Children and Youth — Issue No. 7 — Tuesday, September 4, 2007 (HTML)

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

Katherine Whittred, MLA
Chair

Craig James
Clerk Assistant and
Clerk of Committees

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page

Briefing: Ministry of Children and Family Development		105
	L. du Toit
	L. Boon
	A. Markwart
	P. Cunningham

Office of the Representative for Children and Youth		118
	M. Turpel-Lafond
	A. Robinson
	J. Greschner

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

Witnesses:

Les Boon (Ministry of Children and Family Development)
Peter Cunningham (Ministry of Children and Family Development)
Lesley du Toit (Deputy Minister of Children and Family Development)
John Greschner (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth)
Marilyn Hedlund (Ministry of Children and Family Development)
Alan Markwart (Ministry of Children and Family Development)
Andrew Robinson (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth)
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (Representative for Children and Youth)

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Good morning. I'd like to call the committee to order, please. I'm Leonard Krog. I am the Deputy Chair. I'm obviously not Katherine Whittred.

The circumstances of the continuing lousy summer weather have won the day. Accordingly, we do not have quorum on the committee this morning. However, the committee is entitled to proceed unless a member objects. I would suggest that unless I see someone objecting, we will proceed this morning. No votes can be taken in these circumstances, but we can certainly hear from all of the witnesses who have taken time out of their busy schedules today to be here with us.

Hearing no objection, I would like to welcome the various representatives. Perhaps it might be appropriate at this time if you simply introduced yourselves around the table.

L. du Toit: I'm Lesley du Toit, the Deputy Minister of Children and Family Development.

P. Cunningham: I'm Peter Cunningham. I'm the regional executive director for the north region.

Miss du Toit, according to our agenda, you are first up this morning. Welcome, and we look forward to what you have to say.

L. du Toit: Good morning, everybody. We're very pleased to be here. We look forward to this opportunity.

We're going to try to be succinct. These are the kinds of areas that we're going to present to you. If, after we've had a discussion, you still feel there's information missing, we'd be delighted to then forward it to you in whichever way you would like.

We're going to take a look at the services the ministry actually delivers, how these services are currently organized and delivered, where the ministry is going with the organization and service delivery.

These are currently the services that are delivered by MCFD. You will see that they are much wider than child protection, which quite frequently is associated with this ministry as being its only, or core, service area.

We do have early childhood development and child care services for children and youth with special needs and their families; family development; child protection; residential and foster care; adoption for children and youth permanently in care; community child and youth mental health; youth services — programs for at-risk or sexually exploited youth; community youth justice services; and specialized provincial services such as youth custody, youth forensic psychiatric services, Maples Adolescent Treatment Centre and services for the deaf and hard of hearing.

This is going to be a little bit difficult for you to see, but I will take you through it. My apologies, because this is not the presentation that I actually should have up here. I had refined this, so I'm just going to try and follow the one I have and hope that you can follow the one up there.

Firstly, aboriginal regional support services is one major area. For the first time in the ministry we actually have an ADM of aboriginal services. We have a particular focus now on how we can work with aboriginal peoples and communities in a very focused way, ensuring that aboriginal people actually have a much stronger voice in what occurs for them in terms of service delivery. Our ADM of aboriginal services is aboriginal, and that's a step we've been very pleased to take.

Provincial services involves the administration and delivery of specialized provincial services for children and youth, such as youth forensic and psychiatric services and services for the deaf and hard of hearing. Also, it's currently responsible for child care.

We have integrated policy and legislation. This is also a new component of the ministry at the provincial level. At the beginning of last year we had policy split all over the ministry with every particular piece of service delivery. We have pulled that all together into an integrated policy and legislation section so that we look at overall policy as it applies to services for children and youth and not at policy in small silos which ultimately create problems at the practice level.

Corporate services involves finance and administration and financial advice and support for regions and the provincial office. Strategic human resources provide overall advice and direction in relation to staff development, human resources and labour relations.

The regional executive directors, two of which you have here in our team…. This piece of the ministry is absolutely critical. These are the regions that actually deliver the service of the ministry. We are organized into five regions: the north, the interior, Fraser, Vancouver coastal and Vancouver Island.

The ministry serves people directly and also contracts with service providers to deliver its complex array of services. Approximately 49 percent of the ministry's funding supports contracts with community-based service delivery organizations. This is a piece that people sometimes are not aware of. In fact, a lot of our business is actually outsourced to contracted agencies, with which

we have a partnership. They play a very important role in the work we actually focus on.

We have a chief information officer, who provides integrated information management and information technology solutions that work for our clients, service providers, staff and government. One of the areas we have struggled with in the ministry for a long time is creating an integrated IT system that enabled us to speak to other ministries, as it were, in terms of clients and also to deliver our particular services in a constructive way.

We have a very antiquated system, which is creating a number of problems at the practice level. So one of our big priorities is to upgrade that system, as well as to create a system that is able to link with other ministries, such as Health and Education.

We have the provincial director of child welfare, who oversees residential care, guardianship, foster care, and permanency and adoption planning for children and youth permanently in care.

We have a regional support services secretariat, which provides support to each of the five regions separately and as a whole. This is a new body within the ministry. We will speak to the fact that now we have actually shifted a lot of responsibility for decision-making down to regions, and we've created a support to those regions at the provincial level, as opposed to a group in the provincial office that then dictates what regions actually do.

Then we have executive and support services, which provides overall advice, direction, leadership and support to the deputy minister's office and the leadership team as a whole.

Basically, what we want to just outline for you is how our structure is put together at the provincial office level. The regions have their own particular structure, and we're in the process of relooking at how regions will actually operate. But we have restructured at the provincial level during the last year, and I'm going to take you through that briefly.

You will have seen the roles that people play in the last piece that I presented. Essentially, what we have, then, is a number of ADMs who sit on the leadership team, as well as all of our regional executive directors. That group, which is actually part of our leadership team, reports directly to me. They are the ADM of corporate services, who is Sarf Ahmed, and the provincial services ADM, who is Alan Markwart, who's here today.

We have an ADM of integrated policy and legislation, Mark Sieben — I believe that you've met him before; an ADM of aboriginal regional support services, who is Deb Foxcroft; a chief information officer, Karen Dellert; and the provincial director of child welfare, Marilyn Hedlund, who is also here today.

Then we have our five regional executive directors, who act as leaders in each region but who also have a full leadership position on our team: Doug Hughes; Peter Cunningham, who is here today; Les Boon, who is here today; Bev Dicks; and Chuck Eamer.

I now want to shift a little bit from just the structure and the organization to how it is we see ourselves moving forward as a ministry using the structure that we've just explained, which will undergo some more tweaking, as it were, as we go along. Nevertheless, this is where we intend to go. This is our vision. I do want to explain, too, that this vision and the goals that you will see in a few minutes come at the beginning of our action plan, of which you will receive a copy.

The vision was put together by hundreds and hundreds of people who have been consulted in groups and as individuals over the last year and a bit. Aboriginal peoples themselves came together to decide on their piece of the vision, and they, included with everybody else, decided on the rest.

Our vision is that vulnerable children and youth in B.C. have their developmental needs met and are supported by healthy families and inclusive communities. MCFD is a value-centred ministry that is respected and trusted by the public, service providers and those whom the ministry serves.

Staff are confident, competent, valued and empowered. A respectful partnership relationship exists between regions and the provincial office and between MCFD and partners. Aboriginal peoples, exercising their rights to jurisdiction over their children's well-being through self-determination, have strong and healthy children, youth and families.

We have identified, again with those many people that we consulted, four central goals. Those four goals are also our ministry goals, so they stand there as the goals for our transformation process as well as for the ministry.

We have put together an action plan, which is a plan that takes us forward as a ministry for the years to come. It only, at this stage, reflects up to the end of 2008. The action plan, again, was consulted on with many people. It is the way in which we are going to move forward. It describes what we see as the transformation process, which you've probably heard a great deal about. It is an overarching plan. There will be considerable detail added to it as we go along. It is, at the moment, a living document.

I do want to make the point that it is not a response to the Hughes recommendations or the Hughes report. It is a much more comprehensive document that respects the Hughes recommendations, but it is in itself much broader because we serve many, many more children than are captured in that report. Hughes focused primarily on child protection, and as you see, that is a very important part of our ministry, but it is only one piece. Our intention is to go far beyond that and to look seriously at how we can make changes in the ministry that actually bring about significant changes for services to children, families and communities.

Part of that is a shift to working from the bottom up, and others will speak to that in a little while. But it is important for people to understand that this particular plan is actually intended to take us further than Hughes and is not a means by which we are going to report out on the Hughes recommendations. We will be accountable for it. We will be sharing our progress

on this report on a regular basis with both the public and, clearly, government.

These are the goals: to identify and strengthen or develop effective child, youth and family development services in B.C. within a strength-based developmental approach. The approach at the moment is not a strength-based or developmental one. Primarily, it is focused on a health perspective or deficit model and also a risk management model, which ultimately is not as protective of children as people think. Right around the world, countries have made the shift to looking at a strength-based developmental approach, and we intend to do that as well.

We are going to support…. That word "support" is very critical because we have made a principal decision that we will not be telling aboriginal people what it is they have to do. We will be there to support aboriginal peoples as they attempt to achieve their vision and goals, and we will ensure that children are safe and that they get the services, but that is in partnership. Our role is to support, more than anything else, aboriginal peoples to achieve their vision and goals with regard to jurisdiction and delivery of services to their children, youth, families and communities.

We also intend that we have a fully regionalized model of service delivery for MCFD by the time we have finished this transformation.

Lastly, we intend to transform the ministry itself as an organization in order to support goals 1, 2 and 3. Part of that transformation is what you've already seen in terms of restructuring at the provincial office level, and others will speak to how we have shifted things to a regional approach already.

There will be other pieces that we will transform. For example, we will be making significant changes and improving our quality assurance approach within the ministry across all of our services. We will be moving to a continuum of service delivery, as opposed to looking at services in silos. These are some of the changes that you'll expect under goal 4.

For the purposes of this presentation, we're going to speak to two of those goals. I'll just go back to those. We're going to talk to 2 and 3, because we see them right now as probably the most significant shifts that this ministry can and should be making. That is not to say that 1 and 4 come afterwards. We're doing everything together, but we have been working very hard on goals 2 and 3 in the last year, and so we'd like to report out a little bit on that. We would at any stage be happy to comment on or report out on goals 1 and 4 in more detail.

I'm just going to speak to this one, because you may have difficulty in reading that again. Some years back there was a decision made that there would be five aboriginal authorities put in place. That decision was based on a commitment to aboriginal peoples that they should in fact be responsible for their own children and families and that they be capable of delivering services themselves. They should also be governing those services.

Over the past number of years there have been planning teams in place, working hard at trying to get to this aboriginal governance. In the last year and a half we made an even stronger commitment to back off as a ministry from dictating what these authorities should look like and who should be in them and how they should be governed to a position where we are supporting and facilitating how this would work.

We also see that there should be significant changes made in terms of the actual service delivery. There is inequity between the services that are offered by MCFD to non-aboriginal peoples and to aboriginal people on reserve, and that is, to a large extent, based on the fact that the federal funding formula actually places an emphasis on children being in care. Delegated agencies on reserve are therefore almost pushed in the direction of having to have more children in care and have less opportunity to do the early prevention and the prevention work.

Now, when we talk about a continuum of integrated services, we intend to make absolutely sure that we have increased our service at the prevention and early intervention levels. Aboriginal communities and agencies would find that extremely difficult to do unless we can address the inequity and the funding formula that is handed down by INAC. We are in a process of doing that, and we sincerely hope that we will have a good outcome from those negotiations.

We certainly believe that all children in this province should be dealt with equally and should receive the same services and have the same access that any other child does. We're working very hard on that piece.

We also do believe that service delivery to aboriginal communities does not necessarily have to look exactly the same as what we offer presently in the ministry. It is important for aboriginal people and communities to have their own say in what services might look like and how we can best protect children in those communities, particularly given that aboriginal people live and work by a philosophy of collectivism, as opposed to our general approach, which is based on individual work and an individual approach. We are going to support all of this process.

In terms of aboriginal governance, we've reached the point where two regions, the Vancouver Island and the Fraser Valley, have actually gone to interim authority. Interim authority is based on using the CLBC interim authority legislation. It really is just an interim process that was there to enable aboriginal planning teams to actually have some sense of being a legal entity, which they were not before, and hence how to receive money and make decisions via another organization or the ministry.

As interim authorities, their job is to propose approaches to the minister for authority and to move towards an authority-building capacity and ensure that they negotiate and consult with all the different people who will actually have some role — for example, the delegated agencies, the various chiefs in council, the community members themselves and the urban aboriginal agencies. They will have to make sure that all of that is drawn together.

As interim authorities, they have a serious amount of work to get to a point of readiness so that they can take on that governance. We are working alongside them to support them in doing that. We have another region that is likely to go to interim authority in the next few months.

Then we have the north and the interior, which have particular challenges, given the geography and given the number of aboriginal communities and nations in those areas. At this point they're working as aboriginal planning teams, but we have no decision as to what those authorities or governance models would actually look like. They're working pretty hard at it, though, so we're hoping that within the next little while we'll be hearing a decision from them.

We are bringing forward enabling legislation for authorities, to the Legislature, in the spring, and that would enable interim authorities to move from those interim positions into actual authorities. It doesn't, however, force or dictate to any aboriginal communities that they have to follow that route.

I think that's probably about as much as you might want to hear on that particular piece of aboriginal service delivery. We're going to talk now a little bit about goal 3, which is moving to a fully regionalized model of the ministry. There was a decision at the time that the five regional authorities were thought through in terms of aboriginal services that non-aboriginal service delivery would follow the same route and that there would be five regional authorities.

We have thought about that very seriously over the last year, and at this stage we are not going to be moving to non-aboriginal authorities. We have a number of reasons why that is so. What we have decided to do, and have begun to do, is ensure that our ministry itself has actually moved to thinking and delivering services in a different way, abiding by the fundamental principle that communities and children, families and youth should actually have a say in how services are delivered and what services are delivered. We should be able to engage them in doing that.

We're also wanting to look at a bottom-up approach, which, again, we have started to do. There's plenty of evidence from around the world that the closer you bring the service and the decision-making to the people who receive the services, the more likely you are to address the real needs and not impose programs which may not in fact meet the needs of children and families.

I'm going to ask our two regional executive directors who have had the experience of having to make these shifts in their own regions and within the provincial office to speak to some of this. I believe that they have more knowledge and qualifications than I do in terms of their actual experience of doing that. Les Boon, who is the regional executive director of the Fraser region, and Peter Cunningham, the regional executive director of the north, will each take an opportunity to speak to certain aspects.

L. Boon: Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of my colleagues, along with Peter, this morning. I find myself to be in a bit of an interesting position this morning, having come back from some time on vacation, spending most of it with my grandchildren, watching campfires in the evening and gaining a completely different perspective on my job through those activities than through the words that we've heard today. It's an interesting balance.

I've been asked to talk about three topic areas: community engagement; staff engagement; and probably most importantly, in my mind, client engagement, and how that is occurring in the concept and the overall goal of regionalization.

First of all, it's important to put some historical content to the notion of community engagement. I'm not sure if it was for my 30 years of being in the business of providing services to children that I've been asked to speak today, but when we think about the relationship between government, and in particular the ministries that have been responsible for providing children's services and family services, it really has been a process in furthering that relationship — a learning process, to say the least.

My mind goes back. The relationship many years ago was based more on sharing. The ministries would come to communities and to clients with information to share. That's progressed. That has grown to the phase of what we've referred to for some time as consultation. We would go and ask communities, clients and staff what they thought about the direction that we were all moving in.

That too has grown and matured to the concept of engagement, where we are sitting around as partners trying to look at a problem together, trying to solve the problem together.

There's another phase to grow toward, to mature, and that's the phase of involvement. We can speak a little bit about how we are reflecting all four of those processes of engagement throughout the province. Involvement is where we the ministry act as a leader, a catalyst, a facilitator in assisting communities and clients and staff to assume their own abilities to solve those problems.

There is a general belief system behind the notion of community engagement and community involvement. In its simplest sense it is a belief that communities and people of communities very much know their own needs best, very much have the ability to prioritize those needs against the resources available and very much have the skills, abilities and — most likely, in most circumstances — the resources to be able to provide the solutions for those needs. That's the belief system that guides us in terms of community engagement, client engagement and staff engagement.

As we all know, B.C. is very much a diverse province geographically, in history and with respect to culture, so the communities across the province vary in terms of the position that they're currently in, in terms of what form of engagement works best for them. You won't necessarily see uniformity across the province in terms of how communities are engaged or involved or

are actively participating in consultation processes and sharing of information. It is, as I've suggested, very much a learning process.

The people that we involve ourselves with can be generally broken down into stakeholders — the relationships that we have with stakeholders in our communities — and partnerships — groups that we partner with in order to do our planning and our service delivery.

Examples of stakeholder groups are the foster parents associations and advocacy groups such as Families Organized for Recognition, Care and Equality, which is an advocacy group for families and children with mental health challenges. Youth is a very important stakeholder group and in many cases a very important partner that we are learning how to better involve and not just consult with.

Another example of a stakeholder group is the provincial federation of family service agencies, whose members act very much in communities and are in many cases the primary service provider that we partner with. We have our traditional partnerships of health and education in communities. B.C. Housing is another example.

Each one of these partnerships, each one of these stakeholder relationships, is an active process of engagement in each of our communities to determine how best to apply our resources and what the priority needs of our communities are.

Regional engagement is something different than community engagement. It's very easy to go into a community and to be part of that community, but nonetheless, we need to be able to look at how the whole is moving. Each of the regional executive directors is today engaged in a process of bringing regional leaders from a variety of communities together to provide feedback — to, in a sense, hold our feet to the fire in terms of how we are doing what we have said that we would do and how well we are engaging communities in the processes of service delivery.

Client engagement is probably, as I've indicated, the most important. It is the client, after all, that we serve. It is the client that we are all brought together to be able to assist in, as I say, the rough patches of life that many of our clients are experiencing. But again, it's the belief system that drives us in this direction. It's the belief that clients, although experiencing difficulty at the time, have the basic strengths to be able to see what the solutions might be and that clients are very capable of working with us toward those solutions.

An example of client engagement that you would see throughout the province is something that we refer to as integrated case management. In other words, it's involving the client in the very management and planning process with respect to what needs to work best. In some areas of the province you will see that youth are the chair of their own integrated case management planning format — not across all of the province, but that's an indicator of the direction we're moving to in terms of client engagement.

An integrated case management table is one where you will see all of those who are connected with the family or with the youth be able to come together and have a process of defining what the solutions might be. Again, throughout the province you'll see this moving ahead in different places at different speeds, but it is nonetheless a direction that we are moving toward in terms of client engagement.

Another example of client engagement is that we are moving away from government offices, where clients have to come to an identifiable government office to receive a service. We still have many of those. We are moving toward the development of locations where clients may go to less identifiable community places to be part of a service delivery system that's not just the Ministry of Children and Family Development. It can well be associated with other services in a community.

We call these places hubs of services. Often it's the clients along with others who are involved in the planning of those hubs. In some examples — again, not throughout the whole province — clients can be part of the ongoing management of those hubs or of inputting to the management of those hubs. So there's planning of hubs, and there are some hubs that have been developed.

If you were to look across the province, you would probably see more emphasis on youth service hubs in some areas. You'll also see growing development on hubs providing early childhood development services.

There are other examples of where clients are engaged, and those are the more traditional — where we go out and use mechanisms of forums and one-day workshops, where we invite clients to become part of and to engage with us and other partners in the community in terms of what the needs of that community are.

We're actually getting into the 21st century a bit in terms of some cases recently where we've used websites to get access to client input. Again our emphasis is on client engagement as a means of planning and providing our services in the community.

Finally, just to touch on staff engagement. Although it's a bit of a cliché, it's nonetheless true that it's our staff who provide the services, not us as managers. They are our number one human resource.

It's important to recognize their contribution and to engage them in policy ownership, as an example, and in policy development — to be the authors of policy that guide their own practice. There is a growing recognition of the importance of recognizing that, both in terms of individual achievements and in terms of group activities. You'll oftentimes see group barbecues as a means of recognizing the contributions of a particular staffing group.

Finally, in terms of staff engagement, it's a matter of putting all of the tools that are most effective in the tool box. That means decentralizing decision-making with respect to budget and with respect to client decisions. Again, it's a learning process as we move toward that in various parts of the province.

Hopefully, that gives you some sense of engagement at a service delivery perspective, at a community

D. MacKay: Thank you for the presentations to this point. I've got a couple of questions. I don't know if they will be answered as other people do their presentations, but an issue that comes to mind for me is the community youth justice services. I understand that MCFD funds group homes — or I guess they're called residential homes, foster homes — and part of it comes under the Attorney General's ministry. I have an issue at heart right now that I'm trying to deal with.

I've listened to the idea that we want to talk about inclusive communities. We talk about community, client and staff engagement. I just want to run a scenario by you to see if I can get some answers to this question.

We have a Smithers Community Services Association in Smithers that has started a place for two children who have run afoul of the law and who can be sentenced to a period of up to six months, or they can be waiting for bail. They can be placed in a home at the order of the courts.

What has happened is that the Smithers Community Services Association — I'm assuming with funding from MCFD — has gone out and spent $350,000 on a home in a residential area without consulting any of the neighbours. It's a residential neighbourhood. They've purchased this home.

They are now advertising for parents or for people to live in the home to act as guardians, I guess, for these two children who have been placed in custody for up to six months and/or are waiting bail.

They have failed to consult with the neighbourhood. They bought the home, and it was found out through a real estate agent that the home was going to be used, for a better term, as a correctional facility for two children who have run afoul of the law.

I don't have a problem with the concept, but the fact that it has gone into a residential area without consulting with the neighbourhood has created a huge backlash. The people don't want, as they call them, juvenile delinquents coming into a residential area. It's not a group home. It's not a foster home, because they're going to be paying these people to live in the home.

When we talk about consultation and community involvement, that has not been done. It was done after the fact, when it was found out by neighbours that this was the plan for this home. So I'm asking you: can you guide me?

When I stop to think about it, there are only two other homes in the north right now, one in Terrace and one in Burns Lake. The mayor of Burns Lake doesn't even know if it's operating; I've been told that it is operating today. There's one in Terrace.

They've closed one in Prince George. I find it so hard to accept that a population base the size of Prince George would close a home such as this that would only accept two children. We spent millions of dollars in Smithers building a residential attendance program there in concert with the federal government, and we closed it later on. It would accommodate up to 15 youth who run afoul of the law, and that's been closed.

We spent money on that, and we have now spent $350,000 on a home. Smithers Community Services Association is running into a great deal of difficulty trying to appease the residents of this residential neighbourhood that this is a good program, that these children, I understand, are going to be there by consent. They have to agree to be there, or else they'll go to a correctional facility.

I can't get my head around the fact that we talk about "consult" and "in concert with communities" and "inclusive neighbourhoods." It doesn't work. I wonder if anybody would care to comment on that for me.

L. du Toit: Chairperson, through you, I'm going to ask Alan Markwart to respond and then possibly Peter Cunningham as well, who is the RED of the north. Peter didn't get to do his presentation. He might want to add some things to that as well.

A. Markwart: Okay. The types of homes that you describe with community youth justice services around the province…. There are approximately 180 contracted residential beds across the province. About two-thirds of those beds are actually in family care homes, which are analogous to foster homes, but they're not in fact foster homes. It's the placement of a youth in that family care home as an alternative to…. For example, you place them in the home as a condition of bail, as an alternative to placing the youth in custody. In Prince George, for example, it's to keep him closer to his home community — in fact, in that community under close supervision and control.

They are also used for sentencing purposes as well, again, as an alternative to going into custody often where the family home circumstances are such that the parents, at least at that time, are not able to provide the kind of structure and supervision that's necessary for that particular youth.

One of the problems around community consultation with young offenders is the rather strict prohibition…. Well, it's not "rather"; it is an absolutely strict prohibition around publication of identity of young offenders. Any information that is made known to the community that could lead to the identification of a young offender…. It's a criminal offence to do so.

So, for example, if you have a community agency that is in the very awkward circumstance where if it engages in a community consultation process and says that we plan to establish a home for one or two young offenders at 2956 Smith Street, that by definition identifies any youth going into that home as a young offender, and therefore you've committed an offence.

Now, that's not to say that agencies shouldn't engage in some degree of community consultation, and there are ways around it. For example, you could say that we

are providing a care home for a troubled youth without expressly saying that they're young offenders. It raises the analogous circumstance about this particular home you're discussing, whether it's one or two beds. Is it necessary, and should it be necessary, for example, to engage in a protracted community consultation process around a foster home placement, which typically does not happen?

Part of the problem here, I think, is community reaction to the notion of a young offender. It conjures up public fears of pillaging young offenders in the neighbourhood that are going to wreak havoc. That in fact is not the case. The court would not be releasing youth to a community home in those circumstances unless there was a fairly high degree of confidence that the youth could be well managed within the community.

One of the realities here is that we need to address those kinds of fears on the part of the neighbourhood, especially when word has gotten out. I do think that a lot of it is kind of stereotyping and fearful reaction, which is a reality for people that we need to address. I guess my bottom-line message is that it is very difficult to engage in those community consultation processes around young offenders because of the publication prohibitions under the federal legislation.

I don't know if Peter would like to elaborate. He knows more about the specifics of that situation.

P. Cunningham: I guess the only comment that I would add, Mr. MacKay, is that sometimes community associations act independently of the ministry in terms of moving forward on particular issues.

Now, I would want to go back and talk to the folks that are responsible for that part of the region in my area to get the details. I'd be happy to do that for you. But it's not always that the ministry drives the process around a community association going forward. Sometimes the association moves forward of its own accord.

D. MacKay: I would have to differ with that, given the fact that they have to apply for the funding in the first place through the ministry. I would suspect that the ministry must have some understanding of what it is the money is going to be used for.

In this particular case, it's not a group home. It's not a foster home. The argument is that it is a correctional facility. These kids are being placed there. I know the argument is that courts will not accept this as a correctional facility, but this is the argument.

I've had some pretty ugly meetings with this group, trying to appease them, and I'm not having any luck, because Smithers Community Services didn't send anybody to the last meeting. So there is a problem with this concept.

The idea that we're closing facilities down at Prince George…. I just can't get my head around that. Prince George has a population of 80,000 people. You can't tell me there are not two people there that could be well served in a similar facility within the city of Prince George. But we're moving out to Smithers and going into just outside the town boundaries and accepting this.

I don't want to take any more of your time right now, because I understand everybody is under pressure here, but I would like to talk to you after the meeting to go over this issue.

P. Cunningham: Thanks again for the opportunity of being here today. It's a privilege to come and talk to you.

I've been asked to speak about a couple of things. I've been asked to speak about regionalization and our approach to bottom-up planning within the ministry. I'd like to focus today on two things. One is looking at some of the changes that have happened within the provincial office or within the ministry in terms of structure and how that's affected service delivery. The second thing I'd like to talk about, by way of an example, is an approach to bottom-up planning from the community perspective.

One of the significant changes that has taken place within the ministry over the last 12…. Lesley has alluded to that. It is that the regional executive directors for the five regions now sit as full members at the provincial leadership table. This is a significant change for a couple of reasons, I think.

The first is that it allows the regional executive directors to represent community at the provincial table. The regional executive directors from the five different regions can bring the perspective of various communities on issues such as the one that Mr. MacKay just raised. We can have conversations about that in a more a realistic fashion, I suppose, bringing that sort of community perspective to the fore.

Ultimately, I think that having that regional and that community perspective represented at the table allows for the better development of policy and programs and services — services where it's more realistic and where the policy that's developed actually fits the community needs and can be applied, in fact, in the regions and communities in an easy fashion.

I think, ultimately, what this does is allow for the development of services and programs within the ministry where you have more connection between actual community needs and the kinds of services that are designed.

So that's one really significant change that's occurred over the course of the past year. It's had an impact on the region in terms of how work comes forward and how the region is able to bring the actual front-line perspective up to the provincial table.

There are five regions in the province, as has been stated, and there are many similarities between those five regions in terms of both the services they provide and the issues they face. Having said that — and I certainly don't need to tell you this, but I'll say it anyway — there are also many differences between those regions in and of themselves. Even within the regions there are many differences in terms of communities.

We could, for example, be dealing with an aboriginal community in Smithers or an urban community in the

downtown east side of Vancouver or an interior farming community in Abbotsford, and they're all different. Each of those communities brings with them different issues and concerns, and each of those communities also has different strengths.

One of the key challenges that regional executive directors have in terms of implementing the policies that ministries put forward is making sure that staff and managers are equipped with the tools that really allow them to respond to the community interests brought forward and raised in a really proactive and dynamic kind of fashion. It's very important that policy is able to fit in such a way that it's workable at a practice level. That's one of the challenges that we have.

As an organization, we believe — and Les alluded to this as well — that many of the solutions related to children-and-family issues lie within the communities themselves. It will never be possible for government to provide enough money to resolve all of the issues themselves. Having said that, it's important that we engage communities in the process, that we understand what the unique strengths of those communities are and that we're able to work with those communities in that dynamic kind of a fashion so that we can actually address the issues, building on community strengths.

This brings me to the second thing that I thought I'd talk a little bit about, and that's a bottom-up planning process. This occurs, I think, in many parts of the province, but I'm going to speak about some work that's being done in the northeast currently. We all know the northeast as being a pretty vibrant area. There's lots of economic development stuff going on there in terms of the oil and gas business.

Recently we've begun a process with representatives from the Treaty 8 chiefs and representatives from the urban aboriginal communities. These two groups have come together to discuss and put their minds and their thinking to bear on how to develop a service system that's actually going to be a useful, practical system that's going to meet the needs of their individual communities.

There are 14 communities in the northeast that we're working with, and I say "working with" in the truest sense. This is not a ministry-driven process. This is a process that is going to be driven by the communities.

Community members themselves are going to be going back to their communities and engaging in the community discussion, as Les alluded to earlier, and looking at each of those communities to look at what their strengths are, to try and understand what the issues are and to look at what kinds of assets and what kinds of things the community itself can bring to bear on the issues in relation to keeping kids safe and at home and with their communities.

We're going to take that information from each of those 14 communities and, again working with the community members, look at analyzing just what the information they've collected means in terms of a possible service delivery structure. Then finally, based on all of that information, we'll sit down again and work with the communities as they develop a model for delivering services that's going to meet their particular needs.

Those communities in the northeast that we're talking about are all at different places in terms of their own development. They have different needs; they have different strengths. What we're going to see as a result of this is community plans developed that are specific to those communities, based on what the community has to offer and based on what they see as lacking in terms of service.

Again, this is a process that really is being driven by the community. It's a broad bottom-up approach to looking at what community needs are and how we might address those needs. It's a different kind of approach that the ministry has used than the ministry has used in the past.

Not in all cases but typically, government can develop a program, take it to the community and say: "This is a program that you will like in some fashion." And then the community works to try and adapt to it. In this case we're really trying to start at the very base in terms of planning, in terms of looking at kids and families.

This is connected to the restructuring in the provincial office in terms of the res sitting at the leadership table. What may come about as a result of this work is that we need some changes in policy at the provincial level or some changes in approach or a different approach to program design or development. The regional executive director for the north or any other regional executive director can take that information back up to the provincial table and bring our full resources to bear on looking at how we might address the issues that have been raised as a result of community discussion.

That's an example of a bottom-up approach, and it's an example of the direction that the ministry is trying to grow in terms of engaging communities in the process and in the discussion. I think those are the two points that I wanted to make.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Mr. Cunningham. I'm just wondering. We're a long ways into this, this morning. Perhaps it's time to go to some questions.

B. Bennett: I'll have some other questions, I think, Mr. Chair, but just a clarification, Mr. Cunningham. You used the word "community" probably a couple of dozen times in your short presentation, and I'm genuinely curious to know what you mean by community. Who is included in that? What sorts of institutions are included in that?

P. Cunningham: In the context of the work in the northeast, I should have said, if I didn't, that we're working with the aboriginal community. These would be the Treaty 8 communities in the northeast and the service providers from the non-aboriginal communities in the corresponding communities as well.

B. Bennett: In the context of non-aboriginal regionalization — that process — when you suggest that

communities should drive the process, who are you talking about there when you say "communities"?

P. Cunningham: The example that I was referring to was specifically in relation to the aboriginal work that we're doing in the northeast, not in relation to the broader community structure.

B. Bennett: Can I ask the deputy or Mr. Boon: on the regionalization process for non-aboriginal people in the province, will communities drive that process as well? And if so, what do you mean by communities? Who is included in that?

L. Boon: I think community is a general term that represents a collection of constituents. Depending on the issue….

I'll give an example. In Abbotsford we often talk about the geography of Abbotsford as being a city. In that particular sense of the word "community," you will see community tables focused on particular issues. You'll have a youth services table, where various stakeholders and constituents and youth themselves come and participate in that process.

Also within the geography of the community known as Abbotsford there is the Indo-Canadian community, and they themselves, with our participation, have a community process for input and engagement and involvement in terms of their issues.

In Abbotsford you will also have a community of youth. That will include the various…. Abbotsford has a youth commission, and it'll include us, and it'll include Education. The community is defined by the constituents who have the common interest that's brought together. That will be reflected in different ways throughout the province.

B. Bennett: One of the three of you made a comment a while ago that there's not enough money in the world that we could throw at this file, that communities are going to have to take some responsibility for addressing all of the issues related to children. I can understand why you would say that. I'm sure that's true.

In terms of communities driving the process for reform and improvement, it concerns me that you would define communities as those people with almost a vested interest in, if you will forgive me for using this expression, the children's industry.

I hope that we can find ways to involve the broader community in this reform and not just the people who work within ministries and within agencies and who are so close to this. The broader community, I think, would have a lot to offer. Even though I'm sure it will be challenging to bring them in, I think we should be doing that.

L. du Toit: I agree with you, Mr. Bennett. I think that it is a challenge, particularly in communities where it is less defined than the one Mr. Cunningham was talking about or the group that Mr. Cunningham was talking about.

I think that up until now we have tended to have a situation where it is the stakeholders and interest groups and people who in a way represent the services and needs of children and families. It's part of the developmental approach that we want to take, too, that instead of focusing on the needy or the problem issues, we want to get to the early intervention and the prevention pieces. People in the communities would have a lot to offer on that.

It's a place to go. We're not anywhere near there yet, but we would definitely see it as a goal of our non-aboriginal regionalization process.

M. Karagianis: I actually have a number of questions, but I'll confine it at this point to the three top ones.

Certainly, there has been continued reference here to the fact that this is still a work-in-progress, so I would like to ask if there is some kind of time line for a final production or denouement on the restructuring. And what other tweaking is anticipated before that process is complete?

Secondly, in regard to the support for aboriginal communities in this transition process, there has been no reference here whatsoever to resources for training and for some of the other structural necessities that are required for this to be successful. I'm wondering, again, what the time line is for completing the rest of the interim authorities and then the transition to final actual aboriginal services control.

Lastly, I have not heard any discussion here around the ongoing concerns and problems with recruitment and retention within the ministry. I don't see that as part of the overall plan here. I'd like to know what is being done about that and how that is going to fit into the plan we've seen here.

L. du Toit: I hope I'm going to cover everything. Please just ask it again if I'm struggling.

The time line in terms of restructuring of the ministry. For the most part the provincial office restructuring is complete. We do still want to tweak, as you say, some pieces so that we truly do reflect an integrated policy shop and a practice shop.

There are pieces that we're still working on, trying to define them clearly, trying to make sure that we cover off every section in a really meaningful way — that we don't just have silos and structures for the sake of structures or that we move the chairs around just so that it looks different. We really want to make sure that it is in the best interests of children and families ultimately to structure that way.

We will be doing a little bit of that. It would be unlikely that we would still be fiddling with the provincial structure beyond June next year, at the very latest.

In terms of the regional restructuring, simply because of the effect that the provincial office has on the whole regionalization, we will be relooking at what the structures are in the region and how we might want to shift that to empower our staff more, to empower people closer to the front line and to be consistent and have

the integrity within the organization, where the provincial office lines up with a regional office.

Again, we're unlikely to want to be working on restructuring beyond June next year, because our priority now is to get down to the service delivery piece and change some of those things as fast as we can so that we are as effective as we can be.

With regard to resources and the restructuring for aboriginal services, when I indicated support, I should have made that clearer, and I apologize. We have designated considerable resources to the whole of that aboriginal regionalization process. We do believe, as I said, that there's inequity in terms of staffing, in terms of program delivery. We have budgeted this year, and we certainly will be for at least the next three years' budget.

Our plan basically covers the next four years, and we will be ensuring that there are sufficient resources. We'll probably be asking and asking and will not necessarily ever get exactly enough, but we are very clear that unless we provide adequate resources to the agencies, to the authorities, they will end up struggling and potentially failing. That is unacceptable to us.

We take the resourcing very seriously, particularly in terms of staffing, in terms of training so that people have a sense of real competency and are not left, as it were, dependent on the ministry, which I think makes a nonsense of the idea that aboriginal people can deliver services to their own children and families.

With regard to recruitment and retention generally in the ministry, under the human resource piece in the action plan, which we will give to everybody, there is a strong focus on recruitment and retention. We're going to have to look at what the difficulties are, for example, in certain regions, such as the north, where it's very hard to get and retain staff.

We're going to have to look at the kind of qualifications that we impose on staff and rethink how we actually allocate our human resources. It is not practical to continue to have a big emphasis on "you will have this degree in order to come and do this work" and therefore minimize opportunities for people to join us and assist in service delivery.

That's not to say that we don't require competencies and qualifications, but we want to rethink what we need to do to bring in staff and to retain staff. The turnover of staff, particularly at the practitioner level and the supervisor level, is really not in children's best interests or in families' best interests, where they have to keep on finding a new person and having to go through their story again.

If we can have consistency, I think we're going to improve services. So there will be a big emphasis on that, and we will be able to report out our progress on that on a regular basis.

M. Karagianis: I think just the one piece of the question with regard to aboriginal services that perhaps didn't get addressed is a time line for when the interim authorities will all be in place and then when the final authority is transferred to aboriginal communities.

You talk about a four-year time line as far as resourcing, training, staffing and some of the other challenges. Are you expecting that the transition of full authority will be accomplished in that time frame?

L. du Toit: Absolutely, it should be. There are some regions that might never go to interim authority, simply because it is an interim step and we've put it in place to ensure that people could move on from just planning.

We have, however, put a ceiling on the planning process, and that is the end of March next year. There will be no more planning, as it were. We're expecting planning teams to either move to interim authority or explain to us how they will go to full authority.

The interim authorities will, I suspect, be working for at least a year to prepare themselves for full authority. If all goes well and we work hard enough at it and we have the resources to support everybody, we should be looking at completion of moving to authorities in the aboriginal area of our work by, at the latest, mid-2009. We hope it'll be faster, but to be realistic, that's probably where we're headed.

J. Rustad: I have two questions, I guess. The first is that on page 6 of your initial presentation you talked about the regional executive directors and the roles in there. Approximately 49 percent of the ministry's funding supports contracts with community-based service delivery organizations. You mentioned that those organizations are also going to be consulted with regard to how these interim authorities and, ultimately, regionalization is going to be set up — in making recommendations, I guess is what you say, from the community forward to the ministry.

The question I have is around measuring success with regards to the delivery of services by those organizations within communities, making a real difference for children, making a real difference in families, showing that the services they're providing are actually making progress in the life of the child that's being impacted. What are your plans with regards to that kind of measurement or those kinds of goals, if you want to call them, in terms of success on the ground?

L. du Toit: I think the key to everything that you're asking is related to quality assurance. We are in the process of relooking at our quality assurance policy, our quality assurance practice, and we want to ensure that it extends across the full continuum of services. It's not just a child protection issue. It is an issue with regard to all of our services, and what we want to be able to do is ensure…. This is where the community comes in — the families and the children as well as the service providers.

We will establish or have a look at the standards that we already have and then improve on those standards, make sure that they do actually fall within the

developmental, strength-based approach. Once we have those standards clear for the entire continuum of services, we will be putting quality assurance processes and measures in place so that we are able to have a look at outcomes related to children, to family and to communities.

We will also have all of those people as well as the organizations involved, but the fundamental monitoring and quality assurance management will reside with the provincial office. It's within that that we will ensure that those who deliver services do it to the standards we expect and that, if they're not able to meet those standards, we put in place a developmental plan with them to ensure that they are moving towards using those standards.

The only exception would be if they are actually doing harm to children and families, in which case we will not provide time to learn. We will have to take certain actions around that. But for the most part we believe that people will respond within that quality assurance process, and we will ensure that the outcomes are what we're expecting in terms of the funding we're providing but, more importantly, in terms of what children and families need.

J. Rustad: Just in terms of follow-up. Actually, you mentioned it with regard to the strength-based approach. I'm assuming that what you're saying is that the strength-based approach is looking at the strengths of various organizations, at the services they're delivering and trying to build on those strengths to be able to have success for the children.

Have you looked at the idea of looking at the strengths of the children and what children respond to and developing it around those strengths as opposed to more of the service provider strengths?

L. du Toit: Yes, absolutely. Fundamentally, the strength-based approach is connected to how we work with children and then, obviously, with families. It is a fundamental part of the entire developmental strength-based approach that we recognize that every child has capacity; that every child also has the potential for huge resilience; and that within every child, no matter how troubled or hurt the child is, are strengths on which we can build.

I think that that is ultimately reflected in the assessment tools we use. At this stage it is not reflected in that. It also reflects in the manner in which we work with children. Again, we don't tend right now to have enough resources in terms of human beings as well as skills in terms of working differently with children.

Fundamentally, the strength-based approach is about the way in which we work with children, not about the way in which we work with organizations. But in order to have consistency, the model needs to be applied throughout our organization. That's where the heart of it is — with the children and youth.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): This is not in any way a direction, but anticipating where we're moving in terms of getting through the agenda, we have to vacate this room by 1:15 p.m. today. I think the general assumption was that there would be about two-thirds allocated to the first item on the agenda, which would take us till noon or shortly after, and one-third to the final matters on the agenda.

I'm not directing anyone with respect to questions or comments, but if we can all keep that uppermost in our minds, that would be very comforting to everyone so that we can hear fully from everyone this morning.

The question I had was…. When you speak of aboriginal communities, I'm not sure exactly who you're speaking of. What is the relationship between the aboriginal communities and the first nations communities that have their own governance structures? And where are the channels between the ministry's regionalization process and the first nations acceptance or buy-in to that particular process?

L. du Toit: When we speak about aboriginal communities, we are for the most part talking about first nations communities on reserve and aboriginal peoples who reside off reserve. The first nations people and, in particular, the political people — the chiefs, chiefs in council, as well as service providers at this stage — are what we would call delegated agencies. Then any other service providers on reserve as well as off reserve, such as the friendship centres, are all part of what we would call the aboriginal community.

The discussions with regard to authorities have been with all of those people. Of course, the Métis people form part of that as well. The planning teams have been representative of first nations, representative of Métis and then of delegated agencies and urban service providers. Everybody has been involved in those discussions and the planning.

We also have an overriding body that has worked together for many years and is called the Joint Aboriginal Management Committee. It involves the First Nations Leadership Council as well as the Métis Nation of B.C. president, the UNBC and, of course, the minister. In addition to that, we have service providers sitting around that table, particularly the delegated agencies. They all have a collective say in where we're going with the direction of aboriginal service delivery.

N. Simons: Are you saying that the first nations directors are willing participants in this regionalization process? Has there been an agreement — because previously they weren't in agreement — and how has that been expressed?

L. du Toit: Yeah. I agree with you. There was not a previous agreement. I think there was very clearly a split between delegated agencies, which are the first nations agencies; between the planning teams; and, actually, between the ministry in some ways. We had three parties involved.

Some of that was agreement, and some of it was disagreement. On the whole we have a directors forum from the agencies, and I think there's been a huge shift as we've worked toward the authorities.

There is, however, a nervousness on the part of the agencies. That's mainly because they have a concern that the political agenda around authorities may in fact overwhelm the delivery piece of it. I think it's also reflective of a concern that their expertise in service delivery may not be as acknowledged as it should be.

We're working continuously. The ministry is acting for the most part as a facilitator. Deb Foxcroft, our ADM, as well as our aboriginal regional services managers and so on, are working very hard to facilitate all of those groups coming together.

The minister has also been very clear with the interim authorities that his expectation is that the interim authorities work with delegated agencies and various partners to get their commitment and cooperation. Where this does not happen, we continue to do that work.

We will also not superimpose anything on those delegated agencies. I think we have to be extremely thoughtful about how we bring them into the picture.

It's a complex process, but I think there's been movement. We're hoping that there'll be more. It may be that we don't resolve some of these issues, and it may be that some of the bands and nations do not in fact agree to come on board in terms of authority. That is one of the issues we are being realistic about and feel that we will have to find different solutions to.

The entire work in this area is complex. Certainly, my approach to it is: let's not try to make it simple; let's actually work with the complexity, because it is in children's best interests to do that, and find solutions together.

B. Bennett: If it's okay, I'd like to ask a question that doesn't relate to any of these submissions here this morning but is part of the ministry's responsibilities, and that's child care. I would assume that the ministry must be receiving lots of feedback from child care providers in the province right now about the difficulty of finding trained people to work in the child care agencies. Is that correct?

B. Bennett: Okay. Is the ministry considering any sort of options that would assist child care agencies to employ and retain qualified people? We have, some people would argue, inadequate child care spaces in the province today. Some people might argue that we have just barely enough. But whatever the case in terms of the numbers, we don't seem to have enough qualified people to even support the spaces we have today. So I wondered if you're working on any sort of policy or ideas for the minister and for cabinet that might assist in that area.

L. du Toit: I'm going to ask Alan Markwart to talk to that because he is responsible for child care, but also I'm going to say to you that while I didn't specifically talk to it in the presentation and probably it doesn't reflect very strongly in our action plan either, we are very cognizant of the fact that child care and early childhood development are absolutely critical at the prevention and early intervention stage. We are certainly going to put a greater emphasis on how we can develop those services in the next couple of years as part of going forward with our transformation. So I'm going to ask Alan if he can address the specific question.

A. Markwart: Yes, you're correct in saying there is a problem throughout the province with early childhood educators and their availability. It's not something new, and it's also something that in terms of qualified labour shortages is not peculiar to the child care sector.

Over the past few years and moving forward, the ministry has done some things. We had a bursary program for early childhood educators that's been going for the past three years or so. It has helped to offset the costs of education for early childhood educators. Moreover, this last fiscal year we allocated $4.5 million in funding to a couple of foundations to assist with the continuation of a bursary program as well as professional development funding, which would go to help retaining early childhood educators.

Another thing we are looking at, which is not yet finalized but is in the works and is likely to be finalized in the near future, is a partnership with the Ministry of Advanced Education and our ministry in looking at a loan forgiveness program for early childhood educators. This approach has been used in the past through Advanced Education — for example, with doctors, nurses and residential care workers — with some degree of success, again acting as an incentive to attract people to the field and offset the costs of education.

B. Bennett: Following up on that, there are two sides to the problem. One is perhaps a shortage of trained people, but the other side of it is the wage that these folks earn in the agency, which is uncompetitive.

Have you talked at all about that side of the issue and what government might be able to do to help on that side of it?

A. Markwart: We have talked about it, but it is a very difficult area to address. I think we need to appreciate that child care is funded in a different way than other agency services in the ministry. For example, if the ministry was contracting for family development services or youth services, we would be entering into a global contract with an agency and, in effect, paying the full freight for those services.

With child care, however, we do not contract directly with child care operators. We, in effect, underwrite the operating costs of child care through two principal means. One is through the child care operating fund, which acts as an underwriter to the operating costs of licensed child care operators to the tune of about 20 percent of actual operating costs. The remaining 80 percent is recovered through fees to parents, of course.

The second way in which we do that is through a child care subsidy, which applies to parents who have an income of less than $38,000 a year. That's in terms of eligibility for full subsidy. Then there is a partial subsidy for income levels above that. Given that we are only, in effect, kind of partial contributors to child care funding, it's rather awkward to address the wage issues.

All of this, of course, was confounded by the change in funding approaches by the federal government arising from the last election. The previous government, of course, had the early learning and child care agreement, from which the province was expecting a very, very substantial infusion of funding over a period of five years. That program was rescinded and replaced by the new federal government with a hundred dollars per month going directly to parents of children under six.

Since that time, the federal government has announced rather modest new funding for child care, to the tune of about $33 million a year, which is only about one-fifth of what the province would have received under the former agreement. It's a rather difficult and challenging situation, not easy to address.

R. Cantelon: Thank you, Chair. You must have avoided the traffic tie-up that caught me this morning. My apologies to the committee. My apologies to the staff and deputies that are here today.

Your vision statement talks about optimism for early childhood development. I think we all recognize that it's absolutely critical. Some of that comes to rest at the feet of the education department, and their task has been broadened in that regard. But I think one of the most alarming things I learned as a new member was that 25 percent of our children aren't ready for school. Some of that comes to rest at the feet of the education department, but some would be, to my surmise, perhaps the dysfunctionality or lack of resources of families you're trying to assist.

I think the reorganization and the vision that you've presented to us speak optimistically, but what is your general opinion of our ability to change that 25 percent and bring it down? We seem to be losing that same 25 percent at the other end of the K-to-12 when they graduate, so I'd appreciate any broad or general comments about that.

Then, if the Chair would allow me, I have a follow-up question that's unrelated to that.

The ministry is investing a fair amount of money in early childhood development programs, whether it's infant development, supported child development, home visiting programs, Success By 6 or funding for family resource programs.

In terms of your basic premise — is enough being done? — I think that we would all acknowledge that not nearly enough is being done. The deputy minister referred to that earlier in her presentation in terms of saying that we need to kind of focus more attention on the early years, particularly through early childhood development programs and, as well, through child care funding.

You know, there have been some strides even in the area of child and youth mental health with new programs for children under six, but I do think that, as the deputy minister mentioned, it is built into our action plan. It is going to be a priority, kind of front and centre, over the course of the next few years.

One of the dilemmas around that, of course, is around funding. We have considerable demands for present-day resources to meet the immediate needs of children and families. A greater degree of investment in early years programs means either you need to save money out of those services and then redeploy, or you need additional funding to invest for the future.

R. Cantelon: The follow-up question has nothing to do with that, but Les spoke earlier about nodes of service delivery. One of my offices — it seems to be my office — is one of those nodes of delivery. We have sometimes a very amicable, sometimes not so amicable, working relationship with the local service delivery ministry office. I'm wondering what we can do from a systemic level, whether we need to move that off of this discussion and have a private discussion about how we can make that more effective for both of us.

L. du Toit: Okay, so that would be Vancouver Island, under that regional executive director. What I'll do is ask that he be in touch with you and specifically have a look at what the issues are, and how we can better work together. Would that be…?

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Seeing no further questions this morning, I actually have one question. I promise to be brief.

During the course of the presentation it was mentioned that 49 percent of the ministry's funding for its contracts with community-based service delivery organizations…. How many organizations are we talking about across the province, then? Could you perhaps give me some idea?

L. du Toit: Yes, it is — absolutely. In terms of knowledge and skill. It has nothing to do with his age at all.

The standing figure for a long time was approximately 17,000 contracts across the province, but you have to bear in mind that includes foster homes, so there would be several thousand of those. It would also include a whole variety of individualized contracts for, say, a few hours of psychology in a local area and so on. There are large-agency service providers throughout the province, and there are also small-agency service providers throughout the province.

L. Boon: I was just going to try to put a number to it. In the Fraser region we have just over a hundred agencies through our 14 identifiable communities. Generally speaking, it would be about a third, 30 percent, of the province. Just to try to give you a ballpark, it would be about 300 agencies — give or take, roughly.

If not, I want to thank you, Miss du Toit, Mr. Boon, Mr. Cunningham, Miss Hedlund, Mr. Markwart, for your presentation this morning. The committee appreciates it.

Noting the hour, I'm going to suggest we take, perhaps, a ten-minute break for people to obtain some lunch, and then we'll launch into the presentation from the Representative for Children and Youth. So 12:10, please.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): If people could take their seats in anticipation of the remarks from the Representative for Children and Youth, I would like to welcome Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond back to the committee this morning for an update. I'll turn it over to you. Thank you.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, and welcome back after the summer break to many of you. I had the great pleasure this summer of travelling around in some of your ridings and of experiencing firsthand the often quite damp campgrounds of British Columbia. I can attest to the fact that they're remarkably beautiful. I've certainly very much enjoyed it, and if I look a little somewhat harried this morning it's because I have four children attending three different schools, out-of-school programs, child care arrangements and so forth. At any given time I'm not really sure where my own progeny are, but I'm doing my best to keep an eye on those of all of you and of everyone else in the province.

I'm joined now this afternoon by my two deputies. I know you've met in the past my deputy, Andrew Robinson, who is Nisga'a. He heads up our office in Prince George, and he's responsible for aboriginal relations, outreach and advocacy. I'm also pleased to introduce to you today — he hasn't had a chance to attend a prior meeting, although he started his work in July — John Greschner, who came from the Yukon, where he was the Deputy Minister of Health. He is now the deputy representative for monitoring and evaluation for my office, as well as taking responsibility for the area of critical injuries and deaths of children. I'd like to thank them for being in attendance.

I wanted to speak quite briefly to just a few items. I'll certainly have an opportunity to take any questions that you might have. When we met last in the spring or prior to the summer break, we spoke about a number of things. First of all, the education outcomes report, which this committee adopted — I did want to just report very briefly to you that despite the summer break there's been ongoing work on that.

I was very pleased to receive correspondence from three deputies — the deputy of MCFD, the Deputy Minister of Education and the Deputy Minister of Advanced Education — expressing very clearly the working groups that have been formulated to move forward to implement these recommendations, to fine-tune them as necessary but to implement them. It's a process I'm monitoring on an ongoing basis, but I feel confident in saying that there's been some substantial progress and commitment to moving forward.

I also attended last week a valuable session with the Minister of Education, Minister Bond; the deputy minister; senior representatives of school trustees; parents; Teachers Federation; first nations; and other stakeholders that have a key role to play in the public education system in British Columbia, where we talked about the

report, and they established some key working groups to see that the report be implemented.

We had a very spirited and important discussion on items ranging from foundational skills assessments through to how we can make very significant progress despite some of the differences that might exist, even within that system, on improving outcomes for vulnerable kids and children in care in the school system. There has been some extremely positive uptake, I think, in large measure as a result of this committee adopting the report and anticipating further formal reporting back on that in the future.

The other item that we left was the issue of the Hughes review. As you know, as part of my oversight role, my office is responsible to monitor the performance and accountability of services being delivered for children and youth. My role with respect to the Hughes review is to observe and encourage the implementation of the 62 recommendations and report back to you and the general public on progress being made. I specifically note that that is a role that, to some extent, I feel encouraged in by virtue of the comments of members of this committee at prior sessions.

My office is working now on what will be our first annual evaluation and reporting-out on the implementation of the Hughes recommendations. We began our close look at this after the release by the government's transition steering committee of their final report in June. Now, largely due to the impact of summer vacations in my office and in ministries, we will require a few more weeks to finalize this report. I do commit to circulate it to you, even if we are in between meetings, and provide you with a copy. I'm sure I'll have an opportunity to address it, if you feel it's appropriate, in a future meeting.

It's very important to me for these types of reports to have proper executive briefings, ministerial briefings and so forth so that the work will be collaborative and that when it is presented to the committee, the proper advance work has been done. That's the stage we're at with this report. I think that is significant because it is in the spirit of the Hughes review — namely, much more collaborative engagement to achieve success.

I certainly recognize from the comments that were made by the ministry and the deputy this morning that the Hughes review is only part of their much broader plan of action, as they see it. Our office will be examining that matter with careful attention as well, not necessarily in this report but certainly in future reports.

I'd like to take a moment to recognize the assistance given to my office to date by various partner agencies and affected ministries and, in particular, the MCFD staff. What I will be presenting to you sometime near the end of the month of September is a joint framework report. Even though it's a report by my office, it reflects a joint framework that has been developed with MCFD in the context of a common, analytical framework of how we will assess what has been completed or not completed or yet to be completed. The categories and so forth are the product of some joint work and agreement so that there can be some key touchstones for this committee in the future to assess the progress on work to date.

I can also report to you that we will very soon be concluding with MCFD information-sharing protocols to ensure that the work of the representative's office can be effectively discharged in a collaborative fashion. I anticipate those being signed off possibly within a week.

Other information-sharing and relationship protocols are also near to completion, including one with first nations, Métis and aboriginal organizations in British Columbia.

One item that flows from the work we've been doing on the implementation report on Hughes is the issue of involving other independent agencies in some of the work that is necessary on this file. I can report to you that I've had some very positive discussions with the Ombudsman on the potential of a joint review of dispute resolution and conflict resolution policies and practices within MCFD, delegated agencies and CLBC.

While the workplan is being prepared — and I would like to have a bit more of an opportunity to complete that — the concept is that this type of review would allow us to look at these dispute resolution and conflict resolution processes and to keep in mind, in the context of the Hughes review, whether they are accessible, timely, fair and appropriately child-focused.

We may have an opportunity, through the Ombudsman's office and my office, to make some recommendations around what are appropriate, fair, timely, child-focused processes for dispute resolutions inside ministries but also delegated agencies and other entities that serve and support children and families.

My office continues to make some progress on our first annual evaluation report, which I'll be sharing with you fairly soon. I'm also pleased to report that by the end of this summer we have completed the transition work on the transfer of all child death review files from previous child review agencies, the Coroners Service, and that that is completed. Further details of that will be provided in our annual report, but that piece of transition work has now been completed.

In terms of some of the work over the summer months, I did want, with the permission of the members of the committee and the Chair, to ask my deputy, Andrew Robinson, to speak briefly to the committee. He has been extremely active in getting the ball rolling on our collaborative work with aboriginal and northern communities. He has just completed visiting 16 northern communities.

He has a very strong workplan where he, in addition to myself and others, will be visiting and meeting with aboriginal communities, particularly focusing on ensuring that the voices of children and young people are heard and engaged and reflected to the broadest extent possible within all the entities of government and more widely in British Columbia.

A. Robinson: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Aamasilkwsaxs — Nisga'a for good afternoon.

I've had a very enjoyable first two months in my office working with the staff in the Vancouver office and the

Prince George office for the advocacy, community and aboriginal relations portfolio that I do have. I look forward in the upcoming month to meeting with the rest of the communities that have sent invites to our office: the Queen Charlottes, the Tahltan, the other members of Treaty 8 Tribal Association up in the northeast. We're off to the southern interior at the end of next week.

I started in Smithers with a staff member and, over the past couple of weeks, basically hit about 16 aboriginal communities from Smithers out to Prince Rupert — a lot of Gitxsan communities, eight Gitxsan communities in total; three organizations in the Terrace region; all four Nisga'a communities, including Nisga'a Lisims Government .

I sat down with the program and services directorate along with the Nisga'a child and family services organization–delegated agency and went to the meeting with the northern directors of the delegated agencies, which was a very enlightening meeting also.

One of the key focuses of our meetings, as Mary Ellen said, was to ensure that our office was reaching out to the children and youth within these communities. One of the most glaring things that we encountered in the central interior part of the province, where Dennis is from, is the amount of suicides and the amount of alcohol and substance abuse issues that children and youth are encountering in those regions. That has really gone without any light being shed on it across the remainder of the province.

Some of the issues that were brought up in the previous presentation by our MCFD partners basically looked at some of the issues in the northeast and a lot of the challenges that they do have up there in regards to the oil and gas industry, and trying to keep workers and trying to deal with a lot of the things that pile up on a child's shoulders when their parents are involved in such a big industry.

One of the key issues that we encountered along our journey in the northwest and from Smithers outwards was the impact of the history of the aboriginal/non-aboriginal relationship that took place over time and the impact of that on children and youth in those communities; the impact of that within the non-aboriginal communities such as Terrace, Prince Rupert and other regions where these children have to reside and the types of services that are provided to them; how effectively these services are being delivered to these children; and how effective they are in really providing more of a preventative type of approach for these children to gain and build their self-esteem — not to be so much focused on the resilience of these children but to really focus on a child as a blank slate and to look at and work with that child or youth in those communities.

I noticed a lot of programs in the Prince Rupert region that do focus on urban aboriginal children who move into the Prince Rupert region, and the melting pot of aboriginal children in that area. A lot of good success stories that we have seen were volunteer-based elders groups that are looking for more preventative-based programs from the province in regards to dealing with the issues of residential schools on aboriginal children and working with reintegration of children in care into communities, wherever that is possible.

There was tons of information that was shared with me from children and youth in these cities, who were very open. They came and had very positive discussions and sometimes very negative discussions with us. Ultimately this will all be compiled in a report that would be provided to you guys at a later date.

In all, the activities were very tiring. Fog also caught me on a couple of occasions. But it was a very enlightening and very meaningful discussion with children and youth in the north and with some of the agencies that provide services to the children and youth. Making sure that the connections and the communications between those two groups are working well in the north is a real cornerstone of our office.

M. Turpel-Lafond: As well, as we spread out with our strengthened relationship and community engagement strategy in the north, we continue to emphasize issues around education and improving education achievements for vulnerable children, including the one-in-seven aboriginal children who come through the care system in the north. It's higher than that. So that continues to be a major priority as we engage the communities, as are other priorities.

I can say in terms of the work that has been ongoing over the summer — through Andrew's work and, as well, through John's work — that we are close to completing a service plan for the representative's office, which will be a three-year service plan. We've tried to have some consultation on it. We will complete it and then receive additional feedback, something that we will share with this committee, as well, in the months ahead. It will chart out what we see as some key monitoring activities over the next number of years.

We've spent some time revising our thoughts and plans around that. I can telescope a bit to say that a number of items that have come into sharper focus in terms of our monitoring activities include issues around special needs of children and the extent to which the needs of children both in care and out of care are being addressed. Some of that is connected to the health care system; some of it is connected to the education system.

As well, in the context of the Ministry of Children and Family Development, the entire framework of the legislation, which is administered by the ministry, and the extent to which the existing framework and policy that flows from that framework is currently implemented…. At approximately a ten-year view of that legislation, what has the success been with respect to meeting the time lines and requirements and so forth?

We're attempting to get a very strong understanding of that so that will provide us with some framework to then assess prospects of changes in the future and the capacity and likelihood of meeting certain change goals for the future. That just telescopes a bit of the work that will come in the next while, when you see our three-year service plan.

Also on public outreach, as you know, it has been critical to us on advocacy to open up and strongly provide the advocacy component of our office. We were able, through hiring two very capable university students this summer, to do a fairly strong public outreach project where the students travelled around the province. They set up a booth at malls, public festivals and public events throughout the province and distributed information. They were very good ambassadors for our office and, as well, received quite a few advocacy matters, which they then put over to our advocacy staff.

In part because of their work and others, we had a greater number of calls for advocacy in the month of August than we've had since we opened in April.

I will report later on the trends around those advocacy calls, and I look forward to meeting with the deputy minister at MCFD and the minister in the next week or so, at which time I can apprise them of the key themes that are coming out of these advocacy requests and the extent of the type of advocacy we're providing and the systemic issues that might be more effectively addressed in the future.

I can also say that we're making fairly good progress in staffing our office. Last week a number of key positions were posted. You'll see them advertised. They're also on our website, and I encourage you, if you're interested, to view our website from time to time and to be sure that it gets sent out to any networks you may have with respect to child-serving organizations and so forth, so that they will be aware of those positions.

We have also been making fairly significant progress on finalizing our corporate policies and procedures. A key area for us is in the area of critical injuries and death review. As you know, I've suggested earlier that the Children's Forum that I chair would report to this committee at some point in the late fall, early winter on what is the child death review and injury review process by the various agencies that have some responsibility, legislative or otherwise, in British Columbia. I'm still on track for that.

Lastly in terms of updates, a few of our upcoming public activities this month. Just to let you know, in mid-September I'll be in Toronto moderating the opening panel at the National Invitational Symposium on Children and Youth Mental Health — a very significant item, particularly in light of the fact that there's now a federal commission on mental health, which has expressed an indication to adopt an interest around children's mental health and that there are provincial representatives appointed to that commission as well.

The symposium that I'll participate in will bring together delegates sharing a common vision of the holistic health and well-being needs of young people and children and the commitment to putting some sort of vision into action. I think this will be a very good opportunity for us to look at national research and other research that's underway and how we might be able to bring that back and engage with ministries here.

Also, at the end of September my office will be hosting a booth at the Union of B.C. Municipalities meeting. I again view that as a great chance to raise awareness about our work and the child focus, and to make essential connections with decision-makers from across the province in this area. I invite any of you who may be attending the meeting to stop by the booth as well.

Just one final point I'd like to raise. I've asked the Clerk of Committees, and I believe Mr. James has done so, to circulate to you a recent decision from the Supreme Court of Canada that would be of interest. This decision on child protection law was released by the Supreme Court on July 27 — just a little bit more than a month ago. The Supreme Court of Canada — one particular Justice Abella, who wrote for the court — wrote a very strong decision emphasizing again that the paramountcy of the "best interests of the child" principle must bear in decisions with respect to child protection. This decision certainly suggests that child protection laws, policies and practices should be very careful not to put the interests of others — whether they be delegated authorities, parents, or other institutions or individuals — ahead of the children in discharging the unique obligation the state bears when children come into care.

I think it's significant to look at it and to evaluate it, and while improvements in the child-serving system will require engagement with many people, when it comes to the classic area of child protection, the court has certainly said quite clearly that there's a primary concern, which is the best interests of the child, echoing again the UN convention on the rights of the child. I think you'll find that informative, and I'm certainly reviewing and considering that in light of some of the other discussions that were held here this morning.

With that, Mr. Chair, that concludes a sort of informational update, and I'm pleased to respond to any questions that committee members might have this afternoon.

D. MacKay: Just a point of interest. The date for the meeting following a statutory holiday has obviously created a few problems. I did notice, without pointing fingers, that the people who did manage to show up on time are normally people who have to travel from the north on the statutory holiday.

I'm wondering: if we're going to plan any future meetings following a statutory holiday, could it be made two days after, to permit the members who do have to travel great distances an opportunity to spend some time at home on the statutory holiday?

Having said that, I wanted to ask a question of John, having to do with the child death review. I'm just curious about the categorization of "death of children." Do we put more emphasis on a child who was killed in care as opposed to a child who was killed as a driver in an automobile accident? Are they all given the same priority by the child death review committee?

J. Greschner: Well, with the current mandate that's given under this piece of legislation, we are reviewing

the deaths of children who have been in care or receiving designated services. So the question of review and analysis of deaths of children who are not connected with government services but who may die in motor vehicle incidents or other circumstances in which one might think of those deaths as having been preventable would be a function of the child death review unit at the Coroners Service.

They are currently tooling up to take that on. They recently released a report on drowning deaths, for example, and they have plans to do various reports and analyses in the coming months.

N. Simons: Just to clarify, if I may. Is it every death of a child who has had services in the last 12 months or whatever it is, regardless of the classification of the death — whether it's motor vehicle or drowning or whatever?

N. Simons: Referring to the court case, the Supreme Court ruling, I'm just wondering what you think the relevance of that decision is on legislation that exists in British Columbia. Or if that issue — in fact, the paramountcy of the child's best interests and the safety of the child being the most important factor…. How do you think that impacts on practice and on legislation here?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it's a matter that will require some additional reflection, but certainly the initial reaction is that that is consistent with the act here. It certainly expresses the best interest as a paramount principle in the legislation. However, in thinking about ways to improve child welfare, in particular in child protection, often there is a move toward stakeholder agreements or delegation and so forth. That is an important trend as well.

The Supreme Court of Canada decision is a very strong reminder that those types of decisions, agreements and so on cannot lose track of the fact that there is an interest that is paramount, and that is the child. That is not to say that a child is totally separate from a family and so on, but the state's primary responsibility is to the child.

That's a really key point: that it must therefore be child-focused and not focused on relationships with adults that may also have an interest and strong connection to the child. This case is not about prevention; this is about child protection. I think the child-focus principle has been emphasized very strongly in this case.

N. Simons: If I may just add to that…. The fear I have with the ruling and maybe with some interpretation of the ruling is that there will no longer be an equal emphasis on supporting families to care for the child. I think if you look at the history of that particular case, obviously there were other issues involved that were hugely impactful on the outcome of the case.

I'm just wondering if the misinterpretation that could lead to problems would be that social workers — and I don't believe most social workers would have this problem — might see that their only concern is the safety of the child. Maybe sometimes the safety of the child is to strengthen the family. I was sort of trying to figure out what in fact you thought the significance of that was, because I don't know any social worker who would put the interests of the parents before the interests of the child and the child in need of protection.

The other factor there is…. Can you explain how the interests of the child before they become a permanent ward of the state are different from the interests of the child after they've had their guardianship switched?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the key point in the decision is that social workers, child protection social workers in particular, need to be protected in their ability to make decisions about the best interests of a child and that they have that delegated authority through a statute that gives them that as a primary obligation, for which they need to be protected in their autonomy to make the decision.

It also calls, then, into question the extent to which, inside a child protection system, there is oversight and understanding of what the standards are upon making these decisions, what the practices are, what the quality assurance mechanisms are in a system to review decisions that front-line or other social workers will make in this regard.

So I think the key thing is that there's very strong protection for the decisions that people in the field need to make about the interests of a child. That's a very strong, I think, very positive message with respect to discharging the state's role and the people who have that obligation to do it.

I'm just curious, Andrew. Given the amount of travel that you've done in the last few months, talking to aboriginal people around the province, what did you hear about government's plan for aboriginal governance? Did you hear anything? Did it come up?

A. Robinson: There was a bit of discussion about the process, but the vast majority of the time we did spend discussing the interests of the kids in the community and focusing on the children and youth — more about bringing up the awareness of the office of the representative with all of these rural communities that have a lot of communication issues with outside sources.

There was discussion that in some sense focused on the structures, but at the same time it was more of just a "you need to be aware of this" type of discussion. There was not much content in the discussion at all.

B. Bennett: Okay. Well, that's maybe not a bad thing. My other question is for Mary Ellen.

Mary Ellen, you referred to a new process that you're working on to resolve conflicts. I just wondered if you could help me out a little bit and give me,

maybe, an example or two of the type of conflicts that would be resolved, and just help me out a little bit further by telling me what there is in place today, if anything, that we use to resolve those kinds of conflicts.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. Well, this is pursuant to the Hughes review. Around the Hughes review there were two recommendations about improving complaints resolution process inside the child protection system in particular. If a family or a child has a complaint, what happens to that process?

There were some recommendations to improve it. You'll note, perhaps, from the transition report that that was an item that was reported as concluded. I reviewed the dispute resolution processes for MCFD, for the child protection side, and they vary by region. What happens in one region may be different than what happens in another region.

There is also a subset of dispute resolution processes for youth justice within MCFD, which would not necessarily be the same as the other one. Then there is a process of dispute resolution for CLBC, which, as you know, is a quasi-independent agency, although it reports through to MCFD. So there are some questions around what the processes are there.

In reviewing this spectrum of practices — or policies; in some instances they have not been made operational — it became clear, at least from my perspective, that some additional expertise might be of value — an entity such as the Ombudsman's office, which has an historic role in determining fairness and so forth with respect to the resolution of citizen complaints or concerns about government.

As a result, looking at these, say, six, seven distinct dispute resolution processes, is there a possibility to look at it — look at some key principles and maybe assist the parties, if you like — and assist the ministry or other ministries that may want to have a public complaints process for children and families?

This is what has motivated this piece of work we are examining. It's something which I think I will be able to report back to you on by the end of the month in terms of what we see it doing, satisfying certain key principles such as: are those processes accessible? If a child in care is unhappy with a move in a foster home and wants to complain about it, is there an accessible process? Is it a consistent process across the province, or does it exist only in one region, for instance? Is it timely, or is it something that will be determined four years later when they're out of care?

Is that child-focused? Does it take into account a child's view of a conflict and the supports that are needed for a child? What is the reporting out? What is the accountability out from that process? Dispute resolution processes are a quality assurance function of an organization. What is reported out — the number of complaints that are received, how they're resolved, how satisfied parties are with the resolution, and so forth?

All of this is an area, in reviewing the Hughes review and what's before us, that I think is germane for some detailed examination. It's also very suitable, I would respectfully suggest, for a joint look by both the Ombudsman's office and the representative's office.

B. Bennett: Just a kind of quick follow-up here. You're proposing, I think, to establish a set of principles for dispute resolution across all of those seven different areas. That makes sense, and you're using the Ombudsman's office to establish those principles, but you're not suggesting that that office would actually be involved in dispute resolution in the future.

B. Bennett: Are you discussing this with the ministry, or will you be discussing this with the ministry to gain their perspective and their expertise on this?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. First of all, the whole idea is to strengthen those processes within ministries and within regions. The objective is to strengthen them. These are processes to resolve conflicts there. Anything we might produce might be of value to other agencies, but this is for ministries, including the Ministry of Child and Family Development.

With respect to the involvement of the ministry, this developed because, with our advocacy unit as it's become functional, many of the calls, perhaps 25 percent to 30 percent of the calls, are matters that technically should be resolved already within the existing processes on paper. For whatever reason, they can't function, so these are matters that, clearly, I would discuss with the ministry, whether it be the ADM responsible, the deputy and so forth, and encourage and request their participation even in this review process.

The whole idea is to strengthen it so that that is there. While we can perform an advocacy function, and we will do so according to our legislative responsibilities, I think the idea is to strengthen the system so that that's not required to the same extent. That's a very significant piece of initial work, and I'm hoping it might be able to strengthen that system.

I can say, as well, that although the deputy didn't have a chance to speak to this with respect to the good-practice action plan that's been developed, the draft I've reviewed does speak to the interest in doing ongoing work. The piece of work that my office, with the Ombudsman, might do could be picked up and be useful, perhaps, in that process as well.

R. Cantelon: I certainly agreed with your need, and endorse and salute the requirement for objective standards and performance measurements, specifically the educational achievements. In your recent meeting with the Ministry of Education, did you raise the issue, and what was the outcome, if you did, of the lack of universality of testing? I'm wondering what progress you made on that front.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, it's very significant, as we discussed in our presentation to the committee and

with members of this committee, and it's simply unacceptable that 30 percent of the children, particularly vulnerable children, are not being tested. I took it very strongly to the Teachers Federation and others that it is not adequate to test a sample. You will not get accurate results for vulnerable children in B.C. if you test only a sample. There has to be comprehensive testing, including, as we recommended, that the EDI be implemented.

We continue to be of that view in our office. In terms of promoting improvement of the system for children and vulnerable children, I will certainly be out with the school trustees and principals in their fall meetings to speak more about this. I may also speak more publicly about reasons why it is so important and, when we look at the system and improving it, why we need good administrative data and we need to know how all the children are doing.

We had very strong, fruitful discussions, I felt, and I think there's an opportunity to have further discussions.

R. Cantelon: Thank you. I'm encouraged by that and by the fact that we do need good empirical data. We have to get by some opinions and prejudices about how that data might be used.

You mentioned EDI, but are you looking at other measurements of performance as well? And what might those be?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think that for the children in care in particular and for children that are being served by the government in a variety of areas, there's no question from the representative's office. As I've said repeatedly, our approach is one of children's well-being and the indicators of health. A key indicator of the health of children will be education measures, whether it's at grade level or achieving certain academic standards within certain time frames. These are both national and international performance measures.

Given the reasons we've discussed earlier in our education report, we will push the ministries to ensure that those are adopted and that if there are problems with the data, the data is collected; that if there are issues of confidentiality which need to be resolved between MCFD and the Ministry of Education, for instance, for this vulnerable population, those be resolved so that the information can be appropriately shared as well.

R. Cantelon: One last brief one. You touched on the fact that there's a new federal focus on mental health and children's issues. Do you have any sense of where that direction might be taking us on a provincial level?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it's very significant that there is a federal mental health commission that's been established. I mean, they're freshly established, but children's issues are part of that. Of course, the whole area of health is considered to be shared between the federal government and the provincial government, and it's considered to be largely a provincial responsibility to deliver the programs and services.

For the reasons we've presented in the past, I have strong concerns about children's mental health in British Columbia in the sense of the children that are vulnerable and in care — we've spoken in the past about this — that have the dual diagnosis, where they have a mental health situation and may have a cognitive disorder or other special needs, and whether those dual-diagnosis kids are being supported.

In my capacity as representative, I intend to write to the commission. I intend to share with them what we have found here and encourage them to pay particular attention to the interests of vulnerable children and how the system can be improved for those children — at least an awareness of how they struggle at the moment — and that perhaps as they develop their workplans, they make this a priority as well.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Seeing no further questioners, thank you very much to you and your staff this morning for the presentation.

We have one other item on our agenda, which I think would be appropriate for an in-camera meeting, so perhaps we can allow a moment for the room to clear.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): We're back on the record. Is there any other business that any member wishes to bring up? If not, a motion to adjourn?

Thank you very much. I appreciate all of you coming, especially those who've come a great distance.

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Committee Staff:	Jonathan Fershau (Committee Research Analyst)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH