Children and Youth — Issue No. 9 — Monday, November 26, 2007 (HTML)

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

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH



CONTENTS

		Page

Office of the Representative for Children and Youth: Service Plan		127
	M. Turpel-Lafond
	A. Robinson
	J. Greschner

Update on Implementation of Hughes Report Recommendations		138
	M. Turpel-Lafond

Chair:	* Ron Cantelon (Nanaimo-Parksville L)
Deputy Chair:	* Leonard Krog (Nanaimo NDP)
Members:	* Bill Bennett (East Kootenay L) * Dennis MacKay (Bulkley Valley–Stikine L) * Mary Polak (Langley L) * Valerie Roddick (Delta South 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:	John Greschner (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth) Andrew Robinson (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth) Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (Representative for Children and Youth)

R. Cantelon (Chair): I'd like to call this meeting to order — the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth. You have an agenda before you. We're going to continue to follow the agenda.

The main purpose of our discussion today will centre around the Representative for Children and Youth — the service plan. We'll have a report tabled to us too. The Hughes report update will be tabled. The representative will also discuss the Children's Forum that is proposed, and we have a letter of correspondence that I will read into the record and that you will be passed at some point.

I'd like to acknowledge, as you will be very aware, the presence of the cameras. I hope that they would remain quite unobtrusive, and we hope not to have to ask them to refrain and restrain.

I'd like to ask the committee members to introduce themselves now, starting with the member for Prince George–Omineca.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Mary Ellen, if you could introduce yourself and your associates as well, or they could.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Good afternoon, Mr. Cantelon. First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on your nomination and acceptance of the position of Chair.

I'm Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, and I have with me my deputy representatives. To my right is Andrew Robinson, who is the deputy representative for advocacy and aboriginal and community relations, based in Prince George. To my left I have John Greschner, who is the deputy for critical injuries and deaths and the monitoring area of the mandate. He's a resident here in Victoria.

R. Cantelon (Chair): I'd like to ask you, then, to begin with a discussion and lead us through your service plan for 2007-2008 to 2009-2010. The floor is yours.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you for that. You have before you a service plan. I wish to present my office's first service plan.

I will draw to the attention of members of the committee that under the Representative for Children and Youth Act, the service planning requirement doesn't kick in until next year. It is actually not required to have a service plan prepared until next year. However, in order to structure the work and take advantage of what is a fairly small time frame with respect to my own mandate, having almost been at the point of one year passing as Representative for Children and Youth, I felt it was incumbent on our office to present the three-year service plan earlier.

What you have before you is a three-year service plan which reflects the goals and objectives of my office for the coming years. If the service plan is adopted, I intend to review it with children and youth, particularly vulnerable children and youth that the office engages with, with government and non-government child, family and youth–serving organizations and with others to obtain feedback.

In 2008-2009, I would present a revised and updated service plan for the remaining term of my appointment. I don't intend to review it in detail. I did want, though, to identify some key highlights, starting at page 7.

With respect to our organization, the vision that we've taken of fulfilling the mandate, as set out by the Representative for Children and Youth Act and pursuant to the spirit and intent of the Hughes review, is that the representative's office should be an organization highly valued for championing the fundamental rights of vulnerable children and youth and for promoting improvements in the service delivery system and in the delivery of services to children, youth and their families that result in better lives for children and youth.

In terms of the mandate. The mandate in my office is a fourfold mandate. First of all, we provide advocacy services for vulnerable children and youth and their families respecting designated services and also systemic advocacy. I'd like to ask my deputy representative for advocacy to speak a bit about the work described and the work that we will have in the next while in the area of advocacy.

In regards to the advocacy work that we have begun to carry out since I began my position approximately six months ago now, we have received close to 1,000 advocacy calls into our main advocacy office in

Vancouver. We've begun to focus a lot of our attention on building our advocacy resources across the province. In the north is where we're focusing a lot of our activities — out of the Prince George office with one of our staff members. We have a couple of other staff in the office also that do work throughout the northeast, the northwest and the central part of British Columbia.

We've prepared a lot of our advocacy materials, which have been more focused on bringing public awareness to the northern communities about the mandate and the role of the Representative for Children and Youth. A lot of our materials and outreach have been focused on that one aspect. We've travelled to over 45 communities in the province — Bella Bella, Bella Coola, the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Hazeltons, the northeast portions of British Columbia, the southeast corners — and provided more information-sharing and reaching out to communities and community-based organizations to ensure that they have the accurate information of our offices.

It's been a real pleasure to be able to go to a lot of these communities with our staff and to have such a welcoming environment from the communities in the north, especially the first nations communities that have welcomed us with open arms, in terms of listening to their issues and in terms of sharing information with them about what advocacy means for the representative's office and what the mandate of the office is.

In regards to our community outreach activities, we have done a lot of the information-sharing with the 45 communities. We have carried out a lot of rural and remote travelling and have been isolated and stuck in little locations like Bella Bella, trying to get to Bella Coola. The vastness of the province that you all represent is one of the challenges within our advocacy work that we are recognizing — not just the sheer size of British Columbia but the distinct issues and problems we see across the province in each of the respective communities that we do attend to.

One of the main things is that with the aboriginal staff in our Prince George office, it's been very welcomed. They've been very effective in terms of working with the ministry's offices in the north, working with delegated agencies across the province and also working with aboriginal child and youth–servicing organizations across the north.

We've also carried out a lot of that work in the south, but there is a constant demand for more information about the mandate and role of our office and actually starting to build community development and community advocacy networks within the province. It has definitely been an enjoyable and rewarding experience for my first few months on this job.

We receive a ton of electronic messages — 500 electronic messages since we've started. We're developing our website to be more conducive to having children and youth participate on our website and to provide more information with regards to the rights of children and youth, as Mary Ellen discussed earlier, with the designated services.

We are also looking at developing some very direct advocacy policies and procedures and materials that'll work with the Asian community across the southern part of the province, the migrant community that works across the southern part of the province. Prior to this office being established, there was not much advocacy outreach or community engagement work being done with those communities. So that is one of our main goals within the next six months.

As an operational update for the committee members, I can just note that in our first annual report we hope to highlight the work we're doing in advocacy and report more fully on it — obviously a key part of the mandate.

I'll ask John Greschner to comment a bit to the committee with respect to the work ahead in the second area, which is the investigation of critical injuries and deaths of children receiving a government service that would be subject to review.

J. Greschner: Good afternoon. The part of the Representative for Children and Youth Act that talks about this part of the mandate was proclaimed on June 1. So this piece of the work is off to a somewhat later start than other parts of the office.

Our reviews and investigations staff work out of our Vancouver — soon to be Burnaby — office. We have a director who has been confirmed through the competition process, and we're in the process now of filling three investigator positions, which I hope will be completed before Christmastime.

The way this part of the mandate works is that we collect information. A lot of the information we need is collected from the Ministry of Children and Family Development. We then review that information. We develop a subset of those cases that will be fully investigated, but all of them, in one way or another, will contribute to our more aggregate review and understanding of what this part of the mandate has to teach us.

With respect to the exchange of information with the ministry, that is all working out very nicely at the present time. We have protocols in place, and things are starting to work very smoothly. We have some challenges in a few of the areas of ministry services, but the problem is not the ministry reporting to us so much as that those are areas in which these things are less frequent. They don't have as robust a reporting system within the ministry so that it takes us a little more work to work with the ministry and make sure we're not missing any of those cases.

We took a look at the first four months of complete data, from June 1 to September 30, and reported out publicly on that a couple of weeks ago. It looks like, just in very broad and general terms — it's difficult to completely project based on the limited experience we have — approximately half of the critical injury reports that we get are the kinds of cases that we would be following up on, in that they're the kinds of injuries

that might result in a death or cause serious or long-term impairment to the health of a child or youth.

It looks like about a third of the child deaths are cases that we will have to, in one way, follow up on. That piece is still a bit of a work-in-progress because the way our act is constructed and the way it's intended to work is that we are to consider fully all other reviews before we make our decision about whether an investigation is required. So we'll have to have the passage of more time to understand exactly how all of that works.

We're also working on the four historic child deaths that the committee referred. We intend to be reporting on those before too long.

The final thing I would like to mention with respect to the actual work is that we do have our multidisciplinary team in place. We've had our first meeting, and we will be meeting on December 14 to do our first consideration of facts and patterns from some of the investigative work that we've done.

To complete my comments about this aspect of the office's work, I would like to just note that it's very important to us that we do this work in a collaborative style, whether that be with the ministry or with anyone else who's been involved in the case that we're reviewing.

We have another piece of work, which is a more overarching review of all the child death and critical injury review processes that various parts of government do, and we'll be back to speak with you about that in the new year.

The third part of our mandate is the monitoring and reviewing of services to children, youth and their families to ensure the effectiveness and responsiveness of the child-serving system and that the system is publicly accountable.

In terms of monitoring and review activities, today we will table one of our first reports in that vein with respect to the progress report on the implementation of the Hughes review. Some of the other planned activities that I've reported to the committee on in the past I can report on again, and that is an ongoing effort at monitoring progress on the recommendations from our education outcomes report.

I understand, from dealing with the Ministry of Children and Families and the Ministry of Education, that they are looking at making the deadline of September 31 as the first reporting out on the data on education outcomes of kids in care. We continue to monitor those recommendations and progress and ensure that information comes back to this committee.

We are also moving closer toward an audit of special needs resources and funding to children and vulnerable children in British Columbia. We may look at a collaboration with the provincial Auditor in that regard.

We are also looking at a broader monitoring and review of children-in-relative placements, meaning children living with relatives — whether that be grandparents raising grandchildren; children in the home of their relatives, should it become a designated service that's reviewable by the representative's office; or kith and kin, which is already under the review spectrum of the office. So we are looking at a broader analysis of that.

We are also engaged with the provincial Ombudsman in looking at a fairly comprehensive review of dispute resolution processes in the Ministry of Children and Families, in the delegated agencies, in Community Living B.C. and perhaps more widely in terms of what is an appropriate child-focused dispute resolution process.

So we have a robust program of monitoring. I've just given you a few highlights, and those will be captured under the umbrella of the service plan.

The final part of the mandate is the evidence-based research and assessments that we can make recommendations on, enhancing the development and delivery of child and youth services in British Columbia. Again, the report that was presented in June of this year on education outcomes of kids in care is an example of this.

I am pleased to report to the committee that I obtained an order from the court allowing us to have access to criminal justice records with respect to the youth in British Columbia so we can look at the experience of youth-in-care or youth-in-relative placements and see the extent to which they come in conflict with the justice system. There's a broader project description on that, which we hope to report on in 2008. That is a joint report, again, with the provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall.

In terms of our strategies to fulfil this fairly extensive mandate that I've described, which the committee is well familiar with. Our ability to achieve our mandate relies on the degree to which we have the public's confidence. Obviously, this is achieved in various ways, including the legislated independence of the office, which has been provided for in the Representative for Children and Youth Act.

Obviously, to us, it's important that the integrity and the effectiveness of our office in carrying out our duties and responsibilities be enhanced through transparency, collaboration, our determination and a measured, evaluative and evidence-based approach; that we are child-focused; that we advocate for a non-partisan approach; and that our performance is influenced by the UN convention on the rights of the child, the rights and principles set out in the Child, Family and Community Service Act in British Columbia and other guarantees and protections of rights and freedoms for children and particularly vulnerable children.

Given the cohort and demographics of vulnerable children in British Columbia, our work is also strongly linked to a concern and understanding of the situation of aboriginal children and aboriginal youth.

In terms of challenges that we face with respect to the mandate, I just make note in the service plan that we are dealing in British Columbia with an aging, ethnically diverse population and a decreasing number of young earners that will be supporting them. That's the broader context.

The context, as well, is that we have children in care who display significantly more vulnerabilities than children in the general public and that the vulnerabilities of children in care are often doubly compounded for

aboriginal children and youth. Furthermore, there are other children with vulnerabilities that may be less visible, such as children-in-relative placements.

In terms of the opportunities around the service plan, British Columbia's economic strength yields opportunity for greater focus and resource reallocation to our most vulnerable citizens, including our youth. The government's implementation of the Hughes review recommendations is important, and it's an opportunity to continue to strengthen the system.

Cross-ministry collaboration means greater potential to address deficits in the education, health and well-being of vulnerable children and youth. The coming year will include the further establishment of the administrative and operational foundations of our office in order to support the full realization of our office's mandates.

In terms of our specific goals, then. We have three goals that anchor our vision: that vulnerable children and youth have their rights and interests protected and upheld and that their voices be heard and considered; that the work of the office supports improved results — and I put the emphasis on results — for vulnerable children and youth; and that the office delivers its mandate in a child-centred, open, collaborative, accountable and responsive way.

In terms of the resource issue. As members of the committee will know, with respect to the Representative for Children and Youth Act, we present the service plan to this committee for its review and approval. We will present to the Finance Committee the budget in support of the service plan. The base operating budget which was established for the representative's office is $4.815 million per annum.

When I spoke to the Finance Committee last year in support of the first budget, I stated that while these funds were adequate for startup, the budget would likely need enhancements to ensure adequate monitoring, advocacy and the review of critical injuries and deaths. We have now had the benefit of eight months of operations, and we've been able to scope out our mandate in greater detail and understand more fully the challenges we face and the environment we operate in. Those matters around the resourcing component will be discussed this Thursday with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. I just give you that by way of an update.

With that, I conclude the review of the service plan. I certainly welcome any questions, and I ask the committee members to receive the service plan as presented and consider it for adoption.

I would certainly make a few remarks, in that I concur completely that the aspect of trust is key. You develop trust, and the key to that, of course, is the independence that you must be seen to have and, indeed, do have from the Legislature.

I also take to heart — and I know the committee members have taken to heart — the non-partisan approach that this committee has pursued in working with you in developing a program. I hope it continues, and I'm sure it will continue.

In that non-partisan manner, I will alternate questions from one side to the other. I'm sure we'll have many on the service plan.

I do have a few questions here — one general question and then some more specific ones. My general question would be: now that you are eight months into your mandate, has your experience so far created an understanding of what amendments may be necessary in the future to your roles and responsibilities? That's the first general question.

Secondly, in the advocacy category — and this is for Andrew — I do know that there are some special challenges with the refugee community. I'm wondering exactly how broad your advocacy is in covering some of those issues and, in fact, what policy recommendations may come out of those. I know from some contact I've already had with that community that often those challenges there for children are considerably different, especially if they've emerged from countries that are undergoing civil war. Many of them have come to the country without even any of the base skills that we would take for granted here.

Under the area of children's death reviews, I'm wondering, given the numbers and statistics that have been quoted here, whether or not you would make a recommendation on the adequacy of resources — both from the coroner's perspective and perhaps, given the pressures, if there's a growing role and more resources needed in your department as well.

Finally, I'm glad to hear that you're actually going to the Finance Committee with regard to budget concerns. I know that as you grow your mandate to take in Child in the Home of a Relative…. I think it is really imperative that that group of individuals be covered and brought into the care and responsibility of your office. I'm not sure whether you're prepared to talk about any budget increases here at this point, but I'd be interested, as I don't sit on that committee, in hearing more about that.

Lastly, on the UN rights of the child — whether or not coming from your office generally, Mary Ellen — whether you see yourself perhaps giving some policy recommendations to government in the future on how we may better meet those rights and whether you'd see that part of your role is to identify where government generally is unable to meet that mandate and requirement.

First of all, with respect to the issue of eight months of operations and the amendments, the committee members are aware of the amendment that had been requested with respect to some minor issues, particularly around confidentiality.

In terms of broader areas, I certainly am of the view that as we become perhaps more successful at strengthening the service delivery system, there will be areas

where, potentially, the mandate would shrink. Ideally, that was contemplated. So the review at the end of a period of time was…. Hopefully the advocacy numbers will come down because there have been improvements, etc. At this point, of course, we're seeing a very significant increase, but we will track that very carefully.

Other amendments and changes that might be suggested are really specific to different types of services and to the needs of different children, but it's certainly something that we are looking at as we look into various areas.

In terms of your reference to the Child in the Home of a Relative program. If that does become a reviewable area, there are currently over 4,700 children that we would be baselining and tracking their well-being. If we were to look at children-in-other-relative placements that might be on the periphery of that, that certainly does expand it, and I think that's a really significant piece of work.

Around the issue of resources. I can speak just generally to say that we currently and operationally have an organization that has three offices: here, of course; the lower mainland; and Prince George. I think we're one of the few independent offices that has a presence in Prince George and, in particular, has extensive outreach to other parts of the province.

We are currently at 30 FTEs, and our budget submission will request an increase to 45 FTEs in order to fulfil all aspects of the mandate. I won't go into that in any more detail, except to say that that's the significance of it.

I will pass it over to Andrew to speak to the issue of refugee children and immigrant children.

A. Robinson: In our outreach work in the city of Vancouver and in the larger Fraser region, one of the biggest concerns brought forward to us was on the development of refugee materials — materials that looked at the children coming from African countries, coming from Southeast Asian countries. That is something we're actively working on with organizations in that region that have developed relationships with those communities.

Obviously, one of the main components of those communities is their distinct cultural identity, which those people bring with them when they come to British Columbia. I think respecting that and understanding that is the first step in ensuring that the advocacy work and the outreach work that we do with those communities is valuable and that we are providing the same services that we provide in English and other resources to these members of our province. We are actively engaging with those groups to establish that program.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it's fair to report, as well, that we have advocacy files with respect to children from families and that we are assisting them with all manner of things. I've been out to meet with them in shelters and child care centres, etc., to offer support and get a better understanding of their circumstances.

M. Polak: You'll have to forgive me, because service plan reviews are usually what I end up doing with ministries, and so I've gone through and done a similar thing with all my little sticky-notes. I'll try not to be too detailed and too verbose, but that could be a significant challenge.

I wanted to come to grips, maybe, with a big overall thought that comes to me out of this. That is that in looking through the overview of the office and, in particular, the roles around advocacy, I want to first say that it's great to see a spot where this fits.

My only hesitation is coming from, if you look on page 7, the two middle bullets. I was curious. In constructing a service plan, what thinking is your staff bringing to the table around: "Here's the role of the ministry and what we expect them to do"? There is a certain role with respect to workers in MCFD and those who are out in the community versus what your office does. How is that delineated so that we're not crossing over one another?

M. Turpel-Lafond: With respect to that, the ministry has the function to deliver programs and services and to carry out statutory and other obligations. The advocacy support that we provide is often with respect to the ministry. It might be a child in care, for instance, who is not happy with being placed in a new foster home. The ministry has the responsibility to decide the placement for the child and to offer whatever caregiver support would be required for that child's placement to be a stable one.

The child may feel like their wishes and desires were not taken into consideration. So in that type of an advocacy scenario, we're not deciding where the child lives, but we would engage with the ministry to see if they'd adequately considered the views of the child and the best interests of the child and that the child's voice was heard.

We're not a shadow ministry. We are an advocacy support. But advocacy can run the gamut from those types of circumstances to circumstances where, perhaps, a caregiver has a child in temporary care residing with them and the child can't get access to a health service. They would be in touch with us to assist so that the child would receive some essential health service that they didn't feel they were receiving. That might be an interface with a health authority or the ministry.

The range of services that the advocate side provides really depends very much on the circumstances. In terms of direct advocacy to help resolve a dispute, the view we have taken — and one of the reasons why I've asked the Ombudsman to join me to look at dispute resolution processes…. I would like to see the ministry, whether it's youth justice or it's on the child welfare side or on community living, have a strong child-focused dispute resolution process where they can be resolved more quickly and adequately.

That, I think, is the key. We want to strengthen even that area. We don't want to supplant it. But we're not a shadow ministry. Really, we are providing advice and support, and we do some actual specific case advocacy as well.

M. Polak: In terms of bullet 3 on that page, what I'm hearing you describe is something that relates to responding after the fact, if you will. There have been the ordinary processes allowed to take place, and then there's assistance in facilitation between the parties.

Would bullet 3 refer to…? I guess I read it as being a more proactive engagement where you're building outreach in the community that says: "Here are the services available." Is that specific to services that your office provides, or is that also developing information around services that the ministry provides? Or are they just completely separate?

M. Turpel-Lafond: No. I think they're often very combined. I'll give you a very concrete example: services and supports to children with special needs, children with disabilities. They may have difficulty accessing services and supports, and they may not all be children that are in care, for instance, where the state plays that role.

There are communities in British Columbia where the community would like to have greater information and would like our office to promote agencies that are there to support children with disabilities to reach out to them. When the children and families try to access their services, if there are wait-lists and they can't access them, to be able to meet with the community and support them in whatever way we can….

As well, on our side, we would bring that back to the ministry, for instance, and meet regularly with the ministry's leadership to say: "Here's a pattern of community concerns we have, and we'd encourage you to please pay greater attention to these or to resolve them in some other form or evaluate the service delivery model."

M. Polak: This is just a language one on page 8, in terms of the use of…. In number 2 it says: "The representative monitors and evaluates…." In number 3: "The representative collects…." Then in number 4 the language is just slightly different. It's probably just an oversight. Rather than saying "will," to be consistent, it would be "conducts."

Now we come to the mandate page. Actually, I'll skip over because there's something that I think is maybe more germane. If we go back to the tables, where there are targets laid out to respond to the objectives and strategies….

I'm glad that Maurine raised the issue of refugees, because I know that one of the things I wanted to ask about…. On page 15 the first bullet, under "Strategies," refers to first nations and aboriginal peoples. Of course, that's been a major focus of the development of your office.

But coming from the area of the world that I'm in, I'm also aware that there are significant developing issues, if you will, in the South Asian community in particular, around young people, around children. So I guess it would be important to me to ensure that in a service plan we're outlining a goal to ensure that we're developing outreach that meets their needs and is specific to their cultural context as well.

I know from experience that there's a high level of fear with respect to reaching out about family issues and in particular about children and also a lot of concern around — how can I say this? — cultures attempting to adjust their child-rearing practices as they enter a new country.

Where is your office at with respect to communication with the South Asian community in particular and, I would imagine, also the Chinese community? Those are two more established ones, beyond the refugee community.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Right. I think the second bullet point on page 15 speaks to that. Of course, in terms of identifying some vulnerabilities, we have seen some vulnerabilities there in terms of immigrant children and families, particularly around refugee resettlement, but there are some other barriers as well. I think it's important for us to note that some of the patterns that we're seeing are also through the side of the injury data and children that might be coming into care, the issues with respect to concerns around trafficking of children and so on. There are very specific issues.

This particular objective, 1.4, is around the advocacy services. It's significant to us, as Andrew said earlier, that our services are available in a variety of languages; that our staff represents the full diversity of British Columbia; that we have specific relationships with non-governmental organizations; that we also encourage the ministry to have effective programs with respect to immigrant and refugee children, particularly children from war-torn countries, who have enormous difficulties resettling; and to see that it's not all the Ministry of Children and Families but to see that the family supports are there, whether it's housing, etc.

In fact, at least on one of the advocacy files, I know that our supports really had nothing to do with the Ministry of Children and Families. It was just a matter of getting a woman and her children from a war-torn country out of a shelter and into an apartment. But someone had to make the phone call, so we sort of were the ones who made the phone call, because I'd rather see her children not come into care and her to have somewhere to live.

So we have to look at…. When we have advocacy and we see patterns, can we strengthen the system of supports in those communities?

Your point's very well taken. It's a significant issue for us in terms of planning and the composition of our staff and their facility to work in the community and to have our material available in a variety of languages.

In terms of the extent of the difficulties in some of those contexts, there is a variance. I mean, we're looking at where the children's vulnerabilities are, and we certainly will have a very strong outreach in that area.

M. Polak: I'm really glad to hear you mention working with the NGOs because, as you know, in areas

like Surrey and Vancouver there are some really well-developed community organizations who have the right contacts, so I would strongly encourage you.

Last question, although I suppose I might have more later. The last overall one is with the targets overall. Throughout the different areas, I think there's a valiant attempt to find targets. But I guess I would ask…. How do you phrase this?

It seems as though most of the items are rather tough to put a number on. I know that this is a first, and I know that it wasn't even required, so it's quite a feat to get it put out. But I would have to say that compared to typical service plans that we would review even in social-serving ministries, there should be more attention to thinking about ways in which you can quantify some of the targets more specifically. For example, the effectiveness of getting information out isn't necessarily adequately reflected in a number of pamphlets distributed, etc., so there could be another piece of data that might be more useful to reflect that. I think the same is found through the rest of them.

The one that would be most apparent, though, is in objective 3.2 on page 19. When you look at the objective "effective infrastructure operations practices to fulfil all mandates of the office," I don't know that the question asked in the performance measure really relates closely back to objective 3.2. So there's my comment for you on that one.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I appreciate the level of attention and comment. I think the challenge for us is that we are not a ministry delivering services. As an independent office that has the four core functions of advocacy, monitoring, reviewing critical injuries and deaths and then doing research, the main target I think that we can set is the extent to which any recommendations that we arrive at meet with the acceptance of this committee in the sense that this is a unique relationship. This committee accepts it and then works toward changes with respect to service delivery. Those are some things sort of beyond our control, if you like.

Our effectiveness, the dissemination side…. I appreciate your comment. We've thought a bit about how we could measure that. Again, being a small office serving children, we didn't think it would be appropriate to spend a lot of time hiring consultants to evaluate and test people and so on. We can certainly measure things like the extent of engagement we have and so on. But raising the profile of the office and being clear that there are services there that we can support….

You know, the number of advocacy files is not really an appropriate target, because we don't want advocacy files. We want the system strengthened. When you look at, say, a thousand advocacy files, I think that represents some degree of traction on the ground as well.

But I take your comment, and certainly, as we look at our service plan for next year, we will look at ways that we can maybe strengthen some of these targets, in keeping with being an independent office.

R. Cantelon (Chair): I'm going to have to call a recess. We've been called to the Legislature to do a vote. I'm sorry to leave so abruptly, but we've got a few minutes.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Well, however long it takes. We'll come back immediately after the vote.

R. Cantelon (Chair): I'd like to thank the representative and associates and attendant guests for their patience as we did our parliamentary duty — just to prove that we do have a parliamentary duty.

I'd say to all members that my intention is to try and take this discussion not too long past four. We have several other items on the agenda, and I'm very sensitive to the fact that the representative and other members may have other duties in the House and otherwise at 4:30. No doubt, some of the information that you're going to be presented with today will require further, extensive discussion. I anticipate that to be the case, and it'll take another time and another place.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): I would like to compliment you and your staff on what I would call a commendably ambitious agenda and service plan. Having said that and appreciating that this is not the committee that will put the fuel in your vehicle, so to speak, and appreciating that you have, no doubt, considered contingency plans, what part or parts of your mandate are going to suffer if you do not get an appropriate increase in your budget?

M. Turpel-Lafond: That is a matter that I'd have to reflect on. The first thing would be to have the service plan moved forward, to have the budget discussion moved forward, and then any determinations that we would make would be brought to this committee, because I do feel that obligation of responsibility. Particularly if we were not able to properly and fully investigate a critical injury or death, I would bring it to this committee.

B. Bennett: Mary Ellen, I looked at your service plan the way that lawyers would tend to look at these things, I think. I got the legislation out, and then I got the terms of reference out for the committee and went through the service plan with an eye for: is the service plan consistent with the legislation and with the terms of reference for this committee?

In addition to the last speaker, I would commend you, as well, for making sure that the service plan is in fact totally consistent, in my opinion, with the legislation and also, to the extent that it's necessary, consistent with the terms of reference for this committee.

Your four responsibilities on page 1 are also very much consistent — different wording and plain language, I guess — with the legislation.

I am curious, because over the last seven years of my life I've had the misfortune to have had to look at a lot of service plans for ministries and Crown corporations. I served on the Crown Corporations Committee, on Public Accounts, and now I chair the Finance Committee. I wondered: were you out there all by yourselves with regard to crafting this service plan? Did you have a template that was provided by anybody or any help from any other agency?

M. Turpel-Lafond: No. I mean, of course we reviewed all public bodies and looked at their service planning process and reviewed ministries' service plans and the frameworks for accountability and reporting. I think that we had to really track specifically the mandate and the constating legislation as well as a reasonable workplan within a period of time.

One of the reasons, again, why I wanted the service plan put forward now was that if we need to fine-tune it, we can do that and make sure that we have the type of feedback required in it. We really didn't have a model, particularly around the performance measurement. Many public bodies have service plans without performance measurement targets in them, so I felt it was quite significant that we do select appropriate targets.

B. Bennett: I guess you've invited the kind of scrutiny that I have given the service plan. I do commend you for having a service plan when you didn't have to have one done yet and also for including the performance measures.

I think that as you go forward over the next several years, given that your role is completely independent of government — and needs to be and is legislatively — obviously you're not going to feel any pressure from any agency you might talk to. At the same time, I think the experience that ministries and Crown agencies have had over the past five or six years in particular in terms of developing their objectives and their performance measures….

I know they've really struggled with trying to find, in lots of cases, particularly on the social side, ways that you can measure performance in social agencies. It's a lot easier if you're talking about money, business, oil and gas revenues, and things like that. It's a lot harder on this side. But I think there might be some value — certainly not this year but going forward — in just talking to some of the other agencies and seeing how they develop their performance measures.

I did want to deal with the three goals in some specific way, so I'll just start with goal 1, which, if committee members want to follow, is on page 15. The performance measures are on page 15. One of the other members canvassed this one as well. I wonder if judging the performance on this particular objective is best judged by the number of pamphlets, forums, workshops, speeches, presentations, learning events, or is there another, more objective way to determine whether you have achieved your goal here?

Again, I'm making this comment for the future, in your next service plan for next year. But as you go through this next year, maybe you could think about ways you could evaluate the performance that are a bit more to the actual performance than this might be.

In terms of the next performance measure, expanded advocacy services, you've got two bullets there: provided by the office to children, youth and their families…. Then in that next bullet you've got, in the out-year — 2008-09, the next year: "Establish a baseline number of children and youth served by the office." I was curious to know whether, after the few months you've been at it, you have any handle on how that's going to shape up, or is it too early?

B. Bennett: No. You're going to establish a baseline as one of your performance measurements, and that's going to be the number of children and youth served by the office. Can you take a wild guesstimate as to how many you would serve over the next year?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think there'll be in excess of a thousand. But with respect to the performance measure here, it's children, youth and their families provided advocacy services indicating satisfaction with the support and services received. The baseline with respect to that is going to have to be some form of feedback.

The challenge we have, particularly where we support vulnerable children that are in care, is that it's very difficult to survey them. There are some ethical issues around that, so we're very concerned. We could hire an external consultant to survey a sample of the cases we do and have the feedback from the children. But again, the confidentiality part is so significant. Often children will not work with anyone. They only want to talk to us about….

If I go back to that example of the child in the foster home that wants to be moved, if someone were to call them and say, "I'm doing a survey for the representative's office," they'll think the information they gave us is not confidential. We have some issues around how to do that, but I really appreciate the feedback you have because we are challenged by this. We would like to find a more objective way to do this without being intrusive in the lives of vulnerable children.

B. Bennett: That's the third performance measure, percentage increase in satisfaction rate. I think, to the extent you can actually measure it, that that's a great performance measurement. What other measurement would be better than that? Are the people you're serving satisfied with the service? Good luck with that one. I think it's a tough one.

I was actually focusing a little more on the second one, which is to establish a baseline on the number of children and youth served by the office. My curiosity stems from, I guess, a concern that I've run into with other agencies and ministries when you measure the number of people that you deal with within your ministry or your agency, and dealing with more people becomes a performance measure. It sometimes becomes self-fulfilling, in a way. I wonder if you're concerned about that at all.

M. Turpel-Lafond: No. I mean, I think my true goal would be to become the Maytag repairman, where the phone never rang because the service system was strong, and vulnerable children didn't need external support. That would be my true goal. In terms of setting a target that would encourage individual advocacy versus system change, no, I am very mindful of that. But of the children and families that we are interacting with, are they satisfied?

Again, I have to admit here that I have some significant handicap by virtue of my previous occupation — or the occupation I'm on a hiatus from — as a judge. In the area of advocacy I like to see every case resolved. I don't just like to see information. I like to see every case resolved. My true performance measure would be 100-percent resolution — difficult to measure, because we're not entirely in control of that issue.

Again, the quality of interaction to support vulnerable children…. We may not be able to resolve the dispute, but we may be able to support them in some other way that at least they're satisfied. They've been respected. The interaction that they've had with our office has assisted them in some form. These are difficult things to measure, but I am committed to exploring the most effective way to measure that.

B. Bennett: Okay. Well, I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I'm just going to leave you with the comment that that middle performance measurement in 2009-10 basically states that the more children and youth you serve, the better your performance is. I just wonder if you really want to have that as a performance goal.

B. Bennett: Goal 2. Page 17 is where the chart is with the performance measures. Basically, as I understand it — and correct me if I have this wrong — all of the performance measures for this particular goal relate to whether the government accepts your recommendations, whether this committee accepts your recommendations and whether other agencies that deal with children and youth accept your recommendations. So you will consider that goal to have been achieved if all of your recommendations have been accepted by everyone who should be accepting them.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the important point here is that the reporting relationship I've established as an independent office is primarily to this standing committee. The acceptance of the standing committee of any recommendations is a significant performance measure. In terms of the actual implementation after the standing committee accepts it, I would like that to be considered, but it's not something I can control or would rightly be able to have that direct link.

The relationship, as I see it, is from here to the standing committee — for the standing committee to deliberate, consider, adopt recommendations. I can monitor them, but I think the key performance measure for me is to this committee.

I also include child and youth–serving agencies here and other independent officers and public bodies. But that's around where we're doing collaborative engagement in particular.

B. Bennett: I think that that is, from your perspective, an appropriate performance measure — the question of whether your recommendations are accepted or not. I also think that if that's the primary performance measure for this particular objective, it puts an awful lot of emphasis on your relationship with the ministry.

There will always be differences of opinion in terms of what's happening and what the best solutions to the problems are. That's to be expected. In terms of your recommendations being accepted by the committee and by the ministry, that will be made, I think, a whole lot easier if you've got a very fulsome, open relationship with the ministry and if they get an opportunity to say why they think that perhaps your draft recommendations should be changed somehow or other or why you're wrong, perhaps, and maybe you don't have all the information — those kinds of things.

When it comes to the committee in terms of whether we can accept that your recommendations should be approved and accepted by the ministry and by government corporately, we're going to want to know that all of that discussion and all that communication with the ministry has taken place — that you've made a good yeoman's effort at making sure they understand where you're going with your recommendations and that they really have no further value to add to the discussion.

I'm going to switch to goal 3, which is on page 19. One of my colleagues has already mentioned this one. I wonder, in terms of the measurement for this particular goal, is there some way that this committee could be the entity that decides whether your office has performed well on this particular goal? I understand what you said earlier. We certainly don't want a government entity doing that, but I wonder if this committee would be an appropriate place or body to decide that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think you are going to a very important point. What is behind this performance

measure is that the Hughes review and the Representative for Children and Youth Act call for a comprehensive review of all the mandate and functions of the representative's office at the end of a period of time.

What we're attempting to do here, on an annualized basis, is begin to look at how you would measure this. How would you look at it in support of the committee? The idea is to have a baseline, perhaps engage some external review of that in order to facilitate and support the committee at some point, which will have to look at the whole thing without a set of criteria in the act or anywhere else to do that — look at the operation and see whether or not all of the mandates have been effectively fulfilled, or if there is a challenge to do that.

I am extremely open to that. I think that is the role of the committee. I mean, again, as an independent officer of the Legislature, I feel that I report to the Legislature through this standing committee. The standing committee has a unique role in that regard different than other independent officers, who don't have that relationship.

To be effective requires a 360, and the 360 can be here. I'm hoping to be able to have a way to look at this annually so that I could assist the committee — to be able to say, "Here's what we found to be valuable to look at whether our mandates are indeed being fulfilled and there's the right balance among them," etc.

B. Bennett: So is it your intention to come to this committee at the end of each year with some sort of annual report, and then we would help determine whether or not this goal had been performed or how well it had been performed?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. Of course, again, it's open to the members of the committee generally, in the operational side of my conduct of my responsibilities, to refer to the representative items. It might be that there was a sense on the part of the committee that there is an area of the mandate that's new or hasn't been addressed and could be reviewed specifically by the committee to the representative.

If there's ever a sense of it not being there, it can be done. But at the same time, I'd like it to be much more proactive on that front.

B. Bennett: Mr. Chair, are we out of time? Are there more speakers to go here?

N. Simons: I just want to say thank you for the service plan. It looks very good. In the interests of time, I think I'll pass.

V. Roddick: I'm probably leaping in, this being my first sitting here. There are two things that, as I was going through here, I felt needed a little more clarification. They look absolutely intriguing. One is called the children's plan on page 2, and the other is called the Children's Forum on page 19.

When I read that, I didn't get any elaboration or feeling of what that entailed and what the goals and objectives and baselines, etc., are in those two, or what you're hoping to achieve through those two specific items.

M. Turpel-Lafond: All right, I can address that. The Children's Forum comes from recommendation 47 of the Hughes review, which suggested that the provincial director of child welfare convene a forum with a number of other public bodies that have a responsibility to look at deaths or injuries of children. The uptake on that was not happening, so the representative's office convened a meeting in that regard.

We've had four meetings of the Children's Forum, which consists of our office; the provincial director of child welfare; the Public Guardian and Trustee, Mr. Chalke; the provincial health officer, Dr. Kendall; the chief coroner, Mr. Smith; and — am I neglecting any other members of that? — the Ombudsman, Ms. Carter.

So we have a forum. The objective of the Children's Forum is to look at — in fact, there's an agenda item on it later today, which I don't think we'll get to — how the various pieces of the puzzle in British Columbia fit together with respect to the reviews and prevention around injuries and deaths to vulnerable children. The forum has looked at all legislative changes in support of the Hughes implementation and also looked at how we can more effectively ensure that the oversight and concern is there around prevention. That's the Children's Forum piece.

The children's plan in the service plan is looking at whether in British Columbia there is a need for a coherent cross-ministerial plan for children, which would have a discrete number of indicators around children's well-being, etc., and whether or not the representative's office might bring to the committee a discussion paper with respect to that — to have the committee look at and evaluate that. That's a very high, system-level issue. That activity would be behind a children's plan. That is something you would see — which we've spoken to in past meetings — as a discussion paper item that the committee would be able to review.

J. Brar: Thank you very much for presenting this first service plan from the independent office. I have certainly seen a lot of other service plans from the ministry. Although there is no comparative when it comes to this and the ministry, this is certainly the brief one, the short one and the focused one. I appreciate all the work you guys have done. Of course, I would like to see the actions in the future.

D. MacKay: First of all, I would like to apologize to my colleagues and to the Chair and to the panel people for having to run out partway through the presentation. I'm hoping that I'm not going over ground that has

already been covered. If I do, I'm sure I will be corrected by the Chair, and I'll have to read the Hansard reports later.

I wanted to talk about the mandate of the Representative for Children and Youth. On page 7, I notice it talks about the advocacy role that the representative will play. It brings to mind a series of incidents that are happening in my part of the province — up in the Hazelton area, to be more specific.

We average two to three suicides or attempted suicides in that part of the province every week of every year, so we run about 150, on average, every year. This last couple of weeks have been rather traumatic for the Hazelton-Kitwanga area, where we've had, I believe, two successful suicides and several attempts at suicide, invariably involving young women and 100-percent native population.

In your mandate here it says that you provide information and advice and support for children, youth and their families. I wonder if you might enlighten me as to what it is you do, or if you have been involved in those incidents. Could you tell what it is you have done in your role as advocates to see if we can't get to the bottom of this problem?

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, I can say that the issue around suicide and attempted suicide is a very significant issue to us. I cannot comment around specific cases, because I can't go into the details, except to say that we have involvement in a number of these areas.

I can't say much more than that, except to say that we also have the community relationship component, and we, on the broader monitoring side, are looking at a specific review of suicide attempts and successful suicides for children that are in care.

So there is a specific piece of work that we're doing, but we also touch the issue in terms of reportable injuries and deaths that come to our office. However, due to confidentiality issues I can't speak about that in particular at this point. On the community engagement side, we have a relationship where there are communities particularly concerned or clusters of activity like this.

D. MacKay: Thank you. I wasn't looking for specifics. I was looking for a broad overview of what you are doing within your mandate to protect these young children. What support is out there for the families of these children who are going through this process? Can you be a little more…? I'm not asking you to be specific. I'm just asking you for a broad….

M. Turpel-Lafond: The challenge I face is that there are different circumstances. There are different circumstances where we have suicides or attempted suicides, particularly around children who have received services — who are within my mandate — in the past year, or their families. That group is the group we're engaged with.

We're looking at: were the services effective? Were they supported? If there are issues of drug addiction, if there are mental health issues, are they receiving services? Did they receive services? When there is a suicide attempt, because these things tend to cluster, other children in the community may try it as well. How responsive is the system?

Again, the key lens for us is the effectiveness and responsiveness of the system to supporting them and their families. Those are all of the strategies that we're looking at with respect to the specific instances. I think it's important, as well, to note that when we do table reports around critical injuries and deaths, this issue will be explored in greater detail for you.

D. MacKay: On goal 2, one of the performance measures you mention on the bottom of page 17 — we're talking about the bottom performance measure — says: "Collaborative reviews and reports undertaken with other independent officers and public bodies." The actual target is to compare the number of joint projects, reviews and reports.

Are we duplicating something that's already being done with this target and the performance measures?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I don't believe so. I think the goal here is to look at, again pursuant to the Hughes review…. The Hughes review identified, for instance, the Ombudsman as an independent institution that had responsibility with respect to administrative fairness for children and families. There are areas where the representative's office is of the view that we should work together with the Ombudsman because some issues tackle the item of administrative fairness. Dispute resolution processes for children are a good example.

There are areas where, for instance, the audit power that is in the representative's act could be more effectively, I believe, exercised by a joint audit with the B.C. Auditor General. Or with the issue that you just raised about suicide, it might be most effective for us to look at a study of suicide involving the Coroners Service.

The key thing is that we're not the one-stop shop for children. We work in the context of a number of other agencies that have responsibilities for children. We don't want to take away those responsibilities, but the independent office was created, in part, to strengthen that and to bring those together. The collaboration component there — that's what drives it.

In terms of a performance measure, I think it's extremely significant that we do have those joint activities and responsibilities and see the strengthening of the child focus across all these public bodies in British Columbia.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Mary, if you have one very, very short one, I'll let you do it. But it has to be very short.

M. Polak: It is. First, just an observation on that last question or comment. Perhaps, then, the measure isn't so much the number of joint activities, projects, reviews. The percent of your joint activities and reviews that are collaborative might be the quintessential measurement.

I wanted to simply suggest on the basis of comments by an earlier colleague that going forward…. I have to say that I concur with everyone else, and I hope my comments before didn't sound otherwise. This is an absolutely, tremendously valiant effort, given where you're at in the development of your office. I've seen many a ministry struggle through service plans with far greater numbers of staff and with far less success on a first go in front of a committee.

My suggestion is that perhaps, going forward, it may be of use to both your office and the committee to spend some time specifically on discussing what would be the most useful measures to allow the document to really be a living and guiding document for the office. I think that might be productive in many ways, not the least of which would be assisting the committee in understanding some of the struggles that you're faced with. That's my closing suggestion.

R. Cantelon (Chair): As Chair, I'd like to make just a few remarks. I think it's an excellent document and very well-presented. I think, notwithstanding that you have many lawyers on your staff, it took what was a very dry document, the legislation itself, and interpreted it for people to be able to read in a very useful way.

One minor critical comment, though. I did find that the communication part was a bit on the, let's just say, fuzzy side and in some ways detracts from the real core mission, which is so vitally important to the province and to us all.

My one question is on page 8, with respect to research: "…conducted evidence-based research." Besides doing baseline studies within the department, MCFD, are you looking at comparative research from other jurisdictions? I just wondered if you'd comment on that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. Our research activities are with a variety of ministries, because the administrative databases are…. Pretty much anytime we look at something with respect to children, we have to check a number of databases to be complete. International comparisons are significant, and national comparisons are significant. So the comparator groups are usually vulnerable children or children in care compared with other children in British Columbia and comparing it with other jurisdictions, etc.

Research partnerships, where appropriate, will be important for us to discharge our mandate. So a research partnership with the human early learning partnership at the leading universities in British Columbia has been cemented in terms of supporting our activities. On all of our research projects we have significant external experts in the field as well as the internal capacity. So we make sure that in addition to having an advisory group or a consultative group around the report, we do represent the best expertise that would be available in the field.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Thank you for that. I look forward to learning about that research, and I hope that we have the courage to move forward with it.

We have two items left on the agenda. You've spoken already about the Children's Forum, Ms. Turpel-Lafond. I don't know….

Yes. Pardon me. I'm jumping ahead. We have to approve and adopt the report, so if there's no further discussion, I'd look for a motion to adopt it.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Let the record show it's unanimous. That was for the Service Plan 2007/08 to 2009/10.

The third item was actually the Children's Forum, and I don't know if we need to add further to that. But maybe we could deal with that and expedite the meeting a bit.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Mr. Chair, with respect to that item, I would suggest it be tabled for a future meeting.

Then we'd like to move to the final item, which is the Hughes report, and we will ask the Clerk to circulate it. While you're receiving this, we also have a letter concurrent with that from Minister Christensen.

R. Cantelon (Chair): It's a significant report, and it's one that's going to take a considerable amount of study and thoughtful consideration of this committee. I don't expect to hear more than an overview of the approach from the representative, Ms. Turpel-Lafond, today.

My suggestion will be, so you have this in your minds as you get this document, that we meet at the earliest opportunity. I'm suggesting a date of somewhere around December 10 to bring in ministry officials, because I'm sure we'll want to question them in the context of the comments made in the report and have a very thorough and complete discussion on that topic. We certainly don't have time today, since you've just received it.

M. Karagianis: I would actually reserve judgment on our need for a future meeting until we've actually heard what the children's representative has to say.

M. Karagianis: And I would rather, within the context of her comments and then the letter from the minister, discuss it once we know what the children's representative is going to say.

N. Simons: I just find it rather unusual that prior to the release of a report, we have a letter from the minister essentially calling into question the validity of the report. I find that highly unusual, despite the fact that I haven't been in this place for a long time, and I think that needs some further discussion.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Yes, we will come back because we need to plan what we will do next.

R. Cantelon (Chair): We're not quite all together, but I think the rest will come in very shortly, so I'm going call the meeting back to order.

As the first order, I'm going to ask Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond to give us an overview and comments on the report she's just tabled.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I am presenting today our 2007 progress report on the implementation of the recommendations of the B.C. Children and Youth Review. I call it the Hughes review.

I don't intend to review it in any detail this afternoon, given our late hour, but I would like to summarize the findings of the report. I certainly would be prepared, at a later date, to do a more detailed review, recommendation by recommendation, should the committee be of the view that that would be helpful or necessary.

I want to emphasize first that I share Mr. Hughes's view of the strong and compassionate people doing front-line ministry child protection work for our children in British Columbia. Their commitment to the best interests of B.C. children and youth is inspiring. The Hughes review was very supportive of them, applauding their toughness, warmth, intelligent compassion, decisiveness and determination.

Mr. Hughes also called for additional resources to be earmarked for their recruitment, retention and training. When the review was released by Mr. Hughes in 2006, he said that he hoped that "with proper planning, resources and accountabilities in place, the implementation of the recommendations I make here can be accomplished smoothly and effectively, avoiding the pitfalls of recent experience."

Government and opposition publicly supported the recommendations that came out of the review, and the government committed $100 million dollars to improving the child welfare system in a special children's budget.

Since day one on this job I have been monitoring and examining government's progress on the implementation of the Hughes review. Why am I doing this? We are now at the 18-month point since Mr. Hughes issued his recommendation.

I'm issuing this report today because Mr. Hughes called for close monitoring of progress on his recommendations when he released his report. This committee has asked me to monitor the implementation of the Hughes recommendations and to report directly to the committee on it. But most of all, I'm doing it because I believe it is essential, in the best interests of children in British Columbia, that the Hughes recommendations be implemented.

My 2007 progress report assesses how much activity has occurred to implement each recommendation. There has been progress in some areas. For example, I spoke earlier to Ms. Roddick about the Children's Forum. I think that's an area where there has been significant progress.

I also note that outside the 62 recommendations that Mr. Hughes made, there have been systemwide efforts to support vulnerable children and families that may have a positive impact on children in care. Here I'll just mention a few examples.

I'm not examining the impact on children and families of these innovations at this point, but some examples come to mind, such as the Ministry of Health tripartite agreement with first nations on a first nations health plan to close the health status gaps with first nations children and non–first nations children.

That's a very significant initiative. It's not necessarily something called for specifically in the review but is a very significant initiative. I think due recognition has to be given to the hard work that supports that.

Another example is in the Ministry of Education. The work on closing education gaps through aboriginal education enhancement agreements in 36 school districts is a very significant piece of work to address some of the vulnerable children that were spoken of in the Hughes review, even if it isn't a specific Hughes review action.

Certainly, the legislation that's before you now in the House with respect to first nations jurisdiction over education may present another great opportunity to do some systemwide strengthening.

I make these points with respect to the role of various ministries in terms of promoting family stability and supports and better outcomes for vulnerable children and say that this report is delivered in the context of a recognition that there are many and myriad efforts underway to support families and children.

However, when I look specifically at the 62 recommendations in the Hughes review — and they were largely targeted at the child welfare system and the child-serving system and at the Ministry of Children and Family Development — I am concerned by the lack of sustained action on the agenda the Mr. Hughes set out.

There is not yet enough real, identifiable progress for me to give the government anything better than a mixed review. This is of concern to me because my office is just the latest external agency to be created. The Child and Family Review Board, the child and youth advocate, the Children's Commission and the child and youth officer are all predecessor organizations. Some were independent, and some were not.

We have had two formal reviews in the history of British Columbia: the Gove inquiry into child protection and the Hughes review in 2006. Recommendations made by these bodies have not always been acted on in full and with dispatch.

This history must add to our renewed determination to act now on the Hughes recommendations. We cannot afford to let another round of recommendations sit on a shelf or gather dust. We cannot take the chance that people might start to think the challenges facing our child welfare system are bigger than the solutions that are out there.

The Hughes review is the best report of its kind that I've seen, and I've seen many. It played a pivotal role in my decision to take on the position of Representative for Children and Youth for British Columbia.

I believed, after the Hughes review was released in 2006, that there was a time of great optimism and that the public and others shared an optimistic view for positive change in B.C.'s child welfare system. The Hughes review pointed the way.

I remain optimistic that positive change can be on the horizon, but I temper that with a call for government to redouble its efforts to address the Hughes recommendations in a more timely manner.

It's important to note — and I really want to emphasize this point, although it raises another corollary set of challenges — that it is entirely possible that progress in some areas is not fully captured in my report. I note the letter that has been filed by Minister Christensen, and I appreciate the fact that the committee provided me with a copy of it. That progress in some areas is not fully captured in my report may be possible if documentation was not made available to my office and information was not shared with my office.

The conclusions that are reached in this report are based on the record. If it is the case and subsequent discussion and documentation are provided by MCFD to demonstrate clear progress, I welcome that. Future progress reports will reflect progress in these areas, should that be provided.

Members of the committee will remember that when the assistant deputy minister, Mark Sieben, appeared before this committee around the education outcomes report in June of this year, there was a commitment on the part of the ministry to engage in a joint review of the Hughes recommendations. That was expressed to the committee, and the willingness to have a joint review and collaborate in a joint review was my first position. That proved not to be possible.

As a result, this report is a report of my office alone. I would hope that in future years, as I anticipate these reviews becoming shorter and shorter as more recommendations are implemented, there would be a joint report which would give an opportunity to showcase the achievements of the ministry with respect to implementing these important recommendations.

I want to be amply clear to the committee, though, that the offer was there to do a joint report, and it wasn't taken. A different report has been provided.

In terms of sharing draft reports in advance, that is possible, and that did happen in this instance. However, the report that's tabled today is a report and our independent evaluation of that.

It's important to note that with respect to the assessment criteria we use, the assessment criteria are outlined very clearly in our report. If you look to page 19, we developed an assessment scale to determine where these recommendations are — influenced by a review of various assessment scales used in B.C., Ontario, Canada and United States with respect to following up on reports and recommendations.

The rating scale is, first, a rating of "limited or no progress," which means that no documentation is available to indicate that work is being done toward implementing the recommendation. Generating informal or general draft plans is regarded as limited progress.

"Planning underway" is for situations where specific plans for implementing the recommendations are being developed and appropriate resources and a reasonable timetable for implementing the plans have been addressed.

"Implementation underway" is for activities beyond the "planning underway" process that are occurring, such as hiring staff or putting in place the structures necessary to fully implement the recommendation.

"Substantial implementation" means significant results have been achieved in implementing the recommendation, and full implementation is imminent.

"Complete or fully operational" means that all actions required to satisfactorily implement the letter, spirit or intent of recommendation are completed, processes are operating as recommended, and the matter is moving forward.

A final category is "insufficient information provided," meaning verbal or written summary statements alone.

With respect to assessing the evidence, the approach that the representative's office took was to require some corroboratory evidence in support of the implementation of a recommendation — a workplan, a set of terms of reference, etc., some formal written evidence of work in terms of turning one's mind to the specific recommendations.

The assessment reached with respect to the 62, which is set out on page 2 and then again in the body of the document, is that we found that 18 of the recommendations are complete, fully operational or substantially implemented. The bulk of these have to do with independent oversight and legislative changes required to bring into force the representative's office, changes to the Coroners Service and to create the standing committee here as well.

Nineteen recommendations have implementation or planning underway. Twenty-five have limited or no progress or insufficient information to assess.

Challenges. One of the challenges in offering an assessment to the committee of the status of the Hughes recommendation is that the primary evidence provided by the ministry was a draft plan called the Good Practice Action Plan. It is difficult to evaluate a draft plan, in particular a draft plan that is presented as one which will change in the future, without being very specifically pinned down around the activities that are in it.

It's also a plan that's pitched at a very high level of generality, with a large number of reviews involved in it and not necessarily specific details around what these reviews entail, who would conduct them, what the workplans are, and so on. With respect to the primary evidence presented, it's the Good Practice Action Plan.

It was my view as representative that the ministry should be recognized for developing a draft plan, even though in some other framework, in terms of the methodology, such a draft plan would not be considered as demonstrating progress. I was of the view, in reviewing the draft plan, that it should be given credit and that credit was given to them for a draft plan. However, behind the draft plan there are some very specific questions.

The types of commitments which were seen in the Hughes review to improve outcomes for children and youth did not necessarily come off the page of that draft plan. That is a matter which I will leave with the committee, and I will make one recommendation on that at the end.

What I've done for the committee's purpose is…. In various appearances before this committee I've repeatedly spoken to key themes coming out of Hughes that are important. Those themes are covered in an executive summary, if you like, beginning at page 7, which I title "Hughes Recommendations of Pressing Importance."

Under this category, I cover the situation for aboriginal children and youth as a freestanding category of significance. The development of a strong, centralized quality assurance program with effective standards, practices, policies, and effective monitoring, auditing and reporting by MCFD is a key theme. Again, these themes will be familiar from prior appearance before this committee.

The second theme is the development of an effective complaint resolution process that is timely, accessible and simple; that takes a problem-solving, non-confrontational approach; and that is publicly reported.

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

The fourth is information-sharing provisions regarding sharing relevant information on vulnerable children and youth with public agencies and addressing any statutory barriers to disclosing information among MCFD program areas.

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

With respect to that, I'll just make a few comments on those key areas instead of going into the 62 specific recommendations.

On the issue of aboriginal children and youth, which of course was a matter of great concern in the Hughes review and has been a matter of interest in this committee, I would report that the type of consensus on how to move forward with respect to aboriginal children that Mr. Hughes envisioned developing has not yet been reached. So there is further work to be done in this area.

It would appear, from my analysis of the state of affairs in the ministry, that they're moving forward with a regional or interim Crown agency or aboriginal authority model; however, this has met with some opposition by delegated agencies and others. With respect to a consensus anchoring the model for aboriginal children, that has not yet been obtained in this field.

In particular, I would note that there are challenges with respect to crafting legislation, whether it's a Crown agency model or what have you, which would pass to aboriginal people a child welfare system or interim authority structure that lacks clear performance measures, prevention resources, modern information technology and the capacity to secure better outcomes for children. This may, in fact, result in few, if any, improvements in the lives of these children and youth.

While there are discussions underway, and those are very positive discussions, there is not enough agreement or planning to meet these important conditions for an effective and responsive system for aboriginal children and youth. There's quite a bit of work that remains to be done in that area.

The next theme is quality assurance and monitoring. On this point I have to raise the issue of decentralization and the reorganization of the ministry. The Hughes review noted that the government has a responsibility to be accountable to the public for its performance in protecting and serving children and youth — that the ministry needs a regular, coordinated program of public reporting on its activities and the results achieved for children in care and children at risk.

While Mr. Hughes supported a more decentralized and integrated Ministry of Children and Families, he cautioned against the rapid and far-reaching transfer of child welfare authorities and resources without a framework of standards and performance expectations to guide the process. Indeed, he wrote: "That responsibilities be transferred to regions and to aboriginal authorities once they have demonstrated their ability to meet key performance targets."

With respect to the issue of decentralization and quality assurance and monitoring, I find that the program of coordinated public reporting is not there yet with respect to implementing Hughes — that in terms of decentralization, the framework, the performance measures, the quality assurance practices that Mr. Hughes saw as being indispensable for this are not yet in place. He certainly observed that resources and authority should not be transferred away from the centre to the regions or from government to Crown agencies without clear performance expectations and the standards under which the work transferred will be carried out.

Arrangements to ensure that these expectations are met take a number of forms — from practice standards to guide the work of individual practitioners, to guidelines covering financial and human resources man-

agement, to operational audits to show that guidance and standards are being met, to case reviews to uncover the hard lessons of difficult and sometimes tragic cases, to performance measures to establish targets and show progress toward their achievement, and to external evaluations to determine whether programs and services are generally effective in operation by meeting the objectives set for them.

It became apparent to me in my review of the Hughes recommendation that this area of quality assurance is an area that bulks large among the recommendations that are still in progress.

The next area is the complaint resolution process. I've spoken about it briefly. There's no evidence of the urgency the Hughes review called for with respect to this process in the ministry. I've been unable to determine that the aboriginal agencies have been supported adequately to establish complaint handling processes and the predelegation obligation to do that. Certainly, we're looking for a process that's timely, easy to access, non-confrontational and respectful of parties while being child-focused.

This is an area in particular that I pause on, because it's important in my assessment to determine what the ministry is doing with respect to complaint resolution process. This is an area where we've been told that they have in development a new approach; however, we have not been provided with any documentation, terms of reference or any materials to analyze whether or not the approach meets the Hughes recommendations, exceeds the Hughes recommendations, etc. A verbal-only assurance that work is being done was not viewed by my office as adequate. We needed to see the work behind this to see if progress was, in fact, being achieved.

On the next area, the review of critical injuries and deaths of children, the Hughes review stressed the importance of building internal ministry capacity to conduct case reviews to a high professional standard. It called for integrated reviews, a common model across different program areas, and it urged that realistic time lines for completing reviews be set, met and reported out on.

Too little evidence has been made available to me for me to conclude that tangible progress has been made on most of those recommendations in the past 18 months — certainly the requirement for integration, a common model and realistic time lines. There may have been some movement with respect to reporting out in law; however, after 18 months the model is not there.

With respect to information-sharing, the statutes that govern access and privacy matters within MCFD need to be reviewed. I haven't received sufficient information to allow me to determine that progress has been made on these recommendations around privacy and information-sharing. Certainly, my own legislation contains provisions that allow me to access and use the information required to carry out my own mandate, but I'm not able to evaluate, at this point, MCFD's progress in that area.

A final area which again pertains to data. MCFD, my office and other partners in the child and family–serving system must take maximum advantage of the potential benefits of linked data. Data about how the system performs with respect to children is important to analyze to see if the system is meeting the needs of children and, if it isn't, that appropriate adjustments be made.

I do note in this regard that the child and family–serving sector, as many of you on this committee will know, is largely a contracted sector. The services are contracted through the Ministry of Children and Families. That sector has pushed very strongly for linking of data and has indicated and, in some instances, shared with me the availability of their data to demonstrate the impact on children and families of the services they provide. The ministry has not taken up that data. The ministry has not put in place a system to link that data, to make it connected to outcomes and to develop a more robust capacity to assess how the system currently serves children.

In conclusion of the sort of brief overview I can present today, I would say that many of these key Hughes recommendations, when acted on, will significantly and noticeably improve the lives of vulnerable children. Too many of these recommendations have yet to receive the attention they deserve.

I urge the government to renew its commitment to the recommendations of the Hughes review. I ask the government to clarify the connection between the draft MCFD Good Practice Action Plan and the full implementation of the Hughes review — a point I was not able to discern.

With respect to the larger project of transformation that they've undertaken, I have not sought in this review to analyze that. I am looking at the Hughes review and the implementation of the Hughes review. I am not looking at service transformation plans. If they are connected, I certainly suggest greater public accountability as to how they are connected so that the public and my office, as well, can have a better understanding of what is meant by these plans.

Finally, I request — and I'm delighted to see in the letter from the minister that was tabled here — that the ministry work with greater urgency to implement the Hughes recommendations that deserve immediate priority, which I set out. While some valuable progress has been seen, I would have to report to this committee that over the past 18 months we have lost valuable time. We must work with renewed vigour to address the Hughes review recommendations and give them the support needed for real progress.

I'll just say in conclusion what I said at the outset, which is that I hope next year this report will be a joint one and not a report only of my office.

I had some speakers ahead of time, but before I let the floor be open, I would point out that we're well past our agenda. This is a very significant and important report, and I don't think it's something that we can just

summarily discuss at any length at this time. We don't have the opportunity, nor would it be fair to the members to try and entertain that.

M. Karagianis: I would agree with you that we do need to have appropriate time to consider this. Unfortunately, the meeting has been broken up by several votes. Those are beyond the control of the representative and certainly have interfered considerably with the time allocation here and the flow of questions and answers and all of that.

I am concerned just about one procedural question. We received the service report from the children's representative by a confidential electronic file prior to this meeting, but we did not receive the report here on the implementation of the Hughes recommendations. I see here from the letter from the minister that this progress report was released to the minister on November 22.

I am concerned, procedurally, with the role that this committee plays and our direct relationship and oversight to the children's representative and the fact that the committee itself has been left out of the loop on this information. This is not even getting into the body of information here, which concerns me greatly. I am concerned around the procedures taking place here — certainly, the distribution of a letter from the minister prior to us even receiving the report.

Given the very specific role that this committee plays — it's instituted only as a legislative tool for the children's representative — I am concerned about the flow of information here. I would like us to be able to discuss the significance of the comments of the children's representative and this report very specifically.

As the previous critic, this was canvassed very completely in estimates in May of this year. I am greatly disturbed by both documents that I have received today, as I would expect my colleague the current critic is.

First, I'd like to address the procedural issue here around distribution of information, if I may, please.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Well, briefly on that, I received an embargoed copy of the report on Friday, which is, as I understand, the general standard procedure for reports. They come as an embargoed copy to the Chair. My understanding of the other letter would be that there have been communications between Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and the minister, as in the course of producing any other reports — and, therefore, his letter.

As to your second comment, then, I would agree with you, and I do have to try to be as cautious as I can in wrapping up so that we can get together as quickly as possible and give this report the consideration it deserves.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Mr. Chairman, could I just make a word on that one point, though, just for information purposes?

M. Turpel-Lafond: With respect to the preparation of reports in my office, I just wanted to report to the committee the practices that we engage in. We initially contemplated this report as being a draft report. In fairness to a ministry, as any oversight agency would, we do share drafts of the report as it's developing. Several drafts of this report have been shared with ministry officials. I shared a completed final draft of the report on Thursday and had the opportunity to brief the minister.

When I prepared the education outcomes report that was tabled in June, I shared a copy of that in advance with the two lead ministers and briefed them in advance, which would be normal practice, to allow them to be briefed and to see the report's conclusions.

In terms of the point that's raised in the minister's letter about an opportunity to provide a formal response for inclusion in the report, that was never raised with my office. There was an opportunity to have a joint report. There was a report shared as an embargoed copy but out of courtesy to the minister.

I appreciate that there's an opportunity, as with the education outcomes report, to allow the ministry to address their views and share their views. There's no desire on my part not to permit the ministry to do that. I welcome that.

However, it is not standard practice to allow the ministry to have a formal response inside a written report that was never requested by the ministry. This is the first I've seen this request.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Thank you. And to correct my…. It was Thursday. I want to assure you that I've not shared the report with anyone.

Now I'm going to have to carry on. I'm sorry about this, but I do have other speakers.

B. Bennett: Thanks to Mary Ellen. I think it's one year ago to the day that the representative was not appointed specifically, but the recommendation came from the committee that she should be appointed.

I would suggest that we are at an important crossroads with the representative's function and also with the committee in terms of how we do our job. Everyone who's on the committee has expressed a sincere desire to do this work in a non-partisan fashion, and the representative has also indicated that's the way that she wants to do business.

What I see here is a breakdown in communications between the representative's office and the ministry. In circumstances like this, I would suggest that the best thing we can do is to invite the deputy minister and her staff to come to meet with the committee as soon as possible.

I'm not sure that other members will agree with me on this, but I think it would be good to have the representative and her folks here at the same time so that the committee is not placed in this predicament of trying to sort out the "he said, she said" sort of situation. I think we need to get to the bottom of what is happening with regard not to the substance of the recommendations and the

report but just in terms of the relationship between the representative and the ministry.

B. Bennett: Okay. I'll make a motion that the ministry deputy minister and her staff be invited to meet with this committee, that the representative and staff also come back at the same time and that we have a fulsome discussion about the specific issue of the relationship and communications and transparency between the two organizations and the sharing of information, in addition to the substance of the report.

R. Cantelon (Chair): All right. You've heard the motion. I think it's a reasonable motion to move forward with this so that we can have a second meeting to discuss both the report and the communication.

J. Brar: Since we are going to invite them, I think the key issue here is this whole delay in the process of implementation of the recommendations. I think that should be part of the discussion as well. Communication is one part, but the other important part is the delay in the implementation process.

R. Cantelon (Chair): That was part of the motion to review the Hughes. I took that to be part of the motion. I think that's a very valid point, and we accept that completely.

N. Simons: I think we should consider this very carefully before we rush into any decision. I worry about entrenching a relationship that we may not want to see happen, and that is having a debate held in front of the committee as to what happens and who does what.

I think if we want to speak to the deputy minister about the Good Practice Action Plan, and if we want to talk to her staff about the implementation of the recommendations of the Hughes report, that's one thing. But I think it would not stand us in good stead to be here in what it seems would be essentially a questioning of both parties to determine what happened here and there. I don't think that would be appropriate for our function.

We have a report from the independent representative. We should look at the findings, and I think that should be the focus of our issue. I just worry about setting a precedent where, when we have any sort of dispute, we are going to get the parties in front to answer questions.

M. Polak: I have the opposite view. First and foremost, I don't think we're talking about a dispute per se. Let's understand that we've only just received the report, and certainly, none of us have had a chance to review it in any detail. But what I hear from the representative and what I take from the minister's letter, especially the last paragraph, is that there's a clear intent on the part of both the representative and the minister to work collaboratively.

In any other case — when we work with the Public Accounts Committee, when we work with others — it is our practice to engage both offices on even the most controversial matters. I've never seen that develop into a dispute and a "he said, she said." What results is better understanding, and we're able to discuss issues where there may be crossed wires or issues where there may in fact be disagreement and discover what they are and, as Bill says, fix it.

If our role as a committee is going to be to facilitate the ongoing collaboration of the offices, then why on earth would we start by separating the two?

M. Karagianis: I think that our mandate here is not about collaborating between MCFD and the children's representative. The committee was formed very specifically to interface with the children's representative. That is our role. That is what our mandate very explicitly lays out.

So first and foremost, I would like to follow our mandate and resume another meeting with the children's representative where we have time to consider the report before us and have a discussion with the children's representative.

The response from the minister I treat as a second and as a specifically individual response. I'm certainly happy to, at some point, have a meeting with the ministry, as we have in the past. But I do not see that our mandate is in any way to facilitate any relationship whatsoever. I think that's up to the children's representative and the ministry to fulfil.

Therefore, I certainly don't see any purpose in trying to force a collaborative meeting that is contrary to our mandate. I'd be very happy to see a motion that says we will have another meeting as soon as possible with the children's representative to further explore her report.

Then at some time, if we feel another or separate meeting, even perhaps on the same day, with the ministry staff, as we have done in the past, it would certainly be in keeping…. That would be the only thing I would find supportable.

R. Cantelon (Chair): I'll let Mr. Krog have the last word, and then I'll call the question.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Hon. Chair, I can't begin to express my disappointment in not receiving this report earlier in a confidential manner prior to this meeting. It would have saved some time.

Having said that, however, I concur with my colleague from Esquimalt. I appreciate the good intentions behind Mr. Bennett's suggestion of doing what he proposes to do, but I think baby steps are more appropriate in this circumstance.

None of us have read this report. It is a substantive document. It is one of the main functions of this committee to review the implementation of Hughes over time. It is the child and youth representative's main task, if you will, to bring about a system in this province that we can all be proud of.

Therefore, I would respectfully suggest and ask that Mr. Bennett consider withdrawing his motion and that at the next meeting we simply deal with reviewing this report and the appropriate questions of the child and youth representative and her staff.

B. Bennett: Just to clarify what I think the motion is, the motion is to meet and go over with the representative the substance of her report but also to have the deputy minister and whatever staff she wants to bring come in and talk about what obviously — based on the comments of the representative, unless I misunderstood — is a real problem.

There is a problem with communication between the two parties, and I think it behooves us, even if we do that portion of the meeting in camera, to get to the bottom of that as soon as possible.

I don't agree that baby steps in this case are the answer. I think that we're talking about children and youth and their welfare, and we should get on with what the representative has indicated is a particular issue for her.

R. Cantelon (Chair): There being a tie vote, it falls to the Chair to cast the deciding vote. I will say that I think the word "collaboration" has been mentioned several times in this discussion and in the representative's comments.

I think anything we can do to further that and open up lines of communication and make those communications flow easier and better is to our mutual benefit as a committee, as a government and for the representative.

J. Brar: My point of order: is part of the mandate of this committee to intervene in the process and be a conflict-resolving or problem-solving committee? I just want clarification on that.

R. Cantelon (Chair): I rule on the point of order that it is, but I think that is a worthy point of discussion. I think it should be put on the table. But for now, in terms of this vote, I rule it out of order. But I would entertain further discussion on that.

J. Brar: Mr. Chair, if this is a worthy point of discussion, then my question is: how does it make sense to set a meeting first and then discuss this point, before finalizing as to where we stand as per the mandate is concerned? It doesn't make any sense to me.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Noting the hour, I'll take your comments under advisement and discuss it with the Deputy Chair. There is nothing to preclude separating the motion into two meetings. I think that perhaps we can consider doing that.

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Yeas(4)	Nays(4)
Bennett	Krog
MacKay	Brar
Polak	Karagianis
Roddick	Simons

Committee Staff:	Jonathan Fershau (Committee Research Analyst) Erin Bett (Committee Researcher)


	YEAS — 4

Roddick	Bennett	Polak
	MacKay

	NAYS — 4

Brar	Simons	Karagianis
	Krog

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH