Children and Youth — Issue No. 23 — Thursday, July 16, 2015 (HTML)

Present: Jane Thornthwaite, MLA (Chair); Doug Donaldson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Donna Barnett, MLA; Carole James, MLA; Maurine Karagianis, MLA; John Martin, MLA; Dr. Darryl Plecas, MLA; Jennifer Rice, MLA

2. Resolved, that the Committee approve and adopt the Annual Report as presented today and further, that the Committee authorize the Chair and Deputy Chair to work with committee staff to finalize any minor editorial changes to complete the supporting text. (Doug Donaldson, MLA)

3. Resolved, that the Chair present the Annual Report to the Legislative Assembly at the earliest available opportunity. (Doug Donaldson, MLA)

4. The Committee received an update on the status of the youth mental health submissions and discussed a process for identifying themes in support of the development of a draft special project report.

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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH


CONTENTS
Page
Committee Report to the House	587
Youth Mental Health Report	587

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Good morning, everyone. We’ll start the meeting today. We’ve only got 25 minutes now, so this will be a quick one.

On the agenda, we’ve got the consideration of the committee’s draft report, of which everybody has had a copy several times. We just need to agree or amend what we’ve got in front of us. Then I would hope that the Deputy Chair and myself can deal with any kinds of minor changes.

Then we just want to have maybe a brief discussion on, hopefully, the direction, common themes for our deliberations for the child and youth mental health report, just so that we can give Alayna the direction as to where she’s going with regards to doing the report. And then it’s any other business that we have, given that I guess we’ll be back in the fall.

If there’s a substantial discussion on elements of your draft report, it may be best to take it in camera.

At the outset, as the Chair mentioned, we circulated this draft report in May and then again in Vancouver at your recent meetings at the end of June.

The annual report covers, roughly, a calendar year, from February 2014 to March 2015. It summarizes all of the activities of your committee since its last annual report, including your statutory review of the Representative for Children and Youth Act, the first phase of the youth mental health project and the committee’s review of several reports, of course, by the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth.

We’d be happy to make any improvements or incorporate any comments or suggestions you might have. If not, I think the Deputy Chair may have a draft motion or two in hand.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Yes, I do. I move that the committee approve and adopt the annual report as presented today and, further, that the committee authorize the Chair and Deputy Chair to work with committee staff to finalize any minor editorial changes to complete the supporting text.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I have another motion to complete this part of the agenda. I move that the Chair present the annual report to the Legislative Assembly at the earliest available opportunity.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): With regards to our next agenda item, No. 2, the update on the youth mental health hearings and submissions reviewed, Alayna has provided us with a handout there. We’re not quite done yet because we’re still receiving submissions until July 31.

I guess, Alayna, you will be updating our iPads with the final submissions at about that time.

A. van Leeuwen: Yes, certainly. I just wanted to bring to your attention what you had received so far that you may not have had an opportunity to read through and just draw that to your attention in relation to the impending closure of intake for written submissions.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): We’ve received 29 submissions from witnesses who were not specifically invited to appear before the committee but did provide presentations. You can refer to the brief written summary of the submissions distributed with our meeting materials today. The materials provided by our invited witnesses are also uploaded onto the submission database for members’ reference. Counting those submissions, we were at 52 submissions as of late last week.

To assist in discussion of the next steps for bringing this project to completion, perhaps members would like to have a quick round table now to share their impressions from our most recent meetings in Vancouver.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): When I saw this on the agenda, I really felt we were just doing a quick overview of the written submissions. I’m waiting until the submissions close to actually summarize it all in my head. I know we had some really valuable presentations in Vancouver. I enjoyed them and took a lot of notes, but I haven’t collated those notes yet. I’m not in a position right now to talk about themes or trends at this point.

I’ve looked at my notes, and certainly, with the majority of submissions, there are real common themes. We should be able to come up with some high-level recommendations that would encompass everything that we heard — at least what I’ve looked at so far.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, I’d be
[ Page 588 ]
happy to. In the interim, of course, if you do have a chance to review the preliminary summary from Alayna — I see members hands as well — we would at any time welcome any direction or input that you might have in terms of assisting Alayna with the preparation of a preliminary draft report on this topic.

C. James: The other opportunity we could have would be to send in to the Chair and the Deputy Chair any common themes that we see. Then, when we get back together again, we can at least have a list of common themes, see where there’s commonality and see what rose to the top and where there’s agreement around the committee and then start the debate and discussion. It might a little bit more efficient to be able to at least get that list starting to build before we get to our next meeting.

D. Barnett: We certainly heard enough evidence from different organizations and health care deliverers and mental health deliverers. With this special project on youth mental health, I think that we should be focusing on that, and let the Chair and the vice-Chair have some discussions about that and get back to us. I think we should try and move forward with a special project somewhere. I mean, it’s great that we do all this paperwork and we listen to everybody, but I think we need a little bit of moving forward.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Yes. So if your side could report to Doug with your common themes and direction and ideas, perhaps with recommendations, etc., and the same thing with our side, then Doug and I can get together at a later date. I would assume that there’s going to be very common…. We heard a lot about, you know, very common themes. And then we’ll personally all get together again in the fall, after those ideas have been distributed, so we can really get down to the nitty-gritty and come up with some very fruitful recommendations. I’m seeing nodding heads, so that’s good.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

Chair:	Jane Thornthwaite (North Vancouver–Seymour BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Doug Donaldson (Stikine NDP)
Members:	Donna Barnett (Cariboo-Chilcotin BC Liberal)
	Mike Bernier (Peace River South BC Liberal)
	Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
	Maurine Karagianis (Esquimalt–Royal Roads NDP)
	John Martin (Chilliwack BC Liberal)
	Dr. Darryl Plecas (Abbotsford South BC Liberal)
	Jennifer Rice (North Coast NDP)
	Dr. Moira Stilwell (Vancouver-Langara BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH