Children and Youth — Issue No. 25 — Monday, November 23, 2015 (HTML)

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

2. The Committee agreed to defer consideration of the Joint Report of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth and Office of BC Provincial Health Officer: Growing Up in BC due to the absence of Dr. Perry Kendall, and agreed to amend their agenda accordingly.

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth report: Representative for Children and Youth 2014/15 Annual Report and 2015/16 – 2016/17 Service Plan

4. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth report: Paige’s Story: Abuse, Indifference and a Young Life Discarded

6. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth report: The Thin Front Line: MCFD Staffing Crunch Leaves Social Workers Over-Burdened, B.C. Children Under-Protected

7. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth report: Children at Risk: The Case for a Better Response to Parental Addiction

8. Resolved, that the Committee meet in camera to review its preliminary draft report on Child and Youth Mental Health (Maurine Karagianis, MLA).

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
Meeting Agenda and Work of the Committee	595
Office of the Representative for Children and Youth: Annual Report and Service Plan	596
M. Turpel-Lafond
B. Naughton
Representative for Children and Youth Report: Paige’s Story: Abuse, Indifference and a Young Life Discarded	606
M. Turpel-Lafond
D. Thomas-Wightman
A. Markwart
B. Naughton
Representative for Children and Youth Report: The Thin Front Line: MCFD Staffing Crunch Leaves Social Workers Over-Burdened, B.C. Children Under-Protected	624
M. Turpel-Lafond
B. Naughton
D. Thomas-Wightman
Representative for Children and Youth Report: Children at Risk: The Case for a Better Response to Parental Addiction	632
M. Turpel-Lafond
B. Naughton

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I’m Jane Thornthwaite, the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth. I very much want to thank everybody for coming for this extended period of time to this meeting here in Vancouver.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I’ve just got some brief housekeeping, scheduling changes that I wanted to go over first, and then we can do some introductions. Then I’ve got some opening remarks.

Dr. Perry Kendall, one of the co-presenters of the joint report of the Representative for Children and Youth and the B.C. provincial health officer, is not able to make it today, so we are going to postpone that item to another meeting. That will allow us a little bit more time to offer the representative ten, maximum 15, minutes of an office update, which she has requested.

That will adjust our schedule so that the first item, Paige’s Story, will start at 10:20, then the other item that we have, The Thin Front Line, at 11:15, then the Children at Risk parent addiction item at 12:10. We are hoping to break for lunch just before one. Our lunch is actually in the hallway, and we’re only allotting 20 minutes so that we can go immediately into the annual report and then go in camera for the discussion of our special report on child and youth mental health.

I wanted to give you that little bit of update. I’ve spoken with the chair and the representative, and both have agreed to that adjustment in schedule.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I have a comment on the agenda. This is an extraordinary agenda, and not in the most positive sense. I see four or five reports and submissions provided by the Representative for Children and Youth’s office plus our consideration of a draft of our youth mental health report on one agenda. It’s a lot of business. I feel that the unilateral decision by the Chair to cancel the October 6 and November 4 meetings of the committee has led us to this situation.

This committee is mandated, is legislated as the body to give a thorough consideration, a thorough review, scrutiny to the Representative for Children and Youth’s reports before they’re submitted to the Legislature. Especially in the case of the Paige report, to show respect to the countless hours the representative’s office has put into reports such as that — also the financial costs that have incurred to the taxpayer for creating such a comprehensive report — and also to honour Paige’s story, I don’t feel that the presenter should feel compelled by the timelines on the agenda.

As I say, I think that we need to have a thorough discussion, not just on the Paige report but the other reports. I believe that this committee is the committee that’s responsible for doing that, and therefore I don’t feel that we need to have the presenter necessarily stick to the timelines that are outlined on the agenda.

C. James: I think it’s a very ambitious agenda. I don’t think we’re going to get through it. I think there’s a lot on here. My suggestion would be that we book another meeting for the youth and mental health report, if we need to, and that we let the questions flow, as they flow from the reports. And then if we’re taking more time, that we book another meeting for that — I know people are getting tight timeline-wise, but that we look at our youth mental health report and book another meeting for that and try and see if we can do the reports and give them the time they need.

M. Dalton: My experience on other committees is that this is not…. For example, on Public Accounts we do receive quite a few reports. It’s not unusual to receive a number of reports at one time, and I think that we can stick to the timeline. That’s my opinion.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I’ve been on a lot of committees, and I know that we try to stick to the timelines as quickly as possible, but oftentimes that doesn’t work out in the case of, sometimes, many more questions and one particular item and last questions on another item. So we’ll work with it.

You’re right, Carole, that certainly there are a lot of meetings going on, and one of the comments that I’ve received from others is that there are a lot of meetings because there are a lot of other meetings going on. I think we’ll try and stick to our original plan with flexibility between items.

Thank you, everybody, again for coming. As we all know, the committee was created to implement the second recommendation of the hon. Ted Hughes in his 2006 review of B.C. children and youth and with its first being to establish a representative for children and youth. Former Justice Hughes stated that an all-party committee would “encourage government and the opposition to work together” to address the challenges facing the children and youth system.

We have a good record here in meeting the goal that
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Ted Hughes has set out for us. Since I became Chair in July 2013, we have met 25 times, including numerous meetings with the representative to review 16 of her reports and also numerous times with senior officials within the Ministry of Children and Family Development. We have also worked in an open and constructive way with the representative and the ministry and with each other.

We’ve worked hard to reach consensus across party lines. We have agreed unanimously on reports to improve child and youth services in our province, and we agreed unanimously in the fall of 2013 to undertake a two-year special project on child and youth mental health.

At our last meeting, a motion was brought forward without notice to call the Minister of Children and Family Development to appear before the committee. The media appeared to have been advised of the motion in advance. Half of the committee’s members, on the government side, were not given prior notice. As a result, half of the committee was not prepared for discussion on this motion. It may have been unintended, but this initiative is a change in the committee’s practice, which risks undermining the objective Ted Hughes set out for us.

I acknowledge that from time to time we may not all agree on a particular course of action, but that should be the exception and not the rule. On those rare occasions when we do disagree, we should do so in a fair and constructive way. As Chair, I’m committed to an open and collaborative all-party committee where all members work together on a level playing field. This means coming in here in the spirit of non-partisanship with fair and collaborative processes.

Meeting agendas are circulated in advance so that all members can be prepared to contribute to our discussions. Advance motions, while not required procedurally, are another way to ensure fairness for all of us and all members.

After our last meeting, I adjusted the meeting schedule to accommodate a number of scheduling challenges when some individuals were not available for the next meeting, but I also felt that we needed to pursue and commit ourselves to the objective Ted Hughes set out for us. I’m very appreciative to all members for setting aside the time in their calendars so that this extended meeting we had previously set aside could be rescheduled in this meeting here.

We have a full and important agenda ahead of us, and I hope that we can move forward on our shared goal of raising awareness of issues affecting children and youth in our province. I very much look forward to working with all of you, both in the meetings that we’re having today with the representative and the special project that we’re doing in child and youth mental health, which I feel that we have worked very, very collaboratively with so far.

With that, if there are any other comments from other committee members, we can take them. If not, the representative can start.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for those constructive comments, Chair, and I look forward to reintroducing that motion at a future meeting.

Office of the Representative
for Children and Youth:
Annual Report and Service Plan

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning to all members. I very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss the work of the representative’s office.

It’s unfortunate that Dr. Kendall had to send his regrets today, as we had a presentation prepared. We sent well wishes to him that he have a speedy recovery. I hope that Dr. Kendall and I will be able to present that particular report, Growing up in B.C., on another date, at your convenience.

In light of that, I really very much appreciate the permission from the committee to move to the top of the agenda an office update, which will just touch on some major issues and staff and a few other items of note, and also touch on some of the issues associated with the service plan and annual report that was tabled earlier in the fall and which you have.

Because of the timing of our meetings this year, the presentation has already been made to the Finance Committee. I know there are some members that serve on both committees. Generally, we table the service plan here — not for approval but for discussion — and then go to Finance. This year we’ve already been to Finance, and we’ve submitted it. It is there, and I know you’ve had a chance to look at it. We’re happy to speak to it further as well.

First of all, I want to begin by introducing the staff that are with me. To my left and your right is Dawn Thomas-Wightman. Dawn is the deputy representative.

Last time we appeared before this committee, Dawn was in an acting role. We did have a provincewide competition to fill the position of deputy. That ended in July of this year, and I’m very pleased to report that Dawn was successful in that competition. She has moved from an acting role to the deputy representative and has been providing very strong leadership and support to the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth.

Also, as we think toward transitions for myself as representative, as I’m in my last year of service as Representative for Children and Youth, it’s very important…. Among Dawn’s many, many qualifications that members of this committee will be aware of, she also can provide strong aboriginal leadership, which is a very significant part of the mandate in the statute, and has a very strong history of service in aboriginal child welfare. As we look at transition for RCY, in addition to her many qualifications, that is a competency that’s extremely important and needs to continue in a leadership role
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no matter what happens with the representative’s office in the future.

I’m also pleased to introduce — to my right; to your left — Bill Naughton, who’s chief investigator for the Representative for Children and Youth and runs the program looking into critical injury and death investigations. Bill had also been providing, up until October, full oversight of the area of research, monitoring and evaluations. He was doing that during a bit of a process, again, of transition and change within the organization as we prepared for the future. I really appreciate that service that he provided — essentially overseeing two programs.

We will talk further about this, but his mandate as chief investigator dealing with death and injury investigations that are underway or on the horizon is of such substantial commitment that it was not possible for us to allow him to continue with both roles. Otherwise, we would possibly lose his service, because you can’t ask someone to do absolutely everything in those two areas. But I want to take a moment just to point out how capable he is and the valuable service he provided in both of those roles.

Further to my right, your left, I’d like to introduce a new member of the executive of the Representative for Children and Youth’s Office. Some of you around the table will know him. This is Alan Markwart. Alan is now the associate deputy representative for the area of monitoring, research and audit for the office. This is a job that he’s doing on a part-time basis, still in close collaboration with the entire executive team. We’re very honoured that Alan has joined the representative’s office.

Alan has extensive experience as a field practitioner, policy director, operational director and executive leader. He retired as ADM in MCFD, where he ran youth justice, forensic psychiatric services and children’s mental health and youth services in the province. He has had lead responsibility for services for children with special needs, as well as child care and early childhood development services.

He’s a recognized provincial and national expert and leader in youth justice and the evolution of youth justice legislation, an area where he’s worked for the past 30 years. He was, in that role, recipient of a lifetime achievement award for his leadership from the representative’s office in the past.

He has also authored and co-authored numerous book chapters and articles. He’s an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University. He’s an individual who, certainly in my time as representative, I was able to work very close with.

In fact, with Alan’s leadership, my office, Alan and Dr. Perry Kendall were able to engage and complete probably the most exhaustive study of youth justice in Canada that is used as a template elsewhere. That was really valuable. We’ve had very close, positive collaborations with our office on an ongoing basis.

Alan retired from the ministry, as I say, at an ADM level, having run this significant program of youth justice, which really is one of the jewels in MCFD’s program, because it’s a highly successful program. In large part, the success was due to the kind of rigor and the calibre of collaborative leadership that Alan was able to bring to that area.

I am extremely honoured that Alan has joined our team. His strength, not only with operational knowledge of various areas of MCFD, as well his understanding of youth justice, is extremely valuable to us, particularly as we undertake issues around complex needs, secure care and other matters. Alan was involved in drafting and developing that legislation in the past and has extensive knowledge.

In fact, I don’t think it would be inappropriate for me to note that very frequently people in the ministry would contact Alan and ask him for the history of different policies and program areas. So his strengths to our bench, if you like, at RCY are really valuable, particularly during this time of transition, to provide stability and to provide sound knowledge of issues and policies that may have been attempted in the past that may or may not have been successful.

Having that deep corporate and policy knowledge is extremely valuable, so I hope you’ll have an opportunity to talk to Alan and to welcome him. I expect you’ll be seeing him more frequently in the months and years ahead.

Also, I just wanted to introduce…. In the gallery is Colleen Ellis. Colleen Ellis, with my office, has recently been successful in winning a competition as the director of monitoring, so she will be reporting to Alan. She is also, at the director level, dealing with the audit, research and evaluation programs. Colleen is here. She was one of the leads for us on the second report that we’ll talk about today.

Again, Colleen has deep experience. She started as a child protection social worker with the MCFD in 1991. She had an extensive career with community living services during its various iterations for the children’s services in and out of MCFD and in CLBC. She’s had a variety of positions: team leader, regional consultant and policy manager. She’s been working with the rep’s office, over the last six years, as a project manager and a project director. She has, in the past, also worked in Ireland.

She has got strong expertise in child welfare, so we’re really delighted that she’s taken up that position. Again, it’s part of an important transition, as we plan for the future work that will happen in RCY, to have this new strength. So I’m really delighted that they’re able to be here today.

Also in the gallery from RCY we have Grant Charles, who is a visiting scholar in the Representative for Children and Youth’s office. He’s a professor of social work at UBC and provides support in the policy, research and evaluation area.

We also have John Greschner, who is senior executive
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particularly in charge of outreach. Many of you will know John and know that he has provided valuable service to the representative’s office as deputy in the past.

We also have with us Amanda Willis, who is with our aboriginal team and youth outreach team and works out of the Burnaby office.

We have two other people who are formerly of RCY. We have Edward Evans, who is here. He is retired from RCY service. He was one of the key members of the team that investigated the Paige report so wanted to attend today and be present to be able to share any expertise informally and also to support the presentation.

We also have with us today Rochana Hall, who has left RCY. She was with the team that did the investigative report on Paige — a very skilled investigator and a very strong member of RCY’s team. She has moved into a new chapter in her career. Actually, she’s opened a bit of an old chapter. She’s returned to MCFD child protection, and she works in the Central Saanich team.

We do see that in our staff — that we will have staff that will come and work for three or four years in a particular area. They may return to the field, or they may return somewhere else. That’s a really important part of RCY’s work — that we work very collaboratively, not only to support individuals in the development of their career but to allow people to move in different roles in different parts of their career.

In terms of the actual operational update, just quickly, I wanted to speak to a few areas. I think what we’re probably most significantly engaged in at the moment — if I base it on the type of work I did throughout the weekend, for instance — is that we are doing a joint review with the Ministry of Children and Family Development, particularly with the deputy director of child welfare and a small team and a senior team from my office, including my deputy, Dawn; my chief investigator, Bill; and Alan. We are doing a joint review of hotel placements.

This is an intense project that arose after the tragic death of a youth in care at a hotel. There were a number of discussions back and forth with the ministry over a period of time about the number and frequency in the use of hotels. It’s an area of concern to the representative’s office. Although we were in what I will call a position of deadlock with the ministry, for a period of time, on the issue, we were able to find a way through that and come to scope out a joint workplan to produce a public report on the use of hotels.

That will look at historical and current use of hotels as placements for children in care, including the demographics of those children, the reasons behind the use of hotel placements and the potential risks to children in care associated with hotel stays. I’m anticipating, if my intention can be realized, that this report will be completed before the end of this calendar year. It’s a very intense period of work that’s required reassigning staff to do this.

I’m also anticipating that that joint report will make recommendations on improving policy. Ideally, the joint report itself will conclude a new policy that would be operationalized, I hope, immediately in British Columbia.

This is significant — just to update the committee — because it will incorporate all relevant data. It will, I hope, place us in a unique situation where we’ll be able to report, but we will not have a situation where the representative reports with a data set and the ministry reports with a different data set, and then sometimes there’s a conflict over what is the hotel usage, for instance. As you all know, in the fall, we had some of that experience occur. As I say, it was an intense period of conflict, as one can understand it would be.

From an oversight perspective, it was important for us to be able to look at that data, to confirm it and to be accurate, to come out together. I’d like to give full recognition to some of the senior staff at the Ministry of Children and Family Development, particularly the director of child welfare, who was extremely critical to designing and developing this joint plan. Her office has been working very closely with us, literally on a daily basis, interviewing experts, interviewing front-line staff, contracted service providers and others. That’s a significant area.

As I say, it’ll be out before the end of the year. I’m sure the committee will want to hear from us. I can’t speak for the Ministry of Children and Families. Perhaps there’ll be an opportunity for us to do a joint presentation on that, once that is concluded.

I also wanted to let the committee members know that we’ll be releasing our latest B.C. Adoption Update. We’ve done two of these updates since we did we did the report on adoptions.

We’ve been involved in a very active process with the Ministry of Children and Families, delegated agencies and others on this. We look forward to releasing that in just the next few weeks.

On that front, we’ve also been working very closely with the special adviser that the premier and the minister appointed on aboriginal permanency, and that’s Grand Chief Ed John. He was appointed and started working on a part-time basis in September. Even prior to his appointment, we’ve had numerous meetings and discussions, so I view it as my responsibility to make sure that Grand Chief Ed John is well briefed and well informed and has the support, certainly, of the representative’s office staff.

We have a strong aboriginal team, led by myself and my deputy, Dawn, that has met with Grand Chief John, probably on six or seven occasions, including thorough briefings. Of course, Grand Chief Ed John is trying to strengthen the relationship between the Premier, the minister and the chiefs of British Columbia with respect to these issues around aboriginal permanency. That’s an extremely valuable project. At the same time, he does not carry a caseload to resolve issues and is working part time.
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We are very much enjoying our work with him. However, I do note that he has other important responsibilities. He holds a current political position as a chief. Hence, there are some sensitivities around that in terms of the ability to address issues. Secondly, he also is very engaged in negotiating resource development projects in the north, so he has other jobs that he’s doing. His time is sometimes limited but is certainly welcomed by us. We’ve been very much supporting his work and following and, of course, monitoring that activity.

With respect to the issue of the budget and the service plan, I just wanted to bring the committee members up to date that I did make a budget request before the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services last week, with a request for an additional increase of $1.69 million to my office’s annual budget. For the past four years, my office has not had a budget increase. This year, there was a need for an increase for two reasons.

One is to be able to address the adoptions work and the advocacy work related to adoptions. We’ve realigned internally as best as we can to support, for instance, Grand Chief Ed John’s work, so it can be effective and accurate and meaningful, but also to support the minister in setting targets for adoptions and for meeting those targets.

The first year on adoptions, the ministry was not able to meet the targets. They rolled over the number so that they would be able to capture them this year. We tracked that. You will soon see the report, but I felt an enormous amount of pressure to have a stronger advocacy presence, to be able to allow us to support children and youth to get to that permanency. Hence, I made a request.

Actually, I made the request earlier in the year, but it was tabled. I made a request to hire eight advocacy staff on a time-limited, three-year basis to try and get those permanency numbers up. Then, hopefully, we’d be able to plateau and continue that, but my office would play a role for a time-limited period.

That would include hiring one senior advocate; five advocates, one in each region of the province; a research analyst; and an administrative clerk. The mission of these advocates was specifically to have direct contact with children, foster parents, prospective adoptive parents and permanency planning professionals to promote more timely adoptions in B.C.

I also made a supplementary budget request for a small lift of about $280,000 to this year — not for next year’s budget, but for this year, because it’s an outstanding request — so that I can continue to do the work. We have realigned to be able to support that, and the numbers of permanency cases we have require an intensity of work. Overall, our advocacy caseload has increased, so we’ve needed to address that.

We also have needed to have a stronger presence in certain communities, where people want, as opposed to sort of a telephone advocacy…. When it comes to permanency planning and adoptions, people need to actually meet face to face. That’s a big issue for us around advocates being available in the northeast, the northwest and all regions of the province.

I also went, earlier this month, to Ottawa to participate in the Adoption Council of Canada national conference — the minister also attended — so we could talk about the project that we’ve undertaken in British Columbia to make permanency a more significant public policy objective and have more success.

We had a very good presentation on that at the national level, where they’ve adopted the RCY report recommendations as a national plan.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Mary Ellen, you’re almost at the 20-minute mark for the update.

In addition to our request-for-advocacy budget, I just wanted to note that I asked the Finance Committee to consider a lift of $656,000 to our annual budget to deal with child death and critical injury reviews and investigations.

On that point, I just wanted to note that despite being only about halfway through the fiscal year, we’ve already had double the number of critical injury and death reports from the ministry as we had in the entire previous year. My chief investigator can illuminate this further if there are questions, during the break, if our time is limited on the record.

We’ve made some adjustments to streamline our processes in these reports. But to give you an example, in September of this year, we had 82 reports, compared to 28 in September of last year. This has also meant an increase in the number of critical injuries and deaths that require review and activity. The requested funds would allow us to add five employees to this area — two investigators, two researchers and one records management clerk.

The planned activities with respect to that include a number of specific deaths that require investigations — in some instances, stand-alone investigations. These are areas where, for instance, in reviewing child injuries and deaths in British Columbia, families have been directed to the representative’s office as being the office that conducts these investigations. However, our capacity to do that allows us to do one to two reports a year. We feel that we need to do closer to five to seven reports, particularly for the next number of years, to be able to capture that.

Some of those recent deaths are more high profile, with respect to, for instance, a young person at a hotel in Abbotsford who died; a young person in Children’s Hospital who died, where there were some issues around complex care needs. We have four very high-profile cases
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where families have been directed to us — not only by the minister, but also by the standing committee, which has identified how this process works and that the representative’s office can make a decision to investigate. These are cases that require full investigation.

A third case involves a 15-year-old boy who died on Vancouver Island and who was experiencing some complex needs as well. The fourth case I’m not going to identify at the moment. We’re just trying to clarify which one will proceed, which one may have some criminal aspects to it as well.

In these instances, these are cases that the representative’s office and the chief investigator…. We’ve carefully evaluated. We know they require full investigation, but we do not have the resources to do that investigation. I take that to the committee just because, depending on the outcome of the Finance decision, I may very well need to come back to this committee and clarify. It’s extremely important that I be able to be direct with families, to say that I can or cannot do this work.

We may need to have a discussion of that, maybe an informal discussion with the Chair and the vice-Chair. But I need to understand what…. We have an idea of a plan. If we have a situation where we can’t do everything before us, then I want to be very clear with the families about what can or cannot be done. I’ve had good discussions with them so far. In fact, one of the families — the mother and the grandfather — actually came to the Finance Committee. So the level of concern that families have about this process is extremely high.

The final thing I would just note is that last week, we had a very positive event — the minister and myself — to announce the youth futures education fund, which is a fund that’s held at the Vancouver Foundation and was created to support young people transitioning out of care, into post-secondary. We had a very positive event where the first disbursement from that fund, of $200,000, was made.

We now have 11 colleges and universities that are waiving tuition for young people who have aged out of care, and we have more than 100 students in those programs, which is really quite fantastic. Of course, they still talk about the need for financial support. With partnership from the private sector — particularly, I give recognition to Coast Capital, which has provided a lot of leadership here, and some other donors, including a significant anonymous donation that was made — we now have $776,000 in a private fund administered by the Vancouver Foundation.

I hope to continue to support growing that fund so that there will be sufficient resources there for young people who age out of care to be able to participate in a timely way in post-secondary. So that was a very positive event, and again, the minister and I are working very closely together.

The one related issue, I would say, is that there has been some discussion in that regard about whether agreements with young adults are an effective way to support. There have been quite a few questions raised to me, including by the private sector, about whether or not the government has a robust program for agreements with young adults.

As you know, you voted on changes to the CFCSA to allow agreements with young adults to be expanded over four years, beyond the two years that are now in place. As representative, my staff feels that this could be a valuable area. However, it would require being funded and being a much more robust program.

I’ll just give you a snapshot of where AYA is right now. There are 544 AYA clients, meaning youth that are applying for AYA. They have the following status, and I just want to be really clear. Following status is they may be eligible, expired or closed. So 544. There are 271 open applications in AYA as of October 31, 2015, but only 11 youth are in pay status on AYA. So the expansion of AYA is a strategy that I hope can support young people as they go into post-secondary.

However, it is not being used sufficiently at this time. There isn’t a dedicated budget to it. It’s another pressure area for RCY around advocacy and one of the reasons why, as representative, I pushed very hard to have just straight tuition waivers and to have a private fund that is disbursed directly to colleges and universities so they can help with living expenses.

I believe AYA could be more valuable. At this point, it’s really a paper-only solution. Although I think it’s among the answers that we can have, it needs a dedicated budget, and it has to reach more than the 11 youth that are currently on the program. As we know, about 700 youth age out of care every year.

When we look at the cohort that is in post-secondary now — we are working with them — we can see that they range, really, from the 19-year-old all the way up to, sometimes, a 28-year-old that might be eligible. They are achieving a lot of very good things.

I’ll stop it there. I don’t know if you want me to go directly into the report, or if you’d like to have an opportunity to address anything on the presentation.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I think we should go on with our schedule, if you could go to the initial report. If there are any questions on your updates, then perhaps we could take those when we’re talking about the service plan and the budget update that is a later item on the agenda.

M. Turpel-Lafond: With respect, I tried to incorporate the two together, so I was hoping that we probably wouldn’t have to do that final item.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. Sorry, it might be my miscommunication. I just thought I could accommodate your need to have the other discussion by doing an intro, an office update and also covering that service plan budget request.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): So what you’re saying, then, is that the service plan item that we have….

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Okay. If that’s the case, then we will take questions.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that update — a comprehensive amount of work going on.

I have two questions for you that I’ll pose right away. It points to the fact that it’s very important to have the committee sit, because the questions I’m going to pose are based on media reports. Those, sometimes, are accurate, and sometimes they raise further questions.

You mentioned double the number already of critical injuries and deaths reported to your office only halfway through this year, compared to the previous year. I hope I have that accurately stated. It brings to mind, of course, Nick Lang, Alex Gervais and Alex Malamalatabua. We’ve read in the media and seen highlights in the Legislature of those deaths — that’s this year — and then Carly Fraser’s as well. To me, that’s a disturbing trend — that you have had that many additional reports to your office of critical injuries and deaths compared to last year.

I would like to know your perspective on that trend and why that trend might be happening, because it is disturbing.

Secondly, the process within your office, when you’re faced with that number of critical injuries and death reports, of how you decide which ones bear the full investigation of your office, because obviously, the resources aren’t there to do that.

The word “triage” comes to mind, and I don’t know if that’s something that we would want to use in reference to kids dying while in care. If you could just elaborate on those two points.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. I will answer the last one, and then I’ll ask the chief investigator to speak to the reportables that are coming in.

First of all, on the process issue, we carefully evaluate and apply the statute. We have one role in looking at critical injuries and deaths. The RCY Act gives us powers to conduct, essentially, an inquiry into these matters — to look at making improvements so that situations where children, youth or young people experience either services or not receiving services that may have contributed to the injury or death.

The threshold test for us is that there has to have been a presence or an absence of important services in their lives. So if we take the Gervais case as an example, one of the very significant issues to us will be why he was in a hotel and what his needs were. He had formerly been in a group home, for instance, a group home that was shut down. So we look at where a young person in care is living. Was that connected or not? We can’t prejudge the matter. We haven’t investigated it. But that would be our lens.

In the child death review areas that we’ve discussed at this committee, I wrote to the Attorney General earlier this year indicating that I had concerns that there was not the systemic coherence in our child death review process in British Columbia. In that, I chaired the process of a children’s forum with the coroner, Ombudsman, provincial health officer and the director of child welfare for a number of years as per Mr. Hughes’s recommendation. I felt that it needed a legislative or proper foundation so that we could be more systemic and so that everybody worked together.

I expected to have a process where we actually worked together. The Coroners Service would have a service plan affecting the child death review unit. We would look at it, and we would say: “Okay, well, you’re working on infant sleeping deaths. In an aggregate review, we will do this part. How can we all have the same approach and terminology?” What one sees in terms of very strong jurisdictions is that they collaborate — so the coroner; the provincial director of child welfare or the ministry that is responsible for services; the Health Ministry, as well; and ideally, a provincial health officer; and others.

As an organization, RCY worked very closely with each of them individually, but we have not been able to see a coherent, strong system in British Columbia. So when an event happens, a tragedy happens, like the number of youth deaths that happened this fall, there really is a vacuum that arises in terms of what will happen. The public information is sometimes like: “Well, we have a very strong review process.” And with respect, as representative I’m happy to participate and do my role, but we don’t have a strong system.

After I wrote to the Attorney General, the Ministry for Children and Families hired a consultant, looked at how it should work and wants to restart a new process but not to pursue legislation, is my understanding. And they haven’t begun that process. So we’ve been more than a year without a children’s forum meeting.

Any discussion on these cases…. My chief investigator can speak to it further, but we have ended up being the default agency. I’m fine to do reviews and investigations where we need to do it with appropriate budget, but I am not fine with telling families that there are other processes if those other processes are not in place. Obviously, families can be in a lot of crisis, and they need clarity. While we have different people with different responsibilities, are we working on them systemically and together,
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and are we thinking about use of resources?

One other example I’ll give you talked about the death of the young person at B.C. Children’s Hospital. For instance, there’s been a hospital review by the Provincial Health Services agency of the death of that youth, but they won’t share it with the representative’s office. They’ve invoked section 51 of the Evidence Act, so it’s only going to be shared with the board of the hospital and not with the representative’s office.

That’s unfortunate, when things like that happen. They may have very valuable review that could save me doing a lot of additional work interviewing people. But then it doesn’t work.

I have a previous case where we had an allegation of injury at the youth forensic hospital, and that involved doctors in a hospital setting. Actually, Alan Markwart was overseeing that at the time. He waived section 51 and said: “No, we’re going to share it fully with the representative because we want to get to the bottom of it.” The doctors and everyone involved wanted to work together, and we worked together and produced a very valuable report. There had been allegations of inappropriate touching of girls, and it was a very serious issue. It was thoroughly reviewed, and it was collaborative, and we reported — very strongly.

Again, I’m in a situation where I don’t know. I’m sure there’s probably a really valuable review, but I don’t see it.

These are rules and privacy issues and child death review issues that have been there for a long time. They create gaps. We are, in effect, the default agency to do this, so hence, we have some pretty serious cases.

B. Naughton: I think when we talk about the numbers, it’s important to recognize that there are a number of things happening in the general environment that are driving some of these increases.

In 2011, the committee will be aware that we issued a special report talking about the issue of what actually constituted a critical injury. There was a period of pretty significant disagreement between ourselves and the ministry. A lot of the disagreement focused on events that would be predictably so traumatic to a young person that they would constitute a critical injury of an emotional or psychological nature.

Some of you will recall we did a report in 2012 that looked at the death of a woman. Her Down syndrome daughter was left in a trailer with her corpse for a period of at least a week before she was located by neighbours. The ministry, at the time, felt that it wasn’t necessary to report that to us because that did not constitute an injury.

That sparked a much longer process and a series of ongoing discussions between ourselves and the ministry as to how you define a critical injury. What does it actually mean? We know that for a significant period of time, we’ve seen a systematic under-reporting of critical injuries, particularly in this category of psychological injury.

In 2014, we were successful in coming to a meeting of the minds with respect to what constitutes a critical injury, and we were able to strike an agreement with the ministry on a common definition of that. The ministry, in the spring of this year, rolled out training to over 2,000 social workers on this new policy.

I think what we’re seeing in this is a heightened sensitivity to the importance of reporting, a heightened awareness of the importance of reporting, a more sophisticated understanding of what constitutes an injury. So the increase in numbers — does that mean an increase in child injuries? I suspect it probably, actually, represents a more appropriate reporting practice that’s occurring at the front line.

One of the things that very much concerned me…. We’re going on to talk about Paige’s story. One of the issues in Paige’s story that was particularly concerning to us is that in Paige’s case, we only received a single reportable from the ministry throughout the 19 years she was involved with the ministry. Yet when we go back and we look at her file, there are literally dozens of incidents that would have constituted critical injuries that should have been reported to us.

I think some of the work, some of the awareness that’s come out of the release of that report has also probably been a driver in terms of people understanding more fully what their responsibility is to report to us and to create more fulsome reports. So to some degree we are, if you will, victims of our own success. The pressure on my staff, of course, is significant, because the capacity to continue to manage this volume is not sustainable for us in the longer term.

M. Dalton: Every death of a child in care is concerning. None of us want to see this happen at all.

You did mention there was a doubling from year to year. As far as the numbers, like this year as opposed to last year…. Also, if you can maybe give us an idea of the previous years — say, 2011, ’12, ’13 — and how those numbers…. Has it been a trend that’s going steadily upwards, or is it something that this year has really spiked? Elaborate, please, on this.

B. Naughton: Just going back to my previous answer, post-2011 we saw a significant increase in the wake of our report and with the ministry’s increased sensitivity to the issue of emotional or psychological injury. So we saw a sustained substantial increase in 2011-2012.

M. Dalton: I’m talking about the number of deaths, not so much critical injuries.

B. Naughton: Deaths stay relatively constant, if you
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will. The expansion in numbers is largely going to be related to critical injuries. The reason for that is because deaths are unambiguous, if you will, in terms of it’s clear, factually, what has occurred, and we’re able to cross-check those numbers by liaising with the coroner’s office and other things. Although you may see small spikes in terms of deaths, when you talk about the increase in the volume of reportables, the vast majority of that increase is in the critical injury capacity.

M. Dalton: Right. I can understand that, but I did want to talk specifically about the deaths and how that’s…. You’re saying that other than this year, it has been pretty stable. It’s too much, anyways, but I’m just trying to say as far as the numbers go.

B. Naughton: We are seeing an increase in deaths, but I think it’s too early in the year to suggest that we have a trend with respect to that. I’m very cautious about how you manipulate the data around that, and I think that’s an important caveat. I’m leery to draw trends over a period of a year or two years. I think that’s statistically very dangerous.

B. Naughton: But I think what you do see, and what we’re seeing right now in a specific cohort of children, is a concerning number of deaths. That’s in the 18- and 19-year-olds — the group that is moving towards transition, the ones who are moving towards aging out of care. We are seeing an anomaly with respect to that, but I’m not going to call that a trend at this point.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Can I add one point of clarification, please, and that is that I want to say that in our fiscal year to date, so April to October, we received 380 critical injuries and 90 child and youth death reports, for a total of 470. It’s where we are now.

As the chief inspector notes, it’s hard to do trends, except that we notice there’s an increase. Sometimes we’ll have…. For instance, last year we had a pretty substantial spike in domestic violence homicides. We’ll have a one-year spike of 30, and then it might come back down. Nevertheless, it might not, so we don’t know.

This, again, speaks to the issue of why we need a good collaborative, systemic approach. We work fairly closely, as the chief investigator notes, with the chief coroner, provincial health officer and others, but we need to understand how we classify and understand this.

We’ve had a very elevated number of youth injuries and deaths, particularly among those who are living out of the parental home, in care or may have been in group homes or living independently. How we look at it is really significant. Is it at risk, not having the proper supervision? Like, what is that category? And are they mental health–related? Are they drug use–related? Is it safety-related? Is it homicide? Often, very blurred lines.

We haven’t got the type of good systemic approach to how we view those, and that’s where collaboration is needed. So we don’t want to talk about trends, and we don’t want to impose categories, because, ideally, when you look around the world or around Canada, a good system is where a coroner, independent child death review ombudsman, provincial health officer, people from vital stats and others sit down and carefully look at what the categories should be and how they reflect new developments and trends.

D. Plecas: Okay. I just want to thank the chief investigator, Bill, for your answer. My question was very similar to Marc’s regarding the whole business of what would constitute a trend.

My other question relates to your plan to do a hotel review. It evolves out of the case in Abbotsford with the young fellow who, unfortunately, died at a hotel. I’m wondering if that review — why would you be doing that now, prior to first establishing the cause of death and the issues surrounding the cause of death of that individual? It would seem to me that whilst for whatever reason you might have for doing the hotel review, it would be following that, because it may, at the end of the day, determine that there wasn’t a relationship, per se.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Right. Well, first of all, the Gervais death requires a full investigation to look at that situation. However, it is a matter of fact that he was in a hotel and placed in a hotel, and that is a matter that we don’t need to investigate. The ministry and our staff have sat down to determine that.

The reason why we have launched a joint review is that he is not the only individual in a hotel. As you know, when Mr. Gervais’s death was reported, there was a review process where I was asked and the minister was asked, “How many children and youth in British Columbia are in hotels,” and we gave different answers.

We do have an information system in British Columbia, the ICM system, that has on it a tick box about if someone’s in a hotel. That information system failed to capture all children and youth in hotels in British Columbia. The provincial director of child welfare had to manually phone to determine how many children and youth are in hotels.

My staff, who work closely with children and youth through our advocacy role, brought numerous cases to the provincial director of child welfare, saying: “We have information that there are X number of children in a hotel here in the province. Is that the case?” We had quite a dialogue around that issue.

I can say that it was a bit of a tense process, because as representative, I didn’t feel completely confident that they had a handle on the issue at the provincial office.
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Their systems that were in place — I’m not going to say they failed, but those systems did not allow the minister to accurately report on how many children and youth are placed in hotels and paid for by the taxpayers of British Columbia. That’s a very important test of the system.

Once we were able to get through the fact that the minister’s information was inaccurate, we then rolled our sleeves up and sat together and said: “How are we going to actually get an appropriate assessment?” The minister committed to report twice a year on this issue. Of course, the minister also committed to not use hotels as placements. An emergency visit to a hospital or something — fine. We can understand why you would have a stay but not a placement.

While the commitment was there, what was the practical use? There’s quite a gulf. Our numbers and the ministry’s numbers didn’t align, and we began to dissect the issue. In a spirit of good collaboration and urgent…. This is an urgent issue. It’s a rare situation which requires urgent intervention.

As representative, I feel very strongly that I need to support the provincial director of child welfare, who is trying very hard to put in place a policy of no hotel placements — to support that office to have an effective policy and to put that in place as quickly as possible.

I mean, Mr. Gervais’s situation needs to be fully investigated and understood as to why he was placed in a hotel and whether that placement had any correlation to what happened to him, and what, indeed, did happen to him? I can’t say about that, because we need to investigate it.

However, in the Gervais case, we also decided — through good collaboration with provincial director of child welfare, the deputy and the minister — that the ministry would do an abbreviated internal review. Instead of taking a full year to review, they would abbreviate their review and pass it to the representative’s office for us to investigate.

We’ve had some very good discussions. As I say, we’re working on virtually a daily basis and meeting with the deputy weekly to sign off on progress on that hotel review to get, I hope, by the end of year, a functional policy in place to prevent placements in hotels. It’s an extremely important issue. Infants might be placed in hotels. Adolescents might be placed in hotels. We have to look at the full range of the use of hotels. I don’t want to pre-empt the report. We will release it, and we will discuss it.

We’re on track for a joint project. However, I’ve also made it very clear with the ministry that if for some reason, that joint approach falls apart — which I hope it doesn’t, because we’re working very strongly together with them — my office still has the capacity to report and to publicly report, because it requires a lot of accountability. Who places a young person in a hotel? If it is contrary to policy, can the policy be strengthened, or what are the consequences of that? It’s a very serious issue, and it requires urgent activity.

We’ve had eight weeks of intense work on that issue. Again, I have had to assign a portion of our team to that. One of the consequences of it is that another very important aggregate report that was due to be released soon, the sexual assault aggregate, has had to be forestalled for a period of time to be able to do that.

I think it’s an important thing to do the joint report and do it as quickly as I can to support the ministry.

B. Naughton: If I may, as a point of a clarification on that, I think it’s important to understand that the terms of reference for the hotel review…. It is not child- or case-specific in its nature. It is, essentially, a strategic overview of the practice, the history, what data we’re able to mine from ministry resources and other things. It’s an entirely separate piece of work, of course, from the independent investigation of the Gervais file itself. The initial hotel…. The joint review piece of work is intended to be more generalized in nature. It’s of a more strategic and higher-level nature, as opposed to the individualized investigation work, which will come subsequently.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Mary Ellen, I have a question about the annual report and service plan, because we’re not going to be addressing that later. My question actually pertains to pages 39 and 40 of the report on performance. I’ll just give a little preview.

“Accountability means that the office provides information on its plans, activities and performance to the select standing committee for review and scrutiny,” and then there’s a point on page 40 about progress on recommendations: “Progress on recommendations does, however, provide some measure of the representative’s success in influencing public bodies to make improvements.”

As you’ve identified in the report, in October 2014, we did have the representative’s office issue a report on the recommendations made by the representative and where we are at with government meeting those requirements. It was recognized at that time that the MCFD actually wasn’t in control of a lot of those recommendations. It was other ministries or even other jurisdictions.

My question to you is: how do other provinces measure their success in those recommendations? Do you have any handle on what the other provinces are doing?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I do collaborate with other child advocates through the Canadian Council of Child and Youth Advocates. There are different sorts of statutory mandates and issues, place by place. Tracking of recommendations is something that has gained, I think, significant interest in Alberta. But we were the first province to do a recommendation tracking report, and I think it is really valuable to do that. It is a complicated piece of work, but it’s really valuable to do it. Alberta is pursuing that.
[ Page 605 ]

I think there are different pressures and responses in different jurisdictions. For instance, in Ontario, the child advocate has just received an amendment to do child death investigations. It’s a different situation, but they haven’t done them, and they’re starting. What they do in Ontario is they amplify children and youth voices, which is really significant as well. The recommendations may be coming from children and youth themselves, for instance.

The tracking is handled differently place by place. I think the fact that in British Columbia, about 70 percent of the recommendations are responded to is a good sign. It’s a good sign of a couple of things. It’s a good sign that the work is achievable and that it’s important and that things are getting done. Despite, sometimes, perception to the otherwise, there are good things happening.

However, you’re absolutely right, Madam Chair. The issues that are really thorny and represent what I would call intractability are issues like, in British Columbia, the challenges around poverty. British Columbia is now the only province without a poverty reduction plan.

Some of those recommendations deal with real deep, intergenerational poverty in children and families, particularly aboriginal children and families that have really been seen…. Their experiences overlap into the child welfare system, as opposed to having a strong prevention approach in addressing the root causes that have to do with poverty and affordability.

Recently, as an example, I tracked the recommendations here. We wanted a provincial poverty plan. It hasn’t happened. But then we supported a project with UBCM. UBCM did a poverty project with MCFD. What was the MCFD responsibility? This is where I’d have to track MCFD.

Former minister Mary McNeil engaged in a strategy with UBCM to identify seven communities to do a poverty strategy. Then Minister Cadieux inherited that and continued it. The seven communities abandoned the project because they said it didn’t work, and the internal report in the seven communities, including from MCFD, was that it was ineffective.

They were supposed to roll it from seven to 20 under the UBCM project charter. UBCM, on October 28, walked away from it, saying that it was insufficient, that it wasn’t working. So MCFD strategy didn’t work.

It’s an example of where something was done, like in seven communities. We had to track it in the end. I think it was 14 actual families who were impacted by that poverty strategy, but it wasn’t a poverty plan.

Now UBCM has walked away. The communities have walked away. The Ministry for Children and Families — it’s in flux. Of course, now we have a new federal government that’s promoting a national poverty plan. But the issue comes back to how we tackle things like deep intergenerational poverty and how families are affected.

We can track those recommendations. Those are important cross-ministry recommendations, but we look specifically at what the Ministry of Children and Families does, and the ministry was given the lead on poverty.

That’s an example where last year I would have said: “Some progress.” Now the entire issue has fallen apart, so we’re back to, “Will we developing another strategy with municipalities,” or what have you. I’ll be looking at that.

I do hope to conclude another recommendations update so that we can see how progress is on some of those deeper issues.

D. Barnett: I have one question, if I may. Why did it not work? Why did the local municipalities and governments…? Why did it fall apart, the poverty strategy they were doing? What was their rationale?

M. Turpel-Lafond: What happened was that the Ministry for Children and Families, Social Development and the municipal agencies that are funded in some way or another by government or others were to come together to identify families that they could engage with in those communities who were experiencing low-income poverty and other challenges.

What they found was that there wasn’t really a strong presence by the provincial government there. What they could offer was fairly limited. They had sort of a collaborating person hired out of Victoria, but that didn’t work very effectively. And then it didn’t bring any new money to the issue. Even grappling with issues….

It was also very tough on communities. Some communities had pretty extensive issues around low income. Other communities that didn’t participate don’t have the same issue. It was really an area where we needed to have a provincial plan.

For instance, we had a bit of a provincial understanding. Is it the market basket measure? Is it low income cutoff? Even to talk about who the target families are that we’re working with — this is a key issue.

The number was small. The evaluation, which was, again, done by the ministry, and Social Development staff themselves said: “Insufficient commitment, insufficient presence to be able to make a difference on the ground.” That’s a critical area.

Social development issues…. Ministry for Children and Families and social development as it affects families at risk is a crucial area of social policy, and really, British Columbia has not quite got on to that way of looking at things.

I appreciate that there’s another approach, which is more of a model of job creation and so on. Unfortunately, the model doesn’t work in terms of the social policy piece. It’s important to have job creation. I’m not saying it isn’t. It’s just the model of actual reducing poverty…. It’s a challenge for the deep intergenerational poverty because people aren’t having a lift. That’s the issue of where the interventions are.
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The other part of it is we are paying for some very expensive interventions in the nature of child welfare — children being removed, families not having housing, so certain things that families can’t change about their circumstance that lead to their children being vulnerable, especially single mothers who are at risk with no housing and poor education.

The government has initiated another single mother–focused strategy, which has been started, that could be a poverty reduction strategy for a targeted population. I’m looking at that. That has some really promising aspects to it. Removing the clawback on child support and social assistance — these are some key pieces. But again, if we had an overarching poverty reduction strategy, then we’d be able to, in this committee, evaluate it: “Well, there’s progress.”

I feel two things. I feel like we can’t monitor it very effectively right now, but we can’t also acknowledge where there’s been success very effectively. So there’s piloting. These seven communities piloted in the pilots fell apart, so we didn’t go to 20.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Seeing no other comments or questions, Mary Ellen, you can go on to your first report, Paige’s Story.

Representative for Children and Youth
Report: Paige’s Story: Abuse,
Indifference and a
Young Life Discarded

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I’d like to recognize that Paige’s aunt and uncle are present in the gallery. Fran and Lorne, thank you for coming. I really appreciate the support with respect to Paige’s family in doing this investigation and looking at her life’s circumstances. Again, as I acknowledged earlier, I really wanted to recognize the work that was done by Edward Evans, Rochana Hall and, of course, the chief investigator, Bill Naughton, and the team in conducting this investigation.

As the chief investigator indicated before, when we received a prior reportable and then the death reportable on Paige, we looked at it. Again, I guess I would like to say that we have, over the years, received a number of reportables with respect to girls and boys who would be living in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver. We have watched those cases from a variety of perspectives over the years. Some of them have gone on with criminal investigations because there are issues around the safety of girls and women.

In fact recently, as committee members may know, one of the first-ever convictions was obtained in British Columbia against an individual who was seen to be procuring and exploiting girls in this neighbourhood, 11 in total. A significant number of those were girls known to child welfare.

I want to start by acknowledging that even in the criminal justice area, since there has been a more dedicated sexual exploitation investigation approach and more focus in Vancouver on that, we’ve seen more active criminal involvement there, which is positive. It’s a very positive sign. That’s a very significant development. We’re really pleased about that.

When we received the reportable into the death of Paige, we really wanted to understand why a young person aged out of care into a community that is not known to be particularly supportive to young aboriginal girls or women. Had her placement been facilitated? Was there a connection between how she died of a drug overdose at 19 and where she was living and the services she did or did not receive? We knew very little about Paige when we commenced the investigation.

The investigation was a very significant one. First of all, what we discovered was a very painful and heartbreaking loss for the family and friends of Paige and, also, that her experiences were extremely distressing. The report is certainly one of the most difficult reports that the office has put out. In part, it was important to, as meticulously as we could, describe what her experience was, not only from infancy….

She was involved with the child welfare system from birth. She was born to a mom who was 16, who herself was already struggling with a violent relationship and addictions, and was removed immediately for a very short period of time. There was involvement in the reportables to child welfare almost immediately. Paige’s journey, really, for 19 years was a journey all over the province of British Columbia but especially in the Downtown Eastside for the final three years of her life.

The experience that Paige went through is a very important one for the office to share. Of course, to understand the family’s experience has been very important. And even some of the family’s experience wasn’t included in the report as extensively as it could have been. However, suffice it to say that there were many opportunities where the family — particularly Lorne and Fran, who are here today — wanted to step forward to support Paige and to provide a home for her.

They were willing to take her into their home. However, the ministry did not work with them. In particular, they had a one-bedroom apartment. They were both working and active and willing to support their niece, but the ministry would not support them to get a two-bedroom apartment, which they needed to be able to keep Paige. Paige didn’t want to sleep on their couch. It wasn’t appropriate for a teenage girl.

Lorne and Fran consistently…. As Paige bounced around homeless shelters and SROs and abject homelessness on the Downtown Eastside, they pretty constantly
[ Page 607 ]
were the ones who were called to come and get her at an emergency room or get her in a state of crisis. So in the middle of the night, they would go out and pick her up, bring her home and try and support her. Then the ministry would basically send her back out to the street.

I really want to recognize the family. Frequently, when we read about a case of a girl like this, one often has a set of assumptions about their families — that their families are bad families or they are families that don’t care about them or they’re abusive or what have you.

There’s no question, in our mind, that her mother was not capable to meet her needs. She had serious, persistent addictions, including IV drug addiction. She was not healthy enough to raise a child for significant periods, if not perhaps for the entire life of Paige. But there were other family members, like Fran and Lorne, who were prepared to step in.

It is just really important to make that point, because there is some very significant learning in this report about how the ministry works with aboriginal families. Sometimes the assumptions around aboriginal families, when they struggle…. How you build proper kinship placements and support kinship placements so that you can support kids and how sometimes the aboriginal policy is to allow the child to remain with the parent, but the parent may not be in a position to parent.

Somehow it’s viewed as the correct and appropriate approach because that’s more suitable and less interventionist. However, I don’t think anyone in Paige’s family felt that Paige’s mom was in a healthy place to raise her. In fact, they were very concerned about not only her health, mom’s health, but the daughter’s health.

I think that this investigation certainly brings to light some very significant issues. It also addresses a neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside, which is a neighbourhood that has received a significant amount of attention and focus and is a neighbourhood in which fairly substantial public expenditure is made every single year on services to vulnerable citizens — now services to children less so, but services to vulnerable citizens.

One of the other aspects of our investigation was really to say: “Well, who actually was providing services to Paige?” What kind of support did she get? What kind of support, of course, did her mother receive as well? This investigation reflected some incredible flaws, really, in that model and that system and made some recommendations that we think will be quite helpful.

First of all, understand Paige’s unique situation. As I said, she was born to a mom who had severe substance abuse issues and was really never able to adequately care for her. The level of the ministry’s supervision of her was quite rudimentary. For instance, dealing with a parent with serious problematic addictions, one would expect the ministry would have monitored the mom — so required testing to see if she was drinking, if she was using drugs, and so forth. Really, Paige’s mother never underwent any monitoring.

There was no understanding of different stages of addiction, different situations about requiring a parent to engage with treatment, engage with support, or monitor the safety of a child left with a parent with significant addictions. So Paige had an entire life exposed to a mom who was dealing with severe substance abuse issues.

In addition to that, Paige had a number of other vulnerabilities. At 2½ years old, she was diagnosed with something called Marfan syndrome, which is a genetic disorder of the connective tissue that affects the skeleton and many organ systems in the body. It eventually led her to having such poor eyesight that without her glasses, she was considered to be legally blind.

She would have been brought into Children’s Hospital in her toddler years and been diagnosed with Marfan’s and had genetic assessments done, and then she would have been in a protocol where you’re supposed to be followed annually by a team of people. Kids with Marfan syndrome develop cardiac issues, so a lot of vulnerabilities to heart issues. They’re supposed to be followed routinely.

She had issues with her eyesight. Then there were issues with her growth and development which would have needed to have been followed. She was followed for a few years, but then she was pretty much not followed at all.

That’s an aspect of the investigation that we did not detail as sufficiently as we could have. However, I did produce, inside the health system, a more detailed list of when she received health care or didn’t, based on our investigation, and the type of gaps that appear to exist in monitoring a child with complex health needs, like what the follow-up was when someone doesn’t come back for a couple of years for their assessments.

I did share that with the Deputy Minister and Assistant Deputy Minister of Health and also with the leads in the PHSA. So I did informally provide that information and encourage them inside the health system to do more learning about following vulnerable kids with complex needs when you don’t see them for a period of time.

There’s an aspect to Paige’s life where, had she been followed more consistently and supportively by health experts, it probably could have improved her well-being. For instance, she died of a drug overdose, but she had multiple overdoses or incidents where she was found passed out, extremely intoxicated and brought to hospitals, particularly in her teen years, and it was flagged on her file that she had this Marfan syndrome and this genetic condition.

There was a note to file that was “immediately bring her to hospital,” which, again, was quite important. It was known that she had, for instance, these cardiac sensitivities because of her Marfan syndrome, so she could be
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very prone to an overdose death at a lower level of drug exposure than someone else because she had this pre-existing health condition.

We noted that in the report. However, we did bring information into the health care system for them to look at how they’re serving and supporting. Again, Van Coastal Health — I believe their annual expenditure is between $70 million and $100 million in the Downtown Eastside. They are funding various services there, but Paige did not receive services there. So there is a real disconnect between a child known to have complex needs being in that neighbourhood and then the services that are supposed to be there.

In terms of the first three years of Paige’s life, there were seven child protection reports. Most of them involved domestic violence where mom was a victim, neglect and child abandonment, so she was left alone. The mom was gone for a period of time. She was the subject of 30 child protection reports during her entire lifetime. However, the report makes note that there should have been many, many more than 30. There should have literally been hundreds of child protection reports on Paige.

One of the things that the report documents is that it’s almost incomprehensible that MCFD did not take stronger action to find Paige a safe and permanent home. At the same time, with the 30 child protection reports that they had…. These were 30 serious child protection reports where an incapacitated mom could not meet the needs of her child and had a pretty clear history of just ignoring and undermining and walking away from social workers and others.

The ministry continued to ignore those dangers and allowed Paige to remain in or return to her mother’s care repeatedly, meaning that she shuttled between homeless shelters, safe houses, detox centres, couch-surfing scenarios, foster homes and a number of SROs.

In fact, her aunt and uncle — her Aunt Fran in particular — in the context of our investigation told us about an instance where Paige loved cats. She had a couple of cats that she was keeping as she was moving around to these SROs and homeless shelters. At one point, she called her aunt and uncle and asked them to come and get her cats from the SRO because it was no place for a cat to live. So Fran and Lorne drove down to the Downtown Eastside and got her cats in a crate and took them to their house.

They still have the cats, and they still take care of them. She’d actually come and visit her cats occasionally. They’d try and give her some food and put her back together as best they could, but they didn’t have the ability to offer the more permanent home for her. So she was living in situations where, even as a kid at 16 and 17, she knew you wouldn’t even want to raise a cat in this situation.

By the time she was 16, she had already moved 40 times. If you look at page 35 of the report, if you have it before you, we actually documented within the neighbourhood how many places she had moved. It was 40 times by 16, and then in that 2½ years after she and her mother relocated to the Downtown Eastside in September 2009, she moved another 50 times.

If you look at that map on page 35, you can see that that includes various shelters, single-room-occupancy hotels, at least four. I would note that single-room-occupancy hotels are not supposed to be places where children live, yet we found that she lived there. In fact, we found that other children lived there as well.

Again, credit to the investigative team for personally attending the SROs and conducting the investigation in a very hands-on, direct way, because to find out the history of what was going on in Paige’s life was no small measure.

At the same time, although I have high regard for my investigative team, anyone would have known, because it’s not invisible. Paige and her mother are walking around. They’re known. She’s in 40 police files. She’s showing up in emergency rooms more than 20 times. She’s showing up at schools in Vancouver, asking to get an education. She attended a number of different schools and actually wanted to get an education, have a better life opportunity than she felt her mother had — not because she disliked her mother but because she saw the challenge that her mother faced.

She was in a youth addictions program once. Some of the programs that she was in have since shut down. She was in youth detox ten times. Now, youth detox is frequently…. You get picked up by the police. You’re brought in, and then you’re put in a youth detox for 24 hours.

Transition house. Sometimes she was sent to a domestic violence shelter or a transition house with her mom, even though they hadn’t had an immediate experience of domestic violence — although her mother was exposed to extensive violence, was involved in survival sex work, as well, and had a history of incredible abuse herself.

So they’d occasionally go to a transition or shelter, and they were actually barred from a number of transitions and shelters. They were not allowed to come because mom was acting out, they felt, in an aggressive way in the shelter. So they were refused readmission or were sent out of a shelter.

It wasn’t as though she wasn’t seen and known across these various places in the Lower Mainland and especially the Downtown Eastside. Then there were times that she was also in a safe house. These would be short stays.

Some of the emergency shelters that she was in…. These are shelters where individuals are in a great deal of distress. These are important community agencies. There would be occasions where, in the multiple bunks and beds that are in the shelter, you go to bed, you go to sleep, you wake up in the morning, and there’s somebody in a bunk that doesn’t wake up in the morning.

This was a young person who was exposed to a lot of chaotic behaviour, a lot of untreated mental illness, a
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lot of addictions and also, unfortunately, predators and others who particularly see that young kids like Paige have a currency in a community, particularly where there’s low-level drug dealing and drug collection.

Paige really didn’t have any stability. When we looked at her involvement with the ministry…. As I said, there should have been hundreds of reports. On any given day, someone should have reported that Paige was an adolescent in need of protection — not just the police officer but the person in the community agency and elsewhere.

She had about 17 different social workers assigned to her file, depending on where she was at any given time, because she came from different regions. Only one social worker developed more than a rudimentary relationship with her. Sometimes there was an indication on the file that a worker had maybe seen her. One of the workers testified: “We think we saw her 50 times, but we kept no notes.” Again, it was difficult in our investigation to really understand that.

This issue arose in this investigation again about the obligation to keep notes and whether or not social workers, when they delegate their responsibilities to community reconnect workers or whatever — if they actually take a note when they see a young person. There is a very substantial breakdown in that obligation here of not noting.

If you saw her 50 times but you took no notes, what are we supposed to take from that? What’s going on with her? Actually, she was in a lot of danger, and she was not safe.

Even how the system itself functions to support her by ignoring the danger she’s in, not following up, sometimes actually refusing to go to where she was…. They wouldn’t go to an SRO. And I can understand that social workers don’t want to go out places alone. These are not safe places. But if Paige is there, someone should be going out to see her.

Social workers continually overlooked or ignored obvious risks that she faced, including, as I say, leaving her in a position of risk with her mother. Her mother would have an OD. She’d OD in an SRO. The ambulance would be phoned. Mother was possibly going to die. She was in very bad shape, with some pretty dangerous people in the same place. So Paige would be there, be in the ambulance, ride to the hospital with her. Her mother would become extremely aggressive. Paige would try to calm her mother down in the hospital. Then she would be released with her mother, after this, right back to continue the cycle again.

Not only was she living in a dangerous neighbourhood, but she had to actually cope with a parent who was in incredible distress and who was emotionally — without a doubt, because of her distress — extremely abusive and hostile.

We note in the report how even in the early years, when she was taken into foster care, she was given a bit of an opportunity in a very supportive foster home for a period of time. Her mom found out the foster home that she was sent to. She came to the foster home and lay outside the bedroom window and screamed and yelled at the foster parent when they came in and out of the residence and also just screamed, in the neighbourhood.

The foster parent was kind of embarrassed and alarmed and just couldn’t manage it, even though Paige was settling in well. Of course, Paige was pretty upset, too, because her mother was outside her bedroom window screaming and yelling. Instead of doing what one would expect we would do — which is remove the mother from the situation and provide healthy and safe boundaries for the child to have a relationship with her mother when it’s a healthy, good time — they just released her back to her mom.

It’s not the right thing to do but also leads to a pattern, for Paige in particular, because this is about her experience, where it was clear that she became her mother’s support person, if you like, or protector. She was a young carer who felt that her responsibility was also to keep her mother safe.

MCFD’s approach was really to put the onus on Paige to kind of care for her mother. Then in her adolescent years, when she came into the Downtown Eastside, the MCFD model of youth support, if you want to call it a model, was one of, “Well, if you want support, let us know” — not that she’d ever see anybody with any responsibility, because they weren’t necessarily working the hours when she was in the street. But “if you want something, let us know.” She’d be like, “Well, I’d like to go to school” or whatever.

Pretty much, she had to do all of that on her own. She got herself into a school. She was an extremely bright girl. She had great resilience and academic potential despite the fact that she had terrible attendance at school because of her mother’s chaotic lifestyle.

There’s no question in my mind that had she been able to be connected to school and even had a minimal level of support, she would have been able to meet expectations and graduate. For instance, she attended 16 schools but none for very long. In fact, the last full academic year that she attended would have been grade 7, when her attendance was only between 30 to 40 percent. But she still managed to pass that year, which was to her credit.

Of course, when she came into the Downtown Eastside and she started coming into schools and saying, “I want to be educated,” and so forth, the school noted, as we put in the report, that she was a child whose life was sort of falling apart. She’d show up for school one day and say, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t here because the police came, and my mother was arrested, and then I was homeless for the last week,” or “I had nowhere to live.” When she didn’t attend, of course the school did what it does in British Columbia. It robocalled the mom to say, “Where are you?” but mom didn’t really keep regular minutes on a cell phone or a number.
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A big issue in this case was: how was it that Paige could come into Vancouver, which has a strong and active school board, yet could just slip away from education programs, without adequate support around not only her attendance but also her academic achievement? A continued theme with her was wanting to get an education.

She also, for a significant period of time, didn’t have her glasses — or contact lenses, which she tried to wear for a period of time — so she would have been blind as well. Getting around…. She showed a lot of natural intelligence, being able to survive in the Downtown Eastside, to be able to get all around that region without seeing, and also to even be able to go to school and not always have glasses and not be followed. That was significant.

Again, her aunt and uncle, who are here, would always bring those issues up. They’d always say: “Paige needs her glasses. Paige needs to see the doctor for her health. Please make sure Paige sees that.” Then most of their concerns would never be noted in a file and not followed up on.

In the context of dealing with her, she of course, like a lot of kids in her situation, developed serious substance abuse problems of her own, just as her mother had before her. So during those three years that she was living in the Downtown Eastside, as I said, she was involved in more than 40 police files, primarily for public intoxication and disturbances involving alcohol and lower-level drug use.

One police officer actually said to Crown counsel that Paige needed “some form of intervention, hopefully by the court, or she may be hurt or killed while on a binge.” Unfortunately, the courts did not intervene in her situation. So she ended up at emergency rooms and in detox at least 17 times, because she would be found unconscious, whether that be on the SkyTrain or in a park or in a washroom or where have you.

Reporting between health care workers, police and MCFD about these incidents was spotty. In some cases, they were not reported. In others, the ministry did not respond. The bottom line, really, when we looked at the pattern — because a pattern emerged — was that nobody — not social workers, not police officers, not health care workers, not educators, not the courts — did enough to help Paige. Her files are rife with examples in which workers seemed to throw up their hands and declare “What can we do?” rather than doing everything that was within their power.

Of course, the deeper question is why. Why is it that a young aboriginal girl — whose tragic outcome, in hindsight, seems utterly predictable — was not helped?

Well, it would appear that there are serious challenges with the model of youth services that is offered by MCFD and, also, the systemic approach to this particular cohort of young people — I would say young aboriginal people — and their parents, who have experienced a great deal of vulnerability. Why did social workers leave her in the care of a mother who was clearly not capable of caring for her? Why was that one viable option for a permanent home with family — namely, Fran and Lorne — not explored?

In fact, it was explored and rejected. Unfortunately, the investigation found that the ministry viewed Fran and Lorne as motivated by seeking money. I can assure you, as you can see their presence here today…. First of all, it was a minor, small amount of money for kinship care, which would have been even less than foster care, to support her. But even to label or to think that that is the dynamic at play is very problematic.

I would note that her Aunt Fran, in particular, is someone who worked an entire career at a community-serving agency in the Downtown Eastside, Ray-Cam. Her Aunt Fran worked, basically, at the front desk of Ray-Cam, greeting families and supporting kids and others all the time. In fact, Fran frequently tried to get Paige to come to Ray-Cam just to be safe for a period of time or get something to eat, and so forth.

It was not explored appropriately about how you work with families. In fact, it’s sort of a model of how you would never want to work with families. That shows a deeper problem around the ministry’s capacity to work with aboriginal families, to build positive relationships and to not come from a perspective of judgment — and also, assumption —about those families with respect to caring for their family members.

Paige did have a very short period of time in a foster home. The four months before she turned 19, she came into care. She was found in very bad shape. She finally came into care, was put in a foster home with a single foster parent — a very skilled foster parent but a foster parent who immediately said: “This child’s needs are immense. This child has gone through so much. We have to support her.” But they only had four months.

The foster parent in particular was trying very hard to be an advocate for her. She was deteriorating in her ability to cope. Of course, the transition plan was that she would age out of care, so they were continually saying to the foster parent to prepare Paige for aging out of care. “Keep a calendar. Cross off the days on the calendar. Tell her this is coming. You’ve got to get ready.” Paige wasn’t coping. She was already falling apart.

In this time when she was in that foster home, it was one of the first times she ever had a referral to a mental health team. I know this committee is studying these issues, and they’re very important, around how children access complex care needs or have mental health supports, and this is a cohort of kids that frequently show significant mental health needs.

Not only was Paige born with some medical fragility, but given the trauma and the abuse that she’d experienced, it’s not surprising that she had pretty significant anxiety. She was, to use the language of the moment, self-medicating by using what was most readily available, al-
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cohol or drugs, not to mention that she was involved in a neighbourhood where you can be given drugs in exchange for working to collect drug debts. That is the sort of business of the street.

She did get assessed. She had a referral to the inner-city mental health team. They saw her once. She never went to a second appointment. She died of a drug overdose 20 days later than her second appointment. She wouldn’t have been, really, capable of getting herself to all of those appointments.

When she was assessed by the team, they found that she had generalized anxiety disorder. They thought perhaps she had obsessive-compulsive traits. She had become, really, not very functional. She was really struggling, and they had given her a number of medications. That was the first and only psychiatric assessment she ever received.

When she aged out of care, she basically aged out to a shelter in the Downtown Eastside not very far from Oppenheimer Park. That is where she died, in her SRO hotel room, of a drug overdose, and 18 months after that, her own mother also died of a drug overdose in the Downtown Eastside. Her mother suffered extreme challenges before she died, and then after she died, she had 18 months, herself, of challenges there.

I just wanted to note that around the transition process, the transition planning was chaotic and actually fairly abusive toward Paige — reminding her: “You’re done; you’re done. What are you going to do?”

How she actually aged out of care was the situation that we do see with a number of vulnerable kids in this cohort. Her belongings were delivered to the last school address that they had for her, which she hadn’t been at, in any event. Basically, all of her belongings were put in a garbage bag and sent to the last known school address, which had lost track of her anyway. A social worker checked to see if an apartment building for at-risk youth might have been appropriate. They thought that probably it would be okay, and she was sent out to a shelter.

I think that the investigation, in particular, really demonstrated a number of issues. One is a problematic culture or attitude within the system toward these kids. But it also reflects something more profound, which is what we conclude in this report — that there is an element of what we call professional indifference with respect to the life experience.

Now, of course, telling Paige’s story, you can see where she went and so forth. Is it reasonable that the social worker or community service agency on the street knew what was going on? You know, we see this now from the 10,000-foot view. Is it reasonable? I think it’s entirely reasonable that they knew what was going on during the time she was in the Downtown Eastside — because it’s well known, the problems that are there and the danger that is there.

Not having had the types of reports of a child in need of protection shows, in addition, not only professional indifference but an actual problem with administering the child welfare legislation. It has a duty. We in fact put that right on the back of the report, the legal duty to report, in section 13. We put it out quite broadly, because this isn’t our first case where we found a systemic failure in the duty to report. It’s a profound level of failure, of not reporting, by people who work in the front lines of the system.

I’ll talk about the recommendations in a moment. But after the report was released, the Grand Chief of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs actually wrote to the Vancouver police department and asked that there be an investigation into the failure to report in Paige’s case. As the Vancouver police department was one of the agencies, in the 40 files, that was working with Paige, they transferred the matter to the RCMP, who investigated the issue around the duty to report. This issue about reporting child safety issues appears to be a major, significant theme and problem with this cohort of young people.

Now, in terms of the recommendations, I’ll just speak very quickly to them. I’m sure you may have some questions. The MCFD has developed a response to the report, which I really welcome. Again, we’ve had a few tense moments at times. We had a bit of a tense period after this report was released until more recently, when the report recommendations were accepted in full. I’m really pleased.

In terms of the work plan, there’s a lot of work to be done, but they were accepted. But it was a very challenging process back and forth.

The recommendations include…. The first and most important recommendation was that the province and MCFD in lead really take a much more forceful and effective approach to this issue of professional indifference toward aboriginal children and youth — by the social workers, police, health care and educators — and we wanted an immediate review and engagement with the kids in the Downtown Eastside.

That has led to — and I’ll talk about it, perhaps, later — the rapid response issue, which has hit the ground, and we can describe what’s going on. I’m sure the ministry will come and talk to you, and we’re working closely there.

Kind of valuable, calling it rapid response, although it took six months. But the recommendation 1. The first bullet point was to immediately review all files and to connect with those children and begin proper planning for those children. That is outstanding. That is a very significant piece of work, because Paige isn’t the only young person.

You’ll see under recommendation 1 some very specific issues around how we approach reporting child abuse and dealing with aboriginal children and youth — very specific issues around that cohort of at-risk kids.

The second recommendation goes to the issue of what
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happens in the Downtown Eastside — that MCFD, the Ministry of Health and the city of Vancouver look at the provision of services in the Downtown Eastside and really this — what I would call significant funding that goes to a system that doesn’t seem to work for kids like Paige, and take immediate steps to make sure that there are no kids in SROs, for instance.

It’s really crucial, and I can have our chief investigator address that issue, because we’ve been involved in it. The city of Vancouver, after the Paige report, actually unanimously accepted the Paige report and accepted the recommendations. The mayor of Vancouver and some of the other mayors in the Lower Mainland have been doing some youth-focused work that I think is really valuable. It can help, maybe, put some of this in place.

The final bullet point on recommendation 2 is so essential and, again, goes to the issue of complex care, and that is MCFD’s need to have a form of secure care, with appropriate legal safeguards to allow for actually protecting vulnerable children and getting them to a position where they’re healthy enough to be able to move forward. So the secure care recommendation is there. It’s crucial. For Paige, it would have been a big change.

Recommendation 3 is about this issue of reporting and enforcing the act, and I can respond to questions about that — a significant challenge in British Columbia, to have a meaningful child welfare system that actually has a duty to report and enforces the duty to report.

Recommendation No. 4 goes to education and what we do with the kids that are not in school and with chronic non-attendance. Much of what’s recommended here is for this cohort of kids, although I’d have to say that the recent report of the Auditor General on aboriginal education basically confirms and supports the same recommendation, which I was really pleased to see — particularly, that we be more successful at improving aboriginal outcomes and that we deal with attendance as a key component of that. Because if no one tracks attendance, kids like Paige get lost.

Recommendation No. 5 is really directed to Health and the First Nations Health Authority. I think Grand Chief Doug Kelly might be here. Yes, he’s here today. He’s been very active in promoting this recommendation and looking at what kinds of services and supports are there, with an aboriginal trauma lens.

Again, the committee’s work on mental health supports — how we support aboriginal children and families in terms of responding to trauma and recovering from trauma. Paige and her mom had an incredible amount of trauma in their lives, as well as other needs. The trauma-informed care is so crucial, including in the mental health system, where mom was an active addict but also was very judged by the people in the system.

Then recommendation No. 6 is really a recommendation to the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation. They have a Minister’s advisory council on aboriginal women. We debriefed the report with that advisory council, and we had a very valuable process.

We’ve suggested that this advisory council maybe take on a more active role in looking at the situation for aboriginal girls and women, and especially for Paige — how they came into the pathway, how they came into the Downtown Eastside, how we can change that pathway for particularly vulnerable girls and women.

We were hoping that advisory committee could be actually empowered by officials in MCFD and others to look at cases and really think about it and give strategic advice. So we had a very good discussion with them about that recommendation.

I’ll pause there. I know we probably went overtime. I’m sure we’re going to receive some questions, and we’re happy to answer them officially or off the record, if we have to move forward.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you, Mary Ellen. I just had a request for a two-minute break before we go into questions.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Where to start. First of all, I commend you and your investigative team on such a comprehensive and in-depth report.

Before they left, I wanted to say to the family members, “Thank you for being here,” and also that I’ll be asking a specific question that might bring up memories and experiences that would retraumatize the family. But they left, so that’s okay.

The report has created a lot of reaction and, in my view, not enough action. I was looking at the report, and then I was thinking about when Paige actually died. It was two years and seven months ago tomorrow. It’s nearing 1,000 days since Paige died. Although this report came out in May and has recommendations that could have been acted on in the last six months, I think we have to look at when Paige actually died and when the ministry would have been aware of that, and that’s nearing 1,000 days ago.

I’m going to ask just one question in the first round, and that’s on the short term. My following question will be on the bigger picture and the longer term.

In the short term, in the report on pages 46 and 47, it really outlines that there was the opportunity for Paige to be placed with her aunt and uncle, Fran and Lorne, as you introduced them. That didn’t happen. In fact, in the words of yourself, Mary Ellen, it was explored and rejected by the ministry.

I’m interested in the action that has been taken in the last 1,000 or so days and, again, in the last six months after this report came out. Under recommendation No. 1, the fifth bullet point down: “MCFD to develop a clear
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fund to support aboriginal extended family members to allow them to do kinship care.” It obviously was the shortcoming of why Paige wasn’t able to be placed with her aunt and uncle — a lack of funding and a minimal amount of funding, as you pointed out.

You asked for a report from the director of child welfare to be sent to the representative by September 30, 2015, which is, again, almost two months ago now. Can you elaborate on how that recommendation has been going, as far as you can tell, with the ministry and whether there will be a clear fund to support aboriginal extended family members to allow them to do kinship care, which would have made the world of difference in this particular case?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the dimension in this report around Paige’s experience is the relevance of the fact that she was an aboriginal child — and her mother and the challenging situation they faced, where they left community and eventually came to the Downtown Eastside. The pathway. I think her aboriginal identity and experiences really intertwined with what happened here, not only in terms of many opportunities that were present to change the story.

By the time she came to the Downtown Eastside, that opportunity to be placed with her Aunt Fran and Uncle Lorne was the kinship relationship that could’ve assisted her here. But along that pathway, when she was in other communities in B.C., there were other family members as well. Any aboriginal family may have some members that are struggling but others that are strong and can work together to plan for the needs of a child, with support from the ministry.

The challenge in the Ministry of Children and Family Development is that despite explicit policies and practice directives about placing aboriginal children with family members and so forth, what seemed to be the operative principle for Paige was, “Just leave her with her mom” — that that was an aboriginal-specific policy. Kinship placement, meaning recognizing that aboriginal family members are the best go-to resource when a parent struggles, is not a strong system in British Columbia at the moment. This isn’t the first report that I’ve looked at this issue. I’ve looked at others.

Again, in the 15,000 advocacy cases that we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of aboriginal cases. There’s a cultural problem with responding.

How has the ministry responded to this recommendation? The ministry tabled a response, which again, I don’t want to underestimate. I appreciate the fact that they’ve accepted the recommendations. However, the response that they tabled had no meaningful aboriginal content. It’s valuable around making people more aware of the duty to report and so forth. But what about specifically for aboriginal children and families? What is uniquely required that’s missing?

I think the report speaks to it. First of all, there are not enough aboriginal people working in the child welfare system and child-serving system in B.C. MCFD’s labour force has less than 4 percent aboriginal staff — no senior management staff, ADM or higher. This has been a very thorny point. Until you get a critical mass of people working — I’d say the critical mass is 30 percent — you can’t change culture.

Even though you can have mandatory cultural awareness training and other things that are valuable…. I’m not undervaluing them. Until you get a critical mass, it’s really difficult to serve a population when you’re still coming as an outsider — and to remove those concepts of judgment, blame and aligning the policies. So there’s a real persistent barrier there.

Even the response to Paige’s report, while it’s valuable, lacks an aboriginal lens. I can ask my deputy to speak to it more closely. She has the added advantage, in the past, as being the most senior aboriginal staff member in the ministry — the director of aboriginal services. But I don’t think the response we have is going to lead to the type of change we need.

D. Thomas-Wightman: Before I go into recommendation 1 specifically, I think the representative commented on the tension that was created after this report. We chose very carefully to use the words “professional indifference” and “systemic racism.” That wasn’t an easy decision. Our senior executive grappled with that language, because we knew it would stir up some emotion but felt that we had no other choice but to use that language.

Rec 1 speaks to forcefully responding to that systemic racism and having an aboriginal lens. So you can imagine our surprise when we received the response and there was no aboriginal lens on the entire response. Although the representative comments on the fact that we’re happy there was a response and we’re happy that they accepted the recommendations, it was disappointing to see the lack of an aboriginal lens on that work.

Again, the cultural shift that’s needed…. There’s cultural competency training at the ministry. I believe that about 20 percent of the staff have taken that, which is also disappointing when most of your clientele is aboriginal. The work required to deal with a cultural shift around the systemic racism and the professional indifference isn’t represented in this work.

The rapid response team has no aboriginal participation on it — again, shocking and disappointing. There was some reference to an urban aboriginal child welfare agency participating, but at this time, they have not. They’ve been reviewing files with no aboriginal lens on it.

There was a youth roadmap that was developed — Mary Ellen talked about the lack of a youth model — an attempt to help workers work their way through a
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pathway. There are standards that are in that roadmap, but nothing to do with the aboriginal standards. There are aboriginal standards specific to aboriginal children. There’s not one mention of that.

That was the feedback we have given to the ministry. We’re hopeful that they will respond. To date we haven’t had a response on that. We’ve received, just recently, a brief update on the work of Grand Chief Ed John around his community meetings with chiefs. But it doesn’t speak to this forceful recommendation that was put in there — not lightly. There’s a crisis in aboriginal child welfare, and it continues. So the rapid response team, the youth roadmap, the responses under rec 1 are completely void of any aboriginal lens.

M. Stilwell: I think Dawn may have somewhat responded to my question, but I’d like to ask it anyways. You’ve used the word “professional.” I think we often use the word professional in many different ways — kind of unofficial, or more general…. For example, “professional indifference” takes it to…. You expect that people who work with children in care will work effectively and with the character of a public servant.

This is about recommendation 3, when you talk about individual professional bodies. Many of the people who do this work are not, strictly speaking, in professions — which I would say have, first of all, standards of assessment and demands for documentation that would be very fundamentally ingrained in people — lawyers, accountants, doctors; I mean, this is something that’s very fundamental — and then standards of care and being held to them by a professional body.

I just am trying to probe your recommendation 3. I hear very clearly that there needs to be more accountability and that people are responsible for behaving in accordance with the act. I just am curious. Do you have kind of a bigger vision or picture of how this recommendation can actually play out in ways that will increase accountability and better results? It implies supports and resources for people to develop professionally. I’m just interested in how you see that rolling out.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, I think that on recommendation 3, those are really important observations.

When we look at Paige, we look at social workers not only in the ministry but people working in community agencies, in the Downtown Eastside and elsewhere, that were working with her; educators, meaning school teachers, school staff; hospital staff, which can be everyone from an intake clerk in emergency through to physicians, emergency room physicians, specialists, others; and then police can be everyone from the special car, people from Reconnect, all the way up to more serious investigative teams. Paige had involvement with all of those classes of people.

Now, when it comes to health care professionals, there are really explicit standards. There are quality assurance measures in British Columbians, but nobody measures whether or not they are complying with the duty to report. Is it an easy process to report? I think it isn’t a difficult process, but there needs to be a fresh look at it, because it didn’t happen all the time.

Also, there’s a reason why it’s there. It’s actually in the statute as an offence: failing to report — everyone, not just professionals, friends and neighbours but all of us. If we fail to report, it’s an offence. It’s never been enforced in British Columbia.

There’s one other offence in the act, making a false report, which has been enforced. It sometimes happens in high-conflict family law cases. It’s not enforced very frequently, but it is really important, and it’s taken very seriously. But not reporting has never been dealt with.

What would I have expected? I would have expected a very strong regular campaign, just like the “Wash your hands so you don’t get the flu” campaign in health: “Make sure you’re reporting.” The director of child welfare and everyone should be continually reminding people that if you see someone like Paige, you should report it. It’s a safety issue, and we need to actually get in there and address the fact that she can’t feed herself, she can’t see, she can’t get to school. She’s a child that needs support.

But there are professions with explicit regulatory systems — physicians, nurses, social workers, police and others — who had some training. They can’t say: “We didn’t that know there was a duty to report.” They reported only sometimes. They may have reported ten of the 20 times, but why didn’t they report…? “Well, you know, because we just don’t bother.”

The indifference comes with the idea that it’s not important to pay attention to it, but actually, it’s extremely important to pay attention to it. In the recommendation, the last bullet point was really about the Attorney General and the director of child welfare to engage in a substantial and meaningful public awareness campaign.

All my time as representative until this report, despite prodding and prodding, there has been no campaign on this, just like we did the issue around adoptions. Get a strong public campaign on recruiting, and it works. You have to inform. But this one is even different than adoption, because everyone has the obligation.

It’s one of those areas where is it just sitting there and it doesn’t mean anything, or is it actually a bit of a linchpin in the system? It is a linchpin, because very vulnerable kids can have things happen to them in plain sight. It’s not like people didn’t know what was going on, like Paige is a completely invisible person. No, she’s not. But actually, the level of abuse she experienced was tolerated across the system.

In hindsight, we look at it and say: “Well, how can that be?” Well, it’s because, in part, we don’t actually enforce this meaningfully. I’ve been going back and forth with the
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Attorney General ministry. I wanted them to have a practice directive, a prosecutions directive. Like, they have a directive on how to enforce the provisions prohibiting abuse of seniors. How do you investigate…?

I’m not saying you’re going to convict every time, but how do you present a prosecution? There are normal documents that develop in prosecutions to do it, and one of them is a prosecutions directive on how you will deal with the duty to report. The Attorneys General will say: “Well, it’s not my job, prosecutions.” But then, who does the policing? What if it’s the police that’s not reporting?

It’s one of those issues where nobody wants to touch this hot potato. At the same time, the effectiveness of the system depends on us doing it. I would think professional bodies should take a strong role on their own.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons. When I did the Lost in the Shadows report, when there was a persistent situation where a mom with significant mental illness was attending at a hospital with a child and allowed to leave, the college did a strong outreach to its members. I was glad for that.

But then by the time I got into Paige’s report, where I’m seeing the same thing in every health authority, every region…. She’s in six different hospitals, and I see similar patterns. I think a more aggressive approach is needed in British Columbia. I don’t think we’ll prevent another Paige situation unless we do that more aggressively. Professionals need to see it’s required. The ministry needs to be clear.

We’ll talk in the next report about: can they manage the load? A lot of professionals say: “We don’t report to the ministry, because they don’t do anything.” What we push back and say is: “But you have a duty to report. What the ministry does, the ministry does. But you need to fulfil your duty.” You don’t say: “I’m not going to call the police because someone’s here holding a gun to my head, because last time they responded to a gunshot thing, they didn’t do anything.” You call them, and you have to do that with the children in need of protection.

Sadly, I’ve given this recommendation twice. I shouldn’t even have to give this recommendation. There should be a plan. If, out of this report, a more consistent plan comes forward, I think that would be really valuable.

D. Thomas-Wightman: Can I just add to that around the professional indifference and some of the thought that we have with the social work staff? Social workers are delegated under the legislation, and there are also standards to follow.

In our report, we note that there are strong aboriginal standards in legislation already in B.C. The act strongly speaks to the importance of aboriginal family being involved, aboriginal service providers. On page 47, it talks about a placement when a child comes into care. There’s a priority placement that’s part of the standards.

The professional indifference comes to ignoring those standards. What happened in this case, when it’s clear there’s a priority placement standard…. When Lorne and Fran were, as a family, presenting, how did the social workers continue to ignore this, and not just in this case but prior in the Interior as well?

We see that with aboriginal children. Our other reports saw that. That’s the crisis that we talk, as well, in aboriginal child welfare. The cultural shift that’s needed isn’t reflected in the action plan that they’ve developed.

M. Karagianis: I think one of the really shocking and disturbing parts of Paige’s story is the lack of common sense in some cases. Mary Ellen, when you talk about them packaging up all her things in a bag and taking them to the last school she went to, there’s no common sense in that whatsoever. I think it’s deeply disturbing that this story takes place over a long period of time. This is not something that’s five years in the making. It’s 20 years in the making.

So it’s all the more surprising to hear that we’re only just now undertaking some kind of training to put an aboriginal lens and sensitivity and ethic on that. Just as shocking as Paige’s story is that it’s 2015. This has been going on for many, many years, and it has taken this report, the shocking nature of this report, to jar the system — if it has, in fact, done that.

It seems to me…. Maybe you’d speak to this, whether this is a systemic attitude. It’s pervasive, obviously, in the communities that Paige lived in, probably in the Downtown Eastside. Certainly, the racial overtones of this are pretty obvious. I’d like to know if we have any idea how many more kids are out there in a similar situation or somewhere along this continuum of the experience that Paige had.

What is your view on how this can change? How fast will this change within the system, and how will that be tracked? How will you be able to see that evidence that things are changing?

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, in terms of how many more children. Sometimes in my office, in terms of oversight, we do get into disputes with the ministry about numbers, as you can imagine. Unfortunately, it’s not my choice of how things go, but we had a period of pretty significant disagreement, where I was strongly of the view that there are 200 kids like Paige. The ministry was of the view that there were fewer. It’s not, “I’m right; you’re wrong,” or whatever. It’s just what are you looking at, and how are you assessing it.

In the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver we had a history of kids with extreme vulnerability being intoxicated in parks — kids sleeping over night, nine years old, passed out. They were aboriginal children, primarily. We had community agencies bringing these forward for a period of time. But the scope and scale of the issue — it
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was important for them to look at it. They did a review after the report of some of the cases. We wanted them to, say, take ten or 15 and see what the pathways are.

The ministry did do some of that work over the summer. I think in total they’ve looked at close to 200 files. But they’re not actually engaging with the kids. It’s paperwork at headquarters, which is fine, to study it. But I want a team on the ground, reconnecting through Reconnect, which is an agency where the Vancouver police and others are there, and they’d be on the lookout for it and so forth.

But there is the issue of what does it mean to engage with a young person. This is where the youth model falls down. It has become an incredibly passive, fractured system. It’s very akin to what you’re studying as a committee around mental health supports. Like I say in this report about Paige, if the mental health supports had been in the school, it would have been so much easier for her to get that trauma informed. It probably could have been a very different way of looking at her than, “Oh my god, her mother has been evicted, she’s violent, we can’t handle this kid, and get her out of here.”

Just how you see the system…. The system is not designed to support kids with complex needs who have child welfare concerns. It needs to work more effectively together. But on the youth model, what is the youth model in British Columbia? We’ve had discussions. Even in the rapid response team, what’s the model? I continue to be very troubled by the model. They’re like: “We’re studying it. We’re going to develop a new model.”

I feel very strongly that there has to be an active model, which means that you have to actually go…. In light of Paige and the oversight indifference or the falling down of that system, they should actively go out and re-engage with young people that they’ve missed. Find out if they’re safe, actively make the sweep and work the hours that are required to do that, not the banker’s hours. Then the model is based on this.

The premise of the current model is: “If you want help, we will give it to you.” But what are you offering to a young person? “Do you want help?” What do they mean by help?

If someone is an IV drug user doing survival sex work and you go see them at nine o’clock in the morning and say, “Would you like some help,” what does that mean? Well, first of all, they’re terrified that their pimp is going to abuse them and they’re a rat. Paige was terrified when the police attended at the basement apartment where she was with a 14-year-old girl who was in the bed, covered in blood, and a questionable 51-year-old male was there. They responded because another person in the building was saying: “There’s a lot of yelling and screaming going on. Could you go knock on the door and check?”

They looked at it, and they basically walked away because, again, Paige was like: “Well, I’m not going to be the rat. I want to survive here. If I get my name associated with taking this guy out, then believe me, there are ten more guys like him around the corner who are going to take me out.”

Paige knew what the rules of the street were. You get eaten alive. It’s not a safe place. So when you go out there and say, “Oh look, I’m here. Can I give you some help,” a kid like Paige is not going to look at you and say: “Oh, thank you from the Ministry of Families for coming out.”

You have to be very concrete. Active drug addiction, covering up severe pain, probably significant mental illness — she has to get healthy to be able to even make decisions about a future. Her basic health has to be improved. That’s why one of our recommendations is about even, secure care. Sometimes you have to remove someone — you have to balance their rights; I’m not saying it’s done lightly, and I know Mr. Markwart can speak to this issue — to get them healthy enough to be able to begin to do the work, right? There’s a class of kids that need some pretty intensive support.

The idea that when you want some help…. “If you want help, we’re here” is a way for the system to completely get off the hook. The rapid response team — what’s their response? “Are you ready for help today, Paige? No? Okay, then go back to survival sex work and drug addiction.” It’s just not a system of care.

The glimmer of hope, I would say, is certainly…. We recently have seen a new approach, at least federally, to aboriginal children. There’s a new openness. There’s a new federal minister not only for aboriginal affairs but for children and families who has a very strong mandate letter to look at the situation for aboriginal children.

Now, this is in a municipality in the province. It’s just how might we align, with these new opportunities, some effective approaches. I have not seen the ministry develop an effective youth model. They basically have the motivational interview model, which is to tell people we’ll give you something, but they have nothing to offer. I mean, what will they offer on the ground? That’s the challenge. They really don’t have (a) the model and (b) the services. So building from here is going to take a lot of gap filling.

C. James: Thank you for your comments. I also want to follow up on the system of care for youth that we’ve been talking about. I think it’s a good follow-up. No question the report is shocking, but I think even more shocking about this report is the fact that all of the pieces and all of the incidences have occurred for hundreds of kids and could be pointed out for hundreds of kids. I think that’s probably one of the most shocking pieces.

I wonder a little bit about the work that you did in the Downtown Eastside, in talking about the risk situations for youth, because it’s certainly something I’ve seen in my work up north — that it’s often urban settings, particularly for aboriginal kids. They become a challenge in
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their own community. The community can’t deal with it. They think they’ll move them to where bigger services are. They move them to Prince George or Kamloops or Terrace or Vancouver, and then they get caught in the net.

What I’ve seen in the system of care for youth — and I think it reinforces what you were saying as well, Mary Ellen — is the self-fulfilling direction of the system. The support wasn’t given — I think this report points it out so well — in the early years, and therefore the child becomes a troubled teenager. Troubled teenagers are difficult to deal with at the best of times, never mind all of the other issues and situations that someone like Paige has gone through in their lives.

That then becomes self-fulfilling, because the ministry then says: “Well, we offered help, and they wouldn’t take it. We tried to help, and they went back to their abusive situation.” It becomes a “We’re off the hook” situation. I wondered if you could just speak a little bit about that, because I think that really is part of what I see as a culture issue within the ministry, within the social service system.

Then just on the secure care… I know this will be a further follow-up, depending on where the ministry goes around the secure care. I also sat on that committee back in the ’90s as a school trustee, and I agree with your comments. I think there are situations — rare, but situations — where secure care is worth looking at. But the biggest thing that I took away from that fulsome review was that it’s not an excuse for not providing service. It’s not a substitution for providing service.

That’s my fear around secure care — that it’s a nice easy way, like youth justice in some ways…. I don’t mean easy but a nice way to say: “Okay, we’re providing the service.” We’ll provide a lockup of some kind, and then the child goes back to the same situation, and the services weren’t there and the services weren’t provided. That’s my only, I guess, worry that I have around the secure care issue.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think in terms of the…. First of all, Paige’s story, I think, resonates with a whole group of young people and young adults. In a way, we named Paige because the family gave us permission, even though I know they found it challenging, and we used her picture because we wanted to tell her story. We also did it, in part, because we felt we would be inundated by hundreds of people calling us, saying, “Is that about my daughter?” or “Is that about my granddaughter?” — because there are so many kids like Paige.

They’re not just in the Downtown Eastside, but the Downtown Eastside is the end point, frequently, as a pathway, because of ready access to drugs and also the perception that there are services. But they may not be appropriate services. So it’s a systemic issue.

It’s one case, but there are many cases. In fact, we’ve investigated a few other cases along the way. Sometimes they’re involved in other proceedings which we’re happy to see go forward, like criminal proceedings, and we don’t get to tell the story. But there have been other deaths.

I think the issue, when we really look at the Paige situation, is all of the opportunities that she had. Not only is this a case where we have to learn from prevention…. Could we have prevented this? That is always our lens. Could we or could we not? That’s a very careful factual finding.

In fact, this conclusion is that the system, being the way it is, not only didn’t work to prevent it; it probably hastened her death. That’s, I think, the more troubling thing. One was quite shocked to find out those predictions in the file, saying: “If we continue to leave her with mom, IV drug-using and doing survival sex work, in trauma every day, she will end up on the same path.”

You have to remember that her grandmother died of a drug overdose, she died of a drug overdose, and her mother then, 18 months later, died of a drug overdose. Is it inconsequential that these, again, are aboriginal women who are extremely vulnerable and who end up in this situation and have no service? It’s not surprising. I think it’s a pattern — is the challenge.

When we talk about how you respond, well, we need to have a strong social care system, for sure. But for acute needs, 15 years ago — Mr. Markwart can speak to this — we would have had a more active presence of youth justice. Our numbers in youth justice have gone down. We may have held someone in the youth justice forensic unit or in a program to kind of step them down afterward. But that doesn’t exist.

The school didn’t have supports. The only mental health support she had was when she aged out of care. That’s the other piece of it. Four months before she aged out of care was a critical opportunity to change Paige’s life. She had a foster mom who wasn’t dealing with the issues her mom dealt with and who actually provided understanding, to say: “This kid’s really gone through a lot. I can’t possibly meet her needs. But if we could bring some things to the table, we can get her through, because she’s bright, she’s been navigating this city blind, and she’s been able to protect her cats and preserve some relationships. She’s got a fighting chance.”

What happened was she was just literally shown to the curb. Even that issue of the transition, that strong issue of it…. So you have a long history of abuse. Still, if you get them at that stage, work on it. Do not just let them age out of care and go out.

Even on the mental health support, we can see a lot of resilience. We’re supposed to have one of our best inner-city mental health teams. Even in reviewing that, it’s like: how come you didn’t have her? How come you weren’t providing service to her? You’re here. Are those teams actually providing service to this cohort of aboriginal children? I’m not sure they are. What’s their accountability? What kind of service are they providing? Do they have any aboriginal staff? Do they have any unique relation-
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ships with First Nations Health, or whatever? These are areas that are really crucial, and we don’t see.

I think I’d like to ask Mr. Markwart to specifically speak to the issue of secure care. We did have that committee. We looked at it. We don’t have it. Many other jurisdictions do have it, and it is a way in. It’s safety, but it is a way in. But you’re right — you have to have services.

Alan can maybe talk about where it has been over the years with the ministry as well.

As you know, there is secure care legislation on the books. It was passed in 2000. It was never proclaimed in force. That happened in 2001. A new government came in, and there was reconsideration on a number of grounds.

With respect, I think there are problems with the legislation. There were also problems with the allocation of the funding to implement the legislation, which was inadequate. So it was put aside subject to a review. There was a provincewide consultation that went into place after that. Minister Hagen, I think in 2005, issued a report about that.

It is a very controversial issue which raises a lot of concerns, especially among the aboriginal community, because it raises spectres of residential schools and disproportionate use against aboriginal children.

One of the key findings of that review was that we cannot implement secure care alone. It needs to be embedded within a system of care that is accessible and responsive. There needs to be an intermediate system of care. You need responses right from out-patient community-based services to intermediate community residential treatment to tertiary care responses such as secure care.

If you look at the system, there isn’t a comprehensive system of residential treatment and care for children. There’s foster care. The mental health system that you’re looking at is probably a great example of that. You have the Maples. You have Ledger House. You have the adolescent units in the hospital. There’s nothing in between — literally nothing — in terms of step-up, step-down community-based residential treatment facilities.

If you look at the addictions area, again, it’s a similar situation. Certainly, there are some community residential treatment resources, but they’re few and far between. In fact, we’re in a situation where half of the roughly 50 residential addiction treatment beds in the province are in the youth justice system. There are roughly 25 beds available for the 1,600 kids in the youth justice system, and there’s roughly the same number, 25, available for the other 350,000 or so adolescents in the province. The best way to secure services in this province is to get charged with a criminal offence. That is wrong in principle.

Absolutely, we need secure care. It needs to be properly constructed. We need to adequately protect the rights of kids because it is an extreme step to deprive children of their liberty. But, at the same time, we need to develop a comprehensive system of care so that it doesn’t simply become a short-term default and they get scooped up, put into secure care — sometimes unnecessarily, because an intermediate response would have been better. Or if they go in there, then they’re discharged to what? There are no step-down facilities available.

Paige’s story is probably a good example of that, in the sense that if you’re going to have a responsive and accessible system of response, it needs to be fulsome and it needs to be able to respond not only to the needs of kids but in a timely and accessible way.

There are windows of opportunity in kids’ lives and adults’ lives where they are open to the idea of receiving treatment. But to have them go into a detox centre for two days or whatever and then say, “Well, we can make a referral for you three months down the line to an addictions treatment resource” — well, you’ve lost her at that moment. You need to be able to make that link right away.

D. Plecas: Let me say first, thanks for your report. I am so glad to hear that the government has accepted your recommendations.

For me, when I look at Paige’s case — recognizing, as others have said, that this is simply an example of what we can presume to be hundreds of others — she was clearly a youth, a child at risk, basically from birth. She lacked — however you want to describe it — a navigator, a mentor, a support person. She didn’t have somebody. Of course, her aunt and uncle, fortunately, were trying to be. But before that, it seems that she didn’t have somebody who was there, sort of leading the charge on her life — a person or a group of people.

Then throughout, it seems to me, it’s really an example of what we do non-stop. It’s all about processing. All we do is process people — in effect, at best, holding people in check — with no interventions, and worse, no interventions of sustained substance. I think that Alan is referring to that.

It’s troubling to me. One of the things which we all know is that the single best predictor of human behaviour is past behaviour, unless we can get in there and intervene some way in a significant kind of way. I say that to say…. I know we have some things on the horizon, which are helpful to small pockets, like the ACT team and what our committee is looking at with respect to schools and mental health programs in schools.

But it seems to me that rather than the focus on the duty to report…. My worry is that the duty to report is simply more processing. What we’re missing are the actual first people — I’m reminded of your comment about getting past the nine-to-five thing — who are going to be there to say, “Look, I….”
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There are lots of people who might be involved in Paige-like cases, but somebody needs to take charge, to say, “I’m going to make it my responsibility to make sure that there are interventions” — especially in her case and so many like it where, as Alan said, it has to be fulsome. We’re talking of a multiplicity of problems. It had better be good, and it had better be for a long time.

Again, I’d ask if you could comment on that whole matter. It troubles me because I don’t just see it with respect to youth. I see it across the board. Particularly in criminal justice, this is true. We process people, but at the end of the day, what they need most is help to help them get past their challenges. We’re just not doing it. Then we wonder, of course: “Well, gee. Why aren’t they changing?” Well, of course they’re not. Maybe if you could just comment on that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: On the issue about process and just on the duty to report, I think the duty to report should actually trigger that intervention because of the issue of who’s responsible. When a child is in need of protection, the responsibility is, under the CFCSA, that there be appropriate investigation and actions taken for the child’s safety.

You’re dealing with cases on a spectrum. Paige experienced abuse and neglect — chronic, serious neglect — and exposure to a parent that was an incredible risk and in poor functioning.

When you have a little bit of neglect, you don’t need to have a massive response. Many parents will have challenges. We’ve had a debate recently in British Columbia about whether kids could be home alone after school, for instance.

There are issues. There are different classes of child welfare issues. Most British Columbians do not know when to report and what to report. They may know what physical and sexual abuse is. They know they have to report that. When it comes to neglect, people are sometimes at a loss. Neglect is reportable and should be reported. But this is one of the problems when the child welfare system does not educate people on what is abuse and what is harmful to children and what needs a report and what needs a response.

When the presenting issues are parental addictions, parental trauma, unless you’re doing something to address parental capacity, then the child remains at risk. So in the case of Paige, nothing happened with her mother. It’s not like she attended treatment or got support or had regular monitoring of her addictions or what have you. There was no parental involvement, even though child welfare policy says that you should have it.

Furthermore, there was the concept here, which was: “Well, it’s their choice. This is their lifestyle choice. She’s choosing to remain with her mother who chooses this lifestyle that we just have to tolerate because we’re a tolerant society.” I think this report really goes to the issue that that is actually not an appropriate response from a child welfare lens, even in terms of dealing with intergenerational trauma for the aboriginal community. Leaving people alone to experience this is not a good approach.

Although in the Downtown Eastside, there’s a harm-reduction approach to problematic addictions…. I understand the rationale for that in certain circumstances but not for people who are actively parenting. That’s where the issue becomes turned on its head — and the fact that there are kids in SROs and what the efforts are to address that, for instance.

Even in the wake of the Paige report, these are considered to be private landlords or what have you. I mean, there’s no way to enforce their issues around who’s there or not there. They are making some attempt to do it, but who’s in there dealing with compliance about kids?

Should kids be in dangerous places? No, they shouldn’t. Should kids be out in the middle of the night passed out in parks, no matter where that is? No, they shouldn’t be. What do we do when that happens? There has to be a report. It has to be looked at. It doesn’t have to be looked at from a perspective of removing that child in every instance, but there has to be the proper assessment. That’s not just process. That’s really important to protect the safety of a child and the development of a child.

The “what you do” is key. What happened in Paige is that they said, “Call us if we can do something to help you,” but that put all of the responsibility on a kid in a known situation of danger who had never really experienced any normal safety. So what was her…? Did she ever have a normal relationship with a parent that has unconditional love and support for the child, or was it a parent who had, you know, the monkey brain of addiction, violence and dangerous people in their life? That’s all she knew.

I mean, she was her mother’s protector, so even that one time when she got money from — I don’t know how she got it — perhaps drug debt collection, she ran out and found her mother and gave her mother all of the money, because she was afraid that her mother wasn’t going to be able to make it. She had completely skewed the view that she was a child that could be supported. She was coping. It was a Mad Max view of childhood development that she was coping with.

Your issue about process is important. Processes need to lead to engagement and result. The youth model is one of, I would respectfully say, a lot of referrals to things in the Downtown Eastside, referrals to services that apparently are funded to do something. Some of them do. Some of them don’t. When’s the last time they were actually evaluated and looked at?

If you say you provide counselling services to people like Paige and her mother, do you provide those services, and why is it that they had no mental health support until she’s 19? These are key, key issues. And how could it
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be possible that they lived there for all that time — three years plus — and all those services never provided a service? That is problematic, so an intense review of what happens there is needed.

The government has accepted the recommendations. I don’t know how they’re going to going to do that one, but I would hope Coastal Health, city of Vancouver and MCFD would be actively evaluating and sharing with me the results of those evaluations.

I want to know down to the level of how many kids are actually served here. Are there qualified people doing this service — like people that don’t necessarily have criminal records and no education qualifications? Who’s delivering this footprint, if you like, in this community so we can navigate it better?

But you’re right. It’s not all about process, and it’s also not all about treating people like they’re making rational choices. Sixteen-year-olds don’t make a rational choice to do survival sex work. They don’t make a rational choice that makes them live in this situation. It’s just not possible to see…. A youth model premised on that is not a youth model. That’s professional indifference.

D. Barnett: Well, I read the report. It is a very in-depth report, and it’s a sad story. We all know that too often stories like this happen. I think one of the biggest mistakes, in my opinion, that was made was that this young lady, when she was a child, was not given a chance. I think we can talk about being 16 years old and being put here and there. I think we have to go back to the source of the problem. We can never fix anything if we don’t find out the cause, and I think that, hopefully, this report will help us do that.

M. Dalton: Yeah, 25 years ago, my wife and I had a foster son, when we lived on the North Shore. The ministry was quite involved in helping, and he attended BCIT, got his welding ticket — quite a smart fellow. We really had a positive, good relationship with him.

He aged out, and I lost track. We had occasional communication with him, but he ended up moving to the Downtown Eastside and got involved in drugs. About a year or so later, he committed suicide in a very violent way. I just recognize what a grinder that is on the eastside. I know that the ministry…. There are challenges when the kids age out, but that involvement….

It’s obvious — going back to what Donna said — that intervention, especially with Paige, should have been done sooner, as a young child. Half the children in care are aboriginal, if I’m correct. I know that the comment was made that that is systematic racism. But I’m wondering if the ministry itself is kind of resistant to removing children in some ways, because the numbers are so high as they are. Just to try…. “Oh, here we go again. Another aboriginal child.” I’m just wondering if that’s a bit systematic. That’s a question I have.

With children in care — aboriginal, specifically — how many are in a kinship home? A percentage of those — half or maybe…? Are those considered to be foster children? And what percentage of aboriginal children are in a kinship home?

It appears that that mistake was made with Fran and Lorne, but I would say that I don’t think it’s because of money. You look at how many placements there were in the last 2½ years. That works out to about one every 2½ weeks. I think that they didn’t know what to do, obviously, moving into addiction services and into detox, into shelters, into SROs. It is tragic.

One more comment. I know I’m putting a whole batch in all together. That is on recommendation 4. I was a teacher for quite a number of years. With the school districts, is there not that communication with the ministry when there’s absenteeism? I think that certainly needs to be there, that communication. I think that’s important.

I do know other children, specifically in an aboriginal community — and I’m aboriginal myself — that would not necessarily be in care, but even at elementary age, the attendance would be just atrocious. Sometimes it would be a month on end. Should interventions be made then? There’s that communication piece.

It’s just a comment with the kinship, if you can respond to that. Also, I think that’s a very important piece as far as recommendation 4, the absenteeism with the school districts. Is that a hodgepodge system that different school districts are doing different things? Or is there just not that communication at all?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I’ll start with the absenteeism issue. The reason why we made the recommendation is because most policies involve calling a parent. That’s generally a robocall, meaning you have an automated last number. That is not an effective strategy. In fact, it seems kind of ridiculous under the circumstance.

We’ve had this. In September of this year, this happens. Someone will call us, a middle school teacher, and say: “We haven’t seen Johnny. It’s three weeks into the school year. Did he go to another school district? Where is he?” Or: “He hasn’t shown up for months. What do we do?”

Is it the Ministry of Children and Families that checks on that? Is that an intake? Or is it the school system that checks on it? You will get a different answer in 60 different places. There is no consistent strategy.

My view is that somebody needs to check on it. When it’s kids that are vulnerable and they’re not in school, they have to be in school. If the child is not in school, things fall apart. When there are less organized responsive environments that the kids are in, you’ve got to be more active. I want someone assigned.

The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Children and Families can’t decide. They punt it back
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and forth. We don’t need truancy officers or whatever, but we need someone doing active outreach and management. It continues to be a very big issue.

The Auditor General’s report on aboriginal education that was released recently identified that the Ministry of Education policy has to improve. They cannot put over the issues of, say, absenteeism to just: “The sporadic whatever approach will work.” More consistent approach is needed for vulnerable kids for sure.

On the second issue, though, about kinship care, just looking at the numbers. First of all, more than half, 60 percent, of the children in care are aboriginal in British Columbia — and rising. I suspect that will be as high as 70 percent in the next decade.

How many children are in kinship placement? Well, there are only 508 children in extended family programs; 62 percent are aboriginal — and out-of-care options, about 54 percent of 600 children — so a very small number of children.

We used to have the Child in the Home of a Relative program, which was about 4,000. That got erased. There was an on-reserve program called guardianship financial assistance. That was eliminated.

We don’t fund custom adoption, First Nations adoption or post-adoption assistance on reserve. There’s no support for that and very limited support for aboriginal families. The policies are there, but the resources don’t go. We continue to have large numbers of aboriginal kids with very few programs and supports to create some financial assistance to kinship members to care for children. It’s a persistent issue. Paige is just one, but we see it consistently.

We also have seen a pretty significant shrinking of any support to…. Whether it’s grandparents raising grandchildren, or others, that has shrunk. Given that the aboriginal population has some deep, intergenerational poverty challenges, you need some financial assistance to be able to do the placements. That’s an area that we have not increased.

I don’t think there’s a fear of removal. The removals are happening. It’s the fear of permanency that seems to be the issue.

With aboriginal children specifically, adoption can be looked at with a lens that’s quite negative. We’ve tried to put a focus on permanency in our office and are working closely with Grand Chief Ed John on some of that work. But that’s where the disconnect is. I don’t think it’s about social workers thinking: “Here’s another aboriginal child I’m going to remove.” It’s more that they’re removed and then they languish in care for many, many years — right?

J. Rice: I have two questions. One is around SROs. I live in Prince Rupert and represent a wide area in the north. We don’t have SROs. So the continued use and frequency of SROs has been a big learning curve for me since I’ve become elected.

I’m curious to know how MCFD or outreach workers properly do their jobs, monitor, etc., when the SROs are deemed by the workers to be unsafe.

I was reading some of the quotes in this report. From one outreach worker: “We try not to go into hotels because it’s such a safety concern.” Another ministry person described the SRO as “a nightmare” and that some rooms have doors; some don’t. “I can’t even describe it. You wouldn’t let animals live in there.”

What’s the solution, if people are living here, people that need services, yet the workers are too afraid to go in? Or in some cases, it’s a safety issue. How do you overcome that? What’s the solution?

My second question has been nagging me since the very start of this report. Why weren’t the aunt and uncle, Fran and Lorne, supported to take Paige? It just seems like a simple solution. What happened there? Why didn’t that happen?

B. Naughton: I’ll tackle the SRO question first, if I can. There is a spectrum of SRO hotels. There are some SROs that are actually funded through B.C. Housing, and there are others that are privately held. There’s a continuum of these residential services. The question of how you work safely inside them is a significant one, and clearly, what we got back from staff in the process of our interviews was that they felt uncomfortable going into these places.

In many cases, of course…. In some cases, they try to get police assistance, which, depending on call demand in that area, can be extremely high. They may have significant time lags in terms of trying to get that kind of assistance.

I think a support for a permanent partnering model, where police and social workers would be able to work together in an outreach team that was focused on the SRO hotels, is one potential model that might allow enhanced access and a sense of security for the workers. But I think the larger issue here is why we are, particularly in this city, prepared to tolerate these kinds of feral living conditions in our midst.

It concerns me that a professional says: “It’s too dangerous for me to go into this establishment.” That, to me, cries out for an immediate integrated response between police, health, fire, bylaw and all the other resources that could be brought to bear to address that situation. Tolerating that kind of a pocket — these pockets of dysfunction — does nothing to support these vulnerable people. In fact, it really is a gateway to significantly enhance criminal activity and more jeopardy.

That’s a long-winded way of getting to, I think, a relatively simple issue. It comes down to priorities. It comes down to a sense of urgency attached to this issue. And
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it comes down to a mindset that says that these places have always been here — that they’ve always been a feature of the inner-city landscape, and therefore, it’s futile to try to address that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Just to follow up on that. When the ministry looked, internally, at some of the kids like Paige and did an assessment…. Five of the 32 they looked at are currently living or visiting in an SRO. Four of those are female. One is male. SROs, despite the position that children and youth aren’t supposed to be there…. They’re there. That’s just the known.

I think that the chief inspector addresses the issue we’ve raised, which is compliance. How are we going to make sure they’re not there? Pretty much, the compliance is a little bit of a joke, I would say, to say the least — protecting people from what are known to be really difficult places, which are often dens of drug abuse and lots of other challenges.

On your other issue about the aunt and uncle. Again, I really respect the family for coming forward and allowing us to talk about their situation. They were rejected, in part, because they were seen as being interested in money. Again, it’s a very sensitive issue for a family to talk about this, but both aunt and uncle were working. Both aunt and uncle were trying to provide support for her, and they really felt judged.

They came from a place of judgment toward that family. They did need additional support. They were working to make ends meets, and they were barely able to make ends meet to live in a very expensive city.

They needed a two-bedroom apartment, because Paige couldn’t sleep on the couch. They didn’t think they could…. They wanted additional resources to get a two-bedroom instead of their one-bedroom apartment, and they were viewed as being motivated by money. In fact, they were frequently frustrated because they’d often have to go get her from the hospital and other things, so they were spending money that, frequently, they had to borrow to get her and help her.

That mentality was just laden with attitudes toward aboriginal family members. It’s just not acceptable — completely problematic in terms of that. The alternative was to allow her to continue living, basically, on the streets, in these detox facilities, and so forth.

It would have been a small expenditure. I’m not saying it would have responded to all of her needs, but finding willing family and placing with family is really critical. So it could have been a very different story.

I think the issue, as well, when we think about Paige and her resilience…. Just coming back to the fact that she did die of this tragic drug overdose, she did have underlying genetic issues around her fragile heart and so forth. But she showed a lot of resilience — a lot of resilience.

Even though we’re talking about a variety of intensive supports that are needed, given the degree of resilience and intelligence that she showed, a small bit of stability could have…. Being in school — she hadn’t been in school since grade 7. If she had a stable enough home to be in school, let’s say, for all of grade 9, who knows? That might have been all it took, right? That’s the other part of it. She would have gotten some health supports at school instead of trying to have to go here and there to get glasses and psychological support.

I think that the idea of…. Yes, we need intensive supports without a doubt, and all kids need those supports. But we can’t underestimate how resilient these kids are. If you’re resilient enough to survive in those hellish SROs, you’re probably going to make it. In fact, when we’re working with tuition waivers for the 100-plus kids that are going to school, some of them have been through pretty tough times, and they’re doing really well.

In fact, they probably have greater resilience than many other people who never know what it’s like to go hungry or never had that type of adversity in their life, because they have really developed some good coping skills. With support, they can do very well. I think it’s really important, as well, to be very strengths-based in how you work with families and with young people.

J. Martin: I spent most of the ’90s living a stone’s throw from the Downtown Eastside, and I volunteered at Macdonald School for years and years. I worked with a lot of young girls that very possibly ended up in much the same circumstances as Paige.

When I took that experience and the decades I spent working as a criminologist, I ended up with sort of a preference to really giving some attention to urban geography. I see that in the Downtown Eastside. There’s no other city that has anything quite like that. Even the Tenderloin in San Francisco is three or four grades up above that. When I look at the disproportionate amount of money and resources that’s sunk into the Downtown Eastside….

Paige and people like her, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, didn’t come from East Vancouver. Paige was from Kamloops. They come from Campbell River, Williams Lake, Fort St. John, Chilliwack and a host of other places.

I’m just wondering what your thoughts are. This massive concentration of municipal, provincial and federal dollars, both public and private sector resources, are dumped into the Downtown Eastside. I just sat through another proposal from some people at UBC. They’re doing another test pilot program, and of course, it’s going to take place in the Downtown Eastside.

I’ve always wondered, if we normalize that place, if we put in real housing and basically treated it like every other part of the city…. We’re still going to have an issue. It’s not going to be driven away. But to have something like that that just attracts — it is a magnet for troubled
[ Page 623 ]
youth from all over the province and other jurisdictions in Canada. To what extent are those 12 blocks…? How much of the problem is that?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think your experience and observations are definitely shared by myself and our team. Paige’s story is something that is extremely important to learn from but should not come as a surprise to anyone in this room or shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone in the city.

However, the type of services and expenditures in that neighbourhood are substantial, and what did Paige and her mom get? It is a destination for what? Survival sex work and predation for aboriginal girls and women, for instance. What types of supports are there, particularly for aboriginal people who may find themselves there?

This is a really key issue. It’s a destination. It’s a pathway that ends there, and it doesn’t end very well for most people. I think it’s been known for some time, but it continues to happen. When you have increasingly younger people there, it’s important. It’s a neighbourhood. There has to be a strategy. I think that the issue of….

Our office’s approach to this was: we really don’t want a poverty industry; we want a poverty plan or an approach that supports social and emotional development and success for children that might be there — with some clarity around what it is in British Columbia that we do with kids that are very vulnerable in that neighbourhood. Paige’s example of her life is one of: once you’re there, it’s literally like a web that’s hard to get out of.

Again, to age out of care to Oppenheimer Park, basically a ground-floor shelter where you just open the window and operate your drug business…. It’s hard to believe that someone would see that as being an appropriate place for someone to age out of care. I appreciate that some British Columbians may have no familiarity with it. Maybe they just drive through that neighbourhood occasionally. But there are really serious vulnerabilities, for girls in particular.

The response has got to be an informed one. Yes, the value — what services are there are very important issues. Hence, the recommendation. At the same time, I would say, respectfully, that there are a lot of sacred cows with respect to that region. Nobody is prepared to have that hard discussion. There’s a lot of turf, and that’s not a healthy process.

Hence, I recommended that the city of Vancouver, the province, the health authority and others really look at what is being delivered. I do know some of those agencies are phoning us regularly and saying: “We’ve got kids here that don’t get service.” I’m like: “Well, the three agencies down the street are the ones that are supposed to do it.” But they’re not offering the service. They’re not open. They’re not seeing anyone.

How does that come forward? Basically, this has been a massive issue for some time, around the quality of what happens. For Paige, this is where…. When people encountered her literally hundreds of times and didn’t report what was going on, it does show a professional indifference but also a decision to accept this situation that should not be accepted. Maybe it shouldn’t have been accepted a long time ago, but it shouldn’t be accepted that there are still kids there.

When the provincial director of child welfare reviews a number of cases like Paige’s and finds five are still in SROs, or have been in SROs, can we go to those SROs, see those children immediately and get them out? Not plan to have a rapid response in six months, but could we actually have that done now? What’s their last known address?

The rapid response team was set up in September. I’ve met with the head of the team, saying: “What are you seeing? In your professional background as a social worker and team leader, if zero is the easiest case and ten is the worst, what are you seeing?” He’s like: “It’s all tens.” “Okay. What are you doing?” “Well, it’s hard to know what to do.”

Well, we’ve got to do the doing part. We can’t just, as Mr. Plecas says, record a process. You have to engage and get in there and say: “This is not going to be a good place to be. We’ve got to get you out of here.” How are we going to do that? I’d like to see a much more active approach to that issue.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): First of all, I want to acknowledge the Chair for having the flexibility to allow this fulsome discussion to go on. It’s very appropriate for this committee, and I thank her for that.

I would like to ask a final question. It’s been, as I said before, almost 1,000 days since Paige’s death, as of the anniversary tomorrow, and six months since your report. Many of the short-term recommendations — it’s frustrating — haven’t been implemented fully, and I think it borders on negligence as far as we behave as a society.

Equally frustrating to me is the bigger picture. I refer to some of the underlying causes that the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin described. It makes me think of your report, Not Fully Invested, from October of last year now. One of the areas that that report addressed was vulnerable aboriginal children and youth. I’ll just quote. “The B.C. government has not worked effectively with the federal government and First Nations leadership to develop a poverty reduction plan.” Not just for everybody in the province, but specifically, that was for aboriginal children and youth.

I look at some of the recommendations — there are three of them from that document — key recommendations to close the outcome gap for aboriginal children and youth. There’s been no progress on those three.

Given that and given that some of your comments earlier were around a poverty reduction plan and the province not having one — the only one in Canada — could
[ Page 624 ]
you elaborate on how you believe a poverty reduction plan could have made a difference in Paige’s story?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Sure. I think that having a plan is really important in order to be clear about what works and doesn’t work and to look at different classes of people that experience what low income is — and particularly on housing vulnerability and access to support. Paige’s mom may have been better supported if we’d had that and more clearly identified in terms of the type of stability.

With respect to both Paige and her mother, the need to really surface what was going on with them…. For instance, Paige went twice to social assistance offices to get emergency food vouchers because she was hungry. The third time she went, they said: “You’ve got to stop coming here. We’re not here for this.” Where was she supposed to go get food — steal it? How was she supposed to feed herself? You’re not supposed to go get social assistance? I mean, even on this issue around how does a young person…? Where do they live, and what do they eat?

The poverty planning allows for us to look at social supports and make sure that they’re there and direct and support people to obtain what might already be in the system, which might be valuable and important and that they need to be directed to, but also to build appropriate supports.

It may be that in some instances…. Other jurisdictions that have poverty reduction plans have really looked at: do you want to fund community agencies with high administrative costs, or do you want to increase direct benefits to citizens that need them at the time they need them? There are different models. There are different approaches. They need to be looked at specifically for aboriginal families as one stream that have had deep, intergenerational poverty.

So the poverty plan piece continues to be important. If the federal government develops a poverty plan, as they say they’re going to, with a focus on aboriginal children and families, I’m concerned that B.C. won’t be ready for that. We haven’t done the work. Not only on outcomes — actually, we have no reliable data on reserve and off reserve. We haven’t done good assessments around poverty and how we understand it and how we define it — housing vulnerability, etc. We are going to have to do a lot of work to be able to benefit from a federal initiative, because we won’t be able to demonstrate it.

Other jurisdictions have got a lot more work done. Quite apart from what it may cost or mean, unfortunately, we’re going to…. I wouldn’t want to see that opportunity, should it go forward, pass by British Columbia because we haven’t got our approach together.

UBCM, on October 28, walked away from the poverty project, saying they can’t continue to do it because it’s not a meaningful project. That’s unfortunate. Municipal governments aren’t happy. We don’t have a plan. We have a federal government that wants it, and we have what we see as families that are most deeply affected.

So we definitely have a concern about where we are at the moment in British Columbia on that. We’re not ready, but I’d like to see the province get much more ready.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you, Mary Ellen. We are out of time for this topic. I appreciate the recognition that this particular report got an extensive review and questions and consideration from the committee. My suggestion, to get us back on track, is that we go get our lunch and then we come back.

My second suggestion is that we stick to the plan, in that when you do discuss the two reports that are outstanding, go directly…. We recognize that all committee members have actually read all of the reports. Go for a brief overview of the recommendations, and then let people come in right away with their questions so that we can go through the two reports and get caught up. I would appreciate it if we could get back on track, at least on our timing.

If we can come back here in ten minutes. Gather your food, then we’ll start on the second report.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. We’re coming back to being on line. Given that we did go overboard in the first report…. We have two more reports that the representative is here to report on. Feedback I’m getting from members is that we’ll do The Thin Front Line and then The Case for a Better Response to Parental Addiction and then have questions on both afterwards.

If you would be able to do your presentations no longer than 15 minutes each, Mary Ellen — start off with the recommendations — and then please allow an opportunity for questions. I think those are the most important ones.

Representative for Children and Youth
Report: The Thin Front Line: MCFD
Staffing Crunch Leaves
Social Workers Over-Burdened,
B.C. Children Under-Protected

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you for that direction, Madam Chair. I’ll do my best to try and present this with those constraints.

First of all, the report The Thin Front Line was released last month. It is a report that we engaged in — really, a series of reports that are underway in my office looking
[ Page 625 ]
at staffing: qualifications of staff and some of the recruitment-retention issues in terms of MCFD. This report really looks at a challenge in the child safety service line in MCFD around the number of social workers who are on the job — actually on the job today — and whether or not they’re able to meet the timelines expected in the current legislation, policy and standards.

The main finding of the report…. First of all, I better speak to the methodology very briefly. I appreciate you have a lot of constraints here, but I want to recognize, again, the intensive work by my office, particularly Colleen Ellis, who is here, working with the team. This review is extensive. It included interviews with more than 50 front-line child protection staff and team leaders. It included an audit of child safety reports handled by four teams in three different offices and reviewing more than 200 MCFD documents and data sources.

I have to say that on the issue of the number of social workers…. One of the staggering issues in this report is the inability of MCFD to tell us how many staff are actually working on any given day in the child safety system. The numbers, again…. We’ve had a little bit of a dance around the numbers.

Unfortunately, in the administrative fairness lead-up to the release of this report, government issued a bit of a statement that it had added 200 child protection workers. That was an unfortunate issue. We had a report underway, as they knew, and the actual number of workers that have been added to the system is an issue of dispute, in our respectful view. Having audited and looked at the numbers, it was really only an addition of 19, not 200 — just the idea of how many staff are working, where and to what effect.

The main finding of the report is that there are fewer front-line child protection workers in B.C. today than there were in 2002. The short version of that appears on page 36 as “Milestones,” sort of charting the ups and downs from 2002 to 2015.

The principal finding and concern in this report is that far too many child safety reports remain open past appropriate time frames. This report shows that there are 8,200 child protection incidents that are still open after 90 days. You’re supposed to have a 30-day turnaround decision and move forward. There are 8,200 open after 90 days, well beyond the 30- to 45-day limit.

The social workers reported chronic levels of stress, impossibly high workloads and too much organizational change at MCFD. Significantly, they identified the new computer system, the ICM system. It was introduced in 2012 as being a very destabilizing factor, and new standards and a few other matters were raised.

The data shows that MCFD work environment scores are lower than in other ministries across government and that their short-term illness and injury leave utilization is higher. However, we also found insufficient planning for the demographics of the workforce, which is frequently female and requires additional support with respect to the stress and challenges of the workforce. Experienced social workers, in their interview process, talked about being overburdened and less experienced.

We particularly identify the quality assurance issues around performance in specific regions, in specific offices. It has been, again, openly known that some offices are not functioning. They’re not staffed. Some offices are shuttered and being served by others. We pushed for an emergency response unit that can go into offices that are shut down. The ministry — we’ve been working with them for a number of years on that.

I talked, in the previous report, about aboriginal social work recruitment and retention in the context of the lowest numbers since 2002. Clearly, the priorities around recruiting aboriginal social workers and retaining them have also not been given sufficient priority or success.

Child protection, much like other essential services like policing, needs to be staffed as an essential service. It has been running at a chronic underburn, meaning maybe running at 80 to 90 percent staffing, which you may say looks very beneficial and positive, but actually, it needs to run at 120 percent staffing so that you have coverages for leaves, you have coverages for absences and you have the flexibility to deal with other emergencies that arise. As a result, this is an area that is quite significantly short-staffed.

The recommendations. My staff and I are happy to answer your questions, particularly about the issue of numbers and what this means.

First of all, recommendation 1 is for a lift in funding to be able to provide full coverage for historic leave rates at MCFD at the level of 120 percent staffing and to protect that budget for that reason. One of the ways that MCFD has managed its budget shortfalls over the last number of years when its budget has, in effect, eroded with a stand-pat budget, is by having underburn and doing that locally. So we continue to hear: “We’re managing our budget by not staffing positions and saving that money to manage to the bottom line.” But then what we’re seeing is that the work is not getting done.

Recommendation 2 is to update the ten-year-old workload model and to work very closely with the BCGEU. They have a joint working group that was created as a recommendation of a previous report on a youth suicide that we’ve discussed at this committee. We recommended that a proper joint working group get going. It has been going. It has done some very good work. We want to see that continue, but a proper workload model is needed. It has become quite dated.

Recommendation 3 is to better track local service area team performance and outcomes around quality and timelines, making sure they’re meeting standards and intervening when they’re not meeting standards, including having some clear guidelines on clinical supervision
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and mentorship for social workers. And the workload model — take into account clinical supervision.

Recommendation 4 is on recruitment and retention efforts, looking at a workplace environment survey and short-term illness and injury — so STIIP utilization. Recruitment and retention continue to be a major issue. Although there’s good recent work with the BCGEU, much additional work is needed to be able to have an effective workforce for the future.

Recommendation No. 5 is the one touching on aboriginal staff — that the BC Public Service Agency and MCFD make the staff a priority and set targets. Again, the ministry has not, in my time as representative, been willing to set a target. I think that’s unfortunate. I feel very strongly, based on the evidence of workplace diversity and the nature of the population served, that short of a 30 percent critical mass, I can’t see the culture shifting very strongly to serve aboriginal children and families.

I would like to see that change. I’ve made that recommendation before. Again, I note that there’s no senior staff at the ADM or deputy level that’s aboriginal, which continues to be difficult. I mean, it’s almost ironic, because we are told repeatedly that there are no qualified aboriginal staff to play the role of an ADM or DM level. That seems a little bit comical now that the Attorney General of Canada is an aboriginal person from British Columbia, who apparently is qualified to do that job.

I think the challenge I’ve seen is just a resistance to aboriginal leadership in that ministry — and wanting to have aboriginal staff provided they’re significantly subservient and do not challenge the culture of the workplace.

There is a very serious challenge around the critical mass. Short of targets and accountability, I don’t see that culture…. Culture eats policy is the saying, and the culture in that ministry has got to change to serve the clientele that’s seeking service. That’s recommendation 5. I’ll set that aside — that is, I’d be willing to answer your questions on that.

M. Stilwell: Very quickly, two comments. First of all, the recommendation and comments around clinical supervision and mentoring. I think this is a very important topic and is the flip side of the third recommendation, around holding professionals accountable. You have to groom, train, supervise and mentor people to understand what their profession is. I think that’s very important.

Secondly, I would like to register displeasure as a member of the committee about this numbers issue. The difference between 19 and 200 is preposterous. It’s insulting for the committee to be asked to consider something without appropriate facts. If you and the ministry cannot come to an agreement — within 3 percent, for example — of how many people work there, then I think we should get somebody from outside to do the counting. I mean, it’s insulting. That is just my comment for the record.

M. Turpel-Lafond: On the issue of the numbers, I can just say this. My staff painstakingly looked through the numbers, including all data available. This report was processed for administrative fairness, approved and accepted, and then a dispute arose. The best knowledge…. There’s a saying that numbers don’t lie, and this is what was found.

Now, the day it was released in October is there. Here we are toward the end of November. So coming into the process today, of course, I asked my staff, as I normally would, anticipating your questions: “Tell me the numbers in case committee members ask me, ‘What are the numbers today. Are we up 19? Are we up 20? Are we up 100? Where are we as of today?’”

I’ll ask Mr. Naughton, who is in charge of this team, to respond to that issue because I’m sure he has enjoyed dealing with me on that over the past week.

B. Naughton: The unfortunate answer I had to give the representative is that we don’t have that reliable data. The dilemma is that we are reliant on ministry data systems from which to draw that information. So to be clear, when we’re talking about whose numbers they are, these are ultimately MCFD numbers.

The genesis of this project really goes back to our Lost in the Shadows report. What we found when we looked at the MCFD office that was at the heart of that investigation were enormous discrepancies between what was registered, for example, on CHIPS, which is one of the government databases used to track employee movements, and what we could actually see in the office. We saw there that the ability to rely on that data…. In our view, it was impossible for us to provide any trust in that data or to form conclusions based on that.

At the heart of this staffing report, we did the very best we could with all that available information — drawn, again, from government databases — to check, to cross-check. How much certainty do we have? I would say we don’t have an adequate measure of certainty because we can’t answer on a daily basis how many bums are in seats, how many people are actually working today. That remains elusive.
[ Page 627 ]

M. Stilwell: I’ll just reiterate that as a taxpayer, I find that unacceptable.

C. James: Thank you for the report. I think that in all of the reports we look at, you talk about systemic issues. This report again identifies a piece of that puzzle, a piece of the challenge in the system.

When you hear social workers…. I’m sure all of us around this table, because of our duties and because of being on this committee, have heard the same kinds of stories from social workers who feel burned out, who feel they can’t get to the services that they know are needed, who are facing frustration at having to spend time on paperwork because it’s required. If you can’t get it into the system, it doesn’t exist in the system, yet that takes away from another visit that they can do — to go out there.

I think this is a very important report. It would be easy for people, perhaps, to look at it as simply a budget issue. But to me, this is about the basics in a child welfare system. If you’re talking about a child welfare system, you’re talking about the front-line service. That’s the basics. All of the reports that have come forward from your office talk about the basics and needing to look at them.

I just wondered. Two quick questions. One is whether you’ve heard that from workers as well. They talk about burnout. They talk about the challenges. But one of the comments I’ll always remember, when I first took on the critic role, was a social worker saying to me: “The best thing that could happen for me in the system is to do nothing.” They didn’t mean do nothing. They meant: “Don’t bring another new program in. Don’t bring in another new reorganization or another shift. Give us the money to focus on the basics. Let us do our job, and support us in doing our job.” I just wondered whether you’d heard about that.

The second piece is: do we have any idea of the numbers with aboriginal agencies? Was there any kind of scan done around vacancies and openings? I hear of similar kinds of challenges in those agencies as well.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, on a few issues around the need for stability, I think when the staff talks about stability, it’s interpreted in different ways. I think they need to be supported to do their work. They feel that there are various projects that come and go. I think there is a perception that there’s been more stability in the last few years, particularly given the BCGEU working group that has been working with the ministry and working together. I think that’s a very good sign.

These things accumulate over time, so we need to have a very detailed analysis of the workforce and understand the why. People may have their theories and their views, but we have to really understand the why. What we find is that younger employees are more likely to leave. Social workers with two to seven years of service are most likely to leave the ministry.

I just reviewed a fairly extensive report in the U.K. on staffing and social work issues there. Their average age is eight years. We actually are losing them earlier. Social workers in the U.K. — they’ve been through lots of challenges there, not dissimilar to other places. But how long is it that we can retain the staff? That’s important, No. 1.

No. 2, when you do not have a fully staffed complement, they’re not dealing with the intakes; they’re not making timelines; they’re not covering staff illness, injury, maternity leave, other leaves. These issues really erode inside the system. The work doesn’t get done. The people who are left to do the work have to assume someone else’s workload, and then this becomes very problematic. Things can become quite shut down.

What we’re seeing is not only the higher rate of departure challenges again. We do have challenges in rural areas in particular. These are all known variables that have been a concern for some time. But the question is: what are we doing about it? What the staff is saying is they want stability. They want to have a full complement of FTEs to perform the function. I think that’s reasonable. We need to understand why we do not have it.

This report does show that we are less staffed today than we were in 2002. The concerns that were largely anecdotal…. As the chief investigator said, after we did the Lost in the Shadows report, we’ve actually seen that this is a systemic concern.

At the same time, what environment and culture develop when you have this over time? Well, a couple of things happen. You do have burnout and people leaving. But you have another situation develop that I’m also very concerned about and that can be quite pernicious.

You can have a small group of people functioning in child welfare a little bit too inward. They do not have checks and balances. They don’t have time for another look at a case. A case comes up, there’s a very significant conflict with a parent or someone, and they can rightfully say: “We’d like another person to look at this decision because we feel it’s an inappropriate decision.”

There’s no one else to look at it, and you develop a kind of a clique, which is: “I’m the person in charge of this office, and this is how it’s going to go.” That’s not a healthy situation either. I’m not saying that’s rampant, but that does exist. That becomes a culture in a very stressed organization that functions better if there’s a very command-control, authoritarian hand at it. It can be a really toxic work environment as well.

We see it from the advocacy side where we’ll have a case and say that we’d like to have another look — “No, we don’t do that here.” And “No, well actually, you have to have another look. A second look is needed in this very sensitive function.” “Well, there’s no one else who’s going to look at it.” Then as it goes up the chain of command, that is supported by the provincial headquarters saying: “We can’t possibly look at it because we’re too busy.”
[ Page 628 ]

These are really significant cultural aspects of workplace culture and how citizens are treated by staff that are extremely stressed and frustrated. Either there’s no one there in some places — these are the extremes — or the staff that are there are in bad shape, shall we say. They need some more training. They need another set of checks and balances to come into the office.

We do have some stable, strong teams in some places, but the rural areas and remote areas are always a concern, and they continue to be a major concern. That has been known for some time. So what are the strategies that are used? Over-recruit, pay additional amounts for the location that they’re in, provide a more supportive environment. But also, you can’t expect one person in a rural or remote office location to cover a wide territory, travelling alone. We talked about this in Lost in the Shadows, where there were some situations where social workers were not going out because they didn’t feel safe or that there was an adequate team.

Interestingly enough, as a follow-up to Lost in the Shadows, the office that gave rise to that issue, which is one that we’re quite interested in — we looked at the opportunity to improve it over time. Even despite the report and the attention, we still found problems in that office. We actually found problems in just about every office. So it was pretty extensive.

But your point is a good one, which is really about the basics and stability. The staff that’s there were talking about: “Please, no vanity makeovers.” We’ve had less of that, although we are still reeling from the attempt to, if you like, blow up child protection between 2006 and 2011. That continues to plague the front line of the system. It really paralyzed a number of places, so we’re still recovering from that.

I’ll ask Dawn to address the issues around some of the delegated aboriginal agency staffing challenges.

D. Thomas-Wightman: Sure. Initially, when the ministry undertook their equity FTE assessment, the delegated agencies were left out of that discussion, which caused quite a bit of criticism and tension between the two groups. So when we began our investigation or our report, we decided that we obviously would include the delegated agencies, because some of the problems were similar.

When we began it, though, we realized it that there were many differences between the two. Many of the delegated agencies aren’t under PSA guidelines, etc. So what we’ve agreed to, and updated the agencies with, is that we’ll do a second follow-up report, which has already begun, that will look at the agencies that provide full C6 child protection and a few that provide guardianship across the province. That work has begun under Alan Markwart and his team, with the full cooperation of the agencies.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I have a couple of comments and then a question for you. On recommendation No. 5, I couldn’t agree more. During budget estimates, I questioned the minister on how many — including the DM, ADMs and senior staff — were of First Nations descent. Out of 36, there’s one.

When asked what the strategy was, the response I got back was: “Well, they just don’t apply for the job.” I think that doesn’t typify an aggressive approach to try to actually recruit. I think lived experience is necessary to address the 60 percent of youth in care who are of aboriginal descent. So I think recommendation No. 5 is very important.

Recommendation No. 4 — I’m very interested in that. Just last month the family service practice audit for the Thompson-Cariboo-Shuswap service delivery area was revealed. There were some areas where compliance was achieved where it came around to protection services, especially — removing vulnerable children from risky situations. They were still in the 85 percent–achieved range and sometimes higher.

But where that report really pointed out some concerns was in vulnerability assessments — for instance, completing a vulnerability reassessment or reunification assessment: 17 percent achieved. Doing it within the timeline: 5 percent achieved. Completing a family and child strengths and needs assessment: 26 percent of the time achieved.

To give an idea of what a vulnerability assessment is about, it’s about: has there been a past history of domestic violence that’s been thoroughly assessed before a child is reunited with the family? I think we’ve seen situations where that reunification has occurred, and it has lead to further abuse — especially in the J.P. case.

Those kind of numbers are really, really troubling. When you look at the recommendations and what’s been done to address those, as outlined in this internal document, “provide training” was the key action item out of that. I guess what that means is a supervisor says: “Here’s the timeline; you’re not achieving it,” not “Why aren’t those timelines being achieved?”

I think your report points out to why those timelines aren’t being achieved. It really is important to me that the resources that are required in rural areas you had discussed…. Williams Lake was the example under the Lost in the Shadows document. I know in other northern rural areas where offices just don’t seem to be staffed to the complement that they’re supposed to be. It can lead to these risky practices and risky situations.

Just to further elaborate on that, your comments on that, and also in recommendation 1 — the fact that the funds allocated in the budget line item for staffing weren’t expended for that purpose and were used to fund shortfalls in other areas.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, first of all, they were underspent in staffing. Clearly, the evidence is that the ministry
[ Page 629 ]
has managed its budget shortfall by not staffing. That has been one of their techniques.

On the issues that you’ve raised around recruitment, retention and the strategies, I think it’s important to note in this family service audit that all of the audit data in the child safety area has consistently shown a problem with open files beyond…. Now, on the number of files open beyond 90 days. Sometimes cases are complex. There may be good reasons why a file would be open. But when we’re talking about a magnitude that we’re dealing with here, it’s very concerning.

Furthermore, in the context of doing this audit, the staff’s audit, we found six incidents — that we reported on page 23 — where children were left at risk. We had this very unusual situation where my own staff audited. We had to convey to the provincial director of child welfare that we have cases where there’s no evidence of follow-up by the ministry and there are serious concerns. That affected 13 children. It wasn’t even safety reassessments, but the initial work was not done. As a result of that, some children were actually removed. The safety issues were that significant. But they were just empty.

That’s why it’s really important. It’s one thing to look at audits. It’s another thing to actually go out in the field and say: “Well, what actually did happen?” When you see a number like 70 percent compliance with reassessing safety for a child, that sounds okay, 70 percent. Well, what about the 30 percent? You, ideally, want 100 percent. I’m not overly…. I want a reasonable target. But what’s in that 30 percent, or what have you?

What we found here was pretty serious concerns on the ground. There’s a flag that standards are not being met consistently. Are those standards adequate? Yes, we think the standards are appropriate. They’re not out of line with what standards are in any jurisdiction in child welfare and child safety. Timelines are consistent with 27 states that we looked at and almost every province and territory. Everyone pretty much requires the 30- to 45-day turnaround for intakes on child safety.

We can’t find a way to say: “Are the standards a mismatch with the work?” The standards are the standards. But the FTE complement trained, equipped and supported to do the work is clearly a problem. So the work isn’t getting done, which does raise all of the other issues dominoing through the system.

All right. We have 7,200 children in care today in British Columbia. It’s down from 11,000 children in care in 2006. Is that a good thing, or is that…? What is that? Well, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It’s good to know there are fewer children. But is it because there’s fewer children that have had their cases investigated? No, they haven’t. It’s probably not something we should be putting out press releases congratulating ourselves about, because we have some very serious gaps in our system.

Moreover, that 7,200 was achieved by not only staff that can’t do the job — at the moment — to standard, but also, they cleaned up 1,000 kids and took them off the list this year. MCFD did a data cleanup and removed 1,000 kids in care off the list. We’re currently auditing that.

These are just some of the areas where what we claim are great achievements in our child-serving system — 200 staff and 7,200 children in care…. We need to really go behind that and say: “What does that actually represent? Is it positive?” It could be considered positive, but it also might be considered to be really problematic, because we may not be doing the child safety work in places.

D. Barnett: One of the issues is I come from rural British Columbia. I look after Williams Lake. Of course, there are 13 First Nations reserves within my area.

It’s very complicated, as you know. A lot of times, as you well know, social workers are not allowed on the reserves. That is very difficult for those social workers who are trying to do their jobs. Then we have incidents that are not their fault, yet they are made to feel like they wear it.

I think what we have to do, too, is recognize that social workers are very dedicated, hard-working people and we can’t continuously be negative towards them or the numbers for social workers are going to continue to go down.

They work very hard. They’re sincere. They’re compassionate. I think, from time to time, we’ve got to stand up and thank them and say congratulations. I know the issues they deal with every day, and they are very complicated and very complex.

I know that there are other issues that are creating some of the turnarounds to not be in 30, 45 days, and it’s the court system. We don’t have enough judges when they have to go to court over the issue of who is going end up with that child. Is it going to be foster care, or is it going to be where? So it’s a very complicated, complex issue.

I’ve become very engaged in it, because you care about the people in your community. There are many issues facing this whole child care issue. I hope you don’t lose that and be too restrictive on these great workers that we do have out there.

Another issue we’ve got facing us and that I’m sure, Dawn, you will be engaged in is that in many of our First Nations communities, they have their own schools and they’re not within our school system. There’s a huge amount of children out there. Hopefully, everything is working fine, because we do not have our school districts engaged in their system.

M. Turpel-Lafond: On the issue of recognizing the dedicated work that child protection social workers and team leaders do, I think it’s really important to recognize that. I think, in part, what inspired the report was to actually talk to them and go out and get their voices and be able to relay that in terms of understanding their day-to-day work experience.
[ Page 630 ]

I don’t think what we learned from those social workers…. We certainly didn’t learn that they don’t want to do the job because they’re not appreciated. I think their issues were not being sufficiently staffed and sufficiently supported, as you said. In regions where they have to, perhaps, face a situation of danger, not wanting to go alone. They want to make sure they have proper cell service. They want to make sure they have the technology that they can be supported, should there be an emergency. These can be very difficult situations.

Particularly in the region that I know you advocate for and that you represent, a very strong wish on the part of everyone is to come together to work more collaboratively together and spend the time to build the good relationships so that when child safety comes up, they can respond appropriately at every level. So little time has gone into that, of actually building that proper response and engaging that and having people ready, on reserve and off reserve, to address that.

Delegated aboriginal agencies have struggled with the delegation process, for instance, for years — sometimes four, five, six, seven years. They’ve been in the same spin cycle. They’ve never come to the point of: who is responsible, and how will we work together? It’s like an endless process of discussion.

These are the other challenges where…. Again, in terms of the aboriginal child welfare issues, nobody wants non-aboriginal people to drive into their community and remove their children. Nor should they want that. At the same time, building that system together takes time and effort and, as I say, a critical mass of people coming together to work on the children’s issues and people who can be held to account to meet standards. Whoever is going to do it has to have some common standards around child safety.

The ministry, in the past, has managed that somewhat by just saying: “Here’s the money. Do it however you want.” I reported on that in the When Talk Trumped Service report. That wasn’t an appropriate approach either because kids still had gaps. This is where the ministry needs to really get back to that.

The child protection social workers that are out there do an incredible job under very difficult circumstances. But they’ve told us universally, in this report, that they cannot meet standards. That, I think, is a very significant, systemic problem. They need some direction and support about what we are going to do about that. A place where we see cases not being investigated…. That has got to be addressed.

We’re confident that the ministry is taking a more serious look at it. They have looked at reinvesting. Again, that first recommendation is making sure that the budget gets used for this, not for other priorities that they might have in their service delivery areas.

J. Rice: I want to, I guess, follow up on Donna’s comments. I do realize that there appears to be quite a tone of negativity around MCFD and social workers lately. I don’t think that any of us sitting here are critical of individual social workers. I mean, there are always exceptions in every profession. I think for the most part people become social workers because they really want to be in service. They want to help people.

The criticism, I think, comes from what Mary Ellen just spoke about, which is the systemic issues that we’re talking about. I quite appreciate the quotes in this report from the social workers’ voices. One social worker says: “It’s the ministry leadership who makes the decisions, and that’s why it’s not happening. Front-line social workers are not the ones saying: ‘I don’t want to see that kid. I’m going to wait 45 days.’ It’s because they have 35 incidents sitting on their caseloads.” I think the criticism is about the lack of resources.

On a positive note, I liked what this social worker’s voice had to say, which was: “I get it that they are concerned with budgets, etc., but this is about children in B.C. We’ve had one of the highest poverty rates for kids in Canada for I don’t know how many years in a row. Let’s find a different way of doing our work and prioritize this area of work.” I think the last line is a really powerful statement, and I think that’s what the systemic issue is. That’s what we need to address and focus on. I particularly appreciate it coming from the social worker’s point of view.

My question is: have you done any sort of analysis on what I call the unofficial training grounds of some of the rural MCFD offices? It’s been raised anecdotally that many of them take the new graduates from social work programs, train them up for one to two years, and then they transfer out into what are deemed the more desirable locations in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island area.

I was wondering if there was any analysis on how frequently that is happening. How is that impacting those that are permanent and that are making long-term careers within those rural ministry offices? How could we better serve those offices? For example, could they actually be recognized or acknowledged — that they are the unofficial training grounds of social workers? They’re coming out of school, but when you come out of med school, you’re not just a perfect doctor. You go through a process.

Is that a possibility — looking at how we better support those rural communities that are being the unofficial training grounds with some sort of official acknowledgment and supports in place, if that’s going to be the trend, to rightfully acknowledge them and rightfully support them?
[ Page 631 ]

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, I think the biggest innovation that the ministry is proposing and they’re piloting or implementing right now is centralized intake. They’d have a centralized intake process that then takes it, screens it and sends it out. That’s the current innovation.

In terms of the pathway for new staff, I’m not sure that the evidence supports that idea. At the same time, there has been the development of social work programs and pre–social work programs in communities so that you can recruit more people from your local community.

Do they want to stay there, or do they want to move? I don’t think the evidence is very clear. One of the challenges we point out in this report is that MCFD — even though you have a two- to seven-year window of productivity — does not conduct exit interviews, and they don’t find out why people leave. That’s another thing that’s really important. Do exit interviews. Well, first of all, try not to get people to exit. But if they do want to leave, is it because they want to move from Burns Lake to Vancouver, or what is it?

In fact, in the interviews we did, many people said they like working in a rural setting. They just said it’s very challenging to cover the travel, the safety issues and the backup, in terms of support in their office. They have a small office of seven or eight staff. Three people are away. You’re doing their work and yours, and you’re covering a big territory. It’s a lot different than jumping on SkyTrain and going to work.

Centralized intake is the biggest innovation that the ministry has brought to this. Now, I have to say…. We’ve said to them…. Centralized intake, when it was introduced elsewhere around the world, in North America, leads to a spike in intakes. It doesn’t lead to a decline in intakes. We’re watching that a little bit now.

On the rural, semi-rural, remote recruitment, there need to be clear strategies to recruit and retain and also to identify earlier the programs that can be there and put in place to support people from that local community to be able to work in the system.

The pre-employment education requirement is a significant requirement. Then, post employment, there’s approximately a six-month period of training to lead to delegation to be able to do the work. It’s a significant piece of work. It needs to be done well.

One of the other phases of this staffing work that we’re doing is looking at the provision of social work training in British Columbia and how that happens. Other jurisdictions that have improved this have worked really carefully with the education providers and really developed the workforce early, making sure they’re well qualified so they can be trained and ready to go sooner. That’s important.

Ongoing training is a big issue for rural and remote staff as well, not participating in any training. We heard a lot from the staff. They were not happy that most of the training they had was ICM training at their desks. Once they actually had some training on something else, it was quite encouraging just to be able to be more involved in the direction of the ministry and how they could perform their work.

Otherwise, on the rural and remote locations, I’m going to ask Bill, who oversaw the project, to speak to some of the unique dynamics that came out of the north. The northern issues are unique issues.

B. Naughton: We weren’t able to track the movement of social workers internal to the ministry. So going to your point around…. Are people using rural and remote locations as training grounds and then using those as stepping-off points to other assignments? We certainly heard that anecdotally, but our ability to track that through the system was really nonexistent.

I think what we heard predominantly from rural and remote locations were really concerns about the burden the geography placed on them. For example, in the Williams Lake area, where you’re having to drive four hours to see a single client and then return to the office…. Effectively, you can consume an entire day of staff time. In many cases, it’s not going to be a single staff. Because of the safety and security issues, it’s going to be two staff.

The staffing model inside rural offices, which doesn’t recognize those complexities, really complicates the situation and really does lead to a decline in morale. I think you do have a situation where staff who are embedded and attached to those communities, who may be residents there long term….

There is a degree of frustration with workers parachuting in and parachuting out and with them becoming sort of the holders of all the institutional knowledge but really unable to see forward movement in terms of being able to train another cadre of young social workers coming up who will stay within the system. I think what really concerns us too is that when you’re losing people in that two- to eight-year range, you really are potentially losing some of your strongest performers, and you’re losing a generation, potentially, of people who could be your future leaders.

I think that’s another area that really demands some deeper examination as to why you’re seeing these “BIC lighter” social workers, as they call them, who are being used up and tossed away. I think that’s an important piece of it as well.

There’s no doubt that the rural-remote piece is not a new issue. This is an issue that’s well known, well documented in the literature, and it’s going to require some, really, more flexible and innovative solutions to find ways to hold people, to draw people into these communities and hold them long term. The relationship piece that the representative was referencing earlier is the key. If you don’t have those long-term relationships of trust, you’re not going to make forward progress.
[ Page 632 ]

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I wanted to point out to the member from Vancouver-Langara, who strongly expressed frustration about numbers at the beginning of this session — the debate between the representative’s office and the ministry around staffing numbers — that as a committee, we can appoint a subcommittee and retain personnel as required to assist that committee to get to the bottom of issues.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Mary Ellen, can you then go on to the last report? Maybe spend five, ten minutes doing the recommendations, then throw it open to questions.

Representative for Children and Youth
Report: Children at Risk: The Case
for a Better Response
to Parental Addiction

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. The final report for today is Children at Risk: The Case for a Better Response to Parental Addiction.

There are really two recommendations in the report, the first focusing on the best interests of the child and the second focusing on MCFD strategy when you have parents with addictions.

In fact, we had a very good discussion of some of the dimensions of this for child welfare with respect to Paige’s report. In this instance, it was the case of a boy who was injured when he was in the care of his mother, who was to only have supervised access to the child and, unfortunately, due to an accident related to parental addictions, now has a permanent, lifelong disability instead of significant consequences as a result of this accident.

It’s important here to look at the challenging role that sometimes happens with addictions. This case focuses on when grandparents step in to care for grandchildren when they have a child with addictions and, when the ministry places the child with a grandparent and then tries to place parameters around the parent’s access, really how challenging it is for grandparents to have that responsibility to say, “Well, you can only have supervised access to your grandchild in our house,” when of course, they want to take the child out, or what have you.

It really surfaces those complex issues in families where grandparents are called upon to play a key role, but they have a lot difficulties managing their child’s behaviour. They have a lot of difficulties keeping a lens on the child, and they functionally sometimes cannot, which is not to say that grandparents shouldn’t be there, but they should be supported, perhaps in a stronger way, including sometimes having stronger orders that they can point to and say: “I’d like you to see the child, but unfortunately, I have this order, and I have to follow this order.”

Grandparents need tools to be able to keep respectful and appropriate boundaries between the child and the parent when there are addictions. Even with kinship, there can be dimensions when you’re dealing with an adult and a parent with addictions that can be very challenging to manage.

The two key recommendations are really, on addictions, to have a clearer strategy — and we saw this a bit in the Paige report as well today: how do you monitor, and how do you pay attention to addictions? Are all addictions treated the same in the ministry? Or is there an understanding about the addictions cycles and intensity of addictions — what’s a latter-stage addiction? — which presents huge challenges, and whether or not the ministry has a clear strategy?

Our feeling with this report was that the addictions component is not as strong, and I think the Paige report speaks to that as well.

The second was looking at the issues with the Ministry of Health around addictions strategy more generally. This has become a bigger issue in terms of families experiencing problematic addictions around alcohol, for instance. Accessibility of alcohol is very correlated with problems with respect to children. Some of our strategies and policies in British Columbia have gone to less regulation in this area, and greater prevalence, for instance, of alcohol. It’s unfortunate that Dr. Kendall is not with us today, because he’s authored several reports on that issue as well.

How do we regulate and support vulnerable children and families, in that context, and how does the ministry do its work? Our recommendation there was to really get the ministry to play a stronger role in that area, a bit more practised consultation, more clarity around how children will be protected and, also, monitoring parents when there are addictions. Not necessarily active addictions — but when they are in treatment and post-treatment, what is the monitoring that’s needed to make sure the children are safe?

I’ll leave it there and just entertain questions. I know your time is very pressed.

M. Stilwell: I have a quick comment, which was alluded to in the report, just to confirm that, obviously, the presence of grandparents is important. At the same time, there is medical evidence that grandparents who are caring for young children suffer significant stress. Women who are taking care of their grandchildren in situations like this have increased incidence of cardiac mortality, for example. I do believe that there needs to be that understanding and, perhaps, greater support to keep those relationships valuable.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yeah, I think that that was really a significant factor here. The grandparents were quite challenged. This comes back to something that we’ve seen be-
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fore. Grandparents are caring for the grandson, dealing with the daughter, the boy’s mother that’s dealing with the addictions, and her partner. They’re asking for respite, because they’re overwhelmed. They’re at a stage of their life when they’re having their own health issues, and they were not given support and respite. That’s really crucial.

When you’re placing children with grandparents, to manage that, the type of support they need is — certainly, respite is there, but then — then also having some regular insight and consultation around: what we do with this behaviour if we see it again? Or how we support the child?

Sometimes there’ll be parents with lifelong addictions. Look at Paige. How do we teach the child to have healthy boundaries with a parent that’s addicted? “You’re not the caregiver of your parent. You need to have a good relationship but only when your parent is healthy. You will be protected from your parent when your parent is not healthy and is abusive because they’re preoccupied with their addiction.” These are areas where the ground, surprisingly, has been poorly covered, in terms of getting health specialists and the Ministry of Children and Families together to say: “What is it that a grandparent would need in that situation?”

Really, what happened here — and the chief investigator can comment on it in more detail — is they placed the boy, and then they were out. It was all on the grandparents’ shoulders to manage it: definitely, health impacts and personal impacts, and now a child with very significant special needs and aging grandparents.

B. Naughton: Yeah, I think one of the most heart-wrenching pieces is when you talk to the grandparents, who really wanted to do the very best, of course, for their grandchild — struggling themselves, as the representative says, with their own health issues — but again, no assessment at the front end of what their capacity was.

This was a young man who had some complex needs even prior to the accident and significantly increased after the accident. But nowhere in that file is there any evidence of anyone actually even sitting down with these grandparents to assess: what’s the state of their health? What’s their capacity to tolerate the stresses associated to this kind of a placement?

I remember, in one of the interviews, the grandfather saying: “We just wanted to have the ability to go away for a week. We just thought that when we retired, we’d be able to go away and have a holiday.” That sense of real hopelessness and sense of abandonment went along with that.

I think the grandparents provided a convenient off-load in this case: “Oh, here we are….” A piece of this that I found really troubling was…. You have the daughter who, unsurprisingly, has a partner who’s criminally involved — a fairly intimidating character, particularly to an elderly couple in a remote area. The notion that they’re going to say: “No, you’re not taking the child….” When the boyfriend and the daughter show up with, “We’re going to take the child,” the notion that the grandparents are going to somehow physically intervene to prevent that is just not realistic.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Since this report came out and since the incident as reported in 2009 occurred, I know of another situation, similarly, where grandparents were involved in the care and the mother had mental health and addictions problems. There was an issue where MCFD was interacting with the mother but not the grandparents, and the child was placed in a risky situation as a result of that.

My question is under recommendation 1. This report is over a year old, a year and a half old. The recommendations under recommendation 1 were asked to be acted on by January of 2015. Where have you gotten with the recommendations, as far as MCFD?

B. Naughton: I think what you see is that there’s been some progress made in terms of trying to provide enhanced access to addictions specialists to support front-line workers. One of the things we focused on was the notion that you would be able to provide centres of expertise and access to addictions specialists to support social workers in the decision-making process.

Part of that was looking at some of the model to run the structured decision-making tools that MCFD puts in place around child protection to try to support social workers in terms of: how do you most appropriately address and assess the risks that the parental addiction poses? What we heard persistently from front-line workers was that they didn’t feel they had the background, the training or the ability to access the supports, that they were going to need to have that made available to them.

Compounding this, however, is the larger problem around the access to detox and addiction treatment across the province. One of the issues that we raised with MCFD was the ability…. To what extent could a parent who’s suffering from an addiction issue jump the queue, for example? Could they access services as a priority? At this point, given the current state of addictions services in the province and the limited number of beds, there has unfortunately been no progress made with respect to that.

We’ve also asked for a significant look at policy and at practice directives to try to support front-line work. I understand the policy shop within MCFD is working on that initiative. But at this point, it really comes down to a matter of competing priorities and scant resources with respect to that particular issue.

Although we have seen, I think, some progress in terms of being able to identify and give social workers access to some expertise, the ability to access wider services remains a real sticking point and something of a roadblock to further progress.
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C. James: Just a follow-up, and I think you partly answered it, on recommendation 2 and access to treatment beds. I think you’ve answered on the lack of support for treatment beds for everybody, including parents. But I wondered whether you’ve seen any movement around follow-up of parents coming out of treatment centres and either back into the system, back into having their kids, or back into the situation you’ve described with other family members — whether there’s been any kind of follow-up on that piece.

Then my second question. I guess it struck me when you mentioned the addictions piece and social workers feeling like they don’t have enough knowledge or enough support in that area. Has there ever been a scan — I think of it in a number of recommendations, actually, that have come from your office — around social work training and where the gaps are? Certainly, I would expect a large portion of the kids who come into care come in from families who have addiction issues.

I’m sure there are other areas that you’ve mentioned in other reports where there needs to be, perhaps, a review, a refresher. I think of it in the education system as well, for teachers who don’t get enough training around kids with special needs. I would think that applies with social workers as well.

B. Naughton: It’s interesting. One of the pieces at work that’s going to be a follow-on to our staffing report…. The staffing report was going to go on — we’re going to go on — and look, of course, as we’ve referenced it, at the delegated aboriginal agencies.

We’re going to go look back, as well, on what I think is a core issue, which is social worker training. It’s looking at: what skills are people leaving the schools of social work with, and how do those skills align to what confronts them in the real world? I think you see across different professional lines in the last decade that there’s been an effort to try and bridge the gap between — I hate this dichotomy — the academic realm and the real world, if you will.

One of the pieces of work that we’re progressing on, in the context of the staffing research, is to look to see to what extent training and experiential learning relate to each other and how, if possible, we can shift some of that learning.

Of course, it’s quite possible in this province and across the country to get a degree in social work and never have any addictions training whatsoever. When you look at how prominent addictions issues are in terms of reportable child welfare circumstances, that strikes me as problematic.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the other piece to understand is that the Ministry of Children and Family Development is not in command of addictions services. That falls to Health and health regions. The numbers of addiction treatment options — say, the in-patient treatment option that the mom required — are minimal. There are fee-for-service ones. There’s no coordination with MCFD.

Then youth addictions is also in the health authorities — sometimes under some specific youth justice beds or what have you, but generally it’s with Health. So it’s not inside…. It’s a fractured area to begin with.

The challenge in this particular case was leaving the son with the mom while she was actively in a state of addiction for a number of years. His needs were neglected at school, so he was not doing well and was challenged. They were calling the ministry, and there wasn’t really the right response early.

Then, when they go to grandparents, not doing that under a proper order. So the parents didn’t always know when the child, their daughter, was under the influence or not under the influence. It put a lot of responsibility on them to understand addictions, substances that people may be using and behavioural risks, and they couldn’t manage that. That also requires some expertise in addictions.

Most of the health expertise in addictions is not in MCFD. It’s in Health. It’s very challenging to find an expert resource. That’s one of the reasons why the recommendation is to bring more expert resources in and do the training but also, when it comes to addictions and the risk to kids, to put in place supervision orders and to be clearer about what the expectations are and to monitor that. In this case, there was none of that. So the difference between what Health does and what MCFD does really presents itself around addictions.

D. Barnett: In rural British Columbia, I can tell you, I’m grateful that we have grandparents, because it is amazing how many people have taken their children and left them with their grandparents. They don’t go to MCFD. The grandparents, unfortunately, don’t want to go there. They struggle, and they look after them. Thank goodness for grandparents is all I’ve got to say. We should have more services available for grandparents, because….

D. Barnett: Well, I don’t know if we need more funding. We need more services, because a lot of the grandparents I know who’ve got their grandchildren can afford it. But they need to know where they can go and talk to see what their rights are, what this is, without hiring a lawyer or somebody.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yeah. I think the situation around supporting kinship care — aboriginal, non-aboriginal — and grandparents, aunts, uncles and others who step in…. There’s a lot of informal kinship care that happens
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all the time, which provides a lot of safety, and we really have to recognize and value that. But where something becomes pretty much a permanent thing, because you have a child with serious addictions, they’re not going to be raising the child for years and years. That’s where we need to have the clearer supports.

While some grandparents are able to do that without financial support, the fact is that they’re providing kinship support. It’s a much preferred option than placing a child in care, which is expensive. We did provide kinship support through the Child in the Home of a Relative and other programs, and then that was eliminated. So now we just have this extended family program, but it’s very small.

It’s a persistent problem I have identified with the ministry of: we have literally hundreds and hundreds of grandparents, aunts and uncles, but they’re not getting through your program. Often they’re not getting through the program because the ministry encourages them to become permanent guardians of the child, and they want to do that because they want to travel with the child and help the child, and then if they become permanent guardians, they’re not eligible for the money. That’s the problem.

There’s a very difficult thing. They call our office. We are trying to address it, but kinship support — grandparents require…. I think they do require financial assistance. I don’t think it’s unreasonable. And they require support as well.

D. Plecas: My concern here is a takeoff from my friend Carole James’ comments. The whole business of substance abuse treatment and intervention, the way it’s presented here, brings me back to our discussion earlier about the Paige report. At the end of the day, we have a significant problem, I would say, in the whole field of substance abuse. If there’s a place where all we’re doing is processing people — that’s it — we’re not actually moving people to be…. We’re not intervening in ways that get people away from addictions.

I notice you didn’t use the word “recovery” in your recommendations. You allude to parts of recovery. I think until we get there…. The largest part of what we do right now is the 28-day program kind of thing. Anyone who knows anything about addictions knows that that is nothing short of stupid. If the goal here is to intervene in significant, sustained ways, then we have to be doing that first.

When we’re talking about what we can do for parents with addictions, I’m not optimistic about anything happening there until we first deal with this more significant issue. Let’s get substance abuse programs that have, no pun intended, some substance, because it ain’t happening. We should be so attentive to this. If we look at why we have all of these problems — and, again, going back to Paige — most of the time, if not nearly all of the time, we can be pointed back to substance abuse.

I think there needs to be a more strongly worded recommendation about that. If we’re really being frank here, we need to be asking people to revisit their philosophies about this whole issue as well.

Again, Downtown Eastside is just another example. We spend tens of millions — some of us would say hundreds of millions — of dollars each year to keep people in their place, cocoon them with services, because we fail to deal with the basic issue, and that is: get people out of addictions.

I wonder, if we’re talking about parents…. To me, unless somebody’s moving away from addiction, how are they ever going to be a good parent?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think one of the concerns we see in this report is: what priority is placed on being a parent when you go to seek addiction services? If you’re a parent, are you given a priority? Is there an understanding of the family dimension?

In this case, mom was experiencing depression and domestic violence as well as addictions. That’s not uncommon. Certainly, residential addictions treatment report up to 40 percent of the women who come forward may be experiencing other mental health co-occurring conditions. People who are of this stage of addiction where they take in-patient treatment tend to have some other health challenges that they’re facing. So they would probably not have very good access to services on those other fronts.

I think your point is a good one, which is: what do you do with families? But what do you do when mom has depression, domestic violence and problematic addictions? Why is it they’re not captured? I think that’s really about system coordination and priority.

The addiction support is not organized around if you’re a parent or not. It goes by region to region. It also goes on whether you can pay for private addiction services as opposed to public services, because there’s not a lot of public in-patient service. Then the ongoing supervision around: what is the level of parenting that is happening post-release? Mom was released from treatment into a home with an addict. So she went from treatment to a residence with an addict. Obviously, this is a not a good plan.

It speaks to the fact that the way the system needs to be knit together with Health and MCFD is not…. If you want to find the lead responsibility in the Ministry of Children and Families for parental addictions, it would be the director of child welfare office that has to assess it, but health authorities don’t have to come to the table and coordinate that system with them. So that’s the issue. It’s not a family-focused system.

It needs to be family-focused because, in terms of child abuse, children of parents who are active addicts — it doesn’t matter if it’s alcohol addiction or otherwise — suffer an incredible amount of neglect and abuse, including being deprived consistently or hostile behaviour from the parent, absent parent, child being left alone.
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Also, really being deprived of parental warmth is very connected with the development of significant trauma and mental health disorders later — so inconsistent parental warmth and attention. If there’s another parent or grandparent that can help, that’s good.

But the impact on the child of being raised in an environment of active addictions is very significant. It’s a known issue. It’s known to be intergenerational. We did talk about that in Paige. Again, here we see that the system was just downloaded on the grandparents. Then it wasn’t until the boy spent five months in the hospital after this traumatic car accident that the child welfare system actually intervened to create separation.

The decision points are the wrong decision points in terms of seeing a family and a parent in need of treatment, not just at the end seeing a child that’s injured.

D. Plecas: I’d just go back to your earlier recommendation comments regarding the need to do adequate evaluation on the services that we’re delivering. I would say that this is just one more place where we should doing that in spades, because in the overall scheme of things, it’s hard to see how we’re getting good value.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Well, thank you, Mary Ellen and Dawn and Bill and Alan and your staff for the presentations of the reports today, as well as appreciating our time constraints.

Just for the committee’s purposes, we are going to go in camera when we do the child and youth mental health report, so maybe we’ll wait until these folks are able to depart.

M. Karagianis: Madam Chair, you should just wrap up what we just said — our final decision here on draft.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you very much to all our committee members. We’ll be taking back our recommendations to our writer, and then all of us will be making input to the Chair and the Deputy Chair. We will make further plans after that has been reviewed as to whether or not another meeting is necessary.

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Chair:	Jane Thornthwaite (North Vancouver–Seymour BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Doug Donaldson (Stikine NDP)
Members:	Donna Barnett (Cariboo-Chilcotin BC Liberal)
	Marc Dalton (Maple Ridge–Mission 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