1996 into, as it was then, Ministry for Children and Families and Ministry of Human Resources, CIHR remained with our ministry.

When you compare it with other programs, it is part of government's continuum of services for vulnerable children, but it differs from the other programs. It's the only program not delivered by the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The parent places the child, not the government. The parent is still the parent. It provides financial assistance only.

There are no other services provided through the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance. Relatives with guardianship are considered eligible, which they're not in most of the other programs. On "Issues" on slide 9 the program is neither income- and asset-tested nor based on the needs of the child. The amount is the amount you get based on your age.

There's no assessment of placement, and there's no ongoing monitoring other than continued financial eligibility. "Is the child still in the home?" is the question that we're answering. There's no long-term planning for the child by the ministry. Hopefully, there is by the relatives.

Barriers. Under our financial assistance–focused legislated regulatory framework we do not have the authority to determine why the parent has placed the child or to screen and monitor placement.

To track outcomes for children, and we're talking at an individual level, on an aggregate research basis…. Obviously, the representative's office is able to do data linkage to do that. We don't have the authority to make plans for the welfare of the child or to provide any services other than financial or health-related. We do provide health-related services.

There is a transition plan, as the deputy said in her opening remarks, to transfer this program and align it within the continuum of services for children. In the interim we have been working with Children and Family Development and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to introduce screening of CIHR placements. We're hopeful that can be in place by mid-fall.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you, Cairine and Andrew. Now we will open the floor to questions.

M. Karagianis: I'm curious in a couple of instances why children in the home of a relative have not been treated by government in the same way that children who have been adopted have.

We heard earlier that under the Ministry of Advanced Education, in fact, the programs that are available for children in care also extend to children who've been in care and who've been adopted. Certainly, although in the case of children in the home of a relative, often they have been placed there by a parent. Very often it has been a choice made to prevent the child from going into the custody of the ministry. I do know that anecdotally from numerous parents who've approached me and who are under this category.

Has there been any consideration to broadening the description of children in the home of a relative, considering them under the same umbrella as adoptive children who've been in care and extending to them some of the other options and programs that are available for children who've been in care?

I understand some of that will obviously be considered under the new jurisdiction if it goes to MCFD, but as it stands right now there is a huge gap for many of these children. Often these are children with vulnerabilities, special needs or other barriers to overcome as well. I'd be interested to hear your comments on that.

A. Wharton: Those are all very good questions, and of course those are exactly the kinds of things that we're discussing in our working group with MCFD as well. We'll address those as we talk about transferring the program.

In some cases this program may have been used as an alternative to bringing children into care. In other cases it's very different. There are a broad number of stories in this program. Most, if not the vast majority, of these children do go back to their parents ultimately. It's a very different kind of program. That's one of the things I'm sure that the representative's office will be able to track as well.

J. Brar: My colleague asked a question…. Does the ministry track what happens to the children after the age of 19?

J. Brar: We don't know where they go, whether they become homeless or whatever?

A. Wharton: I would expect that, again, that's some more of the work that will be done as we look further with this program.

J. Brar: Okay. The payments these relatives receive are based on the number of placements and the age of the child. I understand that piece. Is there, under any circumstances, any clawback if the parents receive income assistance or any other income?

A. Wharton: No, the child is not income- or asset-tested in the hands of the relative at all. It is T5'd in terms of reporting to Canada Revenue Agency. It can affect other tax benefits to some degree, but it's not income-taxed at all. It's completely exempt.

J. Brar: One question I asked earlier to the Ministry of Children and Family Development, but I wanted to ask you. There are two different patterns going on here: the number on one side going down, a downward trend in the Ministry of Children and Family Development, but in this program it has been going slightly up and up. Do we know why that is?

A. Wharton: We don't actually know the cause of that. Again, that's some more work that we would like to do. If you look at those two time series graphs, though, they really look very, very different and are completely unrelated. Any changes in children in care numbers do not seem to be reflected in the CIHR data series at all, or vice versa.

J. Brar: The issues identified in your report are very, very important and significant. Has there been any initiative taken in the past to address those issues?

J. Brar: There are four or five issues which are important that are identified in the report. What I want to know is: have there been any efforts made in the past by the ministry to address those issues?

A. Wharton: There have been some discussions over the years, especially since 1996 when the two ministries separated. I think that's leading to the idea of bringing this more in line with the other programs with MCFD. We've been having these discussions for two years, actually.

C. MacDonald: I think we've been working very closely together over the last 12 months. That is reflected in our service plan.

J. Brar: My last question. The first bullet under "Barriers," slide 10, "to determine why parent has placed child…." At this point in time, can you explain how it happened? Can parents just ask anything and it happens, or is there any assessment done?

A. Wharton: There is no assessment done other than a verification that the child is actually living with a relative. Generally, we don't actually talk too frequently with the parent. It's the relative who will come in and say that this parent has placed the child and provide some evidence of that, but it's a fairly passive program.

J. Brar: If the parents say so, the ministry accepts it without any question.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Andrew, you've described it as a fairly passive program, but following along on what my colleague Maurine said, my historic association with this indicates to me that this is, certainly in a number of cases, the alternative. I mean, a parent or parents are confronted with: "Look, we're going to apprehend your child if you don't do something."

When you say there's no assessment, surely there is some assessment made by at least a social worker that the home into which this child is going to be placed is not a known pedophile, alcoholic, drug user or abuser. Surely you're not suggesting that there's no assessment done by anyone in government of the quality of the home into which this child's going to be placed.

M. Sieben: Perhaps I can respond. There is information in Andrew's stack of slides relating to contact between child welfare and the CIHR recipients over the course of the year or two that the child's in CIHR. Additional information that we've seen that's more long term is that about a third of the children and families that have received services through CIHR have some form of child welfare contact. In terms of the anecdotal information in the cases that you hear about, those are the cases.

There is a very large group, a population that's served through CIHR, where that is not the case. The way I'd best describe it is: I have a brother, and if he and I decide amongst our family that it would be good, for whatever reason, for his kids to come and live with me for a while, he's able to do that. We're able to do that as a family.

What CIHR does is provide a benefit for that. It provides some money. There is no form of social worker screening currently in terms of CIHR application. What there is, is financial support for a private, family-based plan for a child in one family to move to another.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): On the assumption that we are dealing with a family, for instance, where in fact they're not on assistance — they have an ability to pay — does the ministry in turn then seek reimbursement from the giving family, if you will, for the money that it's paying to the recipient family?

A. Wharton: Where parents are able to contribute, we do request that they do so. About 6.2 percent of

B. Bennett: I just have a comment or a request to the ministry. As you do your review and come up with policy, I hope that you don't do anything to discourage these relatives from accepting the children. In particular, that's my main concern, although I'm also concerned that you don't do anything that would encourage the parent, also, from having the child go live with the relative.

In the very few circumstances that I'm familiar with — and I won't be as familiar with this as somebody like my friend Leonard Krog, who practised law in this area — my experience is that the relatives' homes have been really good to these children. I would hate to see us doing anything that would make it so bureaucratic, cumbersome, difficult and frustrating that relatives just would say: "We can't do it."

M. Sieben: As was noted, there continues to be discussion between our two ministries, and there's a commitment on MCFD's part to continue to look at the continuum of care for out-of-home living arrangements that we might be able to address.

Within MCFD, within the mandate that we have under the Child, Family and Community Service Act, we're able to enter into agreements through our kith-and-kin provision. There is opportunity for the form of assessment that the member down on this side had referenced. With that said, the gate in is also more of a child welfare gate.

Our goal is to increase the opportunity of what some would refer to as the holy trilogy of increasing family and community involvement in case planning, case decision-making and caregiving for vulnerable kids. That's what we want to do. Where we can do that and ensure the safety of the kids while maintaining the child in their family — broad construct, broad definition — and community, then that's where our efforts are headed.

As our discussions between our two ministries go, it's how best to do that, and in the meantime how best to find ways of servicing those clients and families that wouldn't necessarily be seeking services through the traditional child welfare door.

K. Whittred (Chair): I would like to raise, I guess, more of a comment than anything. As some of you know, I've recently somehow fallen into doing some work with a group called Grandparents Raising Grandchildren. They have some pretty alarming numbers, actually, about the increase in the number of grandparents that are raising grandchildren.

Some of them would actually fall within, as recipients of this program…. I think many of them fall outside the program. Many of them are not necessarily in need of financial resources. Many of them are doing this more as a rescue operation in many cases. Their child has gone astray, and they have intervened on behalf of the grandchildren to raise them. They are in a very isolated position.

One of the reasons I had…. I'm sorry that we aren't discussing this with the larger group here. I think this group feels very vulnerable in terms of educational services, legal services, all kinds of other services.

I guess my question is: as the two ministries make the transition with this program, is there any discussion about this largely kind of unofficial group — most of which, by the way, are aboriginal — and how we try to be child-focused and serve the needs of those children? How do we meet those needs?

M. Sieben: A short answer is yes. We, too — our ministry and various component parts, whether it's our aboriginal services branch or on the policy side — often hear, speak with and converse with grandparents who are providing care to grandchildren. The grandparents are able to receive benefit through the Child in Home of a Relative Program. They might also be considered — should it be an appropriate child welfare case, if there is reason to believe that a child needs protection — for support through a kith-and-kin agreement or other form of agreement.

Often the concern that I field from grandparents that are in the circumstance the Chair describes is that they've received some form of custody, usually under the Family Relations Act. That moves custody from the parents to the grandparent. There is no form of support that I'm aware of specific to that occurring, so there is no specific program or funding allotment or legislation specific to the role of grandparents.

There is, however, opportunity and availability for grandparents to use the doors in, either through MEIA's CIHR program or, if it is a child welfare case, through MCFD, usually through kith and kin, sometimes by looking at the grandparent as a restricted foster home.

The limit there is that we don't look to bring children into care unless there is a firm child welfare need. Often the circumstances come to us somewhat after the fact where, as I mentioned, the grandparents have privately gone through civil family court and have a court order through the Family Relations Act.

The concerns that we often field relate to their ability to receive funding through CIHR but then are also looking for some other forms of support that might be available in their community, which we try to address on a family service level.

J. Brar: Okay. You mentioned that a significant percentage of the parents are on income assistance — right? Now, after 19 these children are not eligible under this program anymore. Will they be eligible for income assistance?

A. Wharton: It will depend on their circumstances, of course, but they can certainly apply for income assistance.

J. Brar: I wonder…. There's a rule under the act of the ministry that you have to be established two years, to pass a two-year independence test, and they won't because they have been part of this program.

A. Wharton: Yeah. Children in care are, but children in the home of a relative are not.

A. Wharton: I'll restate it. Children in care do not have to meet the test, but children in the home of a relative do have to meet the test.

Well, thank you very much, Cairine and Andrew, and my apologies for the long session.

The next item on the agenda is that Mark was going to give us a rundown of where the ministry is with the Hughes report recommendations. I asked him over the lunch break if he could do it and how long it would take. He says he can do it in ten minutes. The floor is yours, Mark.

M. Sieben: I'll try to be very efficient here. We have made a couple of different documents available to you. These documents are available on the MCFD website. They have been there for a month to six weeks now. They basically summarize, at a relatively high level, the work that has gone on in government since the April 7, 2006, release of the child and youth review, otherwise known as the Hughes review.

I'd note that I'm speaking as a representative from MCFD and not as a representative from the transition steering committee that the government put in place in order to initially implement the first year of response to the recommendations. What you find in the document that has the "Best place on earth" motif up at the front is a report from the transition steering committee itself. The chair of that committee was Allan Seckel.

The other document is a matrix, a somewhat traditional recommendation-by-recommendation response document. By the very nature of the document, it's high on brevity and low on detail, but the intent is to give people a sense of how work is progressing on each of the different recommendation areas.

Generally, over the course of the past year the transition team and the individual ministries have done a fair amount of work. When Mr. Hughes released the report on B.C.'s child welfare system, he made 62 recommendations. As noted by the report, a cross-ministry steering group led by the Deputy Attorney General was established last spring to lead and oversee implementation of the recommendations.

Of the 62 recommendations, there is a mix of those that are now complete and those that continue to be in progress. I'd foreshadow a little bit what I'm sure will be a point from the representative — that some of those that are noted as complete might also be looked at as ongoing. That is an issue that certainly deserves some amount of discussion.

Generally, this work has involved conversations and communications with stakeholders, first nations, youth and community partners, who have all worked closely together in order to address some of the recommendations. Very few are those that can simply be addressed by a ministry in and of itself.

Of the 62 recommendations, 45 are directed toward MCFD. Of these, 20 to 22, let's say, are probably what we'd refer to at this point as in progress. As noted by Mr. Hughes, a number of these recommendations are going to take some time to come to fruition. In fact, a number, by their very nature, are not those that potentially could ever be fully completed in the sense that we would no longer do them.

An example is the recommendation related to ensuring that at our headquarters or provincial office level we maintain appropriate quality assurance mechanisms to ensure that whatever happens in terms of governance authority or happens in our regions, we can report back on what is good and what is bad. That certainly isn't anything that we would ever look to stop doing.

There are a couple of particular theme areas that the transition steering committee report lays out where there has been specific work done. I'll note those, and I'll say just a couple of things about each.

I would note that almost all of this work…. Even though there are specific recommendations relating to first nations aboriginal, by the very nature and fabric of child welfare work — that is, working with first nations, aboriginal communities — it's very difficult for us to do any of these recommendations, really, without working closely with leaders and community people at that level.

Since 2001 MCFD has been working with first nations leaders to develop models, particularly for service delivery on child welfare. We expect that work to continue. In fact, an interim authority under the Community Services Interim Authorities Act was established just a few weeks ago here on Vancouver Island. The interim authority is known as VIATT, the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team.

A specific area of work in recommendations noted by Mr. Hughes was in the area of central authority for MCFD and child welfare in decentralization initiatives.

In other words, it's how best to move case-related decision-making and community-based planning to the most local and effective level and then, at the same time, retain appropriate quality assurance mechanisms at a provincial level.

We've done a fair amount of work in this regard. I think this is probably one we could all agree is not an area we'd speak of as being complete. It is in transition. In fact, it is likely to be the type of area that needs to be ongoing.

Similarly, another area that featured prominently in the Hughes report was in the area of coordination, collaboration and information-sharing. Around page 129 in the report here, which I understand from the Clerk can be made available to you, Mr. Hughes noted the fairly positive work that MCFD has done over the years in order to improve the data-gathering that we're able to do and some of the outcomes-based work that's associated with that.

However, he also noted that there was much work left to do. By its very nature, this is not the type of work that can be completed quickly. Nor should it be completed quickly. We look forward to doing that in consultation with our cross-ministry partners and, certainly, staff in the representative's office. That work will certainly continue. Featuring prominently under that category is further work done on program evaluation and outcomes — evaluations that run both internal and external to MCFD.

Another area that received some comment from Mr. Hughes, both within the body of the report and in the recommendations, is our recruitment of staff and staff-related issues. A very big push in direction was given to find different means by which we might engage with those from first nations, aboriginal communities that might find a place in MCFD and assist us to do a better job of providing culturally appropriate services.

This is important not only on the first nations and aboriginal front but in the many different multicultural areas that our ministry provides services to — particularly, but not only, in the lower mainland. Recruiting and retaining aboriginal people in MCFD, though, is a critical issue for us. This is something that we see as a priority in all levels of the organization.

UNBC is now offering a new child welfare certification program, for example. While this contributes to our overall goal of having a greater percentage of child welfare staff that are aboriginal, it's particularly good news for the work that gets done in the north, the staffing issues that often occur in the north and our ability to retain staff in certain areas of the province for a long period of time.

I would also note our bringing on board, close to a year ago now, an assistant deputy minister for aboriginal services who herself is a first nations person. Deb Foxcroft is former executive director for Usma Child and Family Services, one of our longest-standing delegated agencies here in the province.

She's leading this interface between MCFD and to a certain extent government's role, along with our colleagues in MARR, as we speak about decentralization efforts and the work through our delegated agencies to ensure that more children in care who are aboriginal are receiving support through aboriginal agencies and that more aboriginal families have the opportunity to receive services from aboriginal service providers.

Perhaps in view of time and knowing that Mary Ellen has some comments to make too, I'll refrain from making any further comments. I somewhat expect that this will be the initial opportunity for us to provide some measure of conversation regarding government's continuing role in moving forward on the Hughes recommendations.

I'd note in closing that the recommendations, by their very nature, touched the whole fabric of what MCFD is. There is not a specific Hughes-related budget or project. The rationale for that is that it would be too broad and global for us to be able to accommodate within the ministry. Every single part of what we do is touched to a certain extent by these recommendations.

The budget allocation that we've received over the course of the last couple of years — and, certainly, a short lead, with the Hughes report and recommendations in mind — is for meeting ministry business generally. As we go through a ministry process where we're engaging with our own staff and with community people, seeking to continue to improve on the services that we're providing and continuing our efforts at decentralization, we're doing this with the Hughes recommendations in mind.

Lastly, just in closing, I'd note regrets from our deputy minister Lesley du Toit. Due to the short nature by which the meeting was set, she was unable to undo commitments she had made in Kamloops, where she was meeting with ministry staff, as had been long promised. However, I'm aware that she looks forward to coming and speaking with the committee at a later date.

Before I call on Mary Ellen, just noting the time constraint, we are going to start to lose members who have made travel plans, as the meeting was scheduled till two o'clock.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I certainly want to express my appreciation to the ADM, Mark Sieben, for the report.

I reported last day that of the 62 recommendations in the report that was posted, there was a suggestion that a number of them were complete. In analyzing those, there are 17 of that group that in the view of my office, we're not capable of concluding are complete at this point. That's one issue I raised with the committee last day, and I come back to it.

We've been meeting with Mr. Sieben and representatives of the ministry to address these and identify these. I've written to the deputy minister suggesting that further work is required and that some of these…. It's perhaps just a matter of briefing us on what has been done to complete them, but it's a matter of further inquiry.

One of the positive developments that I can report, though, is that between Mr. Sieben's office and our office we have looked at a joint reporting framework where we would be able to come back to this committee with a joint report on those 17 that are of concern in terms of whether they're completed or ongoing. That framework may also be useful for the remaining matters — the remaining or ongoing or in-progress recommendations, which are actually a body of 26 recommendations.

Just to frame the issue for the committee members as you're reflecting on it further, these go to some very key issues coming out of the Hughes review that can be conglomerated into maybe four of five points instead of 20-some. There are four or five key areas from the Hughes review which require some ongoing work and assessment from the view of the representative's office.

One is the development of a strong, centralized quality assurance program with effective standards, practices, policies and effective monitoring, auditing and reporting by the ministry.

The second is the development of an effective complaint resolution process that's timely, accessible and simple; that takes a problem-solving, not a confrontational, approach; and that is reported out publicly. There's a public component to reporting on that process.

The third is development of an effective, accountable, internal critical injury and death review process.

The fourth is the information-sharing provisions regarding sharing relevant information on vulnerable children and youth with public agencies and addressing any statutory barriers to disclosing information among MCFD program areas. We already discussed some of those this morning.

The final is the project of linking and collecting data from other public bodies for the purposes of decision-making about individual children and youth, particularly those most vulnerable.

Those are five areas which I see as having an ongoing nature. They're medium- to large-scale initiatives, and at this point I'm not confident that they've been completed. I want to look more carefully at that and report back to this committee on those 17 and, through that report, perhaps provide a framework that you could comment on — if you feel it's adequate or not for your purposes and the purposes of public accountability on the Hughes implementation process.

If it's an adequate framework, we may use it, then, on an ongoing basis for the other areas that are under discussion.

K. Whittred (Chair): It occurs to me as I hear your remarks, Mary Ellen, that under "Next Business" and "Next Meeting Date," I was going to mention to the committee that we have been in touch with Lesley du Toit, the deputy minister, and have arranged for early September — we haven't got a distinctive date yet — at which time she would update us on an organizational overview of the ministry and, of course, any other issues that we might want to raise.

It occurred to me that perhaps that might be an appropriate time for you to come back to the committee. You would perhaps have had an opportunity for a little bit more dialogue with the ministry, and we could hear your report in greater detail at that time, if that is acceptable to you and the other members of the committee.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Certainly, from the representative's office, I think that's an adequate time line. We should be able to have some insight into these 17 by then and perhaps have a joint reporting framework.

I think the issue of how the implementation of the Hughes review relates more broadly to transformation initiatives within the Ministry is a matter that would require further discussion, so that might be an opportunity to address that as well.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you. I will ask the Clerk to draft that into our agenda for that September meeting. Of course, we will be in touch with you around a definitive date.

Under "Other Business," the other bit of business that I did want to mention to you was the point that was raised by Leonard at the very end of the last meeting, which was about other groups presenting. I had asked the Clerk to look into some groups.

We do have a list that we talked about very early in our discussions as a committee, and we've evolved a bit, I think, in terms of our direction since then. I'm asking the Clerk to continue with that and to communicate with you, via e-mail perhaps, with some suggestions looking toward the fall — again, if that is acceptable.

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

Before we close this portion of the meeting, I'd also like to ask what, if any, actions we are going to take with regard to the recommendations that have been put before us. I think that as the Chair noted earlier in our discussions, the committee hasn't really taken any action. We've neither confirmed, endorsed nor approved the recommendations brought before us.

Are we expected to take any action today or in the future? What is the plan around the presentations that were made to us today?

Certainly, there is some very compelling information that was brought out today. I would say that it was clear from some of the discussion that some of the recommendations…. The ministries have clearly said that time lines may have to be amended and things like that.

I think it's a fairly important action for us at this point to at least take some step to either table it and simply receive the information or to look for further action from this committee.

R. Cantelon: I would seek the guidance of the Chair and the Clerk on that. With respect to our role as a legislative committee, are we empowered to…? What action do we do? Do we report out to the Legislature? I think I need some guidance to clarify what our role is in terms of what we do with what we hear, because I don't think we were given any powers per se to give direction.

K. Whittred (Chair): Having consulted with the Clerk on the appropriate procedure, I am going to follow her advice, which is to ask for this committee to endorse the report today. We will have further discussion and clarification around recommendations at the time that we prepare our report to go forward to the Legislature. That is who we report to.

M. Karagianis: I would be happy to make that motion — that we in fact endorse the recommendations that have been put before us today by the children's representative.

K. Whittred (Chair): Any discussion? Seeing no discussion, all those in favour?

B. Bennett: Madam Chair, I just wondered about the suggestion that I made earlier with regard to the committee formally writing to the school boards and encouraging them to make sure that the skills assessments are done. Would we be in a position to do that, do you think? Or is that something we would have to wait for until we do our final report?

M. Karagianis: I've thought about the recommendation that was made by the member earlier in the meeting. In fact, I think in some ways that oversteps our mandate here. For us to simply take one piece of the recommendations and endorse it in some way to a specific group, I think, is actually outside of our mandate.

Our mandate very specifically deals with our interaction and authority regarding the children's representative. I would be very concerned if we begin to look at any of our duties here as specifically focusing in on specific recommendations and dealing with specific groups within the broader ministries. I would think that that was outside of our mandate. I would not be willing to support us going in that direction.

B. Bennett: I wonder if I could ask the representative whether there's something that her office could do with regard to encouraging the boards.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Just on that, I should have perhaps reported earlier that I do have a series of meetings with all groups involved in the administration of education, from school board trustees and so forth.

Coming out of this committee and in light of the work that's been done, certainly, from my office, I feel comfortable as the author of such a letter that would go out. I would be able to indicate in the letter that I've discussed this matter with the standing committee and with ministries and so on, to encourage compliance with the FSAs and to explain the reasons why it's so important. I think it would be quite helpful.

I will be speaking to a number of these groups at their annual meetings and individually. Also, I would certainly be very amenable to such correspondence from my office.

K. Whittred (Chair): Any other business? I would welcome a motion to adjourn.

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REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH