2011 Legislative Session: Third Session, 39th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

11:30 a.m.

Douglas Fir Committee Room

Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

Present: Joan McIntyre, MLA (Chair), Claire Trevena, MLA (Deputy Chair), Mable Elmore, MLA, Gordon Hogg, MLA, Douglas Horne, MLA, Leonard Krog, MLA, Kevin Krueger, MLA, Richard T. Lee, MLA, Nicholas Simons, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Kash Heed, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 11:35 a.m.

2. The Clerk Assistant and Acting Clerk of Committees provided an overview of the work and mandate of the Committee.

3. The Committee discussed its role and objectives for work for the coming session.

4. The Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, provided an overview of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth, and answered questions.

5. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the report titled: Growing Up in B.C., joint report of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth and the Office of the Provincial Health Officer:

6. The Committee recessed from 2:31 p.m. to 2:46 p.m.

7. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the report titled: Update: System of Services for Children and Youth with Special Needs:

8. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the report titled: Hearing the Voices of Children and Youth – A Child-Centred Approach to Complaint Resolution, joint report of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth and the Office of the Ombudsperson:

9. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 4:05 p.m.

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

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Issue No. 11

ISSN 1911-1940

[ Page 195 ]

TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2011

The committee met at 11:35 a.m.

[J. McIntyre in the chair.]

J. McIntyre (Chair): Good morning, all. I'd like to bring our first meeting of this session of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth to order and welcome you all.

I was delighted to see that we got charged as the session was ending the other day. It allowed Claire and me to meet.

I'm very appreciative that we could find a couple of days this month post-session to get together, because we haven't met for some time. I thought it was important. We have important work to get on with.

I think that especially because some of the members on the government side are new, I've asked Kate, in particular, to give an overview. I thought, first of all, we should.... I know this may sound a little formal, but I think we should, for the record, just introduce ourselves and our ridings, because this is the first meeting of this new committee.

I'll start on my right.

D. Horne: Douglas Horne, member for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain.

G. Hogg: Gordon Hogg, Surrey–White Rock.

K. Krueger: Kevin Krueger, Kamloops–South Thompson.

R. Lee: Richard Lee, Burnaby North.

M. Elmore: Mable Elmore, Vancouver-Kensington.

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): Claire Trevena, North Island.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Thank you. Claire is our new Deputy Chair. We have some new members, actually, on our side.

Claire, I'd like to welcome you to the committee as the new Deputy Chair.

I did ask Kate if she would provide an overview. You do have the agenda before you. I understand I don't need approval of the agenda. We've all seen it.

I thought that in this first item, before we get to the update from the Representative for Children and Youth, I would like Kate to give an overview of the committee and the committee's work.

Then also, at Claire's behest, I thought we should spend a brief moment talking about some of what we might want to accomplish as a committee. We had enormous success, I think, last time. We went through the representative's reports, the outstanding reports, but we also managed to do some interesting work on child poverty, which I know we're very proud of from the past, as non-partisan work. There may be opportunities to look at different subjects or a whole wide variety of things.

I thought it would be of interest to hear from members what their areas of interest might be. Then we could reflect on it, and maybe members could get back to the respective Chair and Deputy Chair. That will give Claire and me some input in terms of our agenda-setting and things like that and where we might want to go as a committee. I'm just sort of looking for a little bit of brainstorming.

Before that I'd like to turn it over to Kate for an overview.

Role and Work of the Committee

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk Assistant and Acting Clerk of Committees): Great. Thank you very much, Joan, and good morning, Members.

As Joan has mentioned, she asked me to provide you with a brief overview of the work of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth this morning. In support of that overview, we have distributed onto your desks this morning a copy of the committee's terms of reference as they were approved by the House on June 2, 2011. The terms of reference are essentially identical to the previous motions that have been approved by the House in the years previous.

In addition, we also have provided each of you with a copy of the Representative for Children and Youth Act. It is essentially in conjunction with both documents that the powers and mandate and responsibilities of this committee are essentially outlined and described.

As members will know, the creation of this committee and its status as a permanent select standing committee of the House was recommended by the hon. Ted Hughes in his report on the provincial child....

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Essentially, in the April 2006 report by the hon. Justice Ted Hughes there was a recommendation which resulted in a number of significant changes to the provincial child welfare system, including the new statutory independent officer of the Legislature, the Representative for Children and Youth, and of course this committee, the select standing committee, which was mandated that the representative would report to, at minimum, on an annual basis.

As recommended by Mr. Hughes, the assembly appoints the position of Representative for Children and Youth. It is an individual who has been unanimously recommended for appointment by an all-party committee, and accordingly, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond was appointed the province's first Representative for Children and Youth on November 27, 2006.
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As the representative's renewable five-year term is concluding later this year, members will also know that a special committee to appoint a Representative for Children and Youth was appointed by the Legislature on June 2.

The first meeting of this committee, the select standing committee, was held on July 5, 2006, with Mr. Gordon Hogg serving as its Chair for that inaugural meeting. The committee met regularly throughout 2007 and 2008 and issued a first report of its work in May 2008.

After that, the committee met two times in the election year of 2009 and regularly throughout 2010. The 2010 meetings included a special public meeting held in Vancouver on the topic of child poverty, which was very well received in general.

The committee issued its latest report of its activities in November 2010. Members will recall that Mr. Hughes stressed in his report that the relationship between the representative and the committee should be a collaborative one. It was his hope that the committee would contribute to a greater understanding of the child welfare system, a greater understanding amongst both legislators and the public.

He also hoped the committee would provide a forum for the government and the opposition to work together cooperatively to address the challenges facing the child welfare system.

I will now focus on giving a brief overview of the key responsibilities and powers of this committee. As members will know, all parliamentary committees in British Columbia retain powers under the provincial Constitution Act with respect to summoning of witnesses and evidence in support of their parliamentary duties. But in addition to those constitutional powers, the other sources of authority for this committee are found in the Representative for Children and Youth Act and in the committee's own terms of reference.

Within the statute you'll note a number of sections where the select standing committee is designated specific responsibilities — in particular, sections 4 and 5, relating to the role of the representative and the appointment of an acting representative; section 12, relating to investigations of critical injuries and deaths; section 16, reports and reviews of investigations; section 17, the service plan; and section 30, which provides that a review of the act must be undertaken within five years of the coming into force of the act. Under section 30, it appears that this review of the act should begin by this committee no later than March 30, 2012.

The second source to guide the work of the committee in the present session is, of course, the committee's terms of reference, which has four key components. You'll see it outlined on the sheets on your desk.

In essence, the committee is tasked with reviewing the representative's service plan, which, of course, includes her organizational goals and performance target for the coming three-year period. However, like the other independent statutory officers in British Columbia, a separate select standing committee, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, is ultimately responsible for recommending approval of the representative's budget proposals required to implement her service plan.

With respect to the terms of reference and the third item, as I noted earlier, the committee may also refer to the representative specific cases of child deaths or critical injuries for the representative to review. While the committee has the authority to make referrals to the representative under the statute, committee members have held the view that the primary responsibility for identifying and investigating these cases should rest with the representative.

[1145]

As we were discussing, the committee has used its powers to refer specific cases to the representative occasionally. To date the committee has considered referral requests from the representative and referred 19 deaths and two critical injury cases to her office. Most of these incidents occurred prior to June 2007, at which time the legislation was fully enacted to give the representative power to conduct reviews and investigations.

The results of investigations into six referred deaths are contained in two reports that have been referred to the committee: in 2011 a review of 21 infant deaths known as Fragile Lives, Fragmented Systems, and in 2008 From Loss to Learning was the other report of three deaths and one critical injury.

Finally, I note the committee's other role — to provide a public forum, of course, to review the reports of the representative, which are tabled by the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. The representative regularly appears before the committee to discuss her reports in a public forum, as she will do later this morning. Members from both sides of the House, of course, have the opportunity to ask questions of the representative, and the committee may make recommendations, if it so wishes, to the House for government action.

Officials from the Ministry of Children and Family Development also regularly attend to respond to questions and provide updates where appropriate, and I understand that the deputy minister will be in attendance tomorrow morning before your committee.

This concludes my brief overview of the work of the select standing committee. I'm looking forward to assisting you with your work in the coming session. I'd be pleased to answer any questions that I can.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Thanks very much, Kate.

Does anybody have any questions? That's pretty comprehensive.

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Kate. It's a very comprehensive summary of what's
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expected of us. I just have one question, and that's on the poverty hearings that came last year that I know were very well received. Did the committee do a specific report on that, or was that part of the committee's annual report?

J. McIntyre (Chair): Actually, yes and yes. It was part of the committee's annual report, but we made a special section about it, and we actually probably went into more depth than we did typically when we summarized the various hearings and the various reviews of reports.

We went to great lengths to put quite a comprehensive view of the presentations, a summary of them. Also, most of all, one of our deliverables was a reading list, which was also included in that. There's quite a comprehensive reading list that we used in preparing who we might want to invite to come and speak to us. That was included in that annual report as well.

Because of the timing — they were both coming out in the fall, in the end, possibly within weeks of each other — we decided it would be best to make one comprehensive summary of our year's work.

Anyone else? Okay.

With that, thanks, Claire. Actually, do you have any comments? Would you like to make some introductory comments before we go on to discussing what we might want to look at as work of the committee or what we might want to emphasize, or any other comments as the new Deputy Chair?

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Chair. I appreciate the opportunity.

I'd also like to thank members for coming out on National Aboriginal Day. I know that lots of activity is happening across the province, and they had to be pulled away from that for these meetings.

I'm just very much looking forward to this committee to be working together. I think everybody who is on the committee is aware of the need to ensure that the child welfare system and the supports for children and families in the province get the best and non-partisan approach that they can and the best support they can. I think this committee has a very positive role it can play in that.

I think that it was very innovative of the committee to be looking last year at the specific issue of child poverty. It's an issue that still is one of huge concern for many people, including, obviously, everyone on this committee.

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I think that if we are looking at strategic ways forward, perhaps something that we might want to be looking at in the months ahead.... We obviously are not certain what the months ahead will hold, but if we do have the opportunity, maybe we want to take the issue of child poverty and take it to the next step of trying to find ways that we can address it. Having looked at the situation there, maybe one of the areas the committee would like to look at is what we do next, having assessed that there is that issue there.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Anyone else? Any thoughts or areas of interest? I don't expect you've got the magic answer now, but I thought it would be worthwhile just at the beginning of all this, because especially with new members, there may be some experience you bring to bear from other positions you've held in government or in opposition and areas of interest that you might have that led you to be on the committee. So I just wanted to hear from members who would like to volunteer areas of interest that will give Claire and me some guidance.

G. Hogg: Well, I think that organizationally, we and governments all across the world are facing significant challenges, both economically — nationally we are; provincially we are — and with the role of the state. We continue to look at how we can do what we do more effectively and better, and I wonder whether we're getting closer to a time when we should look at doing things differently. I wonder what role the committee might play in that.

I guess what I broadly mean about that is that some of our most significant and intransigent problems — addictions, homelessness, poverty, living conditions of aboriginal children and families, many of our social problems — seem resistant to traditional solutions and the methods that we traditionally follow in terms of making and looking at things better.

It's also true that government resources are shrinking worldwide, and that's a challenge for us. Government resources tend to be focused on short-term mitigation rather than long-term prevention — issues around that. Combined with that sort of economic, sociological context, I think best practice suggests that we need to look at things differently.

I think that best practices also suggest that we might look at things differently, whether.... Service and care, I think, are two interesting dynamics, and a lot of thinkers in the field suggest that the state can provide service but can't provide care — that care comes from a more personal relationship. Best practices, I think, also suggest that there are both natural and formal systems of care.

My sense is that as we have grown and aged as societies, we have different approaches to the delivery of services. We had community-based and family-based, and we took care of each other in a more natural or traditional state. Now the formal systems of government seem to be taking over more and more of that, and we're getting further and further away from the natural systems of service provision.

I believe that the natural systems of service provision are healthier systems. They're more resilient, and they
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provide for a better form of the care, as opposed to the service model.

One of the things I would be interested in is looking at, rather than expanding the formal care system, which I think has to deal with our most difficult and intransigent problems.... They have to deal with the children in care of the state and how we deal with that.

But I think the longer-term preventative strategies need to have a more traditional form, and I don't think that as a state we've looked.... I don't know of any jurisdictions that are looking more effectively at what and how we can do that, looking at some of the long-term issues that focus around that.

Whether that's a role for us to look at as a committee — looking more broadly at what's happening worldwide, what's happening provincially in terms of the economic realities and the traditional forms and the formation of looking at how we can provide those more natural forms of care....

We all talk about being able to have solutions closer to where the problems exist, and I think there are methods by which service delivery models can shift towards that. We can focus more effectively on the formal system that we have and look at the development of a more informal system, because I don't think we're going to be able to maintain growth of the formal system, taking more of the traditional system over. I don't think we can afford that, and it's clearly not best practices either.

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J. McIntyre (Chair): Thank you for that. I think we kind of stretched part of our terms of reference when we did some of the poverty by looking at our mandate to educate legislators and the public and to draw attention and awareness to different topics that are related to child welfare. That's food for thought certainly for Claire and me.

I mean, some of this is really to help us set some agendas and goals for the committee. I appreciate your expertise in some of this and some of the social innovation and work that you've been doing. I think we'll certainly use it as food for thought going forward. So thanks, Gordie.

K. Krueger: I intend to do more listening than talking in these meetings, to begin with, which is my habit — probably contrary to my reputation. Since you asked us, I will mention that I grew up on a homestead in northern B.C. It was 1,600 acres of bush when my dad was granted the homestead rights as a World War II vet. We turned it into a farm, and it was a wonderful life.

I grew up believing that I could be anything I want to be, and I still actually believe that. I've been shocked to see how children growing up in communities where they're really privileged, compared to living on a homestead, don't realize what they have in being a British Columbian. They're raised by people who don't realize what they have either, it seems to me.

I came in to Dawson Creek for school, and I was shocked when one of my town friends told me that I and my family were poor. I had never thought that we were poor, and I still didn't at that time, because I was raised in a nuclear family. But there are all sorts of families these days, and I would like government to be able to assist whatever type of family they are and for every child in British Columbia to understand their opportunities and how great things are for us here.

I was really shocked to see that one of the youths who had lit a police car on fire — or tried to — was a 17-year-old child of privilege, well dressed and wearing running shoes that most kids couldn't dream of owning. Why do kids grow up in British Columbia without learning citizenship or understanding how privileged they are?

I had a number of talks with the Provincial Capital Commission board when I had responsibility for it, and the Royal B.C. Museum. Former Premier Campbell had tasked the PCC with trying to move a great direction in opening children's eyes and students' eyes to what they've inherited when they were blessed with this opportunity to grow up here.

Tomorrow we welcome the 25,000th student to come to the capital through the PCC's programs, right after our meeting. I hope you can all come out to the front steps and greet that student. I think it's so important that we find a way to raise children knowing who they are. Where they live is such a big part of who they are.

I have raised three children myself and have had a lot of other people's children through my home on an informal basis from time to time. They just needed to have a different place to be. I have seven grandkids now, ages one through eight, and I want for every child in B.C. what those grandchildren are going to enjoy, which is a safe, secure, happy upbringing and knowledge of their opportunities and a sense, as I had growing up, that they can be anything they want to be. They really are in the best place on earth to make their launch.

As we developed our homestead, First Nations people came and worked with us on a piecework basis when they needed some money. We always had work to be done. They often dropped us off moose meat, which I didn't really realize — and I don't think my parents did either — wasn't legal. But there was a barter system in place.

Again, it's grieved me deeply over the years to see the inequities and what almost seem to be perpetual problems that so many First Nations children endure. So I'm looking forward from that perspective to sharing in the work of this committee.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Anyone else before I make a comment?

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[ Page 199 ]

N. Simons: I just wanted to add that, Gordie, your comments sounded almost like a thesis defence there. It's good that we're all together talking about important issues. I just think that we have to remember that the work we did in getting expert witnesses to talk to us about poverty was very helpful to all of us. I put it on the agenda, and in many respects it's been raised before, but I do think we have to remember that our child welfare system…. The majority of Mary Ellen's casework comes from that system, obviously.

As a former child protection social worker and just someone who's observed things and hears specifics, the vast majority — and we're talking about over 85 percent of kids who come into contact with the child welfare system — are living in poverty, and not the kind of poverty that Kevin spoke about, if that can even be described as poverty. Your lives were enriched by your natural surroundings and your community.

I think that's why we need to look at poverty in a multifaceted approach and beyond simply wages, but including wages. I think we'll be doing a lot more for the children of the province if we focus on raising all boats. We do live in a beautiful place with a lot of opportunity. That just makes it even more troubling to see our situation.

I'm looking forward to our deliberations. I hope I don't have to leave too often. It's kind of one of those things. If I get cut off, it's because of the lack of perfect cell phone coverage everywhere. I look forward to further discussions.

J. McIntyre (Chair): I was going to say to Gordie that part of what we did in the poverty hearings…. We put some parameters on some of the discussions, and we did ask for some direction on some best practices or what was working. It was more specific to poverty plans in other jurisdictions in the country. But your point about looking at things and trying to look at best practices and things that might work may well be worth looking at and expanding.

My own view, and I won't expand here at this point…. I guess after two and a half years of working on this, I would really like to put some focus on aboriginal — on what we can do in terms of what the ministry is doing, on what Mary Ellen has been telling us and certainly what all the experts were telling us in the poverty hearings, and I think everyone will agree: that our situation in B.C. is not acceptable. The fact that aboriginal students are not graduating and that they're disproportionately in care and disproportionately in poverty is, I'm sure all of us will agree, not acceptable.

So from my own perspective, if we could link some of this in, I would like to see some work, something that we might be able to direct our committee on that.

With that, Claire and I will take some of these ideas, and thank you for that, because it will help guide some of what we might structure over the next year or so.

If I could go onto item 2. I'm very delighted to have Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, our Representative for Children and Youth, join us today.

Mary Ellen, you've probably been very anxious that the committee, unfortunately — not our doing, I guess — has not been able to meet since the end of November. You missed our introductory comments, but we're very glad to be charged at the last day of session and delighted. We tried to get you before us as soon as possible.

We'd like you to give us an update. We thought, hopefully, an hour should be enough time to give us sort of an overview, a high view of what you've been doing, what you're working on, the things you want to emphasize and bring to us today. Then we'll be moving on with starting to look at a bit of the backlog we have in the reports and the work you've done over the last year or two, to sort of catch up as a committee.

We thought we'd start with three of those reports. In particular, I wanted to do the Growing Up in B.C. because I think the work that you and Perry Kendall did on that report sets…. What Claire and I both decided to do is we really wanted to set a groundwork here today for the first meeting, to make sure we understood well what you were doing and the directions you were working, and then tomorrow to hear from the ministry, especially with a new deputy and a new minister. We thought it was important to right away get a sense of where you were headed and where the ministry is headed and where we could sort of facilitate and assist in us moving together collaboratively.

So with that, if you would like to start and introduce those with you from your office, I'd appreciate that.

Office of the Representative
for Children and Youth:
Operational Update

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you very much. I'll just begin by introducing the staff with me.

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To your left and my right I have Jeremy Berland, who's the Deputy Representative for Children and Youth. To my left and your right I have John Greschner, who is the chief investigator for the critical injury and death investigation area and also an assistant deputy. Then I have Andrew Robinson, who anchors our office in Prince George. Andrew is the deputy for advocacy and aboriginal relations.

So I have the three with us here to answer any questions and also to join me, first of all, in welcoming the opportunity to appear before the committee. This is my 19th appearance before a Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth in the past four years, and that's a positive. I'm glad we were able to have one this session.

I would particularly like to say how happy I am to celebrate National Aboriginal Day today by talking
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about things like the important task we have to improve the life circumstances of aboriginal children. I think this is a very fitting way to celebrate. Usually I would be back in Saskatchewan collecting my $5 from the RCMP and my $5 payment a year and $5 per child, which means I'd end up with $30 by the end of the day. I'll have to send one of my cousins to do that today for me, but this is a much more professionally rewarding opportunity.

I'd like to welcome the six new members of the committee — I'm really delighted about our opportunity to work together and to address issues — and I also would like to recognize some of the members who are returning members. Member Krueger is a returning member — delighted to have you on the committee and have an opportunity to discuss issues, obviously, with your enormous experience. Also, Mr. Hogg was the first Chair ever, I believe, of the committee and a previous minister as well, so it's very positive.

I'd also like to welcome Claire Trevena to the role as Deputy Chair. I think it's very positive, and I look forward to the committee continuing its work for some time.

The last time we were here was on November 8, and we have a bit of back catch-up to do. Before I go through some of the recent updates on the work of my office, I just want to make a couple of mentions of events on the horizon that I will be inviting members of the committee to, which you may want to take note of if they should work with your schedule.

First of all, on October 13 and 14 my office will be hosting our Champions for Children and Youth Summit in Vancouver. This will be the third summit we've had. This time it will actually be a youth summit. The participants will be youth. It will be at the Wosk Centre in Vancouver, and it will be focused on hearing the voices of youth and understanding better the experiences of newcomer and immigrant youth in British Columbia — what their life experiences are, how we can understand their experiences at home, at school and in their community, and if we're doing everything we can do to make sure they reach their full potential. It's going to be a really unique opportunity to have a gathering of approximately 100 youth, primarily from the Lower Mainland. So you'll be invited to that.

We will also be having our awards ceremony around that event. I wanted to mention that nominations are now open for our fourth annual awards of excellence. In the past members of the committee have been able to attend that and in fact present awards, such as the Chair, and participate in those events. I think it means a lot to the people that we're recognizing.

I think every time we've handed them out, we've recognized some aspect of the ministry's services, either a particular office or a particular service stream that really deserves recognition. I think it means a lot not only to the public but to those recipients to have members of the committee and Members of the Legislative Assembly participate in that. It's proven to be a very positive event.

There are seven categories, and winners are honoured at a dinner at our summit in October, so I encourage you to consider nominating an individual or a group either in your constituency or that you're aware of provincially, who you think fits in one of those categories. So I draw your attention to that. There are 101 days left until nominations close, so the clock is ticking.

Back to the business of my office. Since our last meeting we've issued a number of reports. First of all, we issued a final progress report on the implementation of the recommendations of the B.C. Children and Youth Review. That's the Hughes review update. That was on November 29, 2010.

We issued a special report on December 6, 2010, on the reporting of critical injuries and deaths to the representative from the ministry. On January 27, 2011, we issued the first aggregate report looking at a group of deaths. This was an aggregate report looking at the deaths of 21 infants under the age of two. The report was called Fragile Lives, Fragmented Systems: Strengthening Supports for Vulnerable Infants.

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We issued report 11 on critical injury and death review and investigation, which is a regular update we provide on what has been reported to our office, the progress, the regions from which the reports come, and some characteristics with respect to what has been reported around injuries and deaths of children.

Finally, on April 14, 2011, we released a report on phallometric testing and the B.C. youth justice system. Those are recent reports. We're not going to be touching on them today, although I will address a bit around the Hughes update just in my general update on the ministry and our relationship. We will discuss them more fully later.

I want to begin by just generally talking about the change in leadership at the Ministry of Children and Family Development and to say that it has resulted in a very positive reset of the relationship of the oversight body with my office.

As members of the committee will know from various reports and recommendations, there was a certain degree of conflict and frustration with respect to recommendations and whether or not the depth of discussions was occurring in the past and whether or not the deep sharing of information necessary to show improvement in the child welfare system in particular was occurring as would be anticipated after the monumental review by Mr. Hughes in 2006.

We certainly had some challenges. Although we were working diligently in different areas, there were some challenges. I can say quite strongly to the committee that the reset in the working relationship between the
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ministry and my office has been extremely positive. It's very effective. There now are very close collaborations and work on some key themes that have been raised in reports from my office and certainly a reappraisal of reports that have been issued and the responses to a number of the recommendations, including acting on some of the key recommendations that touch upon areas of concern, which were really my gravest areas of concern — around child safety.

I am very pleased with the fact that the government and the ministry moved very quickly to re-establish and reappoint a provincial director. That was a recommendation in a number of reports, so that was a significant step toward an enhanced system of accountability, a better line of accountability within the ministry and beginning to sort of realign the safety considerations in what we respectfully view as a more effective, proven way. That's quite positive.

We're in regular discussions with the provincial director about the re-establishment of his office and how it will function to improve accountability and improve practice. In particular, the theme of many of the reports of my office has been the ministry's level of responsiveness and effectiveness when it comes to issues around the safety and well-being of children, and the clarity at the level of the front line about what is a legislative requirement, what is a policy, what is a guideline and what is professional judgment. We have found the need, as Mr. Hughes found in 2006, to improve that significantly throughout British Columbia.

As a result of the appointment of the provincial director and the reset in the relationship, I feel much more confident today that plans are in place and the discussions that needed to happen are happening around making those improvements. I'm really pleased about that.

I also think it's important that we do look at some of those previous recommendations that I felt, when I reported to the committee, were not taken seriously enough in the past. The level of discussion that we had about some of them — we'll talk about a few of them today — was not adequate. I felt that they needed to be reappraised, so I'm pleased that's happening. I can't give detailed updates on that now, but I suspect probably by the fall I will be able to give a much more detailed picture of that and also reports on some significant progress.

I do want to report specifically on a few very positive changes in addition to the reappointment of the provincial director. I have at least six other key areas where I have seen progress, movement, certainly detailed planning toward what will be an improved system. I'm not suggesting by any means that the work is completed, but these are at least six areas. It's really with great pleasure that I'm able to come to the committee and actually highlight and list for the benefit of the committee some of these important areas of progress.

[1215]

One was the proclamation of the first-ever Child and Youth in Care Week. Again, many of you were able celebrate this, because you were in the House. I was able to attend when the proclamation was read out by Member Hogg in the Legislative Assembly. I was able to attend with representatives of the federation of youth in care, foster parents and children and youth in care.

I also participated with the minister and others in an event in Vancouver where we had a number of children in care, where we were able to celebrate the strengths and the positive resilience of children and youth in care. I think this is a great event. I'm hoping it will become an annual event, and I'm hoping that in the future the opposition members, as well, will join us in those events and celebrate that with the children and youth in care.

Many of the children and youth in care who attended in the gallery — and I appreciate that members are not able to see what happens in the gallery, for good reason — were in tears. They were that excited about how important it was that government had listened to their voice that they wanted to have a week to recognize how positive their contributions are. I felt very strongly that we needed to do that as well, because often the reports from my office talk about very grim circumstances that many children who have been abused and neglected experience.

Many children who come through the foster care system, who are living in the homes of relatives and so on, have their resilience boosted and do well. We really need to strengthen and celebrate and support that. So it was an excellent week, and I hope it becomes a regular occurrence.

It's the first jurisdiction in Canada to do that. I wouldn't be surprised if others follow suit. So credit on that very significant event, which we'll talk about throughout the year and that I hope do again next year. Hopefully, members of the committee will be able to play a more formal role celebrating that, and I will certainly recommend that and do my bit to try and see that event expanded.

Secondly, a significant set of amendments were passed to the CFCSA, the key child welfare legislation. I appreciate that it was in an omnibus bill. Generally, amendments of this kind would probably come to a committee like this to be examined in detail. I know there was some pressure to get those amendments through. I certainly was very supportive of the amendments.

The amendments were significant because they helped support the ministry in its important work with families when parents are not able to provide that parenting and guardianship role and allow the ministry to work with families so that there can be guardians appointed, with the work of the provincial director to make an application to court to get that guardianship happening.

It's very significant, because family members don't have to bear the cost of a family law application, which
[ Page 202 ]
in British Columbia is at least a $200 filing fee. It's more effective. It responds better to people who are struggling financially but also allows for proper screening of caregivers who will become guardians, usually family members, and also developing a strong relationship with the ministry so those family members can be supported.

The important work with families is significant. It's an area that was really a grey area in the CFCSA. There were kith-and-kin agreements, which were supposed to be for a short period of time. There was the Child in the Home of a Relative program, which you've heard a lot from me about and that I'll speak a bit more about again today. But this was an area that needed to be fixed, and it needed to be improved.

While the change was incremental, it's an important piece of incremental change that means a lot. It will be implemented now. I can report that I was very pleased to be briefed in advance, to have had the opportunity to share views about how those legislative amendments could be improved in practice to make sure that the children's rights are properly recognized, to make sure that we use every opportunity to boost, for instance, information about financial literacy, and so on, for the guardians to support the children that they're going to be caring for. So it's a very positive set of amendments.

It's yet to be implemented, but it will be implemented. I suspect it affects a population of children which will be close to about 2,000 — a significant number of children for whom there could be some formal guardianship arrangements put in place.

Most importantly, it supports a practice in the Ministry of Children and Family Development of when children cannot be safe in their family or the family where the parent is not able to parent because of illness or what have you….

It supports a practice where you can work with family members, and it will develop the professional practice in that area so that British Columbia will have a more solid basis for its professional work to support children who can't be with families to be with extended family members. It's a very significant and positive area. I'm sure the ministry will have a chance to speak to you about it tomorrow.

[1220]

Again, in an ideal world it would be wonderful if legislation like this, at the bill stage, could come to a committee like this so we could really talk about how important it is, so the public and members could have the chance to fully discuss it, because it really is a significant shift that will be positive in terms of the work that can be done for children in British Columbia.

A third area of positive change is with respect to the shelter allowance. This is a change with respect to income assistance and rental assistance. There had been a concern certainly from my office that when children were removed, and where parents were receiving a shelter allowance…. When the children were removed, the shelter allowance was adjusted, and parents — often single parents — would lose their housing while they were working to regain custody of their children. By the time the custody could be returned to them, there was no housing, which would create a significant impediment.

This was a systemic problem, and it has been reconciled. There has been a significant directive in the ministry for housing and the Ministry of Social Development to allow for a re-examination of the shelter allowance every 30 days, to make sure that if families are working with the ministry to regain custody of the children, addressing whatever the presenting issues were that led to the removal of the children, the shelter allowance would be continued.

That's a significant issue. It's a significant issue for families in poverty, a significant issue for single parents in poverty, particularly in the urban settings. So it's a positive return to a program that is important. It's important that we monitor that to make sure that because of information-sharing between MCFD and Social Development, we don't drop it. We have to make sure those systems are talking to each other, and that always requires monitoring and work. But we'll be keeping an eye on that.

Another point which is significant is the increase to the minimum wage, again a significant issue with respect to poverty and the impact on working families but also on working youth who are attempting to support themselves or support a possibility, an opportunity to achieve greater education.

Another initiative that I think is quite significant, which has recently come to fruition, is two significant strategic investments in aboriginal housing — one in Nanaimo and one in Vancouver. Both of those are housing initiatives where children and families — including children and youth in care and youth in independent living — will find it easier to find housing. They are small initiatives, but they are important initiatives.

Particularly, the Vancouver initiative is an initiative of three levels of government, which is not easy to achieve, I appreciate. It recognizes that for aboriginal children and families, urban housing is significant. That is a very positive step and also quite responsive to some of the reports I've made. I think I will continue to speak about the issues about insecure housing for aboriginal families.

Finally, a major area that received very little public attention but is extremely important for vulnerable infants and moms, and certainly speaks very much to a recommendation that we made in the report Fragile Lives and the infant deaths of 21 infants under the age of two, is the announcement that British Columbia will establish a provincewide nurse home-visiting program. That will be consistent in all health regions using a consistent risk assessment tool to identify which moms are vulnerable and require more intensive support.
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This is an extremely positive announcement. I appreciate that there is a great deal to be done with respect to implementation, but I think it's responsive to a number of concerns that I've had about the need to improve the health circumstances of moms, prenatal and postnatal, and the need to boost the health opportunities and life circumstances for infants. Very significant.

That's a list. I felt like I had to take the time to run through it because so often we lose track as we move forward to a new report of things. It's important, I think, to give credit to a number of recent — some of these things have been in progress for a while — decisions that have been made, which I think bode very well for more effective, consistent supports in a variety of systems for children and families in British Columbia.

Speaking a bit more about the ministry, I mentioned how pleased I am about the reappointment of a provincial director. I think it's important just to share with committee members what type of leadership that provides. A provincial director can help to improve practice, can ensure consistent service across the province, can be a leader and a champion for learning from case reviews. I will continue to work with the director and report publicly on how that work is progressing.

[1225]

In terms of some of the internal work of my office and a few of the program areas, first of all, I'd like to give you a bit of an update on our advocacy work. Another significant step, very soon after there was a leadership change in the ministry, was the conclusion of an advocacy protocol. Minister McNeil and I signed a protocol around advocacy to address a concern that I'd brought to this committee several times.

In certain places across the province there was a significant unease, on the part of front-line staff in particular, in bringing advocacy cases to the representative's office. I would say that certainly in some instances they were dissuaded from doing so or were reluctant to do that. We felt very strongly that that wasn't appropriate. We're all on the same page with the kids, and workers in the system, family members, schools and others should feel free to bring cases to the representative's office for us to work on them.

So the minister and I entered into an advocacy protocol, which really sent a clear message through the ministry that this is to be encouraged and supported and that we were all working together for kids. It's very positive. It has had a very significant boost in terms of how we're working around some of the individual cases. It also has resulted in our number of cases going up, which I think is a good thing, even though my staff tells me it's not so great for them. So that's a positive step.

A big issue I've spoken to the committee about in the past is that I would like to get to a place where the ministry provides automatic notification to clients and children about the advocacy services so they don't have to find it on their own; they're notified appropriately. We are working very actively now, with this new protocol, to complete that piece of work.

I think that would be very helpful for the future, and I think it's not only a very important part of the implementation of what Mr. Hughes thought was required in 2006 around how this would work but also a very important part of B.C.'s implementation of the UN convention on the rights of children — to make sure there really is that advocacy, that article 12 of the convention making sure the views and voices of children are heard, is part of the machinery of how we do things in British Columbia. That's a big step.

In April and May of this year we opened 388 new advocacy cases. That compares to about 280 advocacy cases for the same period last year, about a 39 percent increase.

We're seeing a steady increase in the number of calls coming from children and youth directly. For the last fiscal year 15 percent of all our calls were directly from children and youth, some very young. You can understand the significance of this number when you consider that many of them are not able to call on their own behalf. They have to get the assistance of someone else to do that.

Since our office opened — the legislation was fully proclaimed into force in April 2007 — to now, we've had 6,456 cases. That doesn't include what came through the door this morning. We've had a lot of advocacy cases, which I think is extremely positive.

I pause there just to say that we will continue to do that work, and I do think there is a role to expand that advocacy role in our office to a bit broader group of children and youth. I certainly will be recommending this, and I wanted to first inform the committee.

I'm strongly of the view that children and youth, particularly more broadly in the school system, require more advocacy in British Columbia and require the assistance of external advocacy, particularly for children and youth with special needs. I am certainly of the view that we need to expand those advocacy services outside the designated services in the Ministry of Children and Family Development to include parts of the School Act and schools in B.C., where children and youth with special needs in particular are not finding it easy to have issues around the services they receive get resolved.

I think everyone in the education system is having a bit of a challenge to understand how they can effectively support actual children in particular circumstances by being focused on the needs of the child, because they all have a variety of different masters. It would be very valuable if we could stay more focused on the needs of those children in the education system.

In addition to our actual advocacy files, our staff has carried out 26 child rights workshops presented to several hundred children and youth and family members.
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We have also been doing quality assurance of our advocacy services and getting surveys back from children and youth who have used our services as to whether or not they've been effective and supportive and whether or not we need to improve or change our own services to make them better for children and youth.

[1230]

I'll move over to the area of critical injury and death investigations. In this area I can say that we are very actively in the stage of preparing for release two investigations and one aggregate review.

I will just report on the referrals from this committee. In total, this committee made 22 special referrals to me. Most of those were cases in the hiatus from the Children's Commission to when my office was created or cases where there may have been an inquest or was significant notoriety or concern about the services to a child.

Of those 22 referrals, 19 were deaths and three were critical injuries. We have reviewed each of those, and we've completed our work on those referrals.

Seven of the 22 cases have now been part of a publicly released report, either as an individual investigation or an aggregate. Five of the 22 cases are included in reports that are currently in preparation, which will be released. The remaining five are being considered for inclusion in a future aggregate review or investigation. I look forward to an opportunity to speak to the committee in greater detail about these at a future meeting.

I mentioned that we did a special report in December 2010 on reporting critical injuries and deaths. That report arose after I learned of an injury to a special needs child who was left for several days with the body of her deceased mother. That was not reported to my office, as it was not seen to be an injury or seen to be within the category of reportables. I did screen and review that and found it was within the legislation and have in fact completed the investigation of that matter and expect to release that report shortly.

This serious case, along with other examples of non-reporting by the ministry, convinced me that urgent action was required, and a special report was necessary in December. That report recommended that the ministry implement a proper notification policy in compliance with the RCY Act.

Although that policy has not yet been finalized, I am pleased that the ministry is complying by reporting everything. It means, though, that in particular, we'll see in our next report, which will come out later on next month, that the numbers of injuries will rise quite steeply, because we've determined that a number of areas that were not historically being reported to us are areas that should have been.

I would say these primarily relate to sexual assault, which we feel is a serious injury with long-term consequence, and a lot of physical assaults where there are significant long-term injuries. But particularly, a class that had not been reported to us is sexual assaults on children and youth. So you're going to see an increase in those.

Now, we again are screening everything. Things have to meet screening criteria for further review. That has increased work at the front end. But it's very important that we get cases that may have been previously missed and screen them. We're actively collaborating with the ministry on that.

We're also in a process with the Public Guardian and Trustee, because they were relying on much of the same reporting structure for areas of reporting where there may have been an injury or harm to a child or youth who was a continuing custody ward.

With respect to the monitoring, audit and review function in the office, just with respect to a few areas of concern that have continued throughout the mandate.... I highlighted this earlier around the CF and CSA amendments.

The CIHR, Child in the Home of a Relative, program. This has been a significant focus for my office around the child safety issues. We did an audit in June 2010. It was an extensive audit and a report called No Shortcuts to Safety. It was a report in particular that I felt was dismissed in a peremptory form by the ministry, and I didn't feel it was appropriate.

I am pleased to say that we have had very active discussion about the significant challenge where a group of children and caregivers either were not screened at all or were screened inadequately because it was a faulty screening method. We don't have a resolution of the issue, but we're in active discussion about it.

I'm hoping that there will be movement and implementation of those recommendations, because it remains the largest group of safety considerations for my office. The issues continue to be of concern in the public.

[1235]

Certainly, as recently as last week there was a decision by the Provincial Court in British Columbia sentencing a relative in a case where there was significant injury and harm to a child in this program, where a child has suffered significant long-term harm and is quite profoundly disabled as a result of being abused in one of these placements.

So these issues remain of concern to me, and not surprisingly, we're in active discussion. I'm hoping there will be steps taken to correct what were deficiencies there. Certainly, I urge and support caregivers and others to welcome that screening. I think almost all of the organizations I'm working with are very keen to see that if there are child safety issues, they get resolved.

With respect to the Hughes progress report that I released six months ago, I look forward to a full discussion of the report. But I am very pleased to say that what I reported last year in November was essentially stalled.
[ Page 205 ]
Namely, I said I'm not going to report any further on the implementation of the Hughes review because I had reached a dead end and could see no way further with it.

However, I'm positive to say that that has been reinvigorated. So the main themes of the Hughes review are under active implementation, and many of the recommendations and the themes around the clusters of recommendations are substantially back on the table. It will be important for me to monitor progress and report out on progress, because I think there are some very good things to report.

Where last November I was extremely frustrated and concerned that we really hadn't learned the lessons that Mr. Hughes in particular expected us to learn, I feel it's actually a significant leap forward in that area.

I have been working with the ministry's new leadership. I was considering doing a report card on outcomes for children and youth. I've been working with the ministry's leadership, really encouraging them to begin doing more effective reporting on outcomes for children and youth which I would sort of verify and confirm, but getting them to do the type of reporting that Mr. Hughes wanted to see them do, and for me not to have to do it for them. So it's quite positive. I'm hoping that by the fall we'll be able to have more to report on that.

I came in and noted that there was discussion by committee members on the issues of child poverty, and the issues of the depth and breadth of poverty and how it affects different families and children in British Columbia.

I was so delighted with the hearings that the committee had to understand the issue, to frame the issue and to work together across different party lines as Members of the Legislative Assembly on some common approaches to making sure that our systems of supports for children in poverty are effective.

Certainly, no one is suggesting that there are not supports for children in poverty in British Columbia. It's whether or not they're working, and the issue of persistent and deep poverty, particularly in some pockets and areas like deep intergenerational aboriginal poverty. Those are areas where I'm not seeing sufficient traction, if you'd like, or effectiveness. I'm seeing compromised life circumstances for children in those environments and significant long-term impacts for the children with respect to not having the type of support they need.

A number of my reports have spoken to that, so I just bring that back to the committee again to say that the issues of child poverty, and the deep poverty in particular, require a common front. It requires a greater degree of planning and collaboration and, of course, even within government, more effective work across ministries for children and families between housing and rental assistance supports, income assistance supports, job-training supports, child care and so on — more effective and coordinated work within government; also, as the committee well knows and certainly I've recommended before, some opportunity to have stronger discussions with the federal government about how those issues will be tackled.

We continue to see, although 80 percent of aboriginal children in British Columbia live off reserve, the lingering impacts of the challenges they face with respect to substandard services and supports on reserve. We see a lot of that follow them off reserve, placing huge demands for services on some urban centres and even rural centres which are just simply not equipped to provide those supports.

This is an issue that we will continue to come back to, I feel, in terms of one of the key presenting problems particularly for a range of families. We're seeing some of this in new immigrant refugee families and aboriginal families, and the need to have a common measure of poverty.

[1240]

I know we use LICO because it is the StatsCan measure, but we've spoken within this committee, and I've certainly been an advocate that we land on a measure that we accept. By all measures — whether it's LICO, market basket measure or what have you — British Columbia continues to struggle with a significant challenge around child poverty. There are issues around affordability and other market issues that have a significant impact on the life circumstances of children, and we need to talk further and work harder on how we're going to address that.

I raise that just to say that I was really pleased that the committee had some hearings. I would like to see a non-partisan child poverty plan in British Columbia in which we could look at some of the key elements. Again, I note that many elements are in place, but some things need to work better. I've touched upon in the past — and I'll come back to it again — how important it is, particularly for schools, that there be a better level of achievement and support and outcome for children in poverty in schools in British Columbia. We're simply not doing well enough, and we must do much better. That's an area where I think we can gain a lot of ground, but there's work to be done.

I would like to just give you a couple of projects that are under development to conclude on this agenda item. I have a report underway looking at group homes and children and youth who are living in group homes. That report was launched out of concern with an incident where a young person, an 11-year-old person, was tasered by police. That is the subject of an RCMP-requested police investigation, and during that I wouldn't look at that issue.

But the concern that I had as representative was not the use of force on a child, although that is a significant concern that was somewhat addressed in the Braidwood
[ Page 206 ]
Inquiry already around the appropriate use of Tasers in the use of force. My concern was the fact that in a number of group homes in British Columbia, particularly in some regions, the police are being routinely called out to the group homes to do what I would consider sort of disciplinary tasks that would normally happen within a family and that as a result of that, the responses that happen for the young people can be traumatizing and inappropriate.

So looking at the group home setting is significant, and whether or not it is being used as a substitution for therapeutic foster care or whether or not it is being used as a substitute for appropriate mental health services for youth in care, particularly in rural regions. That review is underway. I hope to be able to share that widely but also look at some of the policing issues around the role that caregivers in group homes play when there are disputes. Should the police be playing those roles?

I think there are some significant issues. Obviously, safety is paramount, and if there are criminal offences, it's fine to call the police. But it isn't the job of the police to come and get people into their bedrooms at night. We need to be very careful about what we're doing with young children in care, particularly young children in care with special needs who may already be very traumatized. We need to make sure that they are in an appropriate setting. So that report is delving into that issue.

We're doing some significant work on child and youth mental health and addictions. We have a significant piece of work that we're completing on adoptions and adoptions programming in British Columbia — how it can be improved with a child lens and how prospective adoptive parents can work their way through the system more effectively so that we can see a greater number of adoptions.

Again, for new members of the committee, I just note that the numbers of adoptions in British Columbia have for the most part been stagnant for a decade — approximately 300, give or take. It really isn't an area that has moved. The point of inquiry for my office really was: if we have close to 4,000 children in permanent care for whom permanency planning should be happening, why are we being successful with only a small number of adoptions?

There has been some innovative programming around adopting teens. There are some very interesting initiatives in British Columbia about teen adoptions with some quite remarkable outcomes. This is an area that needs to be looked at carefully and strengthened, so we will be reporting to you on that.

We're doing an audit of plans of care to see how meaningful and significant the planning for children in care is. We'll be reporting on that.

We have a major piece of work that we're releasing on aboriginal initiatives within the Ministry of Children and Family Development, which really looks at almost a decade of work around aboriginal policy. What has been the purpose of aboriginal policy? What is the magnitude of investment? What has been the return on that investment? And what has resulted, particularly around the outcomes for children and youth?

[1245]

We're also engaged in a major study with the provincial health officer, and I routinely try to find partners in these studies, like Dr. Perry Kendall and others, so that we can do a broad, population-based approach. We're doing a major study on child maltreatment so we can understand better the pathways around child maltreatment in British Columbia, which then can inform better practice.

As you can see, there's a great deal of work underway. Certainly, as my first five-year term draws to an end later this year, I am pleased to be able to report, particularly on this new commitment, to steady progress on many fronts, but very pleased with the work with the ministry and the intensity of that work. I certainly hope by the fall to be able to provide more detailed public reporting on that work.

With that, I'll open up to any questions that you might have.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Thank you very much, Mary Ellen, for a very comprehensive review. I know, I'm sure, that other members like I am are very heartened by the progress that you're reporting today and a new…. You've said: "Reset the relationship." I think probably all of us, as legislators in this assembly, are very delighted by what you're saying. Thank you for the detail.

There is some lunch that's starting to be served. So while we are not going to have an official break, I thought this might be…. I just want to make sure that members and others know that you can casually help yourselves as we move to the questions for the representative. So I'll take a speakers list.

K. Krueger: I had a brief, four-month stint as minister responsible for social development. In my very first briefing meetings I asked the senior staff: "What do you think my priorities should be?" They said: "Frankly, we'd really like to hear what you think our priorities should be, because it's always an opportunity with a new minister."

I talked about things that I've heard about all my life, about how senseless it is in a lot of people's view that government distributes cash once a month to people who in many cases have never learned how to manage cash. Many of them get ripped off one way or another, whether they've become addicted to something or whether people steal it from them. Then they try to get along for a month without cash, and thankfully we have a lot of good organizations that are always trying to help.
[ Page 207 ]

I asked them if there had ever been consideration of in-kind social assistance rather than cash, things like people having a debit card where they could go to the grocery store of their choice ever couple of days and get a certain amount of fresh produce, and get access to the kind of training programs that have been so successful in reducing the welfare rolls in B.C. by more than half of what they were.

People are partnered with volunteer agencies. They get a little extra cash because they're working with a volunteer agency. They learn how positive it is to have an adult network. Just like all the rest of us, they develop relationships that help them along. Many of them end up working. But we train people all the time so that they can leave social assistance and have a life where they are self-supporting.

It seemed to me that we could easily use some of the same training programs — they're always training short-order cooks, for example — to teach folks how to cook healthy meals for their children and make sure they have a continuous supply of fresh produce to do it with.

It turned out that there has been a little, almost secret, committee within the Ministry of Social Development that has been wanting to do things like that for years. That's one of the things that I would like to see explored, because some of these situations are treadmills for families. They are brought up in homes where nobody knows how to cook, and so they grow up not knowing how to cook, and the cycle perpetuates itself.

In one of my previous portfolios, because of a wonderful woman in Kamloops named Marg Spina, who's on city council now, I learned about the food-share program and the tremendous success that they've had in collecting food from grocery stores that is approaching its best-before date and making sure that it gets used by people who could use it.

Other communities took such an interest in that that Marg entered up travelling far and wide. She encountered one store in a First Nations community where the only fresh produce was onions. You think: "This is terrible — that things like that go on in our day and age when food goes to waste and we raise excellent food, grow excellent food throughout B.C."

[1250]

That's one issue, and I don't want to monopolize the Q and A so I'll start with that. If there's room I have another.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the comments that you've made are really significant, which is the extent to which we're engaging in the type of innovation that we need to meet the needs of the children and families that particularly struggle. I think that one of the issues is evaluating whether or not those systems are working effectively, and if we are reaching them.

Sometimes it's a very basic level of support. But certainly on things like financial literacy, one of the challenges we see is that children age out of care and become dependent on income assistance at the point of aging out of care. We don't want to see that. We want to see children in care having the similar experience to most children in British Columbia — that they become adults and they are pursuing education and being prepared for the labour force. We don't want to see the transition into adulthood being a transition into income assistance.

So we need to boost things like financial literacy. They may not have a lot of support and training in that area. I think it's important that the Public Guardian and Trustee has been very keen about this. My office has been very keen about it as well. Then anyone who becomes their guardian has that. That's quite important.

I think around the healthy food basket issues…. Many of the children, in particular that we're looking into their circumstances and working with them, certainly are struggling with the deep poverty issues around food security. So the access to healthy food is a major concern. Also, their living environment — particularly living in a motel environment without an appropriate kitchen, without a refrigerator, with very substandard food, without a crib, we know sometimes without even car seats.

I think in giving the appropriate level of priority and work to families — of course to boost the resilience for children but also to support that….

I think we've had many effective programs in British Columbia, particularly around health promotion, that have certainly made healthy families even more healthy, if you like, but sometimes have left behind families for whom the information is not shared or is not put out in a way that's appropriate or is presented in such a way that it's just beyond the reach of the caregivers and parents to understand how to do that.

Again, coming back to the aboriginal situation in particular, we really see that with the aboriginal children and families, particularly in rural-remote areas, but even as they come into the urban centre. The lack of support in the past has had huge intergenerational impacts. We want to reduce those health costs in the future. We need to work more effectively in that area.

But access to healthy food — affordability of healthy food — is a major issue. So encouraging innovation and more programming that would see sharing and promoting access to healthy food, preparation of healthy food — these are so significant.

I mean, we do know very basic things about children's well-being, like the quality of time children spend with adults, their parents and family members makes a big difference around their resilience. Things like family suppers, spending time together, preparing food together — all of these things are crucial. Many of these things are beyond the experience of most of the children that we are working with.

You're absolutely right to say we have major programs, but are we really delivering it in a humane and appropriate
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way and not just enabling but actually supporting resilience in these families?

I'm certainly advocating for some more innovation in social development, working with the Ministry of Children and Families, working with aboriginal-delegated agencies and others to address some of these very practical.… They're not high-level political issues. They're very practical issues around improving the quality of a child's life by improving the quality of their food, the quality of their relationships with adults and their opportunities.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Thank you. I'm being mindful of the time because we're after one o'clock, and we want to move to the reports. I'll just let Claire and Richard Lee, if that's okay.... Oh, and Mable, but it's got to be quick or we'll just take away from our report time.

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): It's always the problem of these committees that one of the member's questions inspires other questions. There are lots of questions I'd like to follow up from that.

I'd just like to thank the representative for the update. It has been, I think, a very…. Well, to say "busy" is an understatement for the last year. It has been very intense.

[1255]

Since the appointment of the office, I think it's been very…. A lot of work has been done, but there is clearly a huge amount still to be done. We are in a stage where the representative's position is going to be looked at again. I think that I'm speaking, definitely, from the voice that I hear from very many people across the province and very many children and families who have come in contact with, or found out about the office. They are very pleased to know about the office, very impressed with the work of the office when we have had contact.

Speaking, definitely, from our side of the House — but I would hope on behalf of the whole committee — we have been very impressed with your work, in particular, and the strength you have brought to the office. I would be hoping that you would be seeking reappointment when it comes to that time.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, of course, you know my term expires in November, but the decision with respect to serving another term really is the decision of Members of the Legislative Assembly. It isn't my decision to make, although I can certainly say that I do feel that the work is not quite finished, and I would like to see it through.

Of course, I'm more than willing to serve to complete the work, but the decision is really the decision of Members of the Legislative Assembly, and I will go along with whatever that decision is.

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): Well, seeing that the Chair isn't here, I will take the opportunity just to come in with that I would hope that there would be unanimous support. It's obviously not an issue for this committee, but I think that we'd hope that there will be unanimous support because your work clearly isn't done. There's a lot of work still to do, and with the improved relationship with the ministry, I think it's only going to lead to much better things.

And while the Chair is still not there, I have one specific question from your report. The provincial director that we now have…. Clearly, it's a very important role. As I understand it, the provincial director at the moment is holding two jobs. Is this something where you would like to see a specific provincial director just with that responsibility, or is a person able to have the role of provincial director and another role in the ministry?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, first of all, you know I respect the ministry's look at its organization to decide how to allocate. It was certainly put to me that this was a transitional measure — that the provincial director would also hold a regional portfolio or responsibility for the Interior region. I would be of the view that that would not be sustainable for the long term.

As an interim measure, that's fine. But I think that the degree of attention and work…. It's just not possible, and of course, you're always sensitive to the fact that if you put too many demands on a senior person to be responsible for two functions, something won't do well, or that person — their health and well-being and tenacity — may be affected.

So I would certainly like to see the provincial director's role to be a singular appointment with that responsibility, and the point of accountability — sort of transparency and continuity — requires that. I'm hoping that this is a transition leading to that sort of single standing position, but I also very much respect and appreciate that within the ministry it is necessary to, you know, take a period of time to sort that out. So I'm certainly in active discussion with them about that issue.

R. Lee: This is actually my first time here in this committee, and I enjoy being in this position. This is actually my first choice. I had a choice of other committees, and this is my first choice.

From listening to your report, this is a broad range of services and responsibilities, as well as an area you can actually look into or investigate. So I think this is a really good committee to move our youth and children forward in our province.

You mentioned about the October summit — the children and youth summit. I think this is an exciting program, so that especially with the topic of newcomers, they can say what they experience in their experience in the system.

[1300]

I also would like to say that, you know, for those children's centre programs we are developing, the children's
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time spent during their lives is very important every day. Now probably they spend a lot of time on the Internet. I know that in the coming report to discuss, Growing Up in B.C., there may be some data there. But I would like to comment that if you want to see the most important area that youth are spending their time on, we should probably follow that kind of emphasis in terms of how they can be affected, what they can do or what programs and services we can provide through that channel — that kind of thing.

So I think maybe it's productive to spend some time in that area and also in terms of.... Well, I'll stop there right now.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, thank you for those comments. It's, of course, going to be so interesting at the summit we're holding in the fall with immigrant and newcomer youth to hear them talk about social networking. In particular, one of the issues that I found as representative over the last four years is a fairly inconsistent level of information within government about the life circumstances, views and needs of children from immigrant and newcomer families. Immigrant children in British Columbia come through a variety of doors from different programs. They're not all coming from one door. There are different experiences. What do we know about their networks? Are they primarily social and virtual networks? Are they new connections here? Are they connections at school, at home, through cultural or religious organizations? How do they form their identity?

There's a very significant political theorist in Canada who's been writing on multiculturalism. His name is Will Kymlicka. He has a fancy term for this called citizenshipization, which is how young people become citizens. For newcomers and immigrant children and youth in British Columbia, I really think we don't know very much about how that process works. Are we doing enough, first of all, to listen to them? Our first step is actually to bring them together and ask them what their networks of support are. Do they have adequate social support? Do they get adequate education support? What would they like to see different in 20 years than where they are today? What do they know about each other? What do they think about British Columbia, and what can we do differently?

So it's going to be a very interesting opportunity, but I've been struck by the lack of information there. We may well find out that many of their networks are not the sort of town, community networks that we think of from our childhoods but are virtual networks. How do we understand that and marshal that in a positive way?

I think your comment is very interesting. I hope you'll be able to participate in that event with us, because listening.... It's going to be fascinating to see what we learn. We will report on what we learn, but it's going to be fascinating to look at the variety of experiences and to also learn if there's much more we should be doing. I think it's fairly unstructured at the moment. But I think that we probably could learn a great deal about how we can boost and improve their circumstances, particularly around their attachment to community.

M. Elmore: Thank you for the update. Appreciate the number of projects under development. Just to follow up with the youth summit, I'm also looking forward and very interested to attend, particularly on the issue of the immigrant youth coming in. I receive, on an anecdotal basis, stories in terms of the challenges of youth, particularly being reunited with their families under the live-in caregiver program. They've been separated for a number of years from their mother. The father and the children reunite. Often they've been separated for a number of years. They're strangers to each other, have difficulty integrating.

I'm also trying to get my hands on the graduation rates to really reflect their success in terms of graduating and continuing on to post-secondary education. So very interested and looking forward to that.

[1305]

In terms of your report today and hearing about the number of projects under development.... I know we are going to be reviewing Growing Up in B.C. Are there any other reports that are pending or that you feel we should be reviewing in the committee?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think it's a good practice to have an opportunity to land on each of them. Of course, today we're playing catch-up with a few from before, but there are a number that it's important to land on.

I would just say that because we are appraising some of the old reports, I might be able to discuss with the Deputy Chair and the Chair how we could maybe structure a session where I could report out more thematically on areas where there had been progress, because in some instances there are recurrent themes.

I can just speak to or telescope one, which is that I do anticipate toward the end of summer or fall making a special investigative report on a significant case around domestic violence — homicides of three children — which will look at issues around domestic violence, policies and practices. I made a report before, with respect to Christian Lee, on the same theme.

Again, while I'll be doing that report, it's a good opportunity to look to see: has policy changed? Have practices changed? Are we better equipped today to address these issues? We'll have to determine how best to do that, but sometimes it's important to look at the report but also look at a prior report to see….

Once issues around systemic concerns become well known, how do we respond, and are we effective? I'll be able to speak to that issue possibly in the fall.
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M. Elmore: Great. Thanks.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Gordie. And I think, if that's okay, I'll make that the last question so we can move on.

G. Hogg: At the risk of once more being irrelevant, governments are having wonderful challenges in terms of how they can become relevant and engaged and engaging. When we talk about having summits — and government is talking about having one with non-profits and volunteerism in terms of doing that — citizen engagement has traditionally been consultation, which means that you go and listen within a framework or a set of values, and you come away and say: "Here's what we're looking at doing."

Some of the more creative models, some which have been tested in England and more recently in Denmark, the co-creation models, actually allow for the evolution and development of a policy process that engages people and delegates some authority and responsibility for them…. Rather than having a Conversation on Health, where you would send out experts to talk to people, you would actually take patients and have patients involved in the process not just as consultations, but follow the process right through to decision-making.

One bit of work in England that they did with their Treasury Board, where they actually involved decision-making in a transparent system that had integrity, about 65 percent of the people felt more engaged in their society and more empowered as a result of that process. Another 30 to 35 percent said: "I didn't get what I expected." It doesn't matter. People come into it with an outcome.

So when you're talking about doing that, we in government are looking at how we can be more open and more engaged in a process that will allow for that type of delegation of decision-making or, minimally, a process which is much more transparent and has integrity through the process.

Could you describe the kind of processes that you're talking about in terms of a youth summit or a youth engagement or model that might be illustrative for us as we're looking at and building some of our models for doing that?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Absolutely. What's so significant is that an organization like myself, the Representative for Children and Youth office, was really created in part to give greater respect for the views of children, the perception that children's views and experiences were not adequately respected in large systems.

I think that the theory, the practice, is really that, as part of having a UN convention on the rights of the child, part of how we do government and community development has to be making special efforts to make sure that children's views are included but also, in doing that, to make sure that your children become citizens who are engaged in their families, their schools and their communities.

I think, as you rightly point out, this is a dynamic process. We have on the whole taken a very passive attitude toward that. While I would feel very strongly that British Columbia has many examples which are far ahead of others, for the most part children's views are really not sought in very many areas of our public social services.

[1310]

Very seldom in our school system do we actually take the views of children. Often they're subjected to their school environment. If they have a dispute, they may not even have a process to go through — in our health system and so on.

I think the challenge we face is that if you want to have more engaged citizens and do more innovation, you have to take seriously the views of children and involve them — frequently evaluate your services, listen to them and have that opportunity.

So we're trying to model some of that practice with our youth summit focusing on immigrant and newcomer youth, because while that cohort of our population is such a dynamic group and also so vital for the success of British Columbia.... I mean, British Columbia has to be able to attract and retain a labour force for the future and have a well-prepared labour force. And what do we actually know about their experience? Well, we really haven't asked them anything — very little — and there's a lot of insularity in our services, our programs and even sometimes in our ethnocultural communities.

So how can we change that? By seeking the views of children. I think one of the things we really need to talk to them about is this very subject. How do you go from something we talk about out there to someone who is participating in the conversation and engaged in a more collaborative process? I think we have seen some examples around the world of greater involvement and participation.

But even in the ministry that I have oversight of, the Ministry of Children and Family Development, they don't have a clear policy on youth participation or youth engagement. There will be a youth committee that gets disbanded. Certainly in my period of four years, I think they've been created twice and disbanded twice.

I'd like to be seeing more permanent commitment so that where services are being provided to children, their views are always being included. This is why that first week of national Child and Youth in Care Week was so important, because the children and youth in care felt like, at least for one week, people were really going to listen to them.

If we can keep the children's views…. Just like in the family environment, prudent parents sit down and listen to their children. Children don't always get their way, if you like, because you have the best-interest responsibility as a parent. But you take the time to engage them in the life of the family and know what's going to
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happen and be confident about it and understand it, to be successful.

I think it's important to note that on the summit, we're working closely with the Vancouver Foundation, with the youth advisory committee, with youth that.... We'll be selecting them using schools and other ethnocultural organizations to make sure we get a broad spectrum of youth. We'll be kind of asking them questions, but we'll let them steer the conversation as well. You have to model real collaboration.

So it'll be a bit of an experiment, but as representative I certainly would like to see more opportunities where we can seriously engage and make an effort in our services and in communities to really seek out and listen to the views of children — not simply say: "We're doing X. What do you think about it?" — and actually have a regular process where children feel that their views count.

In British Columbia that will be a really strong measure for the strength of our system — not only that the adults take it seriously, but we actually go out and talk to them and listen to them.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Thank you very much. I just wanted to add my thanks, Mary Ellen, for the work of you and your office. I think after five years it's been an enormous body of work and has guided us. I know, as you said in your introductory remarks, there have been some frustrations along the way. Certainly in my two and a half years involved with the committee, I think we are making progress.

You mentioned at the end that you want to make sure that we're.... Because we are providing supports, we want to make sure that they're being used in the most effective ways. I think that's probably a goal for all of us and something that can also guide this committee as we sort out how we can best support children and families.

With that, I'd like to go on now. We have three reports that we're going to look at this afternoon. The first one is the Growing Up in B.C. report, which I thought laid very good groundwork for pulling together the literature and statistics and things that exist cross-ministry and cross-government and from other sources, in terms of painting a picture of how our youth are growing up and how those in care compared to those not in care.

I'll turn the meeting back over to you and your group. We've tried to set an hour for each of the three reports. We're a little bit behind here, so we'll have to speed it up a little. We've set out about 20 minutes for your reporting and about 40 minutes for questioning as a guideline.

Joint Report:
Growing Up in B.C.

M. Turpel-Lafond: The report Growing Up in B.C. — if you don't have a copy, we can always make sure you get extra copies of it. It's available on line on our website as well.

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This was a significant effort of multiple years of work between myself and the office of the provincial health officer, which is Dr. Perry Kendall's office. Our goal was to really get an understanding of what the experience is for all children, a broad population-based experience, in British Columbia with a lens on some particularly vulnerable populations that we were aware of — children living out of the parental home, aboriginal children, children with special needs. It's certainly a groundbreaking examination.

As a result of this study, we have been approached by other provinces and jurisdictions that are very keen to try and replicate the study in their own jurisdiction. One of the challenges.... Certainly, I found this when I became the representative in 2006. When I asked the question, "How are children doing in British Columbia?" it depended on the person you asked — the answer that you got.

I think it must be extremely challenging for legislators to be able to work in this field, where the information that you're provided with is not very informative. While you have experiences in your own constituencies and when you hold various portfolios across the province…. I think just answering the basic issue — which is: how are children doing in various key domains…?

There has been a process of reporting on child well-being internationally through UNICEF and in some countries through UNICEF's national organizations, and through the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. There certainly is the promotion of meaningful reporting on how well children are doing.

The report came out of the need to look at…. We narrowed it down to six areas. There are always many other areas, but Dr. Kendall and I narrowed it down, with sort of a team, on six key areas: the health of children; the learning of children; the safety of children; their behaviour; the family economic well-being; and family, peer and community connections. We call those six key domains of well-being to understand in British Columbia what the experience of childhood is.

There are other things that we didn't include, other domains that we would've liked to, but we had to find areas where there was available data and where we could report something. We did also look at areas where we don't have data but we felt we should have data in the future.

The whole issue about the information that we have, the administrative data…. It is so crucial that we look at population-based data and the needs of children and youth so that we can always look at evaluating and supporting these systems. That was the other backdrop.

The goal was to identify a detailed set of indicators that can influence child and youth health and well-being and that can be tracked by government over time.
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The idea that Dr. Kendall and I had…. He sends his regrets today, by the way. He can't be here, but he's very keen that the discussion is happening.

The idea was that we would have a report such as this updated every few years, and then we could get an idea of how we're doing over time. If we see some improvements, because we do feel strongly that there's room for improvement.... At the same time, we think it's so important to celebrate where we are seeing improvements and to talk about it.

This report has been quite interesting, because it's a bit of a watershed report. Also, what I find quite positive about it is that there's a lot of discussion after this report in British Columbia about, for instance, school districts that have really turned things around. We really profiled areas where something different happened that made a big difference — for us to understand that and then inform other areas. That was in the domain of education. I think it's keen and it's valuable.

Again, while we primarily look at children who have a set of vulnerabilities and are coming into the child welfare system, it's always valuable to look across all of the domains and to think about how we're serving and supporting children, and not saying that everything is about government. It's about the quality of life and the quality of supports around a child.

In terms of the methodology, we didn't create new data sets. We reviewed over 120 of these child well-being reports from around Canada, U.S. and beyond. We got some expertise from the leading experts in the field, who were from outside Canada. We had a very consultative process. We worked closely with the McReary Centre Society so that we could use adolescent health data.

We also took on a methodology, again, of trying to model the child views approach that I talked about earlier. We engaged with over 200 youth ranging in age from 12 to 22 in 27 sessions around the province about: "What are the key domains that are important to your well-being? How do you think we're doing?" Then we shared the data with them to get their feedback.

It was quite a collaborative, dynamic process. For many of the children and youth, it was the first time they'd ever had a chance to look at this data and provide feedback on it.

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It was really quite a great process to see their seriousness, their insights but also, remarkably with the children and youth, the extent of their concern and empathy for other children and youth to do well. This, I think, speaks very well about how we need to harness in British Columbia that empathy and concern for other children and youth to get children and youth more involved in community development and feel that they will have a role there.

Some of the key findings. There were some findings that were quite worrying and of concern, around which Dr. Kendall and I feel there needs to be some greater focus and success. Some of the challenging topics that youth worry about were things like binge drinking, sexually transmitted diseases, bullying and discrimination. Those were areas of concern.

They also were very concerned about children and youth being abused. The fact that there is child abuse and neglect in British Columbia is a great concern to the youth in particular. Issues of poverty. These were all seen as hard-to-tackle issues but ones where the children and youth wanted to see these issues addressed.

The youth also consistently in this process identified that having an adult in their life to turn to for support and guidance was an important indicator of their well-being, and they felt so strongly that every child and youth needs to have that. They also were really keen about being involved in these types of reports and to provide feedback so that services could improve.

Some of the positive trends. First, let's deal with health. Healthy birth rates have remained fairly steady over the past 15 years without much variation. Infant mortality rates have been stable from 1998 to 2007, with about 4.1 infant deaths per 1,000 deaths. The youth suicide rate has declined significantly over the past 24 years. In saying that, there seem to be very localized pockets where we have issues of self-harm and suicide, but provincewide the picture has improved.

Young people on the whole are eating healthier, with more than 80 percent eating fruit in the previous day and more than 77 percent eating green salad or vegetables — so a significant indicator. Things like healthy food were, of course, clearly linked to good overall health and are protective factors against chronic diseases.

Some of the more worrying health data we found was that physical activity rates for youth are low, with fewer than half reporting getting at least 20 minutes of exercise at least five days a week. That's a worrying sign.

Again, that regular physical activity.... While it's a protective factor for chronic diseases and can address anxiety, depression and obesity, clearly we're not making the targets there for children and youth in British Columbia. We need to be much more focused on that.

Around aboriginal children. In the health data, again we found significant elevated vulnerability for aboriginal children — higher rates of very high and very low birth weights among the status Indian population. Although the rates of infant mortality in the status Indian population in B.C. has declined, they were still 30 percent higher than for non-status Indians or all other British Columbians, so we still see an elevated level of risk. Status Indian mothers in particular reported a higher percentage of substance abuse — cigarettes, alcohol or drugs — during pregnancy, which continues to be an area where we need to work more effectively.

Around children in care, another target area that we looked at. Children in care, we also saw, experienced
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greater disadvantage. They were much less likely to report consuming fruit or vegetables the previous day. They were also nearly twice as likely to be exposed to secondhand smoke, and 20 percent of them who'd been in care had reported attempting suicide more than twice in the previous 12 months — ten times the percentage for youth that had never been in care. Again, you can see some heightened vulnerabilities and the need to be more supportive, in particular, to that population around mental health as well as physical health.

In terms of the mental health issues generally, the youth said that mental and physical health were major priorities for their well-being. They emphasized that measures for emotional well-being were missing. That was echoed by our data experts. We did have national data experts in each domain that advised us and also provided an independent interpretation of the data — people largely from outside British Columbia.

Measures for resiliency. We talk a lot about youth resiliency, and people talk about how in their own childhoods they had hardscrabble backgrounds that they all.... "We've all overcome our hardscrabble backgrounds." Most of us, if we looked carefully at our hardscrabble backgrounds, will find some pretty major supports that helped us get along the way.

When we deal with things like resiliency, we're looking at self-confidence, self-esteem and connection to community as being key. We saw that these were often absent in the lives of some of the more vulnerable children in British Columbia, and that was very connected to depression and extreme stress.

[1325]

There are important gaps around the mental health information, although we have seen the suicide rate declining, mainly due to male rates of suicide over the past 24 years coming down. Male youth rate of suicide is still twice the rate of female, and they are more likely to report seriously considering suicide in the past 12 months. So we still have some persistent challenges in British Columbia around our adolescent boys as well as girls in target populations, but adolescent boys….

Around the issue of learning and in the domain of education — good news. Provincewide, I think in many ways the envy of many other provinces in Canada…. In British Columbia nearly 80 percent of young people graduate from high school within the expected six years after entering grade 8, which is our sort of gold standard, and 60 percent of British Columbia youth expect to continue their education to receive some post-secondary education. Further, about 60 percent expect to attend university, and 18 percent expect to attend and graduate from a post-secondary technical program or community college. Sometimes those are now merged.

Among youth 18 years of age, only 10 percent were undecided, while 82 percent expected to attend a university, community college or technical institute. So the trend toward educational attainment beyond high school is positive. It's necessary, of course, to participate in an increasingly knowledge-based economy and for British Columbia to be competitive — you know, competitive economy — and for our labour force to be competitive and successful. So we saw some good expectations.

We did see, though, in the data that boys and male youth were struggling much more with writing and reading than were females. There's very little disparity between boys and girls when it comes to numeracy, but around literacy we see a significant disparity.

Female youth were 14 percent more likely than male youth to have plans to attend university. However, male youth were 8 percent more likely than female youth to have plans to attend a technical institute or community college. Again, some of this data speaks to what can sometimes be very confusing information to youth about career planning, training, post-secondary education, the value of post-secondary education.

Certainly, Dr. Kendall and I were aware of the fact that there is a great discussion and debate about how we should counsel, encourage and steer young people in terms of post-secondary. The quality of information that they receive was not measured here, but it certainly remains a significant issue for us.

Some of the worrisome data in the domain of learning was that aboriginal children and children in care continue to perform lower than other children in meeting or exceeding expectations in the FSA assessments. Children in care in particular feel the impact of their circumstances and were less motivated to graduate and often lowered their educational aspirations because they felt there were too many barriers for them to succeed.

Of children in care, 54 percent had one or more vulnerabilities on the EDI, the early development index, which is a measure used by kindergarten teachers in February of each year. That was in comparison to, say, 25 percent of the general population and 39 percent of the aboriginal population, so they had more vulnerabilities.

Around regional disparities we saw some significant.... Again, Dr. Kendall and I would like to have very regionalized data in the Growing Up in B.C. report in the future to tell us how we're doing place by place. A very significant issue — we see this in the area of child welfare practice, child and youth mental health, children and youth with special needs — is this issue of trying to have some consistency across the province in how we do things, how we support children.

It's significant to know how we are doing in different places. Particularly in learning — because schools are pretty much supposed to be the same thing everywhere, if you like — we find enormous disparities, sometimes within a region but sometimes from region to region. So the role of government and the public school administrators, trustees, people working in the area to actually
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come to terms with that and make a difference for the children, is significant.

We found that children in the Vancouver Coastal region consistently performed better than children in other regions. Youth in the Vancouver Coastal and Fraser regions were more likely to have educational aspirations beyond high school — 80 and 82 percent respectively. As a comparison, just 71 percent of youth in the north were reported as having educational aspirations beyond high school. Children in both the Vancouver Island and Northern health regions consistently performed lower on provincial FSA assessments.

[1330]

The youth we consulted with recognized the importance of doing well in school and doing well in all schools. However, the youth were also quick to point out that how one does in school is often a reflection of other things happening in their life. School tests may be more of a reflection of what's occurring in the young person's life rather than a comment on their academic capacity. Bullying, abuse, and stress at home all contribute to negative school outcomes in the views of youth.

It's significant, and you'll see, particularly in the report on education, that we do address places where we feel great things have been happening in British Columbia. I do meet regularly with the Ministry of Education to look at the data as it comes out in terms of the regular annualized FSA data.

We've seen some persistent challenges in these trends around aboriginal students, children in care and so forth. Although this data is now a year old, we're not seeing a lot of changes in that. But we do need to recognize places where really great things have been happening in schools so that we can learn from that and can model that. So you'll see in the report some particularly good practices.

Now, on to child safety. Certainly, age is a major factor for safety issues. The early years, younger than the age of one, and the later teen years, 15 to 19, are particular vulnerable periods for injuries. For children and youth one to ten years of age, falls were the leading cause of injury hospitalization. Self-inflicted injury was the third leading cause of hospitalization for youth 15 to 19 years of age.

Aboriginal children and youth generally experience more safety concerns, are less likely to report feeling safe at school, are more likely to report being bullied, teased or picked on. Substantially more status Indian children four years and younger died from external causes compared to other children. Deaths from motor vehicle accidents alone for this age group were nearly four times higher.

In terms of child safety, we did some work around cyberbullying and Internet safety. The rates of bullying and cyber abuse appear to be somewhat lower in B.C. than some of the national averages.

Female youth in particular were concerned about Internet safety and bullying and found it surprising that the percentage of youth who experience Internet bullying was not higher than the 18 percent reported. So it was about 18 percent. They were surprised that only 6 percent of the males had this experience. They felt it was more pervasive, so that they felt that data was under-reported.

On-line issues for young females range from bullying and harassment to concerns about older male predators. Issues around Internet safety, use of the Internet and so on are significant issues to the youth. Again, I'm not sure we have very clear policies or practices as families, communities, schools, government around this area. It's a significant point.

In terms of child safety, the youth we talked to were not surprised that youth in grades 7 and 12 were the ones who reported feeling safest. Youth in the middle school system pointed out that people often assume that the cause of youth feeling less safe in grades 8 and 9 is that they've gone from being the oldest to the youngest. However, the youth reported that regardless of the school setting, this is the age when their peers are starting to have more influence and make different choices, which affects their feelings of safety.

In terms of economic well-being as a domain around child safety, a family's economic well-being impacts the children and youth. The incidence of low-income families has declined since 2006 to the lowest rate in two decades in 2008, although we've just seen that spike back up again with recent LICO data. There have been some substantial improvements in the last four years, with the largest gains being outside the Lower Mainland.

However, B.C., of course, as we were talking about earlier, continues to have the highest rate in Canada of children living in low-income families. Youth talked about how difficult it was to look forward to graduation day, knowing they can't really afford the same kind of day as their peers. So that was something they particularly spoke to — that perhaps we need to reconsider how we do graduation days and how it affects and often excludes children in lower-income families from feeling like they're celebrating on the same footing with others.

In terms of aboriginal families, a very elevated risk in aboriginal families of a low income. Aboriginal people with paid employment earn substantially less than non-aboriginal people in B.C. The 2006 census data shows that nearly 62 percent of the aboriginal population earned less than $20,000 per year, compared to more than 44 percent of the non-aboriginal population. So we're dealing with a significant magnitude of disadvantage there.

Around children in care, we see that the children in care really felt the strain of being in low income. They were twice as likely to report that they go to bed hungry because there is not enough food in the home.

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They commented to us about the difficulties of low income and how hard it is to participate in extracurricular activities like music and sports, about the stress of having to find a job to help support their families to make ends meet. They also very much praised school breakfast programs and school food programs as a safe way for young people to get fed without having stigma attached, especially programs that are available to all children so that they didn't get singled out as being children that were hungry.

Around the positive child behaviour data, teenage pregnancy rates have declined and now remain steady at about ten live births per 1,000 for women aged 15 to 19. The rate of youth charged with a serious crime has declined by 34 percent between 2001 and 2007, with the overall crime rate falling by almost 31 percent over eight years in B.C. That's a major, major gain and a real area of success.

Accessible transportation was a topic of keen interest to the youth who participated, as well as recurrent themes of affordable and accessible extracurricular sports and music and the ability to have and participate in positive leisure pursuits — what they're doing with their time outside school. It's a major issue in terms of what we are providing and supporting them to do with their time. Clearly, we have much work to be done in this area for a better, more enriching experience for young people.

Parents and family members as role models play a significant role in exposing youth to risky behaviour. Parents are drinking; parents are smoking. Parents are doing things that cause them concern and also create risk. So really a requirement and a request that parents and family members be better role models for children. I think that speaks volumes to us as British Columbians to think about our own actions and the impact on children in a very individual way.

Aboriginal youth, again, show great vulnerability around child behaviour — a more elevated teen pregnancy rate. Even though our number of youth in custody has dropped, a larger number of those youth in custody are aboriginal youth compared to their overall representation in the population.

For children in care, we see that they are experimenting with cigarettes earlier in life, which is a risk factor. For those that drink alcohol, 17 percent who had been in care reported drinking alcohol every day in the previous 12 months. That compares to only 1 percent of youth that had never been in care. So really significant issues around exposure to and use of alcohol and also being concerned about addictions pathways for these children and youth.

More likely to have used hard drugs such as Ecstasy, cocaine and crystal methamphetamine. Over one-third of youth in care had formal involvement with the youth justice system. This is a stark contrast to those who have never been in care.

On a positive note, though, the youth in care reported that they were at least as likely, if not more likely than other youth, to have participated in positive leisure pursuits such as art and drama, dance or aerobics.

So if they're in care, they're more likely to be participating in some leisure activities, which I think speaks strongly about the role of foster parents to try and make a difference by connecting children with other positive activities when they're caring for them. They were also more likely to do a hobby or craft four or more times a week and participate in singing or music classes, which again, I think, speaks very strongly about foster care providers and caregivers to really try and put an emphasis on positive activities that will support children.

In terms of regional differences in child behaviour, youth in the north region were twice as likely to report having smoked marijuana than youth in the Vancouver Coastal Region. Youth in the north and Interior regions were slightly more likely to report having tried drugs such as Ecstasy. So we are seeing some patterns, and that's informative in terms of how we allocate and focus some of our prevention strategies around children and youth.

On family, peer and community connections, the final domain, youth we talked to were clear that adult support is necessary and valuable to their well-being. They understood the importance of long-term relationships and the importance to feel connected to their community. Eighty percent said they feel a sense of belonging to their local community. Thirteen percent of youth in care in the past reported volunteering at least four times a week in the past 12 months, compared to only 6 percent of youth that had never been in care.

Again, I think that speaks very well of foster families who are working hard to try and connect young people in care to volunteer activities, although only 6 percent of youth volunteering is a concern. We need to make greater efforts to make sure young people have opportunities to volunteer in their community and meaningfully participate. That's a very low number that I think we need to work hard on.

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Compared to youth in other regions, youth in the Fraser and Vancouver Coastal regions were more likely to report feeling a strong sense of attachment to their ethnic group. Youth in care in the past year were two times more likely to respond that their teachers did not care or cared very little about them than youth who had never been in care. The perception that their teachers weren't as interested in them was significant.

For immigrant and ethnic minority youth, they reported to us that the culture of today's society — one that's based on technology and social media — can negatively impact their social connections, making it difficult to establish positive relationships and easier to experience negative situations like bullying, harassment
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and negative gossiping. Again, interesting and another reason why we're going to have a longer, deeper discussion with them.

Around the data gaps. Both the youth and the experts identified the lack of good mental health data in British Columbia as a significant gap — not enough data on mental health and emotional well-being. So data on things like positive outlooks, self-esteem, feeling love, a desire to triumph over the challenges — these are all indicators of resiliency — are not very carefully measured.

There are also no indicators of parenting capacity to better understand how to support parents when issues are identified. We're not really measuring parenting capacity, the ability to support and nourish a child. That's a significant area where we can do much better.

Areas around children and youth with special needs and how often children are exposed to domestic violence are two other areas where we do not have good data, and we need to be more consistent with that. We've identified these, and we are certainly working on these.

Our plan. Dr. Kendall and I have a plan, I guess depending on where we all are and what we're doing, in about 18 months to revisit the data and look at it again and report again on Growing Up in B.C.

Since we released this, we've had a chance to work closely with a lot of other agencies in these various domains, work with people working in those domains. We focused on building partnerships — for instance, First Nations health council, health officers, B.C. pediatric association.

We've been meeting widely to talk about the report and how we understand it. I think what's important is to take more of a whole-child approach to child well-being, to get away from the "We have X number of children here today doing this," which is a snapshot of one program or service or experience, and get more of a nuanced understanding of what childhood is like for a child in British Columbia today and therefore maybe do more sophisticated and meaningful collaboration and planning to do things differently.

Certainly, out of this report we have a good idea of strengths in British Columbia, but we also have a good idea of challenges.

I have had a chance to debrief a number of ministers with respect to the report — Minister of Health, Minister of Children and Family Development, Minister of Education. Obviously, the need to work across ministries in these domains and how closely one domain affects the other…. The way we do business in government, in terms of supporting better outcomes for children, requires that we do things differently.

I am keen, in particular, that we have a new cabinet committee which is focusing on families and children, involving people from different ministries and different experiences. I think that will be a valuable place to discuss some of these broader findings but also how we do more effective innovation.

In some instances there's just nowhere else to go within the confines of the small box that is one ministry's program area. We need to think differently about it. That's one area, but there's a great deal of opportunity there.

I'll just pause there and invite any questions.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Thank you. I thought what we'd do is have these questions and then maybe just have a break, because this is a long day. I think the representative hasn't even had a bite to eat, so I'm sure she would be anxious for a break.

We'll just finish up some questions here, unless for some reason they go on and on.

Doug, we'll start with you.

D. Horne: I want to thank you. I think this is an excellent report and something that obviously provides a very good framework for many things, many decisions that we make, many decisions that we have to go to.

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One of the things that one of the other members and I were just discussing and I'd be interested in your views on…. Some of the points that the report makes are perhaps counterintuitive to what one would think…. For example, the one that we were talking about is the use of drugs — that basically the larger prevalence of that is in the Interior and in the north, when one would assume that the availability of drugs for youth would be higher in the Lower Mainland.

I'd be interested in your thoughts, because one of the things that we questioned was: does this necessarily mean that the use of drugs is higher in the north and in the Interior, or that the honesty in answering that question with those who are in the north and the Interior is higher than those in the Lower Mainland? Obviously, that could be broadly across the entire report. I'd just be interested in how that might play into the findings and what your views on that might be.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think first of all, with the issue of sort of polysubstance abuse by young people…. The first thing is that they've identified that they are worried and concerned about adults in their life who are abusing alcohol or drugs. That in and of itself is a message to us. Are we listening enough to them? What exactly worries them about that, I think, is something we need to pay much more attention to.

Secondly, around their use, and I would say not experimentation for some but use, I think that the…. It's always based on a percentage, and so we look at what they report. But they certainly are reporting use, in some regions significantly elevated use, of drugs. Now, the type of drug that is, whether it's marijuana or a harder drug, is an issue.

But I think there are certainly major challenges in British Columbia about the type of consistent health
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information that we provide to young people about drugs and also about binge drinking and use of alcohol. Do we have a consistent program around preventing addictions and so forth in our schools, in our health authorities, in our ministries around drugs and alcohol? We don't.

This is an area where it really jumps out, and the relationship.... We didn't explore it here because the data is not there, but we do know the research data, even around major studies that have been done on polysubstance abuse and even on what are considered to be softer drugs, like marijuana. The impact of use of those substances on the developing adolescent brain is such that we see elevated mental health difficulties into adulthood. So the evidence is very strong there.

Whether or not we are providing good information and adequately protecting young people from that is an open question. I certainly, from what I've seen and what this report indicates, suggest we need to redouble our efforts in that regard. We certainly will not see young people participating positively in community and reaching their full potential if these are the types of choices they're making because we are not adequately preventing or intervening, or because the adults in their lives are modelling very poor behaviour around this.

It's a challenging issue, because addictions create major challenges for people outside families to address. People like to keep those issues within families. Young people are saying they're very unhappy about that. So we do have some major concerns in British Columbia about that and how it relates to mental health and physical health.

D. Horne: If I could just do a bit of a thought. On that specific note of modelling behaviour in those around them, one of the things I did find interesting, as well, and troublesome to a certain extent was the use of tobacco around children in care. Obviously, not only does the secondhand smoke pose a health problem, but it also, I would believe, encourages those in care to smoke. Obviously, that behaviour in those that they're looking to as role models, smoking would….

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It's one of these things that once you are addicted it's oftentimes a lifelong struggle to have to deal with it and something, from a public health standpoint, that we try very, very hard through many, many means to lessen and to basically, hopefully, rid the use of tobacco eventually, because from a health standpoint, that's important.

I'd be interested in your comments as to, when we do look at placement and care, the use of tobacco in those homes, and our ability to perhaps at some point completely eliminate that, and whether that's feasible or not.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think for many of the youth, they may have been living in a family home within the year and then come into care, so the report of use of tobacco in the home may be in their home of origin and not the foster home.

We do have a policy in British Columbia to have no smoking in foster homes. How it's complied with is an issue. I mean, I think that it is for the most part followed, although it's not policed. It's a policy. Certainly, people sort of step outside to smoke, and so on.

So there are issues that come to our attention around this, but I think that issue of modelling good behaviour, but also protecting children from addiction to tobacco, is a major concern. I think some of the anti-smoking campaigns have been important, but have they been adequately, again, focused at children?

I think there's a lot of discussion and debate as to whether or not the campaign will more likely expose them to become smokers. So there are a lot of issues in the literature about how you effectively protect. Probably the most effective protection is to get adults to stop smoking. So recent strategies to announce coverage for anti-smoking medication — for instance, public coverage of anti-smoking medication for cessation of smoking — are good signs.

Changing adult behaviour is probably one of the areas that can have the biggest impact on kids, as opposed to the drug and alcohol issue. We're saying adult behaviour is important, but we do see…. You know, there will be communities where there's an economic downturn — particularly in a resource-dependent economic area of the province — quickly followed by an elevation in addictions. So we almost know that there's going to be a problem very quickly, but we're not very good at responding to that. We're not very good at responding with the adults, but we're also not very good at responding to how the children are affected.

By the time the economy rebounds, there are now issues with the labour force, because you've got serious addictions. So these are really challenging issues. But again, we need to land on them and discuss them. Modelling good adult behaviour is important, and effective adult programming and thinking how we can better target messages and protect children is part of that.

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): There is a huge amount of information here. I'd like to be able to spend days just discussing it with you, but I'd like to pick up on a couple. One is: did you look at all at the access to transportation and safety issues for children? I mean, just from my own constituency, I see kids hitchhiking back to the reserve. They are quite young, and it's very troubling.

The other question, similarly, is working with school districts and the young parent programs and success and access to them, because I know a number of school districts are cutting these because of funding — so just on those two areas.

M. Turpel-Lafond: With respect to the first one, on transportation, we just don't have available data. We
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suspect that there are huge transportation barriers, and it also goes to family affordability, families in poverty. Transportation will be a big barrier to access services, particularly for people who are living in rural-remote areas. The cost even to operate a motor vehicle will be a huge barrier, but other costs could be a significant barrier. The data is not there, but it is significant to keep the data so that we look at consistency around the province.

In terms of the school program, I've asked Jeremy to respond to that because he's been monitoring that more carefully about the young parent programs.

J. Berland: As Mary Ellen said, we made some decisions about what our baseline would be for this report, which basically starts in 2007 and moves forward. We needed to establish that so that we could do future reports.

We also decided that we would only…. This is based on the advice of the international experts that we talked to in the other reports. We made a decision about limiting the choices of the domains, the indicators and the measures to those things we could actually find data on as a way of getting started.

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What we wanted to do was stimulate this very kind of debate so that people would ask the questions about: "Well, what happened in my community versus your community? Why is it different in Prince George? Why is it different in Vanderhoof? What actually happened?"

We did not drill down to the level of individual school districts or individual programs. We are trying to stay at that much broader level and, in our next version of it, move down, perhaps because people will see the value of having that debate and asking those questions to see: "Well, what happens when you reduce a program in a community? What's the impact on child safety or children entering care if parenting programs are reduced?"

We haven't been able to get to that level of data yet. It just doesn't exist in the province.

K. Krueger: At the beginning, when we were sort of doing introductory things, I talked about citizenship programs for kids. One that's concerned me for a very long time is with regard to traffic safety and prevention of injury and fatality to children. I started working with ICBC when the organization was only about two years old, and just a few years in we realized there was a segment of the population that we would never retrain from drinking and driving, that we'd never get to wear their seatbelts and so on.

We started a program right from kindergarten through to grade 12, where we seconded teachers, established teachers in the system, respected teachers who really knew how to talk to kids about issues. It was incredibly successful. When we started that, I was working in Prince George, and we had had a terrible year for grads getting killed in stupid, preventable drinking-driving and no-seatbelt accidents. One of the first teachers that we hired was there. There was this huge success, a dramatic reduction in injuries and fatalities to kids.

In 1993 a new vice-president at ICBC made a decision that it was silly, in her mind, to have traffic safety programs in elementary schools, because children don't drive. Since then, I see all these old patterns recurring. Families have spent their lives developing the flower of the generation — it's only 1.1 children per family these days — and so many of them get killed in grad accidents or other completely preventable behaviours.

Back then I had little children, in the late '70s and early '80s, and if they thought I was thinking of going through an amber light, they'd yell: "Fools rush in, Dad." They had these traffic safety messages down pat, as kindergarteners. There was lots of peer pressure all the way through school. Kids didn't want their friends riding with somebody who was taking risks and so on.

I've been longing to see us get back to that. I've spoken with our new Premier about it, and we'll all be pushing on an open door with her if we want to pursue that. She would like to see that program re-established.

The superintendent of RCMP in Kamloops, just before he retired, told me that in his long career only two major social changes had happened to really help police deal with less of this kind of grief. The public adopted seatbelts as the only reasonable thing to do, and public scorn for driving under impairment developed. Those were the two biggest things that he could name — biggest positive changes in his whole career.

I know the report had many other things to focus on, but I would really appreciate the support of this committee and of the advocate's office to take advantage of this opportunity when it is a top-of-mind issue with our Premier.

Kids these days.... A lot of teenagers actually think it's cool to speed and to drink and drive and even to steal cars and go joyriding and all the risks that that entails to them and everyone else.

I wanted to put that on the record. I hope we're all going to work together on what is a big opportunity to reinstate something that worked really well for us.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I can say there's no question that broad-based school-focused programs are proven to be the most effective — meaning that you get to reach all children consistently throughout the province. It's hugely important. For instance, you know we have a graduated licensing program for when children obtain their driver's licence, which is probably very different than what we experienced when we got our drivers' licences.

Through that graduated licensing program there are some significant restrictions around when you can drive
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and with whom and so on. Those are important safety issues, but they're very late in the day. They come late in the day. The early education around what is risky and what is safe behaviour is important.

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I think it's a real confluence of this issue of how unsafe it is to operate a motor vehicle, having consumed any alcohol. Also, I think if we can ensure if a new program that's provincewide was created, if we could marshal the youth.... For instance, the more than 200 youth we consulted with here who are very concerned about safety issues like injuries would like to be heard by adults. So it's good that we talk to them, but it would be kind of nice if we could actually get some feedback from them, too, to say what they would want to tell someone in first grade about this issue. What would be important to learn? It's just the whole program. We cannot always do everything at once, but to be effective to protect children from preventable injuries....

Without question, we get reportables in my office every year around grad time, when there is a grad party and there is a death. It might be a motor vehicle accident. It might be a death of violence. It might be an overdose on alcohol that's a completely preventable death. Again, have we done enough to protect and equip children, as they become young adults, to avoid these risky behaviours?

I think there's much, much more to be done, and I really recognize those communities in British Columbia that have had these graduation events which are alcohol-free, where the adults and others model that behaviour, and some abstain from alcohol for a period of time around grad time to set a model and example. I think we should really look at that programming, whether it's in ICBC, in the Ministry of Education or shared, but a consistent level of programming and information about safety.

Obviously, the injury prevention group with Dr. Ian Pike is also very keen about this — that there be consistent, effective programming in British Columbia to reach children. Do we have it now? I suspect not. Did we have it for a period of time? Yes. We certainly need to come back to that. This report speaks to that. We can be more significant leaders targeting youth, I think, in British Columbia on that.

M. Elmore: Thank you. It's an excellent report.

I'm interested in if there is a snapshot, if you will, or findings in terms of the experiences and perspectives and stories from immigrant youth and also ethnic youth. I know it has been referenced under community connections.

No. 1 is…. I presume that it kind of runs through all the six themes. Then I'm also just interested on page 48 — the reference that "less than 50 percent of youth report that they feel a strong sense of belonging or connection to their ethnic group." And "the lowest response to feeling connected to their ethnic group was from the youth in the Interior region." You referenced statistics from….

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think one of the challenges…. We used available administrative data, and we really don't collect data. So even in the education system, we have an aboriginal identifier, which has actually done quite a bit to understand more the experiences of aboriginal children in the education system. But we don't have good consistent indicators around newcomer immigrant children.

This is clearly a data limitation that we spoke to. We're just not doing well enough, which is ironic, seeing as we're such a significant province in terms of a destination for new immigrants and newcomers — again, which is why we set this priority this year on having the summit with immigrant youth.

Also, I think we need to raise that awareness in the systems — the education system, health system and child welfare system — that we need to, first of all, collect our data differently. We also need to talk to children and youth and families differently. We have to be very careful about the one-size-fits-all understanding.

Even when it comes down to specific domains like education, health or safety, what are the unique sets of issues that we see? Is a family that's come through the refugee door into British Columbia experiencing something differently? How understanding and supportive are we of that? I think we haven't done enough of that differentiation, and we certainly see it on safety.

We see it in different areas. We see some children and youth reporting that they don't feel as safe. They feel more prone to bullying, or they may be concerned about experiences around domestic violence and how to respond appropriately to that. So we've seen some of that.

I think we need to understand that better. There are significant limitations in British Columbia on what we're doing on that. It has to work more effectively. We need to collect the data. We need to understand it, and we need to collaborate more effectively with newcomer and immigrant families and children around their services.

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M. Elmore: I just have one short thing here. Can you just explain that there's not sufficient data and what that would entail in terms of the collection of data?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I'll just defer to Jeremy. He can give you a couple of examples.

J. Berland: The data sources we used for this were data from the Ministry of Education and data from the Ministry of Health, from MCFD, from Social
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Development. The challenge with all…. First of all, of course, it's not a single information system across all those systems, which is understandable, but those systems also don't collect data in the same fashion about these issues or even by the same geography, so it becomes impossible to match up across those domains.

We would go looking, for instance, in the school system. "Well, do you have information on the number of refugee kids in school?" or "Do you have information on the number of kids of Asian, African…?" You name it. That information just doesn't exist.

Then we think about: "Well, can we break down the existing studies?" A large part of the report is based on some work that was done by the McCreary Centre Society on their adolescent health survey, so does that give us a sufficient breakdown? Again, it doesn't match up.

One of the discussions that we're having as we go around talking about this report with the various ministries and agencies is: "Is this an invisible group? Have you kind of forgotten that you need to measure them as well?" We do reasonably well on some aboriginal data collection, but after that things sort of fall off the map. We have been going back and talking about that question, but it's difficult because the information systems just don't exist.

Accuracy is a challenge as well. It does rely on self-reporting. Sometimes that information is simply not provided to the school, which could be the main source of information for school-aged kids, but it just isn't there.

Our hope, with the provincial health officer, is…. The provincial health office is producing a report which will likely come out next year, in conjunction with the Canadian Institute for Health Information, on a much, much broader set of indices of child well-being — a much bigger, health-oriented approach — and we will reproduce the Growing Up in B.C. report for the following year. By then we are hoping that that information might be available.

It means we're also working with the association of multicultural-serving agencies in the Lower Mainland, MOSAIC, other groups, just to try to tease that out a little bit. We would like to avoid anecdotal information. We'd like to only use facts so that the data can be somewhat unassailable in terms of the debate in local communities.

M. Elmore: Are there other jurisdictions that have efficient systems for gathering this information?

J. Berland: We've studied about 120 of these kinds of reports from around the world. Some, of course, are much better than others and have been at it for a much longer time.

The U.S. has a number of reports done by the Casey family foundation, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. UNICEF has an annual report. There are models about this that we can point to, to say, "There are some examples," but of course, we can't just translate those international findings into the Canadian experience.

J. McIntyre (Chair): If I might direct your direction, you probably saw that Ralph Sultan, one of our colleagues in the Legislature, did work with, basically, Stats Canada and some of the LICO work. He did tie that to English…. Not having English as a first language was one of the determinants, unfortunately, of lower-income families. There is some data there that should be…. I'm sure and hope that the representative has seen that work as well. It does speak to what you were talking about to some degree.

G. Hogg: Thank you for the pan-provincial review and the international context which you've provided for that. The recommendations, or the findings…. It leads to six findings that suggest a call for action.

You made reference to how we tend to box our ministerial responsibilities together. Your efforts to coordinate that by meeting with various ministers and the cabinet committee on families first is making an effort to look at an integrated approach, knowing that governments have, over the years, gone through myriad different attempts with that, from childhood and youth coordinating committees, interministerial committees and probably a number of other iterations. We're optimistic that we have a model that may help us with this.

[1410]

Sitting on that committee and seeing and hearing the number of different initiatives that are coming from various ministries and the way that every ministry has an ability to look at families first questions how we are able to prioritize, to focus around that, whether or not it's short-term mitigation or longer-term prevention and how we're able to do that.

I think that ultimately the question is: how do we take care of each other? How is it that we in communities and as governments look after each other? How do we care for each other in, I guess, a pan-provincial sense? I'm not sure that doing more of what we do better is the right paradigm for addressing that.

As you gathered the information for this report from a number of international jurisdictions and looked at those, did you find any other service delivery methods, any other ways of providing services that seemed to reflect a different model?

I'm reminded of how Henry Ford said: "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said: 'A faster horse.'" So my concern is: are we looking at a faster horse, or are we actually looking at the development of a car? Is there another model for starting to do that?
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My bias at this time is using the notion of natural care, which I think is taking care of each other, and the model of formal care is when the state steps in, using children in care as an example. Clearly, the state has an important role and responsibility when children come into care for managing and controlling and providing the formal structures for that.

There were attempts in this province, fairly successful attempts, in the early part of the last decade, the early 2000s, to try and reduce the number of children in care by providing more natural care — more responses to build for families, to support families outside of the formal structures, being able to do that. Have you seen or are you aware of, based on that, some ways that we might be looking at...?

Is it wrong if we continue to do what we're doing, trying to do it more efficiently and effectively? Certainly, the outcomes and your findings would suggest that ultimately, there hasn't been great success, nor has there been anywhere in Canada, although I'm told that some of our initiatives around that are some of the best outcomes in Canada. But I wonder whether we're still trying to get a faster horse when we should be stepping into a different vehicle.

M. Turpel-Lafond: That's a very complex question, and I think it's an important question to ask. That's one of the ones that we reflect on. But I think if we look at some of the domains, there are innovations that are important. Again, I think that if we look at education, one of the things we included.... If you look at page 30 of the report....

One of our external experts was Doug Willms, who is an international specialist. He's at the University of New Brunswick. The idea in the field of education is to leading rather than trailing indicators so that parents know upfront how the child is doing — not at the end of the school year but upfront if there are challenges.

Education. Again, I'm not the representative for education, but it's so crucial to change the life circumstances of a child, and I think that in terms of the education system in British Columbia, we've had success for many children. We've had persistence of problems, and we have not adequately innovated in the education system, so we don't have innovations in every school district to address these issues.

I think that having leading indicators that are child-focused, as opposed to trailing indicators that are teacher-measured.... The child indicators, meaning the actual child's performance, are being measured, and they're leading. The one indicator we talk about around the leading indicator for, say, kindergarten is an immediate response to the parents the first week in kindergarten about how the child is doing on some key domains and then a plan to work with the child.

You know, we're not very effective in British Columbia at early identification of a challenge, partnering with the parents and making something significant happen well before grade 4. Many children will do fine, but for those that don't, we're not doing it. So on the education piece, there's a huge need to rethink how we're investing in that. Full-day kindergarten is a significant opportunity, but then it raises another set of issues. It's kind of like how you come into the issues.

The development of the nurse home-visiting program around the domain of maternal fetal health. One of the challenges that the nurse home-visiting program will likely have, based on the experience elsewhere.... Trained, capable people who have a very strong concept of public health and infant vulnerability and maternal health go in and find big problems in some places. The issue is: what do they do about that?

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These issues about how we measure parenting capacity and so forth, how we prevent and work with that, then spark the need to innovate more effectively across the system. Sometimes we innovate in one area and then don't listen to what the people are doing. So I think one of the challenges in British Columbia is that we sometimes have the start-stop, start-stop problem. Certain broad-based issues, like a provincewide nurse home-visiting program with good tools to identify at-risk families and then actual effective prevention work around boosting parenting capacity....

Sometimes boosting parenting capacity means dealing with significant maternal health issues. That might be significant depression, poly-substance abuse. Limited parenting capacity — it's a very challenging issue. But we have to talk about: if there's a limited parenting capacity, how do we change that? And how do we change it with a focus on the child?

Do we have that sorted out in British Columbia? No, we don't. Do other jurisdictions have it sorted out better? Yes, they do. There are other jurisdictions that have far better performance on these domains than we do. In Canada we are certainly the envy of some provinces, and they're the envy of us, because we see differences. I think the issue of each of these domains, to look at the evidence.... An attitude around innovation with a strong lens on the child is crucial.

I think what has happened through, say, UNICEF internationally and somewhat through UNICEF Canada is to develop a new approach to decision-making in the executive branch of government; to look at child impact assessments; to be sure to understand, when you're innovating, what the impact is on the child and what the evidence is to back it up; even to create more discipline within ministries and the administrative branch of government to be able to focus more effectively to support decision-makers around that — so to have a child lens and to be able to make that consistent.

In each of these domains we could speak at length, and we do need to do that. We did have a summit a bit
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to do that, but there are many examples of jurisdictions with sort of a similar pot of resources that we have that have greater success. We need to build on our successes where we have them but recognize we just haven't made significant change in certain areas over a long period of time.

One of the reasons why we haven't is because we really haven't planned and thought about it effectively. I mean, this is the first time we've ever collected the data to do a complete look. In part, it was a response to our office saying: "We really don't know how we can evaluate the child-serving system because we don't know how children are doing. What's your starting point, so I can understand where you're trying to go?" Well, we need to get some common starting points, but this is a big start.

It sparks a different type of discussion. I hope it's a discussion that many communities and partners will be involved in.

I think your point earlier was that when it comes to children, one thing is absolutely essential, which is collaboration. Whether it's in a home.... Parents have to collaborate with grandparents and siblings. But in a community Education has to collaborate with the family, has to sometimes collaborate with the Ministry of Children and Families because there are some other concerns in that family, has to collaborate with the health system.

We need to learn how to collaborate more effectively and make these programs more meaningful for the actual life circumstances of children, and we need to see improvement in those outcomes. Some of those outcomes are not acceptable. Certainly, none of us want to see these children, year after year, with this level of safety, education and community connection. We have to do things differently, and we have to do that in an effective, organized way.

Innovation is important, but not just innovation because I've got a better idea than you but because there's really a thoughtful, consistent, methodical approach and there's good-quality work in our social-serving systems, in our community, that's allowing people to make well-informed and highly accountable decisions for children and with children.

G. Hogg: While the six recommendations or the six items that call for action.... I don't think I want an answer for this right now, unless you have one. There's a vision that grows out of that that brings those together, that starts to inform the actions. At some point I think we have to get to what that vision is that will inform the actions so we'll know where to go.

Maybe that's something we should be looking at within this committee or within the dialectic to get to that point. I haven't found that vision yet to pull together those pieces of information that should lead to the call for action. What is the vision that brings that together? What is the vision that starts to inform the actions which are being called for in the report? I think at some point we need to spend some time looking at that to help us move forward.

M. Turpel-Lafond: This report in particular — we anchored it around a jurisdiction that takes very seriously the lives of children and the rights of children.

[1420]

We picked the domains, but we also anchored it in the UN convention and talked about safety from violence; good-quality health care; security; adequate standard of living; education; good educational outcomes; ability to practise one's own culture, language and religion; protection from harmful drugs, sexual exploitation and exposure to harm; and special care and support for children with disabilities.

That's the vision which is really the most ratified convention in the world, the UN convention on the rights of the child. I think it provides a really solid vision. Part of the implementation of that in a place like British Columbia requires us to make that meaningful. So while children have certain rights and we all need to express that and make that work, we have to think about whether we're meeting up to those obligations. I think that's a very good vision statement, but it's also a strong lens of equality.

I think one of the key issues in British Columbia is that it is an open, free, democratic and equal society. It's important that that equality of opportunity be the bedrock of our systems, because that's so fundamental to our civil society.

The knowledge that we need to work harder to create equal opportunities for children and know that we are creating that and working toward that is a fundamental vision that we have to return to. Part of the reason why we measure outcomes is so we can see how we are we doing on that. When we see we're not quite there, we have to think: how are we going to get there more effectively?

That provides the benchmark, and I think it's really crucial that we have that equality, equal opportunity lens. We can never guarantee an equal result to all people, particularly in childhood, but we do need to make sure that we have an equal society around having a nurturing, positive, supportive environment for children so that they can be heard, they can develop well and — these key domains — that we're nurturing and supporting them.

It's not all about government doing everything but actually having a very thoughtful, clear perspective in government about what government does do and how it works with others to get things done and how it supports families.

I think there is a bit of a vision, but I think how we move it forward is important. On this bigger piece, before you can really get into a strong, clearly articulated, commonly shared vision — like a non-partisan
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vision for children — I think that first, you have to really understand what we are dealing with. I think that's the piece — that we need to speak the common language and get on the same page about these issues.

Sometimes we will talk about safety, we will talk about recurrence of maltreatment in the child welfare system as an important indicator of something, but we need to understand how that's connected to other things. So if someone wants to work on one issue, we need to make sure they've thought carefully through how that will impact a community and some broader goals.

J. McIntyre (Chair): We have to keep…. This is the biggest of the three reports we are going to do, but we are starting to lag behind. Richard has a question, and then I was going to give us a ten-minute break or something.

R. Lee: All of these factors are all correlated. I think one opportunity is the children in care. I think that's a sector of the population that I believe can be closely monitored and see how the factors are interrelated, and then you can get the feedback probably very easily.

Also, the state has the obligation, anyway, to provide a better environment for those children, as a parent. The state is the parent in that case. I think in the future the opportunity is there to have that kind of a controlled environment.

What I'm getting at is that, for example, we have different outcomes and indicators in this report, actually, for children in care. They are falling behind in a lot of areas. Except in, for example, drama, those extracurricular activities, they are doing better than average.

[1425]

I think that in the future providing enough resources available…. That's one area. The resources can be utilized so that we have a better understanding of all those relationships and the correlation between, say, getting more fruit in the fridge and why the foster parents or their environment don't provide them with the motivation for them to eat the fruit and that kind of thing — the vegetables.

I think that's something we can achieve a bit more. What's your comment on that?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think you're absolutely right. I mean, of all things we can do around innovation, one thing is to support children in care — who are really in the care of the state, so we have to do that.

I think the challenge with respect to children in care is, first of all, to follow our legislative imperative, which is to take the least intrusive measures with those children, meaning that if you can work with families, work with families to provide caregivers within the family. If they need to come into what we call stranger foster care, or foster care, make sure that the experience mimics and supports the concept of a family.

Many issues behind some of the outcomes we've seen are issues that we've been talking about and wanting to seek improvements in the system on — things like multiple moves for children in care. Sometimes — when we have an injury, for instance, of an adolescent — we're dealing with a child that's moved 20, 25 times. It's just impossible. We can't have a system like that. We have to change that, and these things can be changed.

I think we have to have a stronger level of accountability and a stronger sense of what it is we're trying to achieve when a child comes into care. We're really trying to replicate the experience of a family, to recognize that family is the best environment for a child. We need to make sure our system is working effectively in that way.

We can improve those outcomes. I can say that certainly, again, since we started in 2007…. One of the first major reports, which was a precursor to this one, was on education outcomes of children in care. Dr. Kendall and I looked at more than 20,000 kids in care and how they did in school. It was the first real study of this in British Columbia in detail. It was quite surprising what we learned. Despite what we all thought we'd see, we saw something different.

But we have made some changes that I think will improve some of these outcomes, by working collaboratively with the Ministry of Education, school districts, superintendents of achievement. As of last September we had someone in every school in B.C. whose job was to pay attention to education outcomes of children in care.

Now, you may say: "Oh well, of course we have to have that." If you're a parent and you have children in school, you pay attention to their education achievement. But when you're a child in care, it's a question of who's doing that. Is it the ministry, the guardianship social worker, the foster parent? Who's got the job?

We wanted to focus on: "Let's gets a point of accountability for education achievement." Then, when we find out the kids aren't doing as well as they could or should be or as would be expected, let's do something differently for them.

Some school regions and superintendents are reporting and working with us regularly. They're doing some very good work. Some of them are actually reporting back to us at the level of the child. "Here's what's happening here and here and here." I think that's very positive. That speaks very well about our ability to change the system.

We need to stay focused on outcomes, accountability, reporting. Everybody needs to norm that in the system and then do it.

The Ministry of Children and Families might have said: "Well, it's not really our job. That's the Ministry of Education." The Ministry of Education might have said: "That's not our job. That's the Ministry of Children and Families." Or some might say: "Well, that's the foster parents."
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Well, no. It's everybody's job. So we're all going to do this together, and we're going to make sure it gets done.

That's one of the areas where you can do innovation. Sometimes the innovation isn't all that innovative — right? It's doing what any prudent parent would do, which is pay careful attention to the education outcomes of the child.

The child's not doing well. What's happening? Why isn't the child doing well? How are we going to remediate that situation? How are we going to get them to grade level? And oh, by the way, failure is not an option. We need to norm very high expectations for all of our children in British Columbia.

That's a good thing. It's a good example. But you're right. That's a clearly vulnerable population for whom we need to see improvements within two years. If we don't see improvements within two years, we're going to really need to be hard on ourselves, to say: "Why didn't it change?"

That's a very clear line of accountability. Certainly, for my office, it's a key target with the ministries. That population needs to do much better.

The idea that we can say, "Oh, we'll have no children in care...." We will have children in care. There will be situations where you have to have children in care.

People sometimes want to know: "Well, what's the right number? How many should there be?" There's no such thing. Children need to be safe. We need to prevent situations that bring children into care, but we need to make sure they're well supported so they in turn don't have children who come into care.

[1430]

We sometimes see third-generation children who've been through the care system. That's also a sign that we need to do things differently.

You're absolutely right in terms of outcomes and domains and indicators. There's an area where we need to see performance, and there should not be any dispute about it. We're certainly on that, and we're promoting that type of regular accountability, so we really appreciate your observations about that.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Thank you. With that, let's adjourn for a few minutes.

The committee recessed from 2:31 p.m. to 2:46 p.m.

[J. McIntyre in the chair.]

J. McIntyre (Chair): We will have a bit of a shorter time here, but I think everybody is in agreement that we'll speak quickly, read quickly, ask quickly as we go back through the last two reports, which are Update: System of Services for Children and Youth with Special Needs, and Hearing the Voices of Children and Youth: A Child-Centred Approach to Complaint Resolution.

I'll ask the rep to…. Maybe we can keep it to 15 minutes or so as a summary, and then we'll have 25 minutes or so for questions. Then we can be done on time, because it's been a long haul here.

Representative for Children
and Youth Report:
Update: System of Services for
Children and Youth
with Special Needs

M. Turpel-Lafond: The report, the update of System of Services for Children and Youth with Special Needs from September 2010. That was a report on children and youth with special needs, my third sort of special report. I'm not going to go through all of the ground covered there, but I'm going to touch on some high-level issues.

In June 2008 the B.C. government announced changes so that Community Living B.C. children services would come back to the Ministry of Children and Family Development. There had been some intense monitoring by my office of the services to children within CLBC. The transfer took place in October 2009. This report in September 2010 was 11 months after the transfer, looking at: how is it going, and what else are we seeing?

We did look at a lot of issues, some positive issue around the transfer. It involved about 11,000 children and youth with special needs who came back into the system and needed services from the system, and also the issue of the long-term stabilization and creation and maintenance of a system of supports for children and youth with special needs. So creating a system, making the system function well, understanding that special needs is a catch-all and that there's a range of circumstances for children within that, and they need support.

I recognized in this report a few things. There had been some very positive steps taken around youth transitioning to adulthood. There was a cross-ministry transition-planning protocol for youth 14 to 25 receiving services in MCFD, aboriginal agencies and how they're going to transition into adulthood. There was some good work between CLBC and MCFD around how they're going to work together.

There are some expanded eligibility criteria for CLBC into adulthood, which is important. We're still tracking and looking at that but in particular making sure that adults diagnosed with a significant limitation in adaptive functioning and with pervasive development disorder, FASD, would receive services from CLBC. So that expansion was significant and important, and it did allow for continuity of supports from childhood into adulthood of some children who are young adults, who wouldn't have been served where we had some issues. So that was quite significant.

A couple of keys issues — and I just raise these — around the system for children and youth with special
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needs. There were 12 recommendations when I first reported in this area. The update I filed looks at five areas where there is greater priority and work needed. I want to touch upon those, because it's an area that I'm constantly monitoring.

In particular, I will soon release a report on the 15-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was with the deceased mother, who was served by CLBC and MCFD. I will delve into the circumstances of her care. Some of these themes were informative around that investigative process. That's an investigation report.

A couple of recommendations are five key areas. One is consistent and ongoing communication, ongoing problems with regular communication updates to stakeholders. Families with children and youth with special needs continue to find the system too complex to navigate. There isn't the single window.

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The government said they would create a single window, at least a single Internet window to be able to access it. They'd map out services. Those projects haven't come to completion, and so it continues to be unnecessarily complex and has some significant accessibility issues.

I wanted the ministry to have a clear communications plan — consistent communication between regions. When I saw children moving from region to region, there'd be a whole change in their circumstances, which was unnecessary. So there was a need to do some work around the transition phase, when CLBC came back, to straighten that out. I think there's some ongoing work required there.

The second issue is a very significant issue, and it continues to be one. I'm not sure of the direction that we're going to go in the next phase, but it's very significant. It's the absence of adequate engagement with the aboriginal families. So it's critical that the ministry engage in a coordinated effort with aboriginal stakeholders and families to mitigate gaps in services between on- and off-reserve, and make sure that children and youth from aboriginal families on- and off-reserve are being assessed and supported.

We've seen some significant issues as they transition into adulthood — aboriginal adults not being adequately supported, not having adequate information. So there's a piece of outreach that's missing and then a piece of service.

There is some joint policy work that's been done. It seems to be affecting both children and youth with special needs and children and youth mental health. But understanding how these program areas are going to collaborate, work together and actually ensure that there are aboriginal children that are being served and that the barriers are removed to service.... This is a significant challenge in the ministry, and it needs to be responded to. I'm in active discussions with them, again, about this issue, but it's an ongoing issue.

The third observation I made in that report was the need to implement a functional-based approach to eligibility. A functional-based approach, meaning focus on the functional needs of children, youth and their families, as opposed to an IQ cutoff, or if you have a particular diagnosis, there's a certain thing that comes with it versus another diagnosis which may make you more functionally challenged, and there's nothing that comes with it.

This is an area where ongoing work is also required. Apart from the adult side, there hasn't been any change to the eligibility of services. We're talking with them again, and I expect I'll be updating you on this, because it remains a lingering concern.

The next item is one which I've worked on fairly consistently, and I would bring this to the committee. I talked about it briefly earlier. I actually spoke to the Minister of Children and Family Development today about this very issue, which is advocacy support for youth with special needs transitioning out of care.

Once they are 19, they will have been served in the MCFD special needs process, which means they'll have advocacy supports from my office. We have many hundreds of advocacy files where we're looking at making sure there are appropriate children and youth special needs supports for a child, particularly for families where there is some vulnerability. We're looking sometimes at where the child is living, what types of supports they receive in school, whether there's respite care — a lot of very significant basic supports that are there.

The challenge for us is that we're finished at 19. I've recommended three times now — this is my third time — and I spoke again to Minister McNeil today about this. I feel very strongly, based on the work and the monitoring of the system, that the representative's office needs to advocate for children with special needs to the age of 24, meaning that if you are in the MCFD system with special needs — you have significant developmental disabilities and so on — when you hit 19 you need to continue to have independent advocacy support.

Within CLBC and Social Development, there's an advocate for service quality. So there is somewhere you can take a complaint, if you like, but it isn't sufficiently visible. It isn't sufficiently transparent in reporting out. I'm not sure it has the independence necessary to do that work.

One of the challenges is that we often have experience with the youth. We've done advocacy, and some of them have very challenging situations where there's a dual diagnosis. There's a significant developmental disability. There may be a mental health issue. It's a precarious residential situation from year to year.

We're assisting to try and stay focused on the need. When they turn 19, we're out of the equation. There really isn't necessarily a parent advocate, and the situation can become quite grim for some of these young
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people. Remember, chronologically they are 18 or 19, but developmentally their needs are more akin to that of a child.

[1455]

Certainly, we've recommended repeatedly that the mandate look at expanding to 24 for this cohort of kids who have special needs served by the ministry. It's important, as they come into the CLBC system for that early adulthood, that the care planning continues, especially given the shifts in this area and the difficulty of navigating the system. So we've recommended it. We haven't had any progress to date, but we're continuing to promote that.

Finally, we recommended a stronger focus on quality assurance. Work has not progressed in the area of special needs on data collection and reporting in any meaningful way. We want to see that change. We've been in active discussions with the senior leadership of the ministry about this. We've had very detailed discussions around what types of services are provided. What is the wait-listing, and what is the way the work is triaged, if you like, in terms of the support? And so on. So we would like to see that supported.

Services to children and youth with special needs require some significant changes in policy and practice to be successful — some greater clarity at the front-line system of the workers in terms of how child protection workers and child and youth mental health collaborate with children and youth with special needs.

There are significant practice issues. This report gives you an update, but I would suggest that the work is not completed, and there are some significant gaps remaining in terms of having a system in place in British Columbia.

I'll stop on that report.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Doug has got a question.

D. Horne: Specifically on the issue of the advocacy above 19, I definitely see your concern there. I'm just wondering if it's more about the transition and making sure that the transition from being assisted by the Ministry of Children and Families and then moving over to Social Development…. Obviously, that's a big move, and some significant changes happen there.

I'm just wondering: beyond when that move takes place, what's the magic of 24? Obviously, as they go forward, many of these people with developmental disabilities are in the system and being assisted throughout their lives, and I'm just wondering…. The cutoff at 24 — why was that chosen?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, really, it's just consistent with what we know about brain development. Up to 24 there's still significant opportunity around supporting and making sure there's a positive environment to reach your full developmental potential.

That's the magic of the age range, if you like, but what tends to happen is with the cases that we've had — and again, we've had many hundreds of cases over the past few years, many very precarious cases — frequently Ministry of Children and Family Development social workers are the ones who call us and ask us to specifically become involved because they can't marshal the health resources or the residential resources.

Ironically, it's a case where often we're called by people in the system saying: "So-and-so's placement is about to expire, and we just don't know how we can get everybody together. Could you provide some advocacy to stay focused on the needs of the individual?"

Sometimes there are different philosophies that govern different systems, so in the health system it might be: "No, you don't fit into the tertiary care model. You fit into this model." You know, in the education system, it might be something else. So it's really the question of trying to make sure there is stability and support as the person moves forward, with some real lens and focus on that individual.

[1500]

The challenging cases. What we've found are ones where the child has been in care, for instance, or has lived out of the home or the family doesn't really have the capacity to be an advocate, for whatever reason. They have their own challenges or other concerns, so that person really doesn't have another person or outside agency advocating for them. They tend to not have very sophisticated advocacy skills and often, for instance, end up homeless. They're homeless. They're on the street, and it's completely unnecessary that that happens.

Now, will they contact the Advocate for Service Quality suddenly when they're 20, when they've been in the children's system for many years? Likely they won't. Will we hear about their cases when we find out something tragic has happened to them on the street? Yes, we can.

But one of the things we can do better is to at least let us help those who we're connected to. Get them through to 24. Even year to year, it's: what are we doing this year? People can become in quite a mad panic about some of these situations where a placement breaks down. They do not know at the end of the contract where the person will live, and there's no more foster care. There's no family. So what happens? It's such a deeply vulnerable population.

It's one of those areas where it will probably mean an additional 300 to 400 cases a year for us, but I think it will be really helpful. Plus we could then share information back within the system to try and strengthen that.

It tends to be individuals with complex situations but not much family support or very limited family support. So they're not coming from a family that's going to have a disability savings plan in place. There hasn't been much financial planning, and there hasn't been a lot of
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skills in terms of how to navigate these systems. So you definitely need some outside support.

Clearly, CLBC has a huge responsibility and has a caseload, and they have to do their work. But whether or not someone needs to be outside with independent advocacy to make sure that that particularly vulnerable population, which although chronologically of adult age, developmentally really still fits within the category of a children's system, is just getting their help….

We feel pretty strongly that that's necessary, and we highly recommend that the government considers that for the benefit of those 19-year-olds, in particular, who are aging out of care and onto the streets

D. Horne: As I said, I can see the transition as a big issue. Just sort of going back to question again. Obviously, the way that Community Living British Columbia works is that they put together a plan and then basically implement that plan. Usually they work with the families and with the thing. In the cases with young people who don't have that support of the family, having an advocate, I think, is important.

Going back to my question. Once the plan is in place, is there great prevalence of the requirement for advocacy throughout the plan to 24? I guess the broader question, which we've all heard…. Everything isn't always perfect. I guess that's what I'm saying with the age of 24 as well. Basically, it's something that we need to address and always improve as well as Community Living British Columbia. That's something that we all see as a goal.

My question is: once someone is 25, is there any less prevalence of the requirement to basically deal with that? Where is the most vulnerable time? As I would see it, it would be the time when they're transitioning from the Ministry of Children and Family Development to Community Living British Columbia.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think there's a broader issue which is really a political issue, which is: do all adults with developmental disabilities need advocacy? That's a broader political issue. That's not really for me to weigh in on.

I just know from working with the population of children who have developmental disabilities that at 19, they're not served adequately with advocacy supports in the adult system. The idea that they all have to have a plan and should have a plan…. The reality is when you don't have active family involvement…. When the person who's done your plan is an MCFD social worker who you no longer pick up the phone and call or pays any attention, what happens to your plan? Is there someone in CLBC that supplants that guardianship social worker? Well, there isn't.

[1505]

So what happens? The priority on your case falls to the bottom because you're not phoning constantly. You're not sophisticated to manipulate these systems and work on these systems. I think the key thing is that everyone in the system wants to support young adults with developmental disabilities. It's just that sometimes getting everybody together to focus on it requires some external advocacy.

So our experience is.... We have a very collaborative form of advocacy. We work together; we talk together. We try and stay focused. And we share.... We have access to information, so we know that for the last 15 years these have been complex needs. So suddenly if they come into CLBC and they're going to be placed in an independent living environment that's not going to meet their needs, it's not going to work. We've seen the whole file. They come into CLBC. You know, where is that complete picture going to be? So I think it's quite crucial on that area that there be supports.

Also, on the aboriginal children, what we're seeing is that the aboriginal children with significant developmental disabilities are often being diagnosed quite late in life. They're not getting the early diagnosis before five. They might be getting diagnosed quite a bit later. So the transition planning is quite a challenge again. You know, you're in adulthood. So I think that's another area.

It's just a gap. I'm not sure how to fill all of the gaps that are there because it's not my area. But I do know this: that the kids served by the ministry are often very well supported. Some of them have been in care and have had special needs and have had particular therapeutic foster home environments with plans, with education and so on.

That ends at 19. What happens in the adult system is a sort of voluntary services stream that can be a very different dynamic. They're not capable of navigating that. So a more sophisticated, focused piece of advocacy is required for those young adults. If it's 19 to 25, I'm not of concern.

We need a window of years so we can see some stability with their placement and also can see the full transition. Workers don't get a full understanding of the person immediately. And it depends on how good the file was before and if it gets transferred appropriately. What if they only get part of the file, and we find out — well, guess what — you're missing the file from eight previous places where the individual lived? Does that happen? Yes, it does happen, frequently. We see that on the child side. We know that on the adult side it happens. So then something happens that's less than optimal for that person, and it could have been prevented.

So it's not the entire answer, but it's a big area where simple change can at least backstop some key problems.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Okay. I have a slight question there, too, but I think you've mostly answered it. I know — I think from people who have called my constituency office — that sometimes the family can be involved as
[ Page 228 ]
young as the children being 14, 15. So there is, potentially, some number of years to work out this plan. But I see your point in terms of those who have not had and don't have the support of a family or something like that.

But would it make sense to maybe restrict it to those more complicated cases where there hasn't been family support? Otherwise, it's a generic....

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it needs to be kids that have been in the MCFD system, from 19 to 24. It's based on.... People have to contact us and ask for our services. But I think the big challenge, frankly, is that there can be excellent planning for transition, and then suddenly you're transitioned, and the plan is not followed. There's nowhere to live.

So you can have a piece of paper that is a plan, but you have no services for the person. A bit of outside advocacy focusing on the needs of the individual can actually help create that and get it started. But if you don't have any advocacy piece, then it can sit there. I think there's enormous frustration for young adults who are in families, but particularly for those who are outside of families. You know, they may be being arrested on the street because they're sleeping under a bridge or something. It's quite a grave situation for some of those, and unnecessary.

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): Just touching on that and then asking another question. Has there been any thought beyond this to providing advocacy for young people coming out of care, up to the age of 24 or 25? They're very vulnerable when they are trying to find accommodation. We were talking earlier about the ability to budget, what's happening with housing and what's going to happen with them. So I know it's not specific to this report, but I wondered if it's something that has been considered — looking at some sort of safety net for the 19- to 24- or 25-year-olds coming out of care.

[1510]

In this specific report you highlight five areas where there are serious concerns. You also talk about specific changes to policy in the earlier section on autism and the provincial advisers, and you mention significant gaps. I mean, this is just five areas out of the ones that you have selected. Can you give some indication to the breadth beyond this? This is quite significant, what we have here, but you're saying that this is just an indicator.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, the original report, the first monitoring report on children and youth with special needs, identified 12 areas and sort of did short-term, medium- and long-term where work was required, because there was some very urgent work required.

This recent glance just looked at those, made five recommendations by looking specifically at how the services have come back into the ministry. More generally, I would say that my discussions with the ministry and ministries around children and youth with special needs are really on the issue of how we're translating some of these broad interministerial agreements on what special needs are, what the functional needs are, into actual practice and support.

I think the big challenge is: what is a voluntary service and what is a required service? Services are voluntary in the sense: do you want to have a contract to have these community supports? But in some families they're not able to manage that, and so they need, actually, social work support to be able to make sure that their children will be included in their community and their school with their special needs and that their rights will be fully respected.

So there are some deep issues that we're certainly in ongoing discussions with the ministry about in this program area — what type of executive sponsorship, leadership, performance will be expected in this area. It remains a significant area.

This is one piece of public reporting. I anticipate doing some ongoing public reporting in the next while on this.

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): And on my previous question about the generally 19- to 25-year-old youth?

M. Turpel-Lafond: There has been a trend in other jurisdictions to extend services to young adults — foster care, for instance, past 19; advocacy supports past 19 to 24 for children that are aging out of care.

Certainly it's an area that we're always discussing with the ministry. We're mostly discussing the youth-leaving-care arrangements: what is the planning and so on? It's an ongoing issue that we see the need for.

I have another hat which is that I'm the president of the Canadian Council of Child and Youth Advocates. In that capacity we have just engaged with the Child Welfare League of Canada. It was started out of B.C., but everybody signed on. We're going to complete a study of what is available for children and youth aging out of care in every jurisdiction — like what income support programs, what education programs, what is there that would support them to not transition out of care into, for instance, social assistance, you know, to have more stable things.

We're doing a major piece of work that we'll be reporting — I'll be sharing it with the committee — which will look nationally at what our policy framework is for the 19- to 24-year-olds who age out of care.

I think that will be very interesting, because it will give us a bit of a reflection of how we are even doing in Canada, in British Columbia. So I'm keen to see that. It's quite a sophisticated piece of work. It's going to be very positive.
[ Page 229 ]

J. McIntyre (Chair): With that, actually, those were the two questions. Should we go on to the last report? Anything last here? If there's time, we could always do just a wrap at the end if we've skipped over anything.

On to the third report, Hearing the Voices of Children and Youth: A Child-Centred Approach to Complaint Resolution, which was a joint report with the Representative for Children and Youth and the Office of the Ombudsperson. I see we have Linda Carlson joining us.

Joint Report:
Hearing the Voices of Children
and Youth: A Child-Centred
Approach to Complaint Resolution

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, thank you. I'm so pleased that Linda's here. Kim Carter, the ombuds, is travelling on community outreach at the moment, so she's not available today.

Interjection.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Smithers and Houston — so there you go.

This report was the product of a very positive collaboration between the ombuds office and the representative's office. We initiated it really because the ombuds office deals with administrative fairness and, before there was a representative's office, had done work and does work with children and families around how their disputes are resolved.

[1515]

Kim Carter and I were particularly interested in looking at one issue which I spoke to a little bit earlier, which is: what is the quality of our systems in British Columbia in the Ministry of Children and Family Development to deal with complaints from youth? When a youth has a complaint, what happens with those complaints? Is the process organized? Is it serious? Is it child-focused? And how does it reflect on us?

Again, an office like mine can be created and deal with 6,400 complaints, which is fine, and the process is positive. But we want, closer to the level of services, these systems to be strengthened. That's really what the rights of children require: good dispute resolution, on the ground, with the children's views, being effective and timely.

Kim and I and our staff, with the great support from Linda and others, were able to do a fairly thorough review of the complaints process in the ministry and make some specific recommendations. Again, this is a report that when we released it, we didn't receive a lot of feedback in the sense that the ministry was of the view that it was transforming its practice and would get to this.

I think we have, again, been revisiting some of these recommendations and looking at what the ministry's policies will be to make sure it has the children's views, also to make sure that it has child-friendly dispute processes and deals with some of the observations. On a few things I will note key recommendations.

When we looked at different ways that a young person could complain when they're not satisfied with the services they've received, we looked at a number of files, we looked at a number of offices, and we looked at the ministry's provincial complaints resolution policy. I'm going to abbreviate a bit, with the time, but a number of key recommendations were made.

In the CF and CSA, in the legislation, there's a requirement of a 30-day time limit for resolving complaints. The legislation really sets out a foundation for service. This is unique legislation. It talks about how kids in care have rights, for instance. When they have a concern, they need to have a process. Of course, there's the legislation for the rep's office, and so on. There's the ombuds office for parents, foster parents, adoptive parents and others.

Then, internally, the ministry has to take 30 days and resolve these issues. It sets out a timeline. It was important for us to look at how it was fulfilling its legislative commitment to children and what the Legislature has asked it to do.

First of all, we found that its policy was not consistent with its legislation. It didn't follow a 30-day time limit. It allowed for, in some instances, 90 days or other time periods. We brought that to the attention of the ministry to say: "You need to follow your statutory obligation or amend your statute."

Secondly, it was very significant to us.... A key point for dispute resolution anywhere in government, and the ombuds is very expert in this area, is when you're receiving services from an official in a ministry, and particularly when you're a child.... So someone has made a decision. You say, "I don't like the foster home I'm living in. I'm unhappy with this. I feel they're neglecting my needs." You call your social worker and say: "I want to move to another foster home."

This happens frequently, and they often will phone us. The ministry says: "No, we're not changing it. That's it." Now we're going to make a complaint. One of the challenges often in these systems is that the person who's making the decision about where you live is not the person that deals with your complaint. A fresh person in the organization looks at it and gives a fresh perspective. You need that arm's-length relationship.

The person that takes the complaint is not the person responsible for the service to you. Otherwise, it really affects public confidence in public services. People feel like: "Well, you're the judge and jury. No matter if I complain, you've already made your decision. You're just going to tell me the same thing."
[ Page 230 ]

So children and youth, especially, feel quite aggrieved by that type of service. They want to have someone else to bring their complaint to. Generally, a key part of any good complaints process is you have that arm's-length piece. Again, we've recommended that MCFD amend its regulations and its policy to make sure that this principle is clearly recognized in practice. The person resolving the complaint is not the person responsible for the designated service that's under consideration.

[1520]

A third recommendation we made was — again, we've spoken a bit about this today on different themes — a key core issue, which is that MCFD needs to actively engage youth and solicit their feedback on how to increase the effectiveness of the complaint process.

One of the things, and we'll all be very familiar with this around public services.... There are different views. Maybe in a year there are a hundred complaints made. Of 12,000 kids, there are a hundred complaints made. Well, there are different views.

One view will be: "Well, that's because the services are so great that there's no need to complain." The other view is that people aren't using the complaints process because they don't know what it is, and so they don't use it. You really have to look carefully at these policies. Are they accessible? Are they understood?

In a good system you would want kids not necessarily to be complaining but soliciting their feedback regularly and making sure they understand these processes, and of course, reporting out to the public at the end of the year on how many complaints were taken in these regions with this resolution. They were resolved in this timeline by someone neutral and independent from the service — some basic accountability and reporting.

On accessibility, this was a key point for the ombuds and myself on whether these were accessible. We did see that the ministry had been developing some material, like a best practices for dealing with complaints. However, the ministry did not adopt a consistent complaints policy across all regions — five different regions; five different practices.

Many of these kids were moved from region to region. Who do you call in the ministry office to make a complaint? It's a different person in this region versus that region. There were some, again, basic issues around consistency and sort of basic functioning of a provincial complaints process.

The consistency was a major issue, then tracking and then quality assurance — so making sure that they're looking at these complaints processes. One area where the Ombudsperson and I were quite concerned was…. We wanted to look at these practices region to region, which we did. We wanted to look at the policy and its implementation, and we saw these issues we reported on.

But in British Columbia there are 22 delegated aboriginal agencies. Those are agencies that provide services for the ministry to aboriginal children and youth and families. There are different levels of delegation, including full delegation around child protection to other family services and so on. So there's a delegation matrix. Before an agency becomes delegated, they must have a dispute resolution process so kids can take complaints. We looked at the aboriginal agencies, and we were concerned that we could not see clear dispute resolution processes for kids in those agencies.

In some instances, while the delegation required it, they had not either been established or they weren't functioning, and they weren't being monitored by the ministry. We did recommend — the ministry rejected this recommendation, although we're in active discussions about it again — that the ministry undertake a review and audit of the delegated aboriginal agency's compliance with that; so if they do not have a process to take complaints from children and youth and resolve them, that there be some steps taken. And we feel strongly that that's done.

Now at the same time, in my role, I work with the directors of the delegated agencies through their forum, and I reported and encouraged them to work more effectively in this area. They do raise to me a range of concerns with why they can't do this. Sometimes it's because they don't have access to technology, they're developing, they're too small and so on. Some of their issues are significant. I bring them to the ministry, and we have to work through them.

But the long and the short of it is that if you're going to have services, then legislation requires you to have a dispute process, and it has to be done within this timeliness time frame. There was a concern on the part of the Ombudsman and myself that there had been some relaxing of those legislative requirements for agencies where possibly some of the most vulnerable kids were being served and needed to have their complaints heard.

This is still an open recommendation, and I continue to work with the ministry, particularly with the change in leadership, to see where this will go. This is an ongoing concern.

The long and the short of it is that there is a lot of work to be done to improve the complaints process, to make it a single, clear process, to make it child-focused and to have regular accountability out around what happens.

[1525]

Again, the ministry, because of its legislative requirements but also because it's the Ministry of Children and Families that recognizes the principles of the UN convention in its preamble and its operating principle, needs to have very good processes to not only take the views of children but to listen to children when they have a complaint and show that it can work through those complaints with kids.

Complaints are not a bad thing. This is a key point that we make in this report. Complaints from kids….
[ Page 231 ]
The word "complaint" is kind of pejorative, but feedback and concerns from kids are a good thing because you get them talking. We want young people to be positive about the services they receive so that when they become citizens, they'll have more faith and confidence in their government and greater participation.

The final point I will make…. We did highlight a few promising practices. Some of the promising practices have been shut down now, so I'm not going to go into them at length. We did make a point by way of conclusion. Kim Carter and I were kind of concerned about a problem in British Columbia, which is that we provide advocacy services.

Let's say the child wants to be moved to another foster home, so they call us and say: "We want to go to another foster home." They're saying: "Sorry, there's no other foster home. You're going to stay." We try and get a child focus. "Can you listen to the views of the child?" and so on. So the workers say: "Yes, we've listened to the views of the child, but they're not being moved." So the child feels very strongly that they're not happy about that environment.

Now, practically, what happens sometimes is they'll run away from the foster home. What we would like is for there to be another remedy. Sometimes we exhaust all of the remedies, and the child doesn't have anywhere else to go after our office and a complaint process. Sometimes, particularly for children in care, they need an extra boost with respect to being heard, because they are not that visible.

One of the things that Kim Carter and I saw was there had been a recent development of an elder law clinic in the Lower Mainland to look at better supports for seniors — better understanding their need to have appropriate advocacy and sometimes legal representation. We recommended or observed in this report that there isn't, in British Columbia, a children's legal clinic where in those occasions where the system is exhausted a child can go somewhere.

So we did talk about how we felt — that that is an important service. We should really be looking at how we can fund and support that type of initiative. We put that out as a recommendation. On that, I've had some very interesting and positive discussions with the Law Foundation and others — law school deans and law school folks across the province, the Law Society and a range of others.

We continue to actively talk about how we can enhance services to children, particularly as we look at changing our family justice system and other areas. How can we make sure children sometimes get that additional level of representation that they don't now have? So that has sparked an ongoing positive discussion, which I think will hopefully lead to some creation of something significant later.

The larger issue, in keeping with what we were talking about today around Growing Up in B.C. and so forth, is that if young people really do count in British Columbia, which I know we all feel passionately that they do, we need to know that their views are being taken into account and that they have good processes.

We also know that the research is very strong — and Kim Carter and I reflect on this in the report — that involving youth in decisions and letting them get their voices heard improves their development. It promotes their participation in society, their participation as citizens. It actually improves services — there's good evidence — and it enhances protection for the most vulnerable children and youth. So we feel very strongly that there is a lot of room for improvement in this area.

As I say, when the report was released, we received very limited response. There hasn't been a lot of progress in this area. However, we're in active discussions, where I'm hoping that this will become much more meaningful in the near future.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Linda, were you going to add anything, or you're here for questions?

L. Carlson: No, thank you.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Okay. Good. Thank you very much.

So I'll open the floor, then, to questions. Any questions?

[1530]

K. Krueger: I sort of had some qualms on this, and it's just because it's focusing on the particular issue of how to present legitimate complaints. It almost sounded like we want to build a culture of complaints. Even in the traditional family, there's always this parent-shopping. If mom doesn't give you the answer you want, you try to get a better answer from dad.

I see that as potentially being a trap of being too accommodating in creating a complaint process that's so easy, perhaps, that children in care shop around from foster home to foster home. When I ask that, I'm thinking, well, that that would sound really awful to someone who has dealt with some of these really bad situations where clearly kids should have been moved out of foster homes much earlier.

I think it's important to put on record that we have to have a balance between the natural tendency of all of us to be dissatisfied with constraints and rules and so on that we don't like and, of course, the burning priority to remove children from dangerous or unsafe or improper places. I just wanted your comments on that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the issues about what happens within a family are very informative for how we think about complaints, because that word "complaints" is a bad word in the sense that it sounds so negative. But
[ Page 232 ]
I think that, again, the prudent parent invites the views of a child.

Even though, in our families, children will complain.... Heaven knows, anyone who's parented a teenager knows it's a litany of complaint from morning to the end, and I'm just speaking of my own experience. But in any event, what is important is to have a culture of, "You're going to be heard. I'm not necessarily going to agree, but you're going to be sincerely heard," which means.... You know, what adolescent doesn't want to really be heard?

They may know that they're not going to get the car or get whatever, but they need to feel heard, to feel like they are a participant in the family and a participant in the enterprise of child development.

I think the issue for the children and youth that are served by the ministry in our experience — and I know the ombuds has had deep experience over several years in this before our advocacy services were here — is that the situation for some of the children is pretty grim, and they're often not listened to.

They may have said to the social worker that they feel they're being abused in a home. For instance, the fridge is locked. They don't have access to food. And that's an issue. There's no: "Well, whatever." So the issue is how you deal with that.

The Ministry of Children and Families has got to have that facility to invite it and listen to it. The determination of what's in the best interests of the child will rest with the ministry. It's a big responsibility. It doesn't mean you agree with everything. We do have what I would call.... They're not nuisance complaints, but they're good to get kids talking. We will occasionally get a kid call our office and say: "My mother's making me do homework. I want to go to a foster home." Well, sorry, it doesn't work that way.

"Why do you want to go?" "Because I don't like my homework." "Well, guess what? Homework is part of life. Why don't you talk to your mom?" "Well, she's going to yell at me." "Well, do you yell at her too?"

In the end of it, we teach kids how to resolve disputes through thoughtful, considerate ways of talking to people. But when it is your mandate to decide what is in the best interests of a child — where they live, how they live and so on — you really have to have that responsibility to listen, and you need to be prepared to take some flak, and you need to redirect the flak into a positive form.

It's really significant that you have that right approach. You understand the developmental stages of kids, and they will assert their independence and have issues. But you respond back and say: "This is a good thing you're talking about this. What do you want to do about that?"

Or, you know: "You're not happy with that foster home? Then take it seriously. Maybe the social worker for the resource needs to go and speak to the foster parent about the fact that the fridge is locked. Maybe the fridge shouldn't be locked. Maybe you do need to have access to a private phone to call your parents. Maybe you don't agree with the religion in the home and you don't want to go to church with the family, and maybe you shouldn't have to. It's a legitimate issue that needs to be talked about. We can work it through."

The kids need to know you have processes to work things through and they're heard. So "complaints" is a bad word, because as adults we think about something else. But it's really about how we encourage the views of children, we listen to them and we deal positively with them to boost their development. But also, when you listen to kids, you often find out something deeply of concern is happening.

[1535]

Again, we're not going to cast everything with one brush, but we have had many instances where kids have said, "Something's going on," and in point of fact they were right. They were not very well listened to. So maybe it's better we err on the side of listening to them than slamming the door behind them or in front of them.

R. Lee: When I look at your clients, are they all the children and youth in the province? The services that they can complain about are probably the services provided by government. Are there any funded agencies, funded by government...? Can they complain about the services they are getting from those agencies?

M. Turpel-Lafond: They can. That's really important. If you are an agency providing services to children, you need to have those processes. They are not always in place, but it's an important principle for services which are over a certain dollar amount, for instance, to be accredited and so on — that they need to have a complaints process. But again, whether or not we're reporting on it regularly and dealing with it is something else.

We need to change that culture. We need to change it to be one of where people can bring it forward and young people feel like they can speak up and they can be heard and — they may not get their way — that their issues will be treated fairly.

I think that the issue of fair treatment by officials and fair treatment of children and youth at their appropriate stage of development to increase their confidence and support in public services and government is really important.

The one other point I would say is that a big ministry like the Ministry of Children and Families and many serving agencies — they're often very busy. They often have many conflicting priorities and demands. To find time to do this work and do it well requires that you have to carve it out and make it a priority.

One of the key findings in the report from Kim Carter and myself was that this has got to be a part of the business of the Ministry of Children and Family
[ Page 233 ]
Development. They should model it in a good way that would hopefully influence service providers — you know, the Ministry of Education and other places where children receive very important public services.

R. Lee: But that's not in the act, right? That's not in the act that the service providers have to…? I mean, I want to define this group of….

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I can ask Jeremy to speak to it further, but there is an issue, which is if you contract with an agency to provide services that are in relationship to the legislation — so you transfer your services out to an agency, as opposed to like in one region they are provided by an agency and in another region they are provided by the staff — you are expected to have a similar process. The accountability and responsibility follows you. You need to have it. The ministry in its contracting needs to make sure that it's there. It needs to have some compliance and oversight.

Jeremy, maybe you can speak to some examples of that.

J. Berland: Sure. I was just going to say though that section 93 of the Child, Family and Community Service Act says that the director, the person responsible for the administration of the act, has to have a process for receiving complaints.

The services — your earlier question about who's eligible — really include all of the kinds of things that are covered under that act, which is everything from family support through investigations about whether a child needs to be taken into care or not through to the treatment of that child while they may be in care or to the behaviour of the worker in relation to the family.

There are complaints from family members about whether they want to change social workers. There are complaints from children about their homes. There may be complaints from foster parents about their treatment by a worker or some issue around planning. It really is that whole broad range of things that are in question.

For the large part, the services of the ministry are provided through contract agencies. The direct services, mostly — some family support services, investigations and guardianship services…. All of those other services are in the hands of community agencies. Because they are operating under the authority of the Child, Family and Community Service Act, there is an expectation that those agencies themselves will have a complaint process but that the ministry, as the funder, will oversee that and make sure the agencies are responding to the concerns from citizens who are making complaints.

R. Lee: Okay, but not any for some of the students in school. Can they complain about the service of the school through your office, with that kind of process?

[1540]

J. Berland: Well, that's a different question. This was a report about the services of the Ministry of Children and Family Development, mostly under the authority of the Child, Family and Community Service Act, but not exclusively, because they provide some services for mental health and youth justice under other policies and legislation.

A student in school who wants to complain that the teacher is giving them too much homework or is doing something else, that would not…

R. Lee: That's not covered by this.

J. Berland: …be a complaint that would go to the ministry — unless the student is saying: "I'm not getting enough support at school. I'm a child in care, and the school's not supporting me." That might be, but otherwise it wouldn't go forward.

J. McIntyre (Chair): I'm going to jump in the queue here for a moment.

Appreciating that there are, as you say, things in progress and recommendations being reviewed and different systems being in place, do you sense that there is — I'm sorry if I missed this in the presentation — some progress on those critical issues of timeliness, of consistency across regions and of service, and of, most importantly I think, the independence of the decision-maker? Has the ministry been receptive to those kinds of basic recommendations you are making?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think they have. We certainly had some good discussions about it. I think that there needs to be the type of leadership required to put it into place.

I think they're pretty basic recommendations — consistent, timely, accessible reporting out. I mean, the different lens is it has to be child-friendly and have a child focus. I think that it's taken a long time to get to this point. We wanted this put in place by October 2010. We thought we gave ample time. The recommendation has come and gone.

Some regions, I think, have been more effective than others, but the provincial level reporting and accountability for this is not what it can and should be. For a ministry of children and family services, this has got to be part of the core business of what they do. In each of their program areas and as a ministry, they need to make sure they can do this work, and it has to be demonstrated and clear.

We will continue to monitor that, and I'll continue to encourage it, but there are some hopeful signs. But it has to land…. Particularly, Member, in an office there has to be some clarity. Who do you call? If you cannot even tell the youth who they're supposed to call, region to region, how are you going to respond to the call? Maybe they're
[ Page 234 ]
calling and speaking to the wrong person. It's that elementary, not to mention what you're supposed to do when they do call in.

I think we can clarify that. It's easy to fix this problem, but it requires fixing.

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): I think I'll drop from the list, because it's quarter to and you basically answered my questions.

D. Horne: A couple of quick points. The substance of what you're saying I think is very, very important. That is, obviously having some impartiality to the complaints process and having a clear process so that children who are in care can feel that they're being heard. I think that's extremely important.

One of the things that I'd be interested in and that I'm wondering if you looked at, at all, as this is a joint project between the Ombudsperson's office and your own, is…. Oftentimes there is sort of — and obviously, having been a member for a couple years and having worked around politics for many years…. There tends to be two groups of people.

There is one group of people that quietly soldier on and hardly ever complain about what's happening around them — and quite frankly, in that group, fairly difficult situations can take place, but they just sort of sweep them under the carpet. Then there's another group that basically fairly minor things can happen, and they tend to be constantly complaining.

The difficulty is finding a balance so that you actually deal and provide some direction to those who perhaps never complain — and quite frankly, by complaining they could be enhancing our system dramatically, because some of the things they're dealing with are of significant importance — but at the same time be able to weed out those that are constantly complaining.

[1545]

The other thing that I would be interested in is: of the group that tend to be complaining a lot — and in working together, I'd be interested in — how many cases would be active in both your office and the Ombudsperson's office and perhaps a member of the Legislature or two or three or four?

In many cases, quite frankly, what I've come across is that there are several members that people have approached to sort of advocate on their behalf as well. Obviously, we've got a whole group of people now advocating for one person, and I'm not certain that that's providing a lot of service to the broader community and to the broader group and improving the things that we are actually trying to provide to the citizens.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I'm going to ask Linda to respond to the issue about the type of different approaches, and so on, around administrative fairness. But I'll just say one thing very quickly. I think that one of the key things is really to boost public confidence in this population that their views are valid, and it's important that they be well supported and also to boost their advocacy skills.

Because for young people to learn without being angry…. Sometimes they can be passive-aggressive, particularly if they've been abused and neglected. They don't necessarily have the skills to speak to what their needs are and deal with people. This is a big thing: to teach and support advocacy skills. You do advocacy work. Dispute resolution has to boost that, so it takes a little bit different lens.

But sometimes you're dealing with young people with significant challenges. In the case of children and youth with special needs, you may be dealing with someone who's hearing-impaired. You may be dealing with someone who's got significant developmental disabilities. So the child lens and child focus mean that you have to be a pretty agile service provider. Dealing with feedback and questions is sort of part of your business — to be very comfortable about that. It goes with the service to have that.

I've seen many instances of very good practice, where people are really open and they want to get the child to say what the concerns are and to work though it. I've seen instances where the child just can't get through. We need some consistency.

But I think Linda should speak, with her breadth of experience in the Ombudsperson's office, about: is it good in this society to have people have processes, and how do they use those processes?

L. Carlson: I think that what you find, when you listen to people who have complaints — and certainly, in the Ombudsperson office we do have people who use our services perhaps at a higher level than others — often they are the people with the least resources to respond to the simplest of issues.

They're people who are so vulnerable that when $5 goes missing from their locker in the home they live in, they don't know what they're going to manage with over the weekend. They're anxious, and they don't have support, and they don't have the capacity, perhaps, to problem-solve on their own. So while they can appear to be the sort of chronic complainer, there is very often substance to the issues they're complaining about.

Sometimes what we try and do, as with advocacy for those adults who are in frequent need, is to try and help them problem-solve as well. But I have never experienced a really foolish or frivolous complaint from a young person, from the perspective of that young person. Again, their complaints to our office....

We've talked about complaints, but really people usually start with a question because something doesn't feel quite right, and then it might develop into a kind of inquiry or a concern. When nobody responds to that, it does become a complaint.
[ Page 235 ]

For young people in care to make complaints to our office takes a great deal of courage. We encourage them to express their complaints, and we don't dismiss them as being frivolous or perhaps insignificant because we understand what it takes for them to express themselves, to challenge somebody who's making decisions who has so much control over their lives. I think it's important to always put the complaint into the perspective of the person who's making that complaint.

[1550]

The other comment you made is on the people who do contact everybody and if that's really helpful. As an office that does impartial investigations, we can't advocate for those young people who come to us with complaints. Sometimes that's really difficult. What we can do, though, is assure them that there is someone who can help them have their voice heard while we're doing an investigation.

I can tell you that a young person with support to speak for themselves…. With good, impartial investigation, the outcome of that can be truly magical. It informs the agency as to how they could have dealt with a situation better if they had been prepared not to say, "You've made a complaint; I have to decide whether you're right or my staff person is right," but to say: "We'll take another look at that."

It gives them that information so that they can do it better next time, but it also affirms to that young person that they do have rights and that they are supported when they need to speak out. It helps them know when they can help someone else, a peer, speak out when they're in that situation.

D. Horne: And more particularly, feeling that actually their concerns are being addressed rather than simply discounted.

I would have another question. One of the other points that was made was on the legal services. Many people have many views on this. I understand what you're saying. The fact that, obviously, there are points when you have extinguished all of the areas open to you. However, I would have a huge problem funding people suing the government. I'd just see that as wrong behaviour and a model that shouldn't be followed.

I think one of the problems that the United States faces is the litigious nature of their society and the feeling that anytime you're wronged or that someone's brushed by you, you're going to sue them. Providing funding for legal services I simply don't believe would be an appropriate or suitable course.

That being said, something that I always did in business to basically deal with disputes…. Obviously, in dealing with everything, you oftentimes have disputes. If a dispute is bona fide…. I think one of the things that this course oftentimes distinguishes between is those disputes that are bona fide and those disputes that are simply punitive. The relationship perhaps may have broken down, and you're trying to simply make a point. That is through arbitration, some form of arbitration. When arbitration exists, obviously, you can be heard.

Going back to all of the points that we've been making throughout this report — that is, the ability to be heard, the ability to have some sort of group or body or person that is independent and that can hear that — that type of a mechanism perhaps could be quite appropriate in order to be able to deal with some of these things.

But to simply create a legal fund to allow youth to sue the government, I think, just would be a slippery slope and would really, quite frankly, not accomplish all that much in the long run. I would be interested in your thoughts on that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, first of all, we do have a legal fund for youth to sue the government. It's called the Public Guardian and Trustee. If a youth is harmed — sexually abused, for instance, physically abused, has a motor vehicle accident or whatever — and there's a tort and there's liability, you're not doing nuisance lawsuits. There are issues around harm. Sometimes citizens experience harm, and the PGT, for instance, as the guardian of the estate, needs to take an action on their behalf. They don't have a guardian, so there are cases….

D. Horne: In those cases. That's what I'm saying. It's already taken care of there.

M. Turpel-Lafond: There are cases.

But the other issue is that British Columbia, unlike a lot of other jurisdictions…. If we go next door to Alberta, there's a children's lawyer program, where children — in the best interests of the child in a family dispute — don’t feel like mom or dad are actually speaking for them. They want that they be heard directly. Occasionally they get a counsel appointed for them because it's high conflict. Or in a child welfare case, they've tried, but they don't feel they're being heard. They're rare cases, but they're very important cases, and you don't want to lose that opportunity to have some expertise.

[1555]

One of the other challenges we have is…. We do have, for instance, directors counsel. The Ministry of Children and Family Development hires counsel to represent the provincial director when there has been a removal of a child. But who does that directors counsel represent? They represent the director. Someone is in court representing the parent. Then what about the child? Who even talks to the child? We hope the ministry goes back and talks to the child, but what if the child's not very happy?

We've had some instances, some pretty dramatic cases, particularly where a child wants to be removed. They are in a home where mother has a new partner and
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there is significant alcohol abuse and domestic violence, and the child's not safe and doesn't feel safe but won't be removed. So we can't get the ministry to remove the child or take other action. We've exhausted our process. We've exhausted the complaints process. I think that child deserves to be represented, because I'm not sure the best interests of that child are served by being in that environment. Their guardian, the only person that could do something for them, is not protecting them.

It's a challenge. There are not a lot of cases, but there are some, and they are serious enough. But the family law ones are really significant. We've had instances in this province where young people have been so aggrieved by what's happened in the family court that they've committed suicide. They don't feel like they've been heard. Simply having access to some children's lawyer, having their views heard, probably could make a difference to them. They are that upset about who they're going to live with.

These are not issues where people are going to, you know, sue the government or what have you. It's really about whether or not their views can be heard, when people are making decisions about their life, whether or not they can be in there.

D. Horne: In those cases, obviously, it's a much different thing. The difficulty is the context of the comments on this report that had to do with complaints about the ministry.

Your comments weren't about family law disputes. Your comments were on complaints to the ministry. My comments were surrounding, you know, when a complaint to the ministry isn't satisfied. I don't believe litigation is the answer. That has nothing to do with family law and nothing to do with any of the other points that you've just made.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I mean, there's obviously…. The issue is just one of: if a child has a right in the CF and CSA, for instance, to have access to the private use of a phone to call their family in a home. If they don't have access to that, no matter what we do, do we just tell them, "Sorry, you have a right, but you have absolutely no remedy," or can they occasionally…?

You're not suing people. You know, you're asking for a review to see if the government can be reminded that they have to fulfil their commitments. It's not government per se, but sometimes just on-the-ground, really practical things. It would be very rare, but occasionally you need a bit of that support, because rights exist with remedies.

If you had an adult person in that situation, they could do that, but the child doesn't necessarily…. The guardian of the child is the person responsible for their care, who is the only person that can bring anything out in public in a court, to be a litigation guardian. So they have no way of ever having their rights recognized beyond these dispute resolution processes, which are important and need to be strengthened, because obviously they are not in place yet.

Quite beyond that, there are cases…. It's not very easy to do, because within the public funding of legal services we don't have a line item for this. When the cases come up, and they are very difficult cases, it's hard to get the child to have the type of support that they need. So it's just to have those services.

Many other jurisdictions — Alberta, other places — have a children's legal clinic which will provide that support and occasional representation. So making sure, for instance, in the family case, that the child's voice is heard, and occasionally, in the high-conflict cases, making sure they are represented.

D. Horne: For that, I would support it. It's when it comes down to these other things. I think some form of arbitration, some form of dispute resolution mechanism is appropriate so that yes, in a case where, you know, they should be having a private phone so that they can call their parents…. I think that's very, very important. I think that should be….

We should have some mechanism in place so that if that's not the case, it's dealt with. If for some reason the ministry has not resolved that themselves, there should be a way to have that resolved. I fundamentally don't believe that it's through the courts and having a court order say: "You should have a phone to be able to call your parents."

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J. McIntyre (Chair): We're just at four o'clock. I wanted to first ask if Leonard is indeed there.

Do you have any questions, Leonard?

L. Krog: No, I'm fine, thank you.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Anyway, thank you for joining us this afternoon. We just wanted to make sure you were indeed there and that you didn't have any further questions or any questions. Claire, did you still have a question, or are we just going to wind down?

C. Trevena (Deputy Chair): I do, but I'll try and be brief, because it is four o'clock, and I think that they should be quite quick questions.

Looking at the ministry itself and the complaints process and the need to improve it, does the regionalization within the ministry add to a difficulty? We have what's in the statute about how the complaints process should work, but are we saying that the different areas work in different ways?

Secondly, the delegated agencies and against their responsibility within their codes to have a complaints
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process…. Is there a concern sometimes, because of delegated agencies and the ways that they work, of the safety of the child in making a complaint within a delegated agency? Has there been a concern there?

Finally, we've not talked about alternative dispute resolution, really, much around this. Is this a way forward, or are we looking particularly at the statutory requirements? I hope those aren't difficult for you.

M. Turpel-Lafond: No. First of all on regionalization, I think the reason why the complaints process is in the state it's in is because of regionalization. So much was pushed out to a region without clear accountability and without absolute bedrock processes, like on these core issues of complaints. Because the standards for complaints compliance and so on weren't consistent, we then have at least five or more processes, which in many instances are not working.

I think that the issue of regionalization has given rise to this problem — not to say that things can't be delivered regionally, but you need some provincial consistency, and you need a single provincial complaints policy so that the children know what it is from place to place.

Around the delegated aboriginal agencies, they, too, need a dispute resolution process. Sometimes they are looking at things that may be more culturally appropriate — like, for instance, involvement of elders in that process and so on. We're very much of the view…. We looked for models in the delegated agencies or in other treaty-based arrangements — Sechelt government and others. We looked for models of a different cultural model for dealing with disputes for children, and we didn't find them.

They may be, possibly, developed, but they're not there now. But in any event, there needs to be a process developed. It has to be a process where someone listens to the child. We think an insufficient priority support has been given to that item, and we'd like to see that encouraged.

On the alternative processes…. Absolutely. I mean, I think we need to find ways to deal with complaints, to hear kids out and, if they are not dealt with satisfactorily, think of other approaches. So this has to be an area of ongoing reporting and improvement, but at this point we don't have a system in place. So that system has to come together first.

J. McIntyre (Chair): Okay, I think with that, this has been a long afternoon and thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mary Ellen, to you and your office, and to Linda for joining us with this last report today.

I hope everybody feels we've accomplished quite a bit, in terms of laying the groundwork, certainly in terms of the work of the representative and some of the perspectives and your perspective on some of the changes that are happening. We look forward to tomorrow, to hearing from the new deputy and perhaps other staff that he may be bringing.

We'll have an opportunity for them to give us a debrief, and certainly lots of time. Actually we've allocated almost an hour and a half for questions from members to be able to get a good sense of where the ministry is going with the new deputy and a new minister.

Hopefully we'll have a good balance and a good perspective on where we're at in terms of looking after vulnerable children and child welfare. So thank you very much for being here. and have a good evening.

I need a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:05 p.m.

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