Children and Youth — Issue No. 30 — Monday, October 24, 2016 (HTML)

Present: Jane Thornthwaite, MLA (Chair); Melanie Mark, MLA (Deputy Chair); Marc Dalton, MLA; Carole James, MLA; Maurine Karagianis, MLA; Don McRae, MLA; John Martin, MLA; Dr. Darryl Plecas, MLA; Linda Reimer, MLA

2. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding an update on the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth Report Implementation of the Plecas Review, Part One: Decision Time (April 2016)

4. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth Report Approach with Caution: Why the Story of One Vulnerable BC Youth Can’t be Told (May 2016)

5. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth Report A Tragedy in Waiting: How BC’s mental health system failed one First Nations youth (September 2016)

6. The Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Select Standing Committee’s Statutory Review of the Representative for Children and Youth Act.

8. Resolved, that the Committee meet in-camera to consider the appointment of an Acting Representative for Children and Youth, pursuant to section 5 of the Representative for Children and Youth Act. (Linda Reimer, 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
Tribute to Work of Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond	681
M. Turpel-Lafond
Office of the Representative for Children and Youth: Annual Report and Service Plan	682
M. Turpel-Lafond
B. Naughton
B. Mitchell
Representative for Children and Youth Report: Implementation of the Plecas Review, Part One: Decision Time	688
M. Turpel-Lafond
A. Markwart
Representative for Children and Youth Report: Approach With Caution: Why the Story of One Vulnerable B.C. Youth Can’t Be Told	695
M. Turpel-Lafond
B. Naughton
A. Markwart
Representative for Children and Youth Report: A Tragedy in Waiting: How B.C.’s Mental Health System Failed One First Nations Youth	700
M. Turpel-Lafond
D. Thomas-Wightman
Statutory Review: Representative for Children and Youth Act	706
M. Turpel-Lafond
D. Thomas-Wightman

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I’m Jane Thornthwaite, the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth. We’re very happy to have our Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, and her staff.

Maybe I’ll get you to introduce your staff. Maybe, for the purposes of the beginning of the meeting…. I have some remarks, and then we’ll go forward with your reports.

According to the agenda that we have put out previously, we will be doing the general update from the representative and then the three reports that are indicated.

In the interim, in addition to welcoming back Alayna into the parliamentary Clerk’s office, I’d like to congratulate our colleague Donna Barnett, who was appointed into cabinet on Friday. We are in the process now of getting a replacement for her. We’ve been told that it’s Don McRae. He’s not here yet, but we’re hoping that…. I think he would be great. That will be happening, hopefully, some time today.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Welcome, Mary Ellen. Now, your term doesn’t officially end until November 27, so you’re still here with your staff, your professional team, behind you. I hope that you will introduce your team. But I just have something that I’d like to read out from the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth annual report. This is our final report from 2015 to 2016.

We wanted to just comment from the front here that “British Columbia’s first Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, is nearing the completion of her second five-year term as representative. On behalf of all the Members of the Legislative Assembly, the committee would like to thank Ms. Turpel-Lafond for her support to the committee and its members during her two terms as representative," and for your distinguished work and many contributions to children and youth, and their families, across our province of British Columbia.

I think I can speak for all of our committee members to thank you very much for all of your hard work and your support for children and youth in the province.

By the way, this is just being released right now. It was approved a couple of meetings ago, so we’re just making sure that everybody’s got it.

All right. Why don’t we start with the introductions. Melanie, do you want to introduce yourself first?

M. Mark (Deputy Chair): Good morning. My name is Melanie Mark. I’m the MLA for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and the Deputy Chair. Thank you for being here.

M. Karagianis: Good morning. I’m Maurine Karagianis, MLA for Esquimalt–Royal Roads.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Jane Thornthwaite, the Chair, MLA for North Vancouver–Seymour.

Thank you very much. Without any further ado, Mary Ellen, maybe you could perhaps introduce your support that you’ve got with you and carry on with the general update and the three reports discussed.

I would like to introduce the staff that’s present with me today. To my left, your right, is Dawn Thomas-Wightman, the deputy representative, who you’re well familiar with. She’s joined me in the past. To my right, your left, is Blair Mitchell, the executive director of advocacy, who works out of the Victoria office but works around the province, supporting me with respect to the advocacy function.

Second to my left, your right, is Bill Naughton, who is familiar to committee members. He is the chief investigator and the associate deputy representative for the critical injury and death component of the program in the representative’s office. Seated to his left is Alan Markwart. Alan Markwart has appeared before the committee once before. Alan is the associate deputy representative responsible for the monitoring, review and audit component of the representative’s function.

I’d like to open by saying thank you for those kind remarks, to the Chair. It’s very much appreciated, and I will have a chance to read the report.

In preparing for today, I was reflecting on how I’ve appeared, I believe, about 45 times before the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth over the
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past decade, and probably 12 to 13 times before other committees. I was aiming for 60. I think I got to about 58, so if you want to call me back, maybe I could make it.

In any event, I also, in anticipation of today, was very delighted to hear from a former Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, Joan McIntyre. I really appreciated my time working with Joan, as well as with Ron Cantelon, who was the Chair before, and all of the Deputy Chairs, including those who are here.

I’d certainly like to extend my warm welcome to Melanie Mark as she comes into the role as Deputy Chair of the committee. Of course, there was a time where Melanie Mark was seated at this end of the table, in the representative’s office.

Certainly, when I became the representative, in 2006, one of the first people to knock on my door and tell me, in a rather bossy fashion, about what I needed to do as an advocate was Melanie Mark, because she was in the Office for Children and Youth. I wish her all the best as she’s moved forward into her new role in the Legislative Assembly.

It’s certainly been very important to me to have this role and to be able to work with Members of the Legislative Assembly on a variety of things. Today it’s a bit bittersweet that this is my last appearance, but very happy to see the strength of this office and see the work go forward. I’m, of course, very excited, as my staff is, to learn about a replacement in my role. It’s obviously in your hands.

I am functionally finished my work, so today will be the last that certainly British Columbians or Members of the Legislative Assembly will hear from me in this role. It will be over to my office to keep things humming and warm until a new individual is in place.

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

M. Turpel-Lafond: In terms of a quick office update, we’ve had a very busy past few months. We’ve released six full reports since April, as well as two updates on critical injury and death reviews and investigations. The staff continues to work on the workplan. We will deposit today, I believe at the end of the day, with the Speaker’s office a copy of our annual report and service plan — the committee will be receiving that in short notice — and, of course, are preparing for budget and other submissions pursuant to that.

I will note that the annual report and service plan will contain a bit more of an extensive report from me, looking back over the last decade, around what I feel are the strongest accomplishments and areas for continuing work. So you’ll have that before you for the future.

In terms of the work that’s continuing, I just wanted to highlight a few matters that are underway and, of course, will be in the hands of the next representative to determine the manner in which they will be released, including an investigation into the death of a young man who had been in the long-term placement in a hotel. There was a ministry review, and the representative’s office began its investigation into that death of the individual, who has been named repeatedly. His name is Alex Gervais.

We are at — and Mr. Naughton can correct me if I’m inaccurate — I think 90 interviews at the time of reporting today. That investigation has been a robust one. I anticipate that that will be completed and prepared for release sometime in December, provided there’s an individual at the head of the agency that can release the report.

The second investigation in mid-stage at this point is an investigation into the death of a young man with complex mental health needs who died while staying in a hospital setting. That focuses on residential services to support children and youth who present with similar challenges. That’s well underway and, again, anticipate that being released before the end of the year or early into 2017.

Last week the office released a report called Last Resort: One Family’s Tragic Struggle to Find Help for Their Son, which examined the death of a young man engaged in a youth justice program. Obviously, the representative’s office staff will discuss that report at a future date. That was the last report, an investigation, which was overseen by myself, in this role.

In the monitoring unit, two major reports have been released since April. I appreciate that we will not have an opportunity to address them today, but you will have a chance to hear more about them in the future.

First was a comprehensive report on youth substance use services and the resources that are available for young people and their families struggling with addictions — that was in April; and in September, a report on sexualized violence in the life of children and youth in care, which was an extensive look at the experience of children and youth in care, particularly girls, and the type of violence they experience.

It was a very comprehensive monitoring and investigation report involving looking at, at a period of time, all sexual abuse reportables to the representative’s office and determining what happened in the lives of those young people. A particular recognition to the staff who worked…. I think it was about a four-year project to bring that to completion. It took a lot of intense work in the critical injury and death unit, as well as the monitoring units. I particularly appreciate bringing that first path-breaking type of report to fruition. These will be reported on, of course, in an update in a meeting in the future.

Some of the continuing work in monitoring includes a review of delegated aboriginal agency staffing, which is
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well underway, involving extensive interviewing and assessment of the staffing complement, some of the issues in the aboriginal delegated agencies.

There is also a return to a very significant subject that, as representative, I reported on seven years ago. That is, we are well into a review of education supports for children and youth in care, specifically looking at the outcomes, challenges that make it difficult to support outcomes and what is needed to improve those outcomes.

I just note, on that, that the committee would be familiar that the report that was done in the past by myself and Dr. Perry Kendall, a comprehensive look at education outcomes for children and youth in care, reported seven years ago about 20 percent completion rate for children and youth in care. With some very concerted, aggressive, consistent action with education partners, I’m very pleased today that we’re over 40 percent outcomes. So we’ve more than doubled the outcomes. But as you know, that still lags considerably to the provincial average of about 80 percent.

This particular active piece of work that’s being undertaken in monitoring is really looking at what is working, where is it working and how we can continue to close those education gaps. Especially, we’re learning about this more from both ends, as we now have tuition waivers in effect in 13 of our 23 colleges and universities. We are now seeing children and youth, youth in particular, attend those colleges and universities where there are tuition waivers. We’re learning more by meeting with them and talking to them around how they’ve overcome some of that adversity.

I think that next piece of work will be a deeper and more sensitive look at the issue and also have a chance to celebrate some of the good areas where the uptake has been very strong. That report will have a particular focus. The staff is very closely engaged with indigenous education and achievements there — and, of course, collaborating with the office of the Auditor, where they released a very helpful report earlier this year on education policy and aboriginal education.

In terms of the advocacy program…. The program continues to have a strong focus on direct contact with children, youth and young adults in individual advocacy cases. We are supporting a unique team that is working on indigenous strategies and partnerships. They’ve been collaborating very much to make sure aboriginal and indigenous children and youth are well connected to services and that we are working across the spectrum for their interests.

As I say, I’m delighted that Blair is here with me today. He’s provided a lot of leadership in this area and continues to make sure that requests for service are responded to promptly and that the focus of the representative’s work is on actually serving children and youth and making sure they’re well connected.

Despite what sometimes would appear to be a very fractious relationship between the representative’s office and the ministry, we’re in regular daily contact with the ministry in these cases. I would say probably 85 percent of those cases end up in a like-minded and supported resolution for children and youth. There are some that are not, but an overwhelming preponderance are.

And again, recognize the support of front-line ministry staff, but also the advocacy team. There have been some very high-profile advocacy cases recently, where the representative’s office has been involved in matters where foster families may have legal counsel and be before courts. There’s a high degree of emotionality around these cases, particularly because sometimes it involves placing a child in a brand-new home after they’ve been in a home for many, many years.

Some of those cases require daily attention — keeping the channels of communication open with everyone and trying to make sure the focus can stay on children. It’s very challenging work. Those cases are very important. Even when decisions are made where families maybe are not happy about the outcome or are devastated, frankly, about the outcome, it’s really important in the representative’s office that the staff assist those families, assist those children and work through it and certainly encourage MCFD not to take an approach of digging in, shutting down and not talking to people.

Much of the work of Blair and the staff is around using those very peace-making, dispute resolution–focused strategies to keep people going and to learn from cases.

Again, as I sign off as representative, just knowing there are between 50 and 200 high-profile advocacy cases that have sort of daily input from the senior leadership, myself, and that without that senior involvement taking things upstairs, if you like, these cases would likely not be resolved.

Just this past September we had 160 cases opened. Some of the advocacy work…. I appreciate there will be a statutory review, which will be very helpful. You’ll have a chance to hear from the staff around that, I hope, because even as the government moves to make small but important advances for children and youth in care, such as youth leaving care, recently there were some enhancements.

About $1 million was placed into the agreements with the young adults program to strengthen the supports for the 19- to 24-year-old cohort. Again, our office, when an announcement like that happens…. Of that 168 calls, a lot will be from youth leaving care, who want to get support.

The mandate of the representative’s office ends at 19, unless there’s a youth with special needs. We’ve been trying to straddle that and work that out. And again, credit to Blair and the staff for making sure that, even when something is on the edge of mandate, they are working to support people to get needed supports and working to support the ministry to get out there.

Just this past week we’ve had a very good meeting with a team that we created of indigenous youth. We had
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an event called an Ignite Your Spirit indigenous youth dialogue for change, which brought together 27 young people between the ages of 14 and 18 from, primarily, the Lower Mainland, Squamish and Fraser Valley regions. These are young people who are in care of either a delegated aboriginal agency or MCFD.

So really working directly with youth and looking toward, perhaps, opportunities for the representative’s office in the future, depending on a number of factors, to play a stronger role to amplify the voices of children and youth in care, as obviously, the model of the current representative’s office is one to support, advise and inform those who seek support. It may be valuable that it changes a little bit into more of one of amplifying and ensuring that the voices and the participation are there.

That was a very powerful event — young people providing valuable stories and ideas for improvement. The office will share those findings with the committee in the future. The work is quite significant.

I also just want to recognize…. Although Mr. Naughton has responsibility as a chief investigator, Mr. Naughton, Ms. Thomas-Wightman, Mr. Mitchell, myself were extensively involved between January and July of this year on the issues pertaining to the tent city in Victoria. It probably had fairly daily involvement, looking at the issue of children or young people that were in the tent city.

We’re delighted that the tent city has now been dismantled. However, we worked very closely with everyone involved, and Mr. Naughton in particular played a very significant role for our office, talking about whether or not young people should be in tent cities and what it is like to have tent cities.

As you know, some municipal leaders and community activists feel that we should establish tent cities around British Columbia to deal with challenges with the homeless population. Mr. Naughton and a complement of my staff went to Seattle to visit the tent cities, to meet the staff of youth agencies and police and others to see how young people experience life in a tent city. We haven’t done a report, but we have been working extensively with front-line staff. But while the tent city was operating, we made regular visits, and we tried to support youth leaving.

The office staff was also able to meet with the people who transitioned out of the tent city in Victoria into transitional housing and to talk to them. And it was quite staggering to find that fully 60 percent of those young people up to the age of 28 — because there were a lot of young adults in that cohort — were young people who had formerly been in care. They may not actively be in care, but they’d formerly been in care.

My staff, again, were quite surprised, even here on south Vancouver Island, by the extent to which the occupants and inhabitants of the tent city who were seeking services had overwhelmingly been involved with the child welfare system in their own childhood and adolescence. So we did a bit of shirt surveying around that.

The outcomes in terms of the young people that were in the tent city will be difficult to follow, but I have to say to you that the staff…. It was very challenging. I don’t think any of the young people that were involved in the tent city came out any stronger, any healthier and, in fact, probably came out with more peril.

So we learned a lot from that experience. It was a very difficult experience. It wasn’t our first tent city. I think there’s been a tent city somewhere almost every single year in my ten years as representative, whether that’s Vancouver or elsewhere. But it does speak to that issue of marginalization, criminalization of people who have come through a lot of child abuse and maltreatment.

I just raise that to say I anticipate there will be more policy debate on that, and the office has been working, although not reporting, and recognize the developed expertise in the office on that issue. Certainly, if any MLAs or others are seeking to get better understanding of that, the office is always available to provide briefings and support for you around that issue, should it be arising in your own constituencies.

Again, I think it’s very important to note…. Although this is my last time speaking in this role as representative, I feel very strongly that, with the work that’s underway, despite the fact that my role is done, the term is ending and there’ll be a new person, I hope, soon, the office is in good shape and ready for a new appointment.

The processes that I’ve described, in terms of the work that’s being done, is business as usual. And my staff is very respectful and supportive of all Members of the Legislative Assembly in understanding that these processes will come to some type of an appointment, I hope in the near future. They’re all very eager to provide support to that person.

I’ll stop there, Madam Chair, and see if you may have any questions on the office update. If not, I’m happy to move into the first report agenda item.

C. James: I just wanted to…. I think it’s an appropriate time, as we move into the reports, to express my appreciation, as well, to Mary Ellen. It’s probably the time in the electoral cycle when lots of us, as we’re making our decisions about running again, look back on the accomplishments or the work that we’ve done. I have to say that part of the work that I’m the most proud of is getting the Representative for Children and Youth’s office back in place.

I have to say that you have more than filled the shoes for that first representative. We have been incredibly fortunate in British Columbia to have your determination, to have your focus, to have your energy. I think whether it’s the profile you have raised of the issue…. I think there is not a member of the public now who wouldn’t see children and youth as an important issue and children and youth in care as an important issue. I think that has had a great deal to do with the work that you’ve done.
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But I hope you also move on knowing the legacy that you leave. I think you have had an impact on the day-to-day lives, but you’ve also had an impact on the long term for children in care, I think particularly — you mentioned it — of the work that you’ve done for colleges and universities to ensure that children in care are able to get there. That’s a lifetime legacy. That’s breaking the cycle. That’s making a difference for not simply that individual but others who are to follow. I think that’s an extraordinary achievement.

I know there’s lots of work to do, and we’ll continue to raise those voices of lots of work to do, but I wanted to express my appreciation and say that you’ve done an extraordinary job. British Columbia has been fortunate — and most importantly, children in care have been fortunate — to have your leadership here.

M. Karagianis: I do have a question, but I would also like to add to Carole James’s comments.

Mary Ellen, I think I’ve been here since the very beginning. Other than maybe a little blip, I’ve been on this committee. I was very fortunate to be on the committee that hired you. I do remember that interview very specifically. Certainly, everything that we saw in that interview…. You surpassed every expectation we had about how the role of the Representative for Children and Youth would unfold here in British Columbia and under a new iteration after Ted Hughes’s recommendations.

Again, our sincere thank-you to you for the incredible work you’ve done and for broadening even our expectations year after year on the role of that office and the role of this committee as well. I thank you very much for that. It’s been a great privilege to have worked with you all these years and to have sat through most of the ten years of reports and things, as hard as they have been, as difficult as they have been.

I am curious. When you talk about your caseloads as they sit today in your office, have you seen either an increase or a decrease, or has it pretty much been a steady number of cases that continue to come through the door? You’re talking somewhere in the range of 200 cases currently. Do you see that there has been a significant change over a decade? And what would you see in the future as you go forward?

Obviously, we’re going to be reviewing the legislation and all of that around what the office will look like going forward. Certainly, I would hope that you have some words of wisdom for us as a committee and for the province as a whole to say what you’ve seen in ten years, what the current situation is as you leave it behind. Are we doing better, are we doing worse, or are we pretty much just treading water? I’d be really interested in your observations on that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, thank you both for your comments. They are very heartfelt, and I really do appreciate it.

I can’t help while I’m watching, listening to you, to recognize that when I first started this job, I had brown hair, and now I kind of look like you two with the white hair. So I’m not sure if I’ve influenced you or if you’ve influenced me, but the pressure of the role certainly has aged me a little bit. I certainly appreciate any references around your hairdressers.

Around the caseload and the work, I’ll ask the staff to comment, because I think this is significant. The annual report and service plan that will be released by the Speaker’s office does include a bit of a report from me of what I think are the top five accomplishments of the last decade and the top five things remaining. It’s hard to make it that simple, but I did try to do that. You’ll have that in your hands soon enough.

I would say, around the work of the office, the caseload issues have been very different. When I started as representative in 2006, I was told there may be one or two homicides a year in terms of children and a small number of injuries. I’ll ask Mr. Naughton to speak to the last year, where I understand there have been over 600 critical injuries and deaths. The volume is astounding compared to what was predicted, once we started to dig and find out the degree of actual vulnerability that children and youth have.

I’ll ask Mr. Mitchell to speak to the advocacy role, because the demand for advocacy has grown. The visibility of the office has to be there, because the young people we are trying to reach out to are not young people that feel comfortable getting government-style advocacy. It’s very important in the representative’s office to always be really clear that we are not the Ministry of Children and Families, even though I support and want the ministry to do well. My job is to support that ministry, absolutely. That’s my overarching role and the overarching job in this office. But in order to support children and youth, the office must be very strongly independent and have the confidence and trust that their information will be kept private, that their situation will be kept private.

I will ask Bill and Blair to each respond to the issue around caseloads and the kinds of different cases we’ve had. The work has changed. I appreciate the statutory review will have a chance to look at this in more detail and the scope of it, but the nature of the work was much more intense than certainly was planned. Even on issues like critical injury and death reports, we only handle a very small number that we turn into full investigative reports. But we do carefully review every instance.

With that, I’ll ask Bill, maybe, to comment on the trends that we’ve seen in the last year.

B. Naughton: Good morning. I think it’s fair to say that really since March of 2011, the office has seen very significant increases in the number of reported critical injuries and deaths. This reflects a number of changes in the environment, including a special report that we issued on that issue, in terms of what actually does constitute a critical injury, what qualifies as a critical injury.
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We were successful over several years of negotiation in actually hammering out a common understanding and common language with MCFD as to what does constitute a critical injury for a child.

As well as that, the ministry has also — I have to say: kudos to them — rolled out significant training for staff, highlighting the importance of reporting. I think what we’ve seen since that period in 2011…. We have seen exponential increases in the number of reportables. What I can say for the fiscal year 2016-2017 is we are at 453 deaths and injuries reported to us. The same period last year, we had 408. So if we continue along that trend line, I think we can expect that those reportable numbers will continue to increase.

What we see, however, when we do investigations is that we still…. When you actually review files, when you’re actually interviewing staff and professionals who are involved with these children, I still perceive a significant underreporting of critical injuries. That remains an ongoing challenge for us.

I think Paige is a great example, where we only had one critical incident report, for example, prior to her death. Yet when you actually review her life, there are multiples, probably dozens of events, and that flow of information is so critical in terms of being able to identify kids who are at risk.

I think if anyone has any specific questions, I could address them now, or Mr. Mitchell can continue on the issue of advocacy.

M. Dalton: With regards to critical injuries, fentanyl — is that coming more and more into play with the critical injuries, or is that something apart?

B. Naughton: I would say it’s difficult to tease out fentanyl as a specific factor. Do we see an enormous number of critical injuries associated with drug use? Yeah, we absolutely do. It’s very frequently polysubstance abuse. It may be fentanyl or other opioid analogues, it may be crystal methamphetamine, it may be cocaine — all combined. So I would suggest that the typical profile we see currently, in terms of the youth where incidents are being report to us — it’s polydrug use. It’s very complex and usually aligned to other critical health issues, be they physical or mental.

B. Mitchell: Related to advocacy, we have seen an increase in cases in the last three years — a steady increase where we now have over 2,000 cases a year that we’re dealing with in advocacy.

The issues. Mary Ellen has touched on a few of them already. Certainly, youth transitioning has been a significant focus the last couple of years in the office and one that we’re seeing a lot of, where youth themselves are calling, expressing concerns about not knowing what their plan is when they’re going to leave care, or their adult supports are helping them to call our office, particularly those with special needs, transitioning from care into CLBC services. That issue is ongoing, and we pay a lot of close attention to that.

Youth who are involved in what people would call sort of high-risk behaviour — that’s featured a lot in the last couple of years. Access to services for those youth can often be very challenging, given their own circumstances. But also, that those services sometimes are not available readily does prove to be challenging.

So it’s getting people to work alongside those youth to make sure that they’re aware of what services are available and when they’re ready to access them and that they can. But what we see, unfortunately, is that sometimes a youth could be ready and the services aren’t readily available. There is a lot of work with those youth. That does involve access to residential treatment and access to mental health services.

Also, children and youth with special needs. We know that children and youth social workers have high caseloads, and that does impact on their ability to work in a supportive relationship with children and youth and those families. They’re inundated with the numbers. Sometimes youth that probably would benefit from a more supportive relationship with their social worker…. It does prove problematic. That’s an issue that we see quite often in our work.

Then of course, Mary Ellen has spoken a lot about adoptions. That issue continues to be front and centre in advocacy. The cases that come to us usually are, as Mary Ellen described, cases with a lot of emotions attached. Perhaps a child has been in a placement for a number of years, and there’s a plan in place to then adopt them to someone else. We do have to work through that with all parties, and we do our best to do that. But we at least try to keep front and centre what the voice of the child is and what their rights are in the process.

Those certainly are some of the issues that we’re seeing in advocacy and that we pay close attention to in our work.

M. Mark (Deputy Chair): I just had a quick question, Blair, with the advocacy front. Can you speak at all to wait-lists? We often hear, in Mount Pleasant, about wait-lists for children trying to access services from MCFD. Can you give us an idea what they’re waiting for or how long the time frames are?

B. Mitchell: Region to region it differs, so it’s hard to say, broadly speaking, what specific wait-lists are. But we do see wait-lists for mental health services, for aboriginal-specific mental health services across the province, for some residential treatment. When a child is put on a wait-list for six months, 12 months — we’ve seen children on wait-lists as long as 18 months — the service is not responsive to their needs, nor their family’s needs.

That is an issue, of course, in our advocacy. We can get in touch with the ministry social worker or that person’s supervisor and talk about that, but without adequate resources, we can’t change a wait-list. That does prove quite frustrating for the advocate and, clearly, for the families who are experiencing that problem in trying to get those services for their children. It’s hard to say specifically, but certainly, across the province, we’re seeing wait-lists in different service areas.

M. Dalton: Question, comments, to Mary Ellen. First of all, thank you very much for your service for the past ten years. A lot of reports, a lot of work — thank you for that. Best wishes in your future endeavours.

I just have a question regarding completion rates. It seems like a big increase, from 20 percent to 40 percent for children in care. I know that for aboriginal youth, it’s even significantly higher, which is good news.

I’m just wondering what you attribute the different factors to, leading to that type of improvement in the completion rates. I know it’s a long ways to go, but it’s still 100 percent better than it was, and we want to keep that trend going. Could you make some comments as far as some of the factors for that improvement?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. First of all, thank you for those comments, as well. I think it’s fair to say that the reason why there’s improvement is because people are paying attention. When Dr. Perry Kendall and I looked at the education outcomes of 20,000 kids in care over a ten-year period, we really went deep. We looked child by child. We looked at the administrative data and matched every kid in care with their education outcomes and figured out what was happening.

That was a path-breaking piece of work seven years ago. It led the Ministry of Education and MCFD to set a goal in its annual service plan and to track and monitor. But one of the recommendations Dr. Kendall and I landed on seven years ago….

We debated these issues extensively and have worked very closely together, because we want to improve real outcomes, not just have blue-sky thinking. One of the things we said — and it has turned out to be quite helpful — is we wanted someone assigned, in every school, with the responsibility to monitor the education outcomes of children in care in that school. Superintendents of achievement, as they were then called, and others actually drew that down on a school-by-school basis.

Being the detail-oriented type of person, perhaps somewhat a control freak type of person, that I am about these things, I actually, randomly, would go into school districts and ask to have that information unpackaged for me, as did my team. I’d go into a school district and say: “Well, you adopted that recommendation. What actually happened, school by school, place by place?”

I found that that worked for four or five years and was really helpful to get it to become part of the culture. Someone pays attention to the youth in care, the child in care, and they’re seeing how they’re doing.

As you know, that’s sometimes called the Hawthorne effect. Sometimes just by paying attention to something, you can improve it. But that only got us part of the way. What actually got us more forward was realizing that a young person in care had education needs and that the domain of education is one of the key drivers of resilience.

So working extensively with educators, working extensively with the Ministry of Education…. The representative’s office has had a very strong partnership with every deputy, every Minister of Education, superintendents, trustees, principals, vice-principals, education assistants, school counsellors. I think I’ve been out to them all and enjoyed every single minute of it.

But the focus has really been on what you do for actual kids. If they’re behind, what do you do? We know that they’re behind in grade 4, at the FSAs. We know they’re still behind in grade 7, and they weren’t progressing. Something had to change. But as we move to improve our education system, we have seen this move.

However, I think it’s fair to say we’ve moved the needle up to just over 40 percent completion rates from that low of 20 percent. In order to move it up to 80 percent, it’s going to take more than just someone paying attention. It’s going to take the lag in numeracy and literacy to be caught up.

I’m hoping that with some of the innovations around personalized learning, there will be more accountabilities in education for a kind of personalized learning plan for children and youth in care so we know where they are. But we’re also encouraging teachers, education assistants, principals and others to see that there’s a post-secondary future, that there’s a training and an education future for every one of those kids.

I used to get a lot of: “Oh, we’re just keeping this young person fed. They’ve been abused. They’re not doing well at school. They’re in a lot of emotional distress.” Now, actually, when I deal with teachers and principals and others, they’re talking to me more about how they’re remediating the education needs of a young person who’s had a lot of instability.

So strategic investments will be important, but that change is one that has just taken a lot of rolling up your sleeves and working on it, and credit to British Columbia that there are very strong people in the education systems at the front line that are able to do that work and have really seen this as important and have not stigmatized children and youth in care but have seen them as children and youth that will do better.

The other point I would just make in response to your question is we’ve had a very strong campaign for permanency and adoption, and we know that in the last two years, we’ve had the highest years and highest numbers of
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placements in a decade — permanency placements — in adoptions. We know that post-adoption, those education outcomes come way up. So really associated with good outcomes is getting that forever family.

But those numbers lagged for a decade, so we are still going to have a lot of kids that are not going to benefit from that. But it also tells you how permanency and the forever family and that family functioning is so important for good education outcomes. It’s pretty hard to replicate the family when a young person is bouncing around care, even though there are very caring and supportive foster families in British Columbia. Things kind of fall apart when kids get into group homes and they start to be homeless, and they really do fall apart at school. But if you can get that family, that’s crucial — and get families prepared to dig in and never say never and never say quit. Then we see some great outcomes.

Those are a few factors. So school factors and permanency factors are major. But British Columbia will need to continue to work. The next report that the office will promote will really look at what has worked where and what might work better. Again, it’s important that the Ministry of Education and MCFD set targets. It’s not good enough to say that we’ll increase it by 2 percent. We need to say, “We need to get to the provincial average of 84 percent,” and that these kids have to get there.

Far too many of these kids continue to get a school-leaving certificate instead of a Dogwood. They get an Evergreen. And I’ve challenged that. We’ve looked in some school districts where it just can’t possibly be the case that that many children would get Evergreens. Working with the Ministry of Education, we are addressing that, frequently behind the scenes. Not everything gets out into the public. But those changes are really crucial. Hopefully that education-focused work will continue, because I think it will bear great results.

As Chair, I just want to remind the committee that this particular section of our meeting today and Mary Ellen’s presentation is till noon, so we’ll have to accommodate all of your reports, in addition to your comments on the statutory review, within that time frame. But you’re certainly flexible within that time frame to take whatever time you need.

Why don’t we start on the first report that you will be reporting out on, Implementation of the Plecas Review, Part One: Decision Time.

Representative for Children
and Youth Report: Implementation
of the Plecas Review, Part One:
Decision Time

M. Turpel-Lafond: I’ll turn my comments now to the report from the representative’s office which was released on April 28, 2016, which was a public report on the report that was prepared by Mr. Bob Plecas. His report was released on December 4, 2015. It was called Plecas Review, Part One: Decision Time.

As you know, the Plecas report…. And I’ll be careful here, because I know we have Mr. Plecas at this table. Bob Plecas’s report was originally described, when he was appointed by the Premier, as an independent review of a case — a particularly significant case — called the J.P. case, which continues through the courts of British Columbia. This was a case in which the representative’s office provided advocacy to the children in that matter from 2006, so for virtually the last decade, we’ve played some role or another around advocating in that case, so we’re well familiar with the facts.

Anyway, Mr. Bob Plecas was appointed by the minister and the Premier in the summer of 2015 to do an independent review of that case. Mr. Plecas’s review kind of morphed from an independent review of a case to a more overarching report on the child welfare system. It set out some sweeping recommendations for policy, program and legal reform, and it was released before Mr. Bob Plecas and his team looked at the J.P. case.

Whether or not there will ever be a report on the J.P. case is unknown to me. Some of the origins of it are a little bit challenging. In particular, there were some concerns at the outset with the appointment of Mr. Bob Plecas by the Premier. The Privacy Commissioner had to make a ruling that there was material provided to Mr. Bob Plecas by the staff of the Premier’s office and the Premier — material related to the case that was confidential — before he had appropriate privacy protections.

As you can imagine, beginning with the appointment, there was a lot of distress on the part of these children and a lot of contact from my office about them. I was very appropriate to engage with the ministry and others to say: “Upon what basis will this review go forward?” There were a number of serious concerns about it.

I would certainly say, as representative, that of course Premiers, ministers…. Anyone in government is allowed to get an opinion from anyone on child welfare or what have you. It’s just that if you hire someone to look at an actual case and that person doesn’t have privacy protections or doesn’t have an official role, it can be very challenging. And when you’re dealing, as Mr. Mitchell said earlier, about, the situations with families….

When you’re dealing with a family that has been involved with the child welfare system and feels that there has been an element of retaliation against them over the years, the appointment of Mr. Bob Plecas — and no comment on his extensive, impressive qualifications — to come in and look at a case really escalates their concerns. It caused a great deal of unsettling for those children and that mom and that family.
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That mom and those kids took some actions. They made a privacy complaint. They went to the court process to try and stop Mr. Plecas from doing his review. Those were all within their own ambits. They made those at their own discretion. However, I can just say, as representative, that they were put into a lot of distress. It wasn’t clear to them what the review would be and how they would be treated.

Those matters are before the courts. It could be another four or five years before that is decided. The B.C. Supreme Court in the J.P. case found that there was negligence on the part of the ministry — that’s now under appeal — but not only negligence. They found a level of negligence that had never been found in the history of British Columbia.

As you know, these are serious cases with a lot of sensitivity. Mr. Bob Plecas was appointed to look into that. Somehow in the process, it turned out that by December, there was a broad-ranging report, including a report on, for instance, the representative’s office and the functions of the representative’s office. Mr. Plecas filed his report, and then within a few short weeks, literally before the ink was dry, was withdrawing parts of the report to government. But the government was not releasing that.

It became a rather awkward situation, to say the least, with respect to the representative’s staff, who were extremely upset about the process, upset about the secretive nature and backroom nature of it. Also, the staff was very upset about the fact that Mr. Plecas was inaccurate in his report. For instance, Bob Plecas reported that there was a period of 18 months in which the representative’s office didn’t communicate with the ministry. That was one of the small items in his report. As the staff well knows, at the representative’s office, we’re in daily contact. So some of it was inaccurate.

However, again, I’ve tried to support my staff and say that this is just the nature of the beast. People can write whatever they want. We live in a free society. It’s not very often that someone writes something at that level that is so not accurate and doesn’t bother doing an administrative fairness process with the targets of that report. But in any event, so be it. The staff, I think, handled it very well, and I really appreciate their professionalism in going through that.

Also, the staff was very interested to see…. Well, first of all, the advocacy staff had to deal with a thorny issue. If you have these children and a mom who is very concerned…. During the process that Bob Plecas did his review, our office worked tirelessly, almost on a daily and weekly basis, to get some type of a protocol in place between the ministry and this mom and her children so that the ministry would not continue to do child protection investigations without appropriate buffer.

I think it’s fair to say — and Ms. Thomas-Wightman led that process with me — two years later, unfortunately, we don’t have a protocol in place, so there is nothing.

Again, I’m very mindful of the fact that these are those very sensitive cases where, if someone’s reviewing your case and you feel that there’s retaliation and there are constant issues…. There’s no doubt in my mind that in this particular case, the impact of Bob Plecas’s review on mom and these children has been profound. Mom and the kids are more upset, I think, than they’ve ever been.

Not having a protocol to deal with their child-welfare investigations — for instance, having someone from outside the province manage it or a retired person…. Not having that completed…. I’m very disappointed. It’s one thing that I pushed very hard for and I could not get the ministry to move on.

I would just say that sometimes when the ministry digs in, it’s hard to get them to dig out. While that was one side of the ministry, Mr. Bob Plecas doing his review and so forth has really affected a family. While there are big issues that Mr. Bob Plecas looked at which were important, we always have to remember that with this work, when it’s focused on, for instance, a case and there are real kids, there is a great sensitivity. That is why we have privacy issues and so forth.

The mom and her children at the target of this never met with Mr. Bob Plecas, nor were they willing to, nor did they feel confident doing so. It took me, as representative, from 2006 to 2008 sometime to build a trusting relationship as an independent, neutral office. Some of that, frankly, was blown by this process. I’m sorry to say that this case will be resolved in the courts in some form. No doubt, you’ll be hearing about it more. I think, frankly, it was made worse, not better, by this process, in terms of those kids.

Leaving that aside for a minute, because obviously, Mr. Bob Plecas was withdrawing parts of his report within a very short period of time and changing his mind on matters. That is fine; although, the public didn’t hear about it. So it did cause me some disquiet, as representative, in my dealings with the ministry. They were difficult during that time, because after Mr. Bob Plecas did his report, it was hard for us to do our advocacy work. It was hard for us to get things done, because some of the tenor…. Suggesting that there was a highly acrimonious relationship or that there had been a shutdown for months in communication — some of that sort of narrative, as false as it was, seemed to take hold.

I remember exchanging very positive emails with the deputy of MCFD on the day the Plecas review was released, saying: “This is not the nature of our relationship, and you know it.” And he wrote back to me, saying: “Absolutely, it is not. We’ll just get through this and get to the other side. It’s something else happening, and we’ll just get through it.” I really appreciated that sensible approach by the staff within the Ministry of Children and Families.

In any event, the Plecas report needed to be looked at. Not only did it not look at a case, it raised a lot of issues, including, as you’ll know…. I wrote to you as members of
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the select standing committee to say that if recommendations are being made to change the function of the representative — the role, the function, and so forth — really, the standing committee is the focus. I wrote you that letter and I issued the report in April for a couple of reasons.

One is that when I look at reviews of child welfare systems…. Mr. Bob Plecas did a fairly extensive, broad, sweeping review with a lot of highly generalized views about the system — a lot of it based on an era in which he was in government. That is a different era than today around child welfare.

A lot of these reviews that have been done nationally…. For instance, if I look at Alberta, our neighbour province. They did a review of how they look into child death and injuries. They did a white paper, and they had hearings with over 600 participants. Every review of child welfare and child services…. Even just by the nature of the interest in the work of this committee and the representative’s office, I’m strongly of the view that transparency and openness is needed, and public input is important.

The nature of a review done in this manner, without sharing information with the oversight office, without consulting with the aboriginal community — and as you know, the aboriginal community was very upset about the report — and also not showing the metrics or the drivers of the report out to the public is a concern. So these issues…. I’m not saying Mr. Bob Plecas came from any type of a bad place. He came from his experience and knowledge.

Really, if we can distill his report down to one thing that I take away as representative…. I reported in April 2016 to create a bit of a record. When my office staff, like Mr. Markwart, sought to find out what your staffing drivers were, what your financial metrics were, what your rationale for some of your views in your four- or five-year blueprint that you’re proposing was, the representative’s office was told that we were not able to see any material that was part of Bob Plecas’s review. So essentially, we were left in a position of having to go to court to exercise our authority.

I felt very strongly that that’s not healthy, that’s not a valuable approach at this time. Although I’m quite confident we would be able to win that, it was not really worth spending time and money on it.

Hence, I did a public report, which I thought would be more appropriate — to lay on the public record some of the correspondence and some of the views that were not made public.

One of the recommendations that I made was to pause the implementation of that process and engage with indigenous organizations. That took some time, but the ministry did do that, and I’m very pleased about that. It was fractious, but they did get there.

The indigenous organizations were very strong, and the leadership was very strong. There were some very tense meetings where I sat outside the meeting while the minister and others were meeting and not seeing eye to eye on a transparent process.

I also was of the view that some of the aspects of Mr. Bob Plecas’s report are extremely important and valuable. He relied extensively on the work of the representative’s office and our staffing report, on The Thin Front Line and other things.

Some of his recommendations, despite the impact on the actual family here, were very significant, such as his recommendation that the budget of MCFD be restored. I emphasize the word “restored,” because the impact of stand-pat budgets had been to erode child safety.

I think it was very sensible of him to say that further to the reports of the representative’s office, you need to restore that budget. I was very delighted. I take no ownership issue here. If the government was more comfortable restoring that budget because Bob Plecas told them to do so, rather than the Representative for Children and Youth, so be it, as long as the budget gets restored.

However, the concern to me was that he made a number about what he thought the budget should be — the amount, the staff — and I didn’t feel that it could be accurate, so I wanted to look at it. The government did move toward restoring it. I think it could have been more aggressive and more ambitious — the extent to which it could be restored. And the staffing issues continue to be a concern.

One of the issues that he put out — he didn’t speak to it at length, but he put it out — was the issue that there should be higher compensation paid to child protection staff so that you can recruit and retain them. Recruiting and retaining staff in the Ministry of Children and Families is a massive problem with these stand-pat budgets, of not putting the budget into it. But it’s also those, say, top-ten offices which have been chronically understaffed or using emergency teams for a long time.

These are very important recommendations. You would have seen them in my reports in the past. I think Mr. Bob Plecas coming in and reporting that and confirming that was extremely helpful. Again, those are matters that could have been accepted instantly and moved forward. So here we are. The budget is being restored, but we really haven’t dealt with the compensation issues. We haven’t dealt with the hard-to-recruit packages that you need to put in place.

Again…. I spoke earlier about Alberta. Certainly, if we paid Alberta social worker rates in B.C., we probably would be recruiting and retaining more people.

Our fundamental problems in the public service…. I think Mr. Bob Plecas did hit the nail on the head to say there is a very serious problem the government has to change there. I very much appreciate his thoughts on that.

It’s an area where very specific monitoring is needed. A broad, sweeping report that says “restore the budget, pay people more and move forward….” It requires good public monitoring to say: “How many staff have been
[ Page 691 ]
added? What is your budget lift? Where will those staff be allocated?”

Now that the ministry has received, I think, a fairly nominal budget lift, we are tracking and monitoring as best as we can — and Mr. Markwart can speak to this — where that budget has gone since it’s been lifted. Again, the ministry has a little bit of a history of taking budget lifts….

I remember when I first became representative, and the Finance Minister was Carole Taylor. They had a $100 million one-time children’s budget with Premier Gordon Campbell, and that $100 million children’s budget evaporated without the staff being increased. It was placed on a number of projects and ideas that people had, including high-level discussions in political — different priorities. But it didn’t go to the core functions of the service lines of the ministry. So really careful monitoring and oversight is important.

One of the things that was of concern in Mr. Plecas’s report was, he said, to improve the quality assurance functions in the ministry — which is something you’ll know well from the reports of this office, and they are not there yet — and reduce the oversight function of the representative’s office, because it could be problematic.

Actually, that’s somewhat of an illogical position, as we put out in our response report. Until they get a proper quality assurance function, until they get the kind of transparency and accountability, it’s very important to have independent, neutral monitoring of this ministry and to be sure that we know: how many staff are there? Where are they? Are they working, and are the hard-to-recruit in other places in better shape today than they were before? Again, there are some offices, ten in particular, that I can say from my decade, almost, as representative, have operated based on an emergency team — an emergency 30-day, 60-day and 90. That’s not a functioning office.

Mr. Bob Plecas’s report was quite helpful, but how to move forward is a challenge. Of course, he made some other recommendations around privacy and other issues — which this committee will have a chance to look at in the future, about how to be able to disclose information about cases and so forth — and made some recommendations on the management model with respect to MCFD. All of them are quite important.

Mr. Bob Plecas made a strong point of saying in his report that the ministry should have a strong complement of people on its management team that come from the front lines. As representative, I feel very strongly about that. I think he’s absolutely right. Unfortunately, right now at the management table of the senior executive of the ministry, there’s only one person with front-line experience. Since his report, actually, it has declined rather than increased. In any event, a variety of skills are needed at that level, but expertise in children’s services is one of those.

One of the most important points that he made, on page 44 of his report and that I emphasized on page 4 of mine, was to put appropriate financial resources in place. Again, I can’t emphasize enough how that is the case, and how, in the years prior to the December 4, 2015 report by Mr. Plecas, my office had consistently said the budget is declining, and the government said no, the budget is actually increasing. When we did The Thin Front Line report, we were able to show the gap over time.

I was delighted that he was able to enforce that in using the office’s work, able to move forward with that. It’s just that he didn’t identify clearly what the filling the gap is. Certainly, in the representative’s office and our staffing work, we have an idea about that, and we will continue to be engaged closely with the ministry on that. He said very strongly in his report — a point that I would differ with in the report we filed…. He called for a four-year overview or road map of the ministry. It’s not a blueprint, he said, but internal experts need to make these plans and get them approved and be held accountable for outcomes.

I agree that the ministry needs its internal experts and so forth, but it needs external oversight and accountability. It would be very disappointing if all of this internal work happens over four years, something is presented at the end and in fact those hard-to-recruit locations are still understaffed. Really, the approach that Mr. Bob Plecas took, while it’s valuable, was more of a backroom, special approach, as opposed to an open approach. You will obviously have an opportunity, depending on how you move forward with the statutory review, to look at some of the matters.

I think one of the issues that Mr. Bob Plecas missed in his report, which is foundational to the work, is the fact that the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth works hard and tirelessly, I’ve seen, during my time as representative, through very thorny, challenging times, to work together and produce a non-partisan approach to issues that are crucial — such as the critical work that this committee has done on issues like poverty, mental health and just generally in responding and supporting the representative’s work to try and get people moving things forward.

I think if there is to be a broad, sweeping look at child welfare issues, proper hearings and proper involvement by those in the child-serving sector is really important — and, particularly, hearing from the young people most affected by this. Again, it’s not just budgets; it’s not just metrics. It’s not just 200 communications people in government getting the message out every single day. That’s the particular politicized message. It’s really about meeting the needs of a group of citizens that have to be there, and systems that are essential systems, like the child safety system.

With respect to this particular report, the recommendations that we made have been actioned, for the most part. At the same time, we have yet to see the material
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from Mr. Bob Plecas’s review, to understand it fully, although I would say — and I’ll let Mr. Markwart address this if there are questions — that we would like to do truth-testing, if you like, on some things, like, for instance, proposing that the representative’s role be replaced by internal contrarians at a senior level or saying that in the policing model, like the Vancouver police…. This is a model that works effectively in organizations.

Our office has looked at that and determined whether…. That’s something the committee may look at or may not look at in the future. It’s up to you, really. However, all of these things need a certain element, as I say, of truth testing, which is…. You know, each of us has our opinions and our views based on what have you, but we need to make sure that they stand up to the light of day and they can meet that test of truth testing.

It may very well be that there just are no documents in particular for us to look at, that there are just opinions that individuals have, and that’s fine. But the issue of staffing, budgets and making sure the stability is there in the ministry will be an ongoing issue.

I will say that the one recommendation I made that I’m not entirely clear on…. I’m not sure when that matter will be resolved, but certainly I had some very valuable discussions about this matter with the prior Privacy and Information Commissioner. That was my third recommendation:

“The ministry should clearly and publicly indicate whether materials in the possession of Mr. Bob Plecas are considered documents that are in the possession or control of the ministry for the purposes of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and what steps have been or will be taken to ensure confidential documents are managed with the same degree of security as would be required when they’re in the possession of the ministry staff.”

I say that because Mr. Plecas, although he was hired by the Premier to be independent, quickly saw his position morph because of sidestepping the privacy issues, or they overstepped the privacy issues. They gave him court documents on the day he was hired, and then they had to make him a director under the CFCSA. It became a director meaning “functioning within that director’s role,” but because there’s an ongoing court case and a lot of sensitivities, it would be very important to be clear about where those documents are and how they’re handled, as the director of child welfare — and assigning someone to be a director of child welfare — is a very sensitive role. Some certainty around that, I think, would be very important, and the ministry appears to be somewhat confused about that in our dealings with them.

M. Karagianis: Mary Ellen, you’ve given us an enormous amount of information and things to consider in your analysis and your recommendation. I’d just like to briefly go back for a moment, though, to the genesis of this report, which, of course, was the J.P. case. I gather from your remarks now that your office is not in contact with the J.P. family and unable then to offer them the significant supports of your office. Can you just give us a little bit more information or perhaps just repeat that for me?

This was something that was raised in the Legislature, and it is a case that I believe is imperative to be addressed more responsibly and appropriately. I’m distressed by the fact that this report was undertaken and moved in a different direction than what, originally, we had hoped and expected when Mr. Plecas was assigned to take on an analysis of the J.P. case or whatever it was he was supposed to be doing. But at the heart of this, I’m very concerned that this family has been left adrift, has gone through just such a horrendous process and still seems not to have received a just and fair evaluation at this point or review or investigation or treatment. I’m very disturbed by that, and if you could just address that a little bit more.

There are so many other implications and complexities around your review of the Plecas report. I think that’s going to take more time for all of us to digest and think about how we use that information in going forward. But I just don’t want the J.P. case to again be overshadowed by the more bureaucratic and other responsibilities that we might undertake in statutory review and other things.

I’m just so deeply disturbed by that particular case and where this has gone for them.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think a couple of things. Again, this goes to these issues about different roles and responsibilities that we have in public service and in the representative’s office. Having provided advocacy to the children between 2006 and 2008, we were well aware…. This was a period during which J.P. was persuaded to put the children in care as sexual abuse allegations were being looked at, thinking that that would assist. Then we assisted to get the children returned to her.

Obviously, we work with families and children, and they may have very significant grievances about what has happened to them in their engagements with the ministry. We work with them. We have very clear limits. We’re very clear with people to say: if you have a grievance and you’re very unsatisfied and you feel harmed, you’re able, like any citizen, to contact a lawyer and go forward on whatever basis. We don’t encourage people, but we do notify them. Our role is to actually deal with the children. We had involvement, and we did that.

Mom and the children did retain counsel, and they sued. It was lengthy case, leading to a more-than-400-page decision, which had a bunch of findings of fact. One of the issues I was concerned about…. And I was well aware of those facts, having had to be the advocate, but I am not involved in the case in any way. I’m trying to keep focus on the children with my advocacy staff. And, of course, we meet with Mom and the children as needed.
[ Page 693 ]

Again, it’s a delicate situation, but there are families who feel mistreated. In that decision in the B.C. Supreme Court, it was a pretty extensive finding that different things didn’t happen well. The investigation of sexual abuse by the Vancouver police department, the treatment by the staff, telling someone one thing but the note saying something else — there were a lot of issues of credibility. In fact, the justice in that case said the person who had the eyes on child welfare was the mom, when the ministry was not necessarily dealing straight with her about what was going on. There were very significant issues that happened here.

The case does require care, because how the ministry investigates sexual abuse is important and how the government views citizens in these situations is really important. Sometimes people in high office will say things like: well, you know, there are basically high-conflict individuals that are in a family law breakdown, and they just involved the ministry, and then they want a child protection investigation, and so on. All manners of things happen, of course, in a society.

But how you depict someone, when the people have the political and executive heads, really can colour their experience as citizens and the experience of their children. So there are a lot of delicate issues here. There’s no question that that decision was significant enough that the Premier decided to engage someone to look at the case. The Premier took a personal interest in it and did that.

I was very concerned at the time that that should not be retrying the case through a backroom process or basically bringing someone in to interview everyone in the ministry and say, “Well, what do you really think happened?” but never talking to Mom or anyone else. You can retry a case, and that’s fine. Cases are cases. I’m well familiar with that you need to stay out of them and let them run, and you need to try and keep people working together.

This has been, I think, a recipe for how not to do things. In the end of it, at the same time, I’m trying to salvage the best that I can from it, which is improve the budget, restore the budget. Yes, that’s all good. But the carnage along the way is this family and these kids.

When I met with Mom, she was very direct, the last time I met with her, to say: “Okay, you’re there as representative, and you’re going to try and get a buffer between the ministry and myself, because I feel, my children feel, quite retaliated against. But what happens when you’re not there? What do I do? Will my children be removed?” She has a very strong sense of retaliation. I’ve tried to assure her that that won’t happen. But I’ve tried to get a protocol, and again, it’s been 18 months, and I have no protocol.

These are not just, as I say, high-level reports in Victoria. These really do affect families. Whether a high-level report gets it right or wrong is one thing. Whether J.P. and her children are going to be able to go forward and get through this is another thing.

Certainly, her experience — now that the government, I think, has at least five or six lawyers on retainer in the appeals and various processes in her case — is one of, you know, governments have deep pockets. She has someone who took her case. That’s fine — win or lose. But she has a lot at stake in it, in terms of that issue of whether people believe someone and can work with them. Things become very rigid. So things are very dug in, and it’s not in a good place.

The next representative will, no doubt, inherit that advocacy case and, no doubt, will need to spend the patient time to meet with mom and the kids and the ministry and try and get that protocol. Hopefully, it can be achieved. It’s needed, and it’s emblematic of something.

When Mr. Bob Plecas was appointed, I spoke with him after his appointment. I said: “I won’t be able to meet with you to discuss the specifics of the case because I have ethical obligations as an advocate for her, and I may review the case down the road, or the office may review the case down the road.” I said very clearly to Mr. Bob Plecas: “You’re in for a really rough go here because you’ve kicked a hornet’s nest. You’ve stepped into the middle of something that really is undergoing some processes.”

Although people are entitled to review whatever they can review, the human component of it is very challenging. I appreciate that Mr. Bob Plecas is a very senior, respected former deputy and so forth. I think he was very confident that he was going to be able to go forward. I don’t think he took very kindly to me saying to him: “I think you’re really stepping into a mess here.”

In any event, I did so just to say: “Will you please trod carefully because you’ve got real kids and a family.” They, in turn, were very unhappy about Mr. Plecas’s report and very unhappy with the fact that they feel that the ministry has dug in further after Mr. Plecas’s report. Certainly, the family has a sense of inevitability, that the ministry will continue to be on them, if you like. I would like to see that not happen. I don’t think that’s necessary. People’s personalities can be permanently affected by these types of disputes, and they shouldn’t be.

Again, one of the roles of the representative’s office is to buffer. We should always buffer. But unfortunately, the way the report came out and what it said ended up meaning that the representative’s office’s authority itself was undermined, when actually I had been supporting extensively, trying to keep everybody on the same page for a number of years. The way things happen on the ground and the way things happen at the Queen’s Printer when these reports come out are two different scenarios.

I don’t know if Mr. Markwart wants to comment on some of the issues around the staffing, the budget, and so forth, and what we were seeking to look at around that. But these are enduring issues.

A. Markwart: Well, I could give two examples. We did make a request for essentially all of the background docu-
[ Page 694 ]
mentation leading to the analysis and recommendations arising from the Plecas report. As Mary Ellen mentioned, we weren’t provided that information, on the grounds that that material actually was not in the possession of the ministry. That legal issue aside, it is important to look at the basis for a recommendation: what is the analysis, and what is the evidence? I can give you two examples of that.

Mary Ellen mentioned this recommendation around contrarians. The role of a contrarian actually originates from the police community. It has been implemented in a few jurisdictions. The purpose of it is to assign it to particularly difficult cases to address the issue of what’s called confirmation bias. The contrarian is there to take a different point of view and challenge the assumptions of investigators.

In looking at this, the recommendation is actually fairly substantial, because the Plecas report recommends it be implemented in every service delivery area. That’s at least 13, and if there are two or three, we’re now talking millions of dollars.

Is this an evidence-based approach? Our staff looked at whether, in fact, there is anything out there. We could not find one example of its application in the child welfare arena.

Even if you look at the evidence in the police community, we found one article. It was actually a study of a contrarian program that had been established in the Netherlands. The result of that was that despite the assignment of a contrarian to a number of different cases, none of those cases went in a different direction than the original, which really kind of begs the question: “What’s the value of this?”

So part of our request…. We requested all of the information but really wanted to know: what’s the basis for this recommendation? Is it something that simply sounds good? Or is there actually some evidence out there that we’re unaware of? That’s entirely possible. There could be some grey literature that we’re not familiar with. If there is some evidence that supports it, well, that’s great, and we should know that. But at least let’s produce some evidence. That’s one example.

Another example, on a much larger issue, would be around: what is the basis for the recommendation for a budget increment, and in fact, what does that apply to? The analysis that was presented in the public report was rather skimpy. Really, we wanted to know: what were the details of that, and what, precisely, did it include?

There was, for example, mention of the need for 200 social workers, which arose principally relying on the analysis from the report The Thin Front Line, which was done by our office. But 200 social workers amount to roughly $20 million. Well, where’s the rest of it going, and what was the basis for that? That’s rather important — that you know what that money was intended to address. Was it solely for social workers? How much was intended to be assigned to a lift in salaries? How much was intended to be assigned to quality assurance? We weren’t able to get that information. In fact, we have yet to see a budget plan from the ministry — a detailed budget plan — about how that money is intended to be used.

Of course, we don’t even know whether it was intended to address other areas of the ministry, for example. Apparently not. But there have been a number of concerns raised about wait-lists for child and youth mental health. There is a substantial increment that is required to address that area alone, much less other areas such as special needs, for example.

M. Mark (Deputy Chair): I’m just going to point to page 16, looking at the findings. I want to quote what I’m reading here. “Somehow the cart got placed before the horse, and the part 1 report — setting out sweeping recommendations for policy, program and legal reform — was published prior to an examination of the J.P. case.”

My question: is there an anticipation that there is a part 2, and how can you get to that conclusion? That’s one question — just this anticipation of another report.

Then the second emphasis of your findings is the lack of meaningful consultation with the aboriginal leadership in communities, children and youth, and your office, based on the experience in every other major jurisdiction, as you pointed out earlier. But you quote in this report: “An insider approach to reform in which recommendations are developed and adopted without scrutiny….” As you’re speaking to, Alan — the evidence-based. Those are the findings.

Then I look on page 6. It says that on December 15, Minister Cadieux indicated on a radio station that the report provides a very thorough outline of where the ministry needs to go and that it was now government’s job to take the guidance from the report.

The second point. On February 9, in the Speech from the Throne: “The Ministry of Children and Families has begun the work of responding to the Plecas report.” And then on February 16, in the budget speech, the Finance Minister states: “This budget provides an extra $217 million over three years for the Ministry of Children and Families to go towards helping our most vulnerable children, including implementing recommendations in the Plecas report.”

My question, for clarification: is the report being implemented? Are the Plecas recommendations being implemented, in light of what I see on page 16 — that there wasn’t thorough analysis from an independent source?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think it’s fair to say what we have placed in our report from April. That is that Part One: Decision Time was putting the cart before the horse. I don’t think there is going to be a horse. I think it is what it is, which is, distilled to its base, a report whose legacy
[ Page 695 ]
will be that Mr. Bob Plecas recognized that there was a significant budget hole and that had to be fixed.

The analysis of the J.P. case or what have you, or the team that was supposed to do that…. If there is such a thing, I haven’t heard from it. I haven’t seen it. The mom and the children haven’t heard or seen it. I think we are now looking at almost a year. We’re looking at quite a time since this was released in December of last year.

I certainly hope it isn’t. At the same time, it could well be that, within the ministry, working on the legal case has required ushering together a team to prepare to support the ministry’s position. That’s something different. That’s actually working on an appeal, not working on the issues.

So the cart was put before the horse. I actually, frankly, don’t even know what the horse is anymore with respect to it. Senior ministry leadership has said to me: “We’re done. We’re moving forward.” That’s healthy, I think, given it.

Also, the absence of consultations with aboriginal groups, my office, stakeholders and other communities of interest, like children and youth, and the refusal to provide background information I think makes it pretty difficult to credibly determine whether these recommendations, as Alan has said, are meritorious — which ones are and which ones are not.

I like to take it from the positive, high-level view, which is that it recognized a significant hole in the budget. It’s got to be rebuilt. But certainly, as this committee will look at statutory review and maybe some of the themes that come from some of Mr. Plecas’s opinions and so forth, I think it’s very important to truth-test those and look very carefully about whether oversight is significant, in what area and for how long, and what kind of oversight.

I appreciate that, in my role as representative, we’ve done a real deep dive on these areas and tried to provide very accurate information to the select standing committee and not high-level generalizations. But again, one wouldn’t want to see a parliamentary report with the type of level of detail that Mr. Bob Plecas’s report had, because it would be open to be challenged later, or you file a report and a week later before the ink is dry, you’re withdrawing most of it. That’s just not sound.

I think the checks and balances that we have are important ones. But as Alan Markwart has said, our office has a continuing deep interest in things like: if there is a budget lift, where will that money go? What is the hole in the budget that’s being plugged and by whom? We will continue to work with the ministry to support them and to support their planning.

Moreover, I’ve been working very tirelessly with the BCGEU to get the BCGEU, through its components, and the ministry to work together in those problem areas where they need to staff. It does come back to a big issue, which is the level of remuneration of social workers and incentives for hard-to-reach places. So it does keep coming back.

I appreciate that the issue was very disputatious, if you like — the manner in which this report was commissioned and responded to, and certainly the impact on the staff in the representative’s office. I’m not overly protective to my staff, because they’re all independent and, if anything, they challenge me every single day on every issue. So it’s pretty fair. But I think that the staff was quite upset by the deficiencies, the level of truth-testing and the patina on it — that it had a particular political colour as opposed to being a neutral report.

Having said that, we have to look for the good. I say here that we should see the good for what it is, but we should also learn the lesson. The corrective lesson is: broad, sweeping reform to the child welfare system cannot be a backroom job. It has to be a broad set of hearings with engaging people — a unity-seeking, transparent approach.

Certainly, my term is ending as representative and has come to a close, but my approach has been openness, transparency, engaging the committee, working with each of you on all sides to make sure that we can go forward, own the issues, resolve them and celebrate the great things that are accomplished together but also not underestimate concerns to protect anyone’s interests. It really has to be focused on the children and youth.

It was a very challenging experience, and it required a report. Whether or not the next representative will, in fact, take the litigation to obtain those documents is still an open question. I decided not to do that, because I just felt a report would be more important. I did have to, in the past, litigate to obtain material when the ministry wouldn’t give it to me. Certainly, the next representative will be in a position to decide whether to do that.

Mr. Markwart and others will have to provide information about…. If the ministry moves forward to establish contrarians and have a multi-million-dollar project, we probably will need to push, or the new representative will have to consider that issue. Access to information and openness is a really key part of being able to move forward.

I think, given the time frame that we have, we’ll get you to move on with the next report, recognizing that you’ve still got the statutory review — your opinions on the statutory review process to the committee — to be done before noon, and it’s now 20 to 11.

Why don’t we carry on with those two outstanding reports and then continue on.

Representative for Children and
Youth Report: Approach With Caution:
Why the Story of One Vulnerable B.C. Youth
Can’t Be Told

M. Turpel-Lafond: The next report will be very brief, because it’s a unique report. The report is called Approach With Caution: Why the Story of One Vulnerable B.C. Youth Can’t Be Told.

This report is one I released in May 2016. It’s not going to take me long to report to you except to say…. We’ve just talked about collaboration and working together with the ministry and what is going on with the representative’s office and so forth. I think that this report is a unique one where we were involved in a very sensitive situation with a young person living a life much like the office documented in the independent investigation into the death of Paige.

This is a young person who was living in the Downtown Eastside in SROs with multiple critical injury reports to the office. This is after Paige and at the same time. In preparing a detailed investigative report…. So we prepared a lengthy, detailed investigative report, interviewing, preparing a good understanding of what was happening and opportunities to learn.

However, the situation was such that the individual was in such a precarious situation, and continues to be in a precarious situation, that we really sat down with the director of child welfare and the Public Guardian and Trustee. We heard from them, and they were of a view that the possibility of identifying this individual through the report…. Even though there’s a cohort of about 200 youth in crisis in the Downtown Eastside, the potential to identify this person was high. The impact on her and others would be so profound that we had to really consider this.

It was a unique case where the director of child welfare, Ms. Cory Heavener, wrote to me, saying, “We would like you to please consider not making a full report — just a summary report — but we will continue to work together, not only in the advocacy side but on the systemic issues,” which were similar to what was in the Paige report.

The only thing I would highlight that was extremely important was that this was a young person who had been living in a group home environment. MCFD had relied on a private company to operate 24 group homes, and about 35 or 36 children were there when they shut those group homes down. The ministry did a protocol investigation at our urging in January 2015.

There were some other actions that the ministry was taking around how the young people in these group homes were treated. There was a pretty strong documented case — including for this young person, but others — that there were very serious issues in those group homes, such as exposing the kids to drug use, unsanitary conditions, problematic hiring practices within the agency and a lot of concerns about staff behaviour, aggression, and so forth to the kids, the young people.

One of the matters that we were very engaged with the ministry on was the group home issue and the residential service issue. When the director of child welfare wrote to me and said, “This is a case where we’re concerned,” we reflected on it, and with my chief investigator and my deputy, we convened, and we really worked with the ministry. We listen to and we respect the role of the provincial director of child welfare. It’s a very important role.

It’s rare that they ask me not to release a report. It’s very rare. I’ve had a few instances. It’s the first time I’ve gone along with it, because it was well documented. Sometimes it was more for political reasons. This was for well-documented reasons. Hence, we released a high-level report.

One of the things that was important, though, was that the ministry terminated all of its contracts with this agency. One of the young people who was also in these group homes was Mr. Alex Gervais, and we are in an active investigation on Mr. Gervais. I think we will be able to…. I don’t know. It won’t be me. It will be a successor. We’ll be able to understand the role that living in a group home or in a hotel, what the impact is….

This is a young person that was also in a hotel for a period of time. As I say, she has survived. She’s got very big challenges in her life, but she’s living that experience. I guess that’s the key point for me to make to the committee. The quality and accessibility of support sometimes falls short. Even when the representative’s office does a report like the Paige report and there’s a strong response and there’s a commitment, to get those supports on the ground can take time, and there are still young people there.

We didn’t develop separate recommendations. We came back to the Paige story again and emphasized some of the very same themes, because we felt they were emblematic of what this young person experienced. Again, it’s a very serious situation and, again, one of those cases where advocacy is engaged. Mr. Naughton can, I think, speak to it a little bit more if you’d like more detail.

Just the level of work…. I can say that there are a lot of adults in responsible positions in my office — like Mr. Naughton, Ms. Thomas-Wightman, Mr. Mitchell and myself — in the provincial director of child welfare’s office, where we work on these cases regularly, and we touch base and say: “What’s going on? Let’s get back in there.”

The important thing is that there be a mentality of discussing what happens with young people, especially these very high-profile cases where there’s a lot of crisis and a lot of concern and a lot of disturbance in their lives. So the whole spirit has to be one of: “We’ve got to get in there and keep working with this young person.”

In the spirit of that, we chose not to release a fulsome report. The ministry has the report, though — the full investigative report. They did write to me and tell me the steps that they would take to move forward. I’ve been monitoring that, and the staff will have to monitor that in the future.

I can’t say a lot about this except to say it’s a very unique situation. I think it’s an important part of the role of the representative’s office to conduct an investigation and then, in the end, decide whether or not a public report is made. I think that, as members of the committee, you would be very concerned if we were conducting a bunch of investigations and then not releasing them, because you would want to know the factors. So I was very clear
[ Page 697 ]
with the ministry that I will produce something of a report, because I need to be accountable for what happens.

This role isn’t about investigating and not reporting. It’s about investigating and reporting. But where there is a persuasive view that someone’s life is that precarious, I think it is important to err on the side of supporting the young person. Of course, it always remains within the purview of the next representative, depending on what happens with that young person, to later release a report.

I will leave it there. Again, Mr. Naughton, who handled the file extensively and with a lot of aplomb, will be able to address the issues around those conversations. But we had very senior decisions. It was not something I entered into lightly — not to release a report.

I’m confident that there’s been some learning. I’m not confident the change is all there, but I’m confident there has been some learning from that report.

L. Reimer: Thank you very much for your years of service. I haven’t been on the committee for all that long, but I appreciate your support of the ministry with respect to adoptions and that sort of thing, and this work that you’re doing now for children and youth.

My question was, basically, with all of this…. You’re talking about the production of documents, and you’re talking about working with the ministry, and you did say in your initial comments that you are in regular daily contact with the ministry and that you, together, are able to come up with like-minded solutions. I’m just wondering: who at the ministry are you dealing with on a daily basis? Is it senior staff? Or is it front-line workers? That was my question.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you for those comments and also for your support around the forever families campaign too. It’s really, really meaningful. I really appreciate that.

On the engagements with the ministry on this investigation in particular, two directors of child welfare…. Mr. Doug Hughes, who’s now the former — he’s now an ADM in Health — and Cory Heavener, the provincial director and the deputy director on a regular basis, dealt with the deputy minister, who now is the former deputy minister, Mark Sieben — he’s at public safety — on a regular basis, and of course, dealt with the more front-line staff working with this young person in the Vancouver region.

I can get Mr. Naughton to speak more about…. Well, we dealt with everyone. We dealt with police. We dealt with…. I’ll have Mr. Naughton talk about it, because it was a matter of a routine briefing to know what was happening and to participate. Also, an advocate is assigned to this young person and tries to participate in planning around where she’s going to live and her safety and support. A case like this is daily involvement more close to the front line, sometimes weekly involvement with the provincial director and periodic involvement with the deputy and others. It’s a good example of a case where the communication is regular.

Despite whatever one may hear about issues with the government, the representative’s office or what have you, the fact of the matter is: it’s always business. On these cases, we work tirelessly with the staff.

It’s interesting. Maybe Mr. Naughton can speak to this. The staff in the ministry frequently call us and say: “Can you help us get in there and get something going for this young person?” They’re actually calling us to say: “Can you get your advocate that has a relationship with the young person to get the young person back into the hospital, or get them…?” They may be under the control of a predator, for instance, who may be a very dangerous male 25 years older than them, who may be giving them drugs and engaging in sexual victimization, as an example.

Our office having that relationship — it’s not one-way. It’s very two-way, and it’s very positive and very professional. I think I’ll ask Mr. Naughton just to talk about, around this case, that type of engagement.

I don’t know if you have the numbers, but I think it’s fair to say you were engaged daily on it. I think you could probably speak to it better than I can in terms of the front line.

B. Naughton: I think that, as this investigation unfolded, obviously our investigators were engaged with people on the front line, the people who were having daily contact with the young person who’s at the centre of this report. I’m going to have to choose my words really carefully to make sure that I don’t inadvertently provide any identifying information, because the situation is still of enormous sensitivity.

I think our engagement with the front line, of course, is always extensive in the investigative process, particularly during that phase when we’re gathering information. But as this investigation continued — this is over a period of more than 18 months — it became really clear to us that in the search for stability for this young person, we were having no positive outcomes.

There were continuing returns to the SRO hotels in the Downtown Eastside. There were continuing returns to really high-risk behaviours with some very, very dangerous people. Despite the best efforts of ourselves and, certainly, the advocates involved with this child and the ministry, it was clear to us that this was not an improving situation.

As we came closer to the completion of the investigation, I was in daily contact, certainly, with the director of child welfare and her deputy, Alex Scheiber. It became clear to all of us that we were facing an unprecedented
[ Page 698 ]
situation — unprecedented in my time in the office — where the release of the report could have had a negative impact on that young person. That, I will say, was one of the most agonizing decisions I’ve ever personally faced within the office, and one of the most difficult things.

We are invested in the work. You’ve spent enormous amounts of time with this young person, with the people who surround her, and there’s always a value to telling that story. But at the same time, the accompanying risk was so high. And I think we would be engaging multiple times a day.

Also, I think it’s really important to understand that we were we were always actively advocating to find her perspective. How did she feel? What was her take on it? How did she believe she would be impacted? She wanted a story told, but at the same time, there were all these other factors in the environment.

It was enormously difficult. As I said, it was the most agonizing issue, I think, professionally we’ve faced inside for me. But at the same time, I’m convinced that at the end of the day, we came to the best outcome for that child at this time. I hope someday we can release the report, because I think there’s still a lot of learning there that we could capture.

C. James: Thank you to you and your staff for bringing forward the summary of the report. I think you’ve described well, Bill, the difficulty and the challenges of making a decision like that. But I think it also, again, shows the independence and the importance of the office in putting the child’s best interests first, which, in this case, were exceptional circumstances.

I just have a question around the safe and secure care issue that’s raised in the summary. You mention, and I think we all know, that MCFD said they were going to take a look at secure care. I understand there’ve been comments made since then that the government isn’t looking at it and isn’t looking at it for legislation. I just wondered….

I sat on the committee back in the ’90s when it was being reviewed, and it’s a tough issue. There’s no question. But it’s certainly an issue that I feel is worth having that conversation on. The caution that I always have around secure care is it can’t be seen as a substitute for service. I think there’s always a fear of that with secure care — that if you look at just locking a child up, sometimes that’s a way of not providing the service and supports they need.

I’m just curious whether you’ve had any more current updates around secure care discussions with the ministry.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, and I think your question is very pertinent, because I think there have been six occasions in my reports, including the report that was released just this week on the young person who went into youth justice because the parents couldn’t get support for him. Six times I’ve made the recommendation or elevated the issue of secure care. So it is crucial. The only way to have involuntary support for a young person is either through the youth justice system or the mental health involuntary committal. My experience as representative is that there’s minuscule opportunity to do that.

The youth justice one requires you to have your loved child or the person living with you, the person you’re caring for, charged with a criminal offence as a door in, and that has all of the stigma and issues with it, including huge pressures on parents.

The mental health door, as the committee is well familiar from your work on youth mental health, is…. Even when someone presents as requiring a committal, if there’s nowhere to commit them to, they’re not committed. Or they end up being committed into adult facilities, and there are all of those issues about capacity.

The secure care issue is really so you can address urgent safety and therapeutic care issues, especially where there are really major, as I say, behavioural challenges. I don’t want to label kids as behaviourally challenged so much as the sudden impact of drug use, for instance.

As we know about the potency of street-level drugs, the behavioural change can be so dramatic and rapid that the idea of stabilizing from a safety viewpoint without having to criminalize is very important. As well, it may not have a mental health component. The child might be traumatized by drugs or the lifestyle that they’ve been thrust into from those who’ve given the gateway to drugs, but they aren’t necessarily having a pre-existing mental health condition.

So the secure care is a short-term protection. As we pointed out here, as we pointed out in the release to the story about Nick that was released earlier, you know, a number of provinces have this. As you will recall, it was on the books in the past but wasn’t proclaimed.

The ministry has done, I would say, nominal work on this issue. I hear two views. I hear the view that it is not appropriate to have secure care because all services should be voluntary. I’m very supportive of voluntary. I mean, obviously, children should be at home or in a foster home. They should be supported. It’s just that you have to be realistic.

Someone in the situation like this young woman was in is in such an urgent crisis…. You’re going to put her in a hotel, or she’s going to be in a group home that doesn’t function well. Where else is she going to be? Criminalizing young people is so difficult. Even though we have a compassionate and good youth justice system in B.C., we still don’t want that to be the door to service.

In terms of dealing with MCFD on secure care, Mr. Markwart and Mr. Naughton have been my leads on this. Again, we’ve been prodding and prodding and asking to see their material. But I have to say that the actual detail is thin. When the government appointed a committee, with Dr. Kendall and others, to look at problematic drug use
[ Page 699 ]
and fentanyl, we promoted a youth lens on that. I think it would have been nice if someone from the representative’s office, actually, was on that committee, because we have done extensive work — someone like Mr. Naughton or Mr. Markwart.

The point of the matter is, I think, that the work has been insufficient. I think it might be a topic that, again, the standing committee may look at. Obviously, the mental health report that was done by this committee touched on the need for institutional supports, but you need step-up and step-down.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association and others have always been concerned, and I share their concern. You don’t want to just take liberty away from people. That’s not the plan. But the issue is, as parents speak out…. When you have someone careening into obvious crisis and danger…. Kids are dying. It is a small cohort of kids, but it’s an important category of service that exists elsewhere. I can ask Mr. Markwart to give a bit of an update on our most recent discussions.

We again recommended it into the death of Nick who came to the youth justice system. It would have been a door that would have prevented him from going into youth justice. The parents — again, credit to them in that case — have been very clear to say: “We just didn’t know how we could get him safe.” He was on methamphetamines. He can’t be at school. Where is he?

You know, it’s not a system for parents. But the parents who do speak up are speaking up because they’re making a very good point, which is there is a gap. Part of the gap is, yes, a better mental health system and, yes, a youth justice system. But the secure care gap.

I don’t know, Alan, if you have anything more recent to report in our discussions.

A. Markwart: Actually, I don’t have anything more recent. The last substantive work that was done was the ministry did a jurisdictional scan, a detailed look at what was available in other jurisdictions. I believe they looked outside of Canada as well.

As Mary Ellen indicated, we’re already aware that there are seven jurisdictions that have a form or another of secure care. But other than that, we’re not aware of any detailed planning or substantive movement on the issue.

It’s alarming to be reading about this case, given that the Downtown Eastside is a part of my constituency, of Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, and the grips that the ministry has and yourself to not be able to act and protect this young person.

There’s a real emphasis of Paige that I notice in this report — 21 reportables, critical injuries, to the child. You note: “A year after Paige’s Story was released, the representative is discouraged that the work done to profile this cohort of vulnerable young people has not yet translated into action, and MCFD has not released the profile of young people in the Downtown Eastside who are experiencing deep distress and ongoing injuries.”

I guess I had a couple of questions about the status of the lawyer that was recommended to the provincial director. Does this young person have a lawyer to protect their civil rights? And the status of the Public Guardian and Trustee in this case — to again look at his or her interests and to just emphasize the question that the member raised around secure care and whether or not secure care would save this young person’s life.

B. Naughton: I just want to say, to start, that as we walked through the process of this investigation, it was extremely clear to everyone who was involved that the youth justice system…. Because this young person was repeatedly incarcerated, the youth justice system was clearly serving as a stand-in for a proper secure care system. That became abundantly clear.

It was also clear…. I don’t want to say this in some way that would be seen to be negative to the people who were involved with this young woman. But they were clearly…. Police, social workers, others, clearly were trying to take advantage of these opportunities of incarceration to connect — to try to provide some meaningful health care, to try to connect to services, to try to use those opportunities of safety and stability to try to move forward.

I think that was a very key take-away from this. In this particular case, we repeatedly see this use of the youth justice system to try to provide those periods of safety and connection.

In terms of the civil rights issue, I can’t speak to the status of the Public Guardian and Trustee’s engagement. Perhaps the representative or the deputy representative could. But it’s clear to us that there is a cohort of children who have passed through some of these group home settings where they’ve experienced significant injury. It remains an outstanding issue, in my mind, with respect to how we’re going to address their civil rights and the litigation associated to that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I can just say, with respect to the question about legal counsel, the Public Guardian and Trustee plays the role of the estate guardian. The Public Guardian and Trustee was asked for an opinion here more in terms of some of the safety dimensions.

My view, with respect to the CF and CS Act is that the provincial director has the power to appoint counsel for a young person in care. This is a CCO, and that young person should collect their view. So the Public Guardian and Trustee played a role, but really, they’re the estate guardian. I was comfortable working with them in this
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case, but this case does speak to the need to have young people that are close to that secure care in youth justice having independent representation. The ministry does not do that, but that is a key piece.

Our job as an advocate sort of runs out. The young person is in deep peril. Between some terrible fatality happening to them and when our job as an advocate runs out, there’s this chasm. Who’s there with them? Who’s going to court when they’re in…? We can help try and get them out of a group home or a hotel. But if we can’t, who’s actually with them, defending their civil rights?

We don’t want to be defending people’s civil rights after the fact, which is why other major provinces, like Alberta and Ontario, have a children’s lawyer program. In fact, I just met with the director of that in Saskatchewan. They have a program where for…. It only cost them approximately $2 million, the report that they had. They represented children in foster care, over 100 where these types of cases get a counsel appointed. It’s another buffer, another person that can be there to make sure that the child is not invisible and forgotten.

Those are important. I mean, I appreciated working with the Public Guardian and Trustee in this matter. But the Public Guardian and Trustee and the Ministry of Children and Families were very joined at the hip in this matter — which is appropriate, I suppose.

I would like to see an independent person for the child that’s communicating the views of the child, not taking the views of the ministry and presenting them as the views of the child. So there is work to be done. Some of that we’ve left with the ministry to say, “We need you to do a better job around that,” but it’s a gap that is missing.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you, Mary Ellen, and also for the delicate way that you and your staff have been able to present at least the information that you were able to present for this particular report.

Can we please move on to your last report, understanding that we still are interested in your comments about the statutory review process coming up?

Representative for Children and
Youth Report: A Tragedy in Waiting:
How B.C.’s Mental Health System
Failed One First Nations Youth

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, thank you. The final official report that I’ll be presenting today is called A Tragedy in Waiting: How B.C.’s Mental Health System Failed One First Nations Youth. This was released on September 8. It tells the story of a 16-year-old boy who left school one morning, walked in to a nearby forest and took his own life.

We’re talking about reports and all of the delicate balancing that we do working with ministry, family and community. It’s important to thank his family and community for their openness in working with the representative staff and Mr. Naughton’s team and for allowing the story of their child to be told but also just sharing some of the challenges that that family and that community has faced.

Chester, we’ve called him, to protect his privacy and his community, was an intelligent teen from a close-knit family. He was described as very sweet and easy to like by his teachers.

He was living on reserve in a strong First Nations family that had experienced many challenges in terms of being involved with child welfare, dealing with poverty and isolation, dealing with a number of issues much more significant than most children and families would face in British Columbia over a period of time.

He began to exhibit some signs of serious mental health issues, and the overall finding of the report is that a lack of timely access to mental health services contributed to this suicide death. We revealed the extent to which indigenous children in particular are at risk.

I note that in the region that Chester lived in…. It’s not a rural or remote location. You’ll know that we’ve reported before on the situation of mental health services in rural and remote regions. Again, I know the committee is well familiar with the mental health issues. It’s not only the Chair’s role of leadership in this regard to promote improvements, but also members have completed a very valuable report that set out a timeline of getting into mental health services within 30 days and being seen within 30 days.

At the time of release of the report for aboriginal young people in this urban area, we checked. The timelines to get in and be seen…. There were still kids on that list that will wait almost two years as of September. The wait times are significant.

Part of the importance of telling this story is about what happens to young people who wait and what happens to their families who wait. Chester’s story is not an easy one, but it’s a bit emblematic about what does happen when people wait. Chester received very little in terms of assessment, and unfortunately, little has changed for this group, despite some very promising signs. The wait times are, on average, 270 days, or nine months, to get in, but there are young people who will wait two years.

Again, I say that out of an abundance of truth-testing and fact-checking where before I release a report like this, I send my senior staff out to check and recheck the wait times. I send them out to look. I send them out to go through them. I send them out to meet the front-line staff.

Not only do we do this investigation, but we check and recheck to make sure we are not out of bounds on that. The staff, again, in MCFD who are responsible for child and youth mental health and aboriginal child and youth mental health have freely acknowledged that the wait times are significantly long and are a barrier.

The lack of assessment for Chester was significant. Chester was served by a delegated aboriginal agency as
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well as MCFD and tried to get into aboriginal child and youth mental health. He essentially started to fall apart. Chester was hearing voices. He was saying some very disturbing things. He was not able to manage his level of emotional disturbance at home and in school.

The school component of this report is significant. Again, I know members are very attuned to this and have recommended strongly the improvement of mental health services in schools. Unfortunately, what happened with Chester and his family was that he was, essentially, sent home. His mom was left to get a medical note before he would be returned to school, and it was really challenging, as even any of the physicians that she was engaged with couldn’t get in through the door of aboriginal child and youth mental health to get the services to him to get assessed.

As I said, that approximately nine-month average wait time is to get in the door. Then the array of services that would be normal for a young person experiencing the level of distress of Chester…. Again, I appreciate that the committee members are very informed members about this issue, having done extensive work on it. Young people that have the profile of Chester may be having some significant disturbance, expressing suicidality, definitely navigating the adolescent years where there can be a lot of turmoil.

The gold standard is very well established around mental health treatment — engaging a young person; a good assessment; positive attachment to a therapist and a good therapeutic relationship; allowing the young person to participate in evidence-informed therapies like dialectical behavioural therapy, or DBT, which, again, is sort of the gold standard.

The province and MCFD have commissioned several reviews of how to deal with youth suicide and suicidality. We have a very good therapeutic road map around how to engage. It’s not a question of knowing what to do; it’s getting the young person in and doing it.

Chester never got in that door. It’s about nine months, in that region, to get in the door. Then when you’re in the door, that service, aboriginal child and youth mental health, is not offering in any organized way that array of services that would be needed for that profile of a young person.

What’s important about the Chester report is to say what happened with Chester but to be mindful of the fact that he’s a cohort that has significant needs. The services, by waiting and not having it easy to navigate and clear about what the service roles and responsibilities are…. How much gets placed on a family but also a young person?

The image of Chester…. Not only is his care a bit of litany of errors, but even the crisis response team worker in his region, who was called out because there was a crisis many times, said that the system is so fragmented that it’s balkanized and that it utterly failed this young person. Even an interview, one interview with early psychosis intervention at school because Chester was in such bad shape, didn’t open doors to care.

Just how hard it is on the ground to deal with these extremely lengthy wait-lists…. What happens on the ground when there are wait-lists is that people don’t refer and that they see it as pointless to go into a system that won’t assist someone.

Now, I appreciate that as adults who oversee the system, we all think we’ll get in there, and eventually you’ll get help and, in the meantime, help the parents cope. We have good organizations like the FORCE and other things that can support parents who are dealing with children with mental health challenges.

Unfortunately, most of those do not have a strong aboriginal component. Again, as an aboriginal family, there is additional isolation and additional challenges because you had a delegated aboriginal agency that couldn’t really function for almost a decade. It had sort of an illusionary support structure.

If you looked on paper, it looked like you had someone dealing with a file. But when you looked on what actually was happening with Chester, it was missed opportunities and not having a meeting and not following up and not getting him in for real services.

“Real services” means proper assessment — yes, being able to work with aboriginal families and aboriginal child and youth mental health to the extent that it has a service footprint, even though it’s very small and the demand is massive. They do have, in the places where they have these teams…. They’re not all over the province; they operate in only six places. But they have, in some of those teams, worked closely with the aboriginal community to build inroads and build inroads with families.

That delegated aboriginal agency that was there had had audits. They were in panic. They weren’t working. The ministry knew well that that agency wasn’t working, and the ministry knew well that Chester was in that system, which was not working. But who takes up the focus? Who takes up the work?

Really, this report is about what happens. What happens on the ground is the family experiences huge distress. The school experienced huge distress. Chester’s peers experienced huge distress in dealing with him and, obviously, were isolating him and couldn’t cope with his behaviour. And he couldn’t cope. A lot of his time at school was just spent wandering around in the adjacent park-like area beside his school and not even being in school — didn’t know where he was.

Things that one would expect, like a coherent safety plan with appropriate responses by a mental health team, with appropriate engagement of the family, and so forth, was absent for Chester. His distress grew. As we note in the report, sadly his own sister, who attended the school with him, was panicked at school on the day he was miss-
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ing for longer than expected. He’d been expressing suicidal ideas, and she engaged with the school to search for him. They found him deceased in this park beside the school ground.

Again, the tragic loss of this life by someone who basically was outside the door and never really got in the door, and their family left to pick up the pieces, if you like, after, but also generous enough with us and with British Columbia to be able to share their story.

Obviously, for people that are in the door and supported and receiving some of the therapeutic modalities I described earlier, their outcomes are fantastic. If you’re in the door and you have good care and a positive relationship with the therapist and you’re receiving some of those needed supports to deal with the volatility that comes with that age and that suicidality, British Columbia can do really, really well. The challenge is the people in the door is so small, and the people outside the door is so large. How are we moving them in and out?

I note in this report a certain level of concern. As the committee recommended in its excellent report in January 2016 about Concrete Actions for Systemic Change…. As representative, of course, I applaud and celebrate the committee’s work on this. That all-party excellent report on mental health is incredibly positive. It very sensibly called for 30-day assessment and 30-day treatment. Even I would like to see it quicker, but I understand that’s the thing. But there’s no evidence that this has been actioned. I appreciate there’s planning toward it. The leadership that the committee took to bring it forward is there. To put it in place on the ground for someone like Chester — we just haven’t gotten there.

I appreciate…. It just speaks to not only how important that the work of this committee is in doing it but also, once a report is made, that the report be followed. I appreciate the standing committee itself. You can compel and bring people to talk about your reports. Your reports had very valuable recommendations. But I view it very much as the role of the representative’s office to take those reports and follow up on them, as well, and make sure that it moves forward.

I recognize and applaud in particular the role that the Chair of the committee has played in terms of promoting improvements in child and youth mental health and trying very hard to get out and find places where things can be built and starting so diligently with taking on the strong role that this issue will be more profiled and that systems can be knit together.

But the mental health system continues to rest with the Ministry of Health; the Ministry of Children and Families, one of its six service lines; and then sort of with the aboriginal child and youth mental health; also with some role with the federal government and others. And as I report in this report, a bit of a bell that I ring, which is government has indicated that it is again looking at jurisdiction for aboriginal communities. This is something I’ve reported on in the past.

There have been high-level jurisdiction discussions — a lot of talk, not necessarily always service. Obviously, there are jurisdiction issues. I would be very concerned if improvements in mental health got placed only in that category, meaning talking and planning without real service. I think the report about Chester speaks to the need. That might be a valuable realm, but the mental health services budget and approach needs to be more seamless and focused on the needs of those people on the ground trying to get in the door.

I flag in this report how important some agencies — like the First Nations Health Authority, which is a non-jurisdiction-driven entity — have been around promoting wellness and that they may be of assistance in getting patient navigators and so forth. But they, too, are on the outside of aboriginal child and youth mental health.

Any plan, to be realistic and effective…. It’s very important that there be a clearly articulated and documented infrastructure and funding plan for child and youth mental health so that we do not have Chester in this situation where apparently everyone is serving him but no one is serving him. He’s not receiving any service, and he’s not receiving any well-known, evidence-based documented mental health service.

When we see that type of conduct and behaviour where a young person is this far dialed out in terms of their functionality at home, at school, in their community and they can’t get into the system for nine months or, at the outer limits, two years, the cost is too high. It’s a very high cost.

I appreciate that there are some longer-term recommendations in this report. Even though this excellent report came from the standing committee in January 2016, as of September 2016, we are still dealing with long wait times — wait time to get in the door and then wait time to get a service. There is a sort of telephone drop-in where you can get immediately assessed, but the assessment is, “Hello. Here’s where you are. You’re on that list to get really assessed,” than to really get a service. It’s still triaging, to some extent.

The effect of triaging on the actual management of cases…. Ms. Thomas-Wightman will be able to speak to it more, if you’d like to pursue it. But really understanding how the pressure on the front-line child and mental youth health staff to categorize different cases at different levels — how that has turned out to be incredibly pressuring and kind of chaotic. In fact, she’ll be able to document a bit. But in our experience around doing administrative fairness on Chester’s case, which is anonymized….

You know, when you meet with the team leader, they first say: “Well, is this, this person, or is it these other ten kids that have died while waiting?” The staff is really wanting to do a good job but feeling really challenged by it.
[ Page 703 ]

I’m not saying that this report is about the staff, but I want to really give a shout-out to the staff in aboriginal child and youth mental health, because they are working. At the same time, they have that grinding reality that there are so many people outside the door that they could never let them in because they’re already overwhelmed. So something has to change. They are waiting. They’ve been waiting and waiting for some map about how it’s going to change, and they don’t know what that will be.

This report, I think, is significant also because I really looked at the issue about education and how co-locating mental health supports in school…. School teams need staff that have specialization in mental health, and they need to know what to do. Sending kids home from school or sending them somewhere else to get care, disrupting their school attachment, moving them from school to school….

Not all kids will be able to get all their mental health supports in a school setting — we understand there are acute needs and high-incident needs, and so forth — but better support there early would certainly help.

This is a young person who moved from a tribal school to a regular school without a piece of paper, without even knowing what he was doing. Again, by all accounts, he was fine at one school but then fell apart in the next. But actually, he was falling apart, and no one had….

Even that issue, once you come into a mental health assessment, someone would touch down with actually calling back to the last classroom teacher and finding out what was going on, getting information and moving forward.

The Tragedy in Waiting report really does talk about how it is a tragedy in waiting. On the delegated aboriginal agency in question, there have been improvements. A recent audit shows improvements. But the sustainability of that improvement is a matter of question because there have been a few files where we’ve seen improvement.

There was deep confusion even in that agency about whether or not they had responsibility for child and youth mental health or whether promoting, say, guitar lessons for Chester was a good approach. While that doesn’t sound like a bad idea in principle — it’s a nice thing to do for a young person — that isn’t what you need when you have acute mental health issues and suicidality.

I’ll leave it there, to say that the recommendations are fairly straightforward, build on the report of this select standing committee and also shine a light back on that 30-30 recommendation that I think should be the standard of 30-30. I’m not saying it would have resolved everything in the life of Chester, but he never got through the door.

Those people who are waiting two years on that wait-list, including now — that is so far from 30 days. Again, although there have been improvements and there are efforts and there is planning and there are special committees, they have not hit the ground yet fully for young people like Chester.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you, Mary Ellen. I have one question from Carole.

C. James: Thank you for the report. Not a question; more, perhaps an expression of anger that I continue to feel around the lack of supports for youth mental health.

I think one of the areas that you mentioned around the wait times — this is probably an issue that we hear more about in our offices than anything else — is families who are just at the end of their rope, who just are not able to cope, who aren’t able to find services.

I would go as far as to say that there isn’t a system. We have no youth mental health system. We have some supports here and there. We have them in different places, but we don’t have a system. If it was a system, you wouldn’t have seen a report like Chester’s report coming forward.

One of the areas that I think I’m hearing a lot about right now is that the existing services are triaging, because that’s the way they cope and that’s how they have to cope — to triage. What that means is that there are young people who are not yet in a crisis who are getting to a crisis because they’re on the wait-list.

You’re seeing much more severity in the cases that are coming forward and in the situations that families are dealing with because they weren’t dealt with early, because the young person didn’t have the support. So I think there’s not only a crisis for young people like Chester; there’s also a crisis for people who, if they got the early support, wouldn’t get to a place of crisis. I think the ultimate cost to that family, to the system, to parents, to schools for those kids who actually could have been dealt with early is an additional important piece to pay attention to in this report.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. I think your point about the pressures on the ground…. I mean, obviously mental health services are non-existent in parts of the province, more remote parts, and that really does disproportionately affect aboriginal children. But this is an urban area where there are services, and there are hospitals, and there are teams.

The interesting thing is that all of those teams say, “There’s no system,” even though they’re in the team in the urban centre, because they don’t feel that they can get in and get through it. But the toll and the cost of waiting is astounding — then waiting to get in a door and then waiting for what?

I think your point is an important one, where families are happy to finally to get in the door and a relationship is being built with their child, youth or the family, but then when will they get the therapy that actually can reduce suicidality, like the dialectical behavioural therapy and others?

If you happen to live close to B.C. Children’s Hospital, you might be able to get in, or if you happen to live close
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to a unique place, like in North Vancouver, where there’s a very good school that they can manage…. You know, you get…. We don’t have a society in which we move around, and kids have mental health challenges everywhere.

I think the other point that comes out really loudly in this report…. And I appreciate the standing committee’s report. It was excellent, although you didn’t have a chance to really look into the aboriginal side, and you noted that in your report. I think one of the things that really comes out is: what do we mean by a mental health system? I’m glad that, again, the Chair has taken on a role, because we need champions for mental health throughout our cabinet and throughout government. Everyone on the standing committee, by doing that report, is a champion for mental health, which is good.

But I think one of the key issues is really the model that we bring to it. So for Chester and his family, a model of understanding the family dynamics and building the distress tolerance of the family to cope with…. You’re not going to rescue Chester from the fact that in the family, there are people who may have a significant criminal history and may have presented as being very problematic toward children.

Children experiencing, sometimes, an absence of parental warmth or being somewhat victimized by other people in their own family is very distressing. A child that already may have a predisposition toward a mental health issue and is being raised in an environment like that will have strengths and will have challenges.

But good mental health systems are now based on building the skills of young people to cope within their families and respond appropriately. That’s why the aboriginal child and youth mental health work is important. It’s not about removing children; it’s about actually problem-solving, building skills within families. Some of them have to do with safety, but some of them have to do with the fact that some children may experience victimization, and that may exacerbate their mental health issue.

When an aboriginal young person in a position like Chester’s says, “I may commit suicide; I may kill myself,” I think it’s a very loud bell, that people should maybe not even have 30 days. Maybe it should be the two-day rule for those young people, because we know they’re very likely to follow through on it. They may be very distressed and may not have the natural supports of a large group of well-established adults because the adults in their families have been through a lot of struggles as well, or may be preoccupied with their own struggles.

Again, this is a family that didn’t want to get services. For instance, they didn’t want to talk to their band about services because they felt they didn’t have privacy. They felt like sometimes there are hostile issues there, and they wanted an anonymous, neutral mental health system that understands their aboriginal experience but would be responsive to them. So being sent back to their sort of band office, which is a mix of political administration and some services and what have you, was really complex.

I think the Chester story speaks to that incredible problem that we have of not having a system. And when you don’t have a system, tragedies happen. Chester’s life was worth a lot. It was worth everything to his family and his community, and obviously the school — everyone, his sister. They all continue to be racked by this. They want to understand how things can be done differently.

So champions for mental health, which is why I identified, maybe, First Nations Health Authority. Maybe they can step up and be a champion. It’s important to point out the problems, but it’s also important to model resilience and be positive for young people. But you can’t destigmatize mental health if you wait two years to get an appointment. There is a stigma, and the stigma is: you will suffer without support. So we haven’t destigmatized mental health for people like Chester, who stand outside the door and roam around the school grounds in obvious distress while everybody else goes about their business.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I have three people on the list to ask questions. We have half an hour left, but that includes your feedback on the statutory review. What I would suggest is that Melanie, Marc and Linda ask their questions quickly, and then maybe you could make one final comment encompassing what they’ve asked. That will at least, hopefully, give you 20 minutes to give us your feedback on the statutory review.

M. Mark (Deputy Chair): I’ll keep my remarks brief. I just wanted to thank you for shedding a light on this issue. This is an issue that has hit close to home for myself. I took part in the We Matter campaign about indigenous youth suicide that’s impacting indigenous children across this country and across B.C. and the importance of destigmatizing mental health and bringing those programs into the schools. I just wanted to thank you for illuminating the importance of this issue, to emphasize giving young people the support when they need it the most.

M. Dalton: Thank you for this work. I was struck by how many different organizations’ supports were there, but it was the lack of collaboration at times, a bit of a hodgepodge. I think there’s certainly room for cleaning that up.

Certainly more professional support would have been there. My thoughts were also…. There were certainly a lot of attempts, even right during the time of the suicide, to surround him. There was certainly a lot of push-back by him and then from the family. I would just like to comment on that.

One remark. The report seems to be somewhat critical of the designated aboriginal agency and also even the tribal school. That’s concerning to me. I’m wondering if, in the move from the ministry to kind of giving self-
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regulation and support to the aboriginal agencies, there’s a gap that’s happening and there’s a bit of a loss of professionalism. That seems to be indicated in the report. Just maybe some comments on that.

L. Reimer: This was just a huge tragedy. I guess my question is around what other jurisdictions are doing to ensure the safety of their youth at risk, their aboriginal children, what have you. You mentioned the programs in North Vancouver, the pilot projects. Certainly, I am aware of the province of New Brunswick, which also has mental health services in their schools.

Obviously, the answer is not simple. These are very complex situations, so there’s probably no one simple answer. It’s probably a continuum of answers. But do you know of any other jurisdictions that are doing good work? Do you look at those other jurisdictions in your work as the child and youth advocate?

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, just with respect to the point that was made by you, Marc, about those who were engaged with him. Chester…. For instance, an early psychosis team met with him briefly, but he was non-responsive. He was not responding. One of the challenges is when you have a crisis team, it’s the immediate crisis and you don’t follow up.

The whole idea is you get them into a service, like aboriginal child and youth mental health, with a proper assessment. What they do is: are you hearing voices now? Yes. No. Maybe. That whole piece of what you do is very problematic.

Even in the early psychosis piece…. Could they have taken him to the hospital and had him admitted, for instance? Yes, certainly, they could have. They didn’t. Were they able to probe how he was doing? Yes, they could have, but….

It’s all of the burdens that these teams have on a daily basis. Is him hearing voices more significant than the other people on the caseload that they’ll be seeing that day, where they’re hearing voices and holding a knife? This is the nature of the crisis that’s there. So really, the engagement with him was nominal except for mom and the family trying to cope and trying to say: “Well, let me see a neurologist, or whatever.” Obviously, a lot was going on — so the importance of assessment and finding out what’s happening in a family from peers.

Around the delegated aboriginal agency piece…. They had responsibility. The ministry is funding them and delegating their duties to them. But if they can’t function over a long period of time, then Chester is sitting in his home in his community with a completely chaotic structure. He didn’t even know if he had a worker or not. Half the time they weren’t sure if they had a contracted worker. Did the contracted worker see him? Who had the contract? What was the worker supposed to do?

Checking in on someone is different than having a relationship with someone. You can see here, he didn’t have a relationship. A young person with suicidality that’s in crisis needs more than a telephone, five-minute check-in.

In terms of the tribal school, I think the challenge is just no…. The kids move from the tribal school to the public school, but nothing moves with them. That has to be improved on both sides. Also, some of the difficulties Chester was having…. His academic performance and so forth seemed okay in the tribal school, and then he tanked when he got into the public system. What was going on? Could he not function? Or was it the deterioration in his mental health? School teams are so crucial.

The point that you raised, Linda, about jurisdictions and so forth. There are other jurisdictions…. I think the important thing to notice is that British Columbia has a lot of high-level planning on mental health. It just hasn’t drawn it down to the realm of operationalizing it to reality.

There was a time — in fact, Mr. Markwart will recall this, because I believe he was responsible for this in the ministry — where British Columbia had the best five-year mental health plan for child and youth mental health. They were out of the starting gates with friends and school-based initiatives. They had very good people, and they were all tossed away. The program wasn’t renewed, and then after five years it started to deteriorate. Mr. Markwart will remember this quite well. There was leadership in the ministry that said: “Well, we shouldn’t do mental health. That’s not one of our priorities. It’s not even needed. Kids don’t need this.” Now, we’re building it back.

British Columbia has very good people. It has good blue-sky ideas. The standing committee’s report itself is a stellar report in every way — 30-30 is stellar. It just has to be done. The issue of not reporting wait times and wait-lists…. You can issue a report, but then if there are 270 days you wait and you would never know that, then that’s not a real service.

The instincts in the system to not make that known, public — to keep that private, if you like; the pressure for people not to be completely honest with families…. When the family comes, to say, “Well, we’ll have you on a wait-list,” and then every three months: “You’re still on our wait-list; you’re still on our wait-list….” After a year, the family is like: “Well, forget it. Why even be on your wait-list?” Instead of just being upfront with them and saying: “This is where you are on the wait-list.”

I can ask Ms. Thomas-Wightman, because she went out in this region to really talk to them about how they are managing, what the staff says and how they manage the families. Because that’s the dimension of…. Even if you have something like that, and you say you’re doing it but you’re not, it’s very devastating for families.

Other jurisdictions are tracking it, and they’re more upfront. We need to be more upfront about where we are, and
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of course we need to put more resources into it. I’ll ask Ms. Thomas-Wightman to speak to that issue in this region.

D. Thomas-Wightman: I met with the staff a couple of days before the release of this report and, like the representative said, they were confused about which child I was talking about, because there are a number of children that they lost to suicide in recent times. They wanted to express a couple of things.

First of all, that aboriginal child and youth mental health was no different than child and youth mental health, except the word “aboriginal” was in front of it. So the way they envisioned aboriginal child and youth mental health, they weren’t able to perform in that way. They wanted to build relationship, be in the community. They didn’t have the staffing to do that.

The other piece…. They had some cuts on their team, specifically, and those positions went to child protection. They didn’t feel protected in those processes. Also, their time with psychiatrists had been not withdrawn, but smaller amounts of time and access to a psychiatrist…. Often, after the diagnosis and medication, that was it. That was the only time they had access to a psychiatrist, so monitoring the medication and monitoring the family was a significant issue.

The wait-list, as the representative talked about, was up to 600 days for some youth. What this team leader talked about was that in a better system, even when they’re on the wait-list, they’d like to develop a relationship with the people on the wait-list. They’re unable to do that because of the severe staffing shortages, so they felt discouraged.

They felt that the vision for aboriginal child and youth mental health was a good one when it first was initiated. They had some aboriginal staff on their team. Those staff left because it was no different than child and youth mental health, and they all recognized the unique needs, which the representative talked a little bit about, around family dynamics in aboriginal communities.

So no outreach, no ability to engage with people on the wait-list and a real misunderstanding within the system, even what the wait-list looked like. Their own social workers at Children and Family Development didn’t understand what the wait-lists were.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Mary Ellen, thank you very much to you and your team for all the work that you’ve done on this particular issue, and thank you very much for bringing it again to the committee’s attention.

I’d like to move on quickly, given the fact that we’ve got one more item on which we do want your input. What I would suggest, given the timeframe, is that perhaps it would be a good idea if you could give us a written submission, as well, to complement. So maybe just summarize your points with us today, and then provide us with a written submission.

Then, of course, we’d assume that when that new representative comes on board, they will also give their suggestions as well. So we’d appreciate your….

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yeah. Thank you for that, and thank you for that flexibility. The staff of the representative’s office has been carefully meeting. In fact, all the staff is meeting this week to finalize their feedback around operating under the RCY Act, where there may be challenges, room for improvements. I can certainly ask Ms. Thomas-Wightman and the staff to prepare that into a more written brief so you can have a more thorough view from the staff that operates the three programs on what might be even some minor issues.

I spoke today about a few, like youth leaving care. As we enhance support, advocacy for them will be important. Like a small area…. It’s a very minor issue. Other matters, I think the committee will be well familiar with.

I did write to the committee on May 18 just because you received some correspondence from the Deputy Attorney General about some changes that might have been afoot. I wrote…. I just want to flag that again to correct the record a bit, because there were some proposals to amend the Adoption Act that might see some external review of adoptions.

In my role as representative, I did discuss extensively with MCFD whether that should be external to MCFD or internal. They were of the view that it should be external and it could be located in the representative’s office. We hadn’t reached an agreement. That’s not my role, to reach agreements. But that issue of a possibly ongoing external review of the permanency plans might be something, so I flag that correspondence again.

The other thing is that obviously there’ll be a new representative who will go forward. If the committee, depending on your mandate and agenda, in reviewing the RCY Act as you get down the road, would like to have me reappear in some form, I’m happy to do so, to talk about it from a historic viewpoint, about the experience. But I’m confident that the staff can provide you with a summary of areas where improvements can be made. Obviously, you will get to hear from a wide range of individuals in the child-serving sector that will be able to address issues.

On the side of monitoring different components of the government’s services to children and youth, particularly the area of children and youth with special needs, there is a need to clarify what is a designated service and not. There are some disputes there. Things have been chopped and moved around over the years.

I have talked about that the young adults’ agreements are important. The CLBC transition piece needs a bit of tweaking, I would say.
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In terms of one of the big items, which we talked about earlier around the report of Mr. Bob Plecas — the ongoing significance of monitoring and the role of the monitoring function — I think that there is a pretty strong agreement with the ministry that until there is a proper, regular quality assurance reporting function, the monitor, review and audit component does need to continue.

The staff will outline more details of that in a report to you. Certainly, it’s something that should be reviewed again in a number of years, but it’s not quite at that point yet. Until quality assurance is up and running and showing, I think it’s important.

The ministry has reported on performance management, at my urging over the last number of years. Its performance management reports continue to be more focused on financial reporting and not reporting around outcomes for children and youth.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it’s important just to note that around the core vulnerability of the advocacy function within the representative’s office, many other jurisdictions in Canada — I’ve spoken about this — have the power to at least oversee some type of a legal advocacy program. Saskatchewan has a model. Alberta has a model. Ontario has an in-house model. We’re the only province of this size and scope that doesn’t have that service appropriately aligned and coordinated.

The less-expensive model is to have something overseen by an independent child advocate. I think that could be valuable and helpful and overcome some of the issues we’ve had in the past. But I point that out.

What I anticipate — and I can ask Ms. Thomas-Wightman to speak to this — is that the representative staff…. They’ve shared with me a draft of their submission for the select standing committee. With the permission of the committee, I think it would be valuable to receive their report. Depending on your timetable, perhaps that can be held until there’s an appointment of a new representative, or if you require something to be submitted under the guise of an acting…. Obviously that’s up to members of this committee and other committees. But there will be a document that I believe the staff will be able to table.

Again, just for my purposes, if there’s any value in having some insight on how it worked over a decade, I’m happy to return and speak to it. Maybe after you’ve deliberated, if you wanted to address something, I’d be delighted to return, as a courtesy, on my own time. At the same time, we have to move forward not by looking in a rearview mirror. Looking forward, there are probably good things that need to be added that the committee has in mind.

Certainly, a thornier issue — and we’re seeing this in the investigation into the death of a child at B.C. Children’s Hospital — was the lack of sharing of internal reports into critical incidents in the health care system with the representative’s office. Unfortunately, as we complete that investigation, we are essentially redoing an investigation that the PHSA, Provincial Health Services Authority, did, so duplicating work.

There’s lots of opportunity…. I don’t want to use the words “cut the red tape,” but there’s lots of opportunity to coordinate and share. I think some of those areas…. The critical injury and death team will have some views about that, and I’m happy to return.

I’ll just ask Ms. Thomas-Wightman whether or not I’ve missed anything. She’s been managing this issue about the staff feedback and when a document may be available, subject to your direction.

D. Thomas-Wightman: Over the next two days, Tuesday and Wednesday, we have an all-staff meeting to address this issue. We have a facilitator and lawyer coming forward. Each team will have their top-two suggestions to the committee. So we will look at all of those and draft something up.

We should have something ready, probably in a couple weeks, two to three weeks, for the committee. We’re looking forward to getting their input from the front line and what they see day to day as issues or changes that we can make to the mandate.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I think that’s very helpful. The timing will be very good because we will be receiving input over the next few months on the recommendations for the statutory review for the act.

Given that I don’t see any other hands, is everybody on the committee okay with the overview that Mary Ellen has given us — in addition to the upcoming staff report that, obviously, you’ve already been working on, which, I think, will be extremely helpful — and then, her standing offer to maybe come back again another time if need be? Is the committee…? Am I seeing nods of heads? Nods of heads. Okay, that’s good.

M. Mark (Deputy Chair): I’m curious about the interface with education or family law. I know that we’ve only got you for five more minutes, so I want to take every second.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, I think the last review of the representative’s monitoring function, which was conducted with a kind of joint submission from myself and Steve Brown, who was then the deputy of MCFD…. In that process, the committee was presented with some information about how the representative’s role could be expanded around education, particularly for children
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and youth with special needs and the need to get support around the IEP, personalized learning, kids with fragile medical needs, and so forth.

It’s an area that is not in the core mandate as a designated service. Children who are in care and children who are in certain special needs programs the representative’s office can advocate for, but it’s advocating in the education domain. There are 55,000 children in British Columbia with a designation of various types. I think there could be some way to open that door. That was tabled in the past but not actioned.

Frankly, it wasn’t actioned, in part, because as the representative, I was mindful of the fact that I have a fairly small staff. If we suddenly had 5,000 more education matters…. I think they’re needed. There are lots of issues, and lots of progress can be made there, but it would require careful scaffolding with a budget and a clear understanding of what is happening.

So any time anything is expanded…. I think, if anything, during my tenure we’ve expanded without the budget. Unfortunately, although the people seated with me are very kindly, friendly, generous people, there are a lot of people that just feel that it’s too much without an appropriate staff complement. Any of these changes, while they might be really valuable if they’re agreed upon, need planning to implement.

When we expanded the children and youth with special needs transitioning to CLBC, we planned, we staffed, we were prepared, and it was very successful. But it was a modest area. Education is an important one, and it’s one that you’ll have to consider. Should the kids with special needs in the school system…? Some of those kids are not in school, right? They have very serious issues. Some of them face a lot of discipline and face non-inclusion in the classroom.

How those are dealt with varies by school and district. Should there be greater provincial emphasis, and should the representative’s office play a role? That’s a matter that I’m sure will be brought to you in some form. I certainly think the representative’s office is capable of doing that, but that’s a significant staff issue. Expertise in education is unique. Education works well when everybody, as we’ve seen with education outcomes for kids in care — with a real partnering role. But that would require staffing up the representative’s office with education expertise.

There are great people out there, but they need clear role definitions. I just leave that to say that it is very important. I certainly think it’s needed — there’s a gap — but it would need to be well prepared for. I don’t think it requires a statutory change. I think it’s been done so that the government can designate that almost instantly, but they have not done that yet.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I thank you for that, Mary Ellen. I assume that that would be put in your submission to be deliberated on.

I just want to thank everybody. I know it’s been a really long meeting. Now our committee will take a five-minute break, because some of us haven’t had one break at all. Then we’re going to come back, and we’re going to go in camera to discuss the statutory review. This is a common practice that the Clerk has recommended.

We’ll take a five-minute recess. Then, if everybody could come back here…. I understand that there will be something to eat as well, which will be very helpful for everybody. So we’ll be recessing for five minutes.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Welcome back, everybody. We will now need a motion to go in camera.

I wanted to just summarize briefly that there is a continuing process going on that is being agreed upon for the statutory review. There will be more information on the committee website on that shortly. The other item about the acting or interim representative is also a process undergoing at this particular point.

Access to on-line versions of the report of proceedings (Hansard)
and webcasts of committee proceedings is available on the Internet.

Chair:	Jane Thornthwaite (North Vancouver–Seymour BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Melanie Mark (Vancouver–Mount Pleasant NDP)
Members:	Marc Dalton (Maple Ridge–Mission BC Liberal)
	Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
	Maurine Karagianis (Esquimalt–Royal Roads NDP)
	Don McRae (Comox Valley BC Liberal)
	John Martin (Chilliwack BC Liberal)
	Dr. Darryl Plecas (Abbotsford South BC Liberal)
	Linda Reimer (Port Moody–Coquitlam BC Liberal)
	Jennifer Rice (North Coast NDP)
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