The committee met at 2:02 p.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Welcome, everybody, to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth for our second meeting of the session. I’m excited that we have a report to review and we have guests here who are presenting to us. I look forward to hearing their perspectives, and we have an opportunity to ask questions. Thank you all for being here.

Without further ado, let me introduce Bernard Richard.

Thank you for being here.

Consideration of Representative
for Children and Youth Reports

Room for Improvement:
Toward Better Education Outcomes
for Children in Care

B. Richard: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to have now attended all of your committee meetings to date.

I am today accompanied, as I was the last time, by Dawn Thomas-Wightman, who’s the Deputy Representative for Children and Youth, and Jeff Rud, our director of communications. He’s the more shy, retiring type in the corner there.

We’re certainly pleased, again, to present to this committee, a committee that really plays an important, integral role in the function of my office. I look forward to a continued productive working relationship with you, Mr. Chair, and with members of the committee.

I’ve heard Ted Hughes speak now twice in the last month — here in the Legislative Library and in our own office, where he was a guest speaker at RCY university just a couple of weeks ago. I must say he was spectacular, as usual. He, every time, reminds me of the value-added the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth brings to the work of my office and to the best interests of B.C.’s children and youth.

The report presentation on today’s agenda is Room for Improvement: Toward Better Education Outcomes for Children in Care, which we released on October 26. This report takes a look at the educational outcomes of B.C.’s children and youth in continuing care and at the supports that are needed to help these students be successful.

[2:05 p.m.]

I do want to start by acknowledging the long hours and difficult work that goes into the preparation of these reports. The project lead for this report, Brian Hill, unfortunately is ill today. He really wanted to be here. I want to acknowledge his tremendous and tireless effort in making this report possible.

For some time, children and youth who find themselves in the care of the B.C. government have had significantly lower academic achievement in the provincial kindergarten-to-grade-12 education system than their peers. Several reports from our office over the years have highlighted this discrepancy.

As we all know, educational attainment is associated with almost every measure of population health and well-being. Research has shown that youth who do not complete high school are less likely to be healthy, have poorer family functioning and are more likely to receive income assistance. Education should help to level the playing field for children and youth, to provide all young people, no matter their life circumstances, with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive and succeed.

My office decided to look deeper into the reasons why children and youth in care aren’t doing as well academically and report out on findings and recommendations to ensure that their learning needs are better addressed in the future. Our review involved the participation of 1,200 people with experience in both the school and the care systems. This group included more than 160 youth in and from various forms of care and nearly 500 teachers. Focus groups were held with youth, and surveys were completed by young people, teachers, principals, vice-principals, Aboriginal education staff, social workers and foster parents.

We also analyzed data from the Ministry of Education on the educational achievement of students who are in continuing care, with a deeper look at Indigenous students in that group as well as those with a special needs designation. The report was also guided by an extensive international and national literature review on supporting education outcomes of children and youth in care.

The findings are as follows. Summarized quite a bit, but I’ll give you the highlights. What we found in our report is that significant gaps in education outcomes persist, with children and youth in continuing care as a group trailing well behind other students on academic measures. For example, in the academic year 2014-15, just 34 percent of B.C. grade 7 students in care met or exceeded expectations in numeracy. This compares to 73 percent of all other grade 7 students who met or exceeded numeracy expectations, more than double those in continuing care.

A similar disparity is seen when looking at grade 10 core subject marks. For example, 71 percent of all other B.C. students had marks of C-plus or better in science, compared to just 39.5 percent of students in continuing care. The difference between these two groups is nearly as large when it comes to languages and social studies.

Perhaps most glaring are the figures around high school graduation rates. Fewer than 51 percent of B.C. students in continuing care graduated within six years of starting grade 8, compared to about 89 percent of the rest of the students in the province.

These disparities are often exacerbated when the student in continuing care is Indigenous or has a special need. Of Indigenous students in continuing care, only 44 percent graduated within six years of beginning grade 8.

This is clearly alarming and not acceptable. If we were speaking of the overall graduation rate for all B.C. students, at 44 or 51 percent, people would be in the streets, marching in front of this beautiful Legislature. Because children and youth in care are a minority of students and they often do not have adults to advocate for them, their educational outcomes have managed to slide under the radar.

[2:10 p.m.]

Students in care are not naturally underperformers, but because of their life circumstances, experiencing trauma and instability early on, many need extra supports in order to succeed academically. Our review found that too often, these supports are not available. But when they are, they can help children and youth in care to succeed, close the gaps and make education a true equalizer.

These supports include stability at home and school; help with school work; sharing information and planning; having mental health needs met, including help to heal from trauma; and a focus on the needs of Indigenous youth, including cultural content in class.

Concerns over the education of children in foster care are not limited to B.C. In Ontario, achievement results show similar disparities for children and youth in care. In the same week that we released this report, the Ontario government pledged $21 million over the next three years to help address disparities in that province. Included in that funding will be the creation of the educational liaisons for children in care in Ontario.

That corresponds with one of our recommendations from this report. We are calling on the Ministry of Education, school districts and MCFD to establish point people in each district who will coordinate information-sharing and advocacy in support of improving education outcomes for children and youth in care.

Our report makes five other recommendations: three more to the Ministry of Education and two to the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The most notable is for the Ministry of Education to provide specific funding to each school district dedicated to supporting the learning needs of these students.

Room for Improvement also recommends that the Ministry of Education strengthen accountability for the academic achievement of students in government care and that MCFD ensure that children and youth in care are supported to recover from trauma so that its significant impact on their learning is reduced.

The report repeats a recommendation from the B.C. Auditor General’s 2015 report on Indigenous education calling for the development and implementation of a systemwide strategy to close the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous student outcomes.

Importantly, the report calls on MCFD to assess the trauma-related needs of all children and youth coming into care and ensure that recovery supports are offered across all care settings, including schools. We know that children who have experienced trauma cannot focus on school or much else until the effects of trauma are addressed.

Finally, the report recommends that MCFD ensure that caregivers are authorized to make decisions on the participation of children and youth in their care in appropriate school activities, including those at school that require written permission. Children and youth in care are all too often left out of field trips because a permission form has not been signed by their social worker, which can take days. These forms should be signed by the adult that is responsible for these youth and children on a day-to-day basis.

Acting on these recommendations would go a long way toward levelling the educational playing field for children and youth in care. If you are a parent, you do everything you can to help your child succeed at school. As the legal parent of these young people, government should be doing the same thing.

Since we released Room for Improvement at the end of October, my staff and I have spoken to several external organizations about our findings and recommendations. The feedback has been very positive and encouraging. In fact, after speaking to the B.C. Teachers Federation’s representative assembly on November 3, the group passed the motion to endorse the report’s recommendations, committing to convey its support to government. School superintendents, principals and vice principals are also supportive.

I will be speaking with the First Nations Education Steering Committee on Friday of this week about the report — and to hear what they have to say about it.

It seems the findings and recommendations in Room for Improvement have struck a chord with those involved in the education system, including Minister Fleming, who gave positive acknowledgment of the report and accepted all of the recommendations, which is good news for children and youth in care in this province.

[2:15 p.m.]

As is our normal course of action following the release of a report, my staff will be meeting with MCFD and the Ministry of Education to discuss the recommendations further and will monitor their implementation.

I’m happy to take questions.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much, Bernard. It’s a very interesting report, one that I think, in many of our minds, confirms what we had thought and perhaps adds some muscle to the arguments that this issue needs to be addressed in a very systematic way. I hope that we have some questions. I certainly have some of my own.

I believe that there was a recurring theme, not just in this report but in previous reports, speaking to the issue of the lack of social worker time. Their priorities are always making sure children are safe. When you get down to making sure they’re going to their parent-teacher interviews, it’s sort of lower down on the list of priorities.

Do you believe that the issues around social work, human resources and staffing could go any…? How do you think that that could impact on the ability of children to succeed in school?

B. Richard: I think it is important for social workers to give education a place that allows the children that they’re responsible for to succeed. That isn’t always the case.

Normally, social workers prepare plans of care for children for whom they’re responsible. There are a number of things that should be included in those plans of care, including cultural connections and permanency planning, but education outcomes should be at least as important. I think any of us who have children know that we spend a lot of time to ensure that they have the kinds of supports and attention that they need to succeed in school.

Unfortunately, for kids in care, often because they’re moved around so often, it’s hard to maintain that level of support. Foster families, as great as most of them are, are dealing with several children at a time. They may have a child for six months or a year, and then they move to another family, often changing schools in the process.

I think it really is up to the social worker to maintain that support level that’s required — or at least ensure that it’s in place.

N. Simons (Chair): I welcome questions from committee members.

I want to acknowledge Brian Hill and the work that he did. Obviously, it’s a lot of work, especially with the number of people and organizations that were consulted and spoken to.

T. Wat: Thank you, Bernard, for your introduction.

I just want to follow up on the comment that you made just now. You said that because they move around very often, as a result, they also change schools. Is there any reason why they move around so often? This is my first question.

My second question. I want to see this finding in comparison with other jurisdictions in Canada. How does B.C. fare compared with other jurisdictions?

D. Thomas-Wightman: I can speak to the moving around, for sure. It’s, unfortunately, pretty common for kids in foster care to have multiple placements.

The best course of action would be that if a child comes into care, they have two plans right away: one plan to either return to their parents or another permanency plan. They would go at the same stream. In case one doesn’t work out, there’s another one.

But what often happens is they try to return children to family, which is a good thing to do, but that can go on for many, many years. Then the trauma around that sometimes results in some children acting out or behaviour issues. Foster parents maybe can’t manage those, because they weren’t trained or whatever reason, so they move through a home.

Then they may move again for some other reason. Maybe that foster parent retires. We have foster parents that are aging, and they’re not bringing in as many new foster parents, so perhaps that’s the case. Maybe it’s not a good fit, or maybe they move them back with a sibling now. There’s another sibling in care, and they can move them again.

It’s not unusual to have ten-plus moves for a child in care. We see some up to 40 and 50 moves, so you can imagine that kind of disruption. The trauma with each move impacts the child, which then can impact their behaviour, which then makes it hard for a placement.

[2:20 p.m.]

What often happens is they become teenagers, and they age out of the foster care system into a group home — staffed residential resource. We’ve found, in those cases, the schooling was even poorer. There was no connection with the staff and the school. By the time the youth get to that place, school is kind of — like Bernard had said — the last priority, I guess I would say.

It’s a significant issue in the care system and something that we look at often. It impacts every area of the child’s life, including school. It definitely moves as a norm, unfortunately, for children in care.

N. Simons (Chair): Thanks, Dawn.

Did you want to follow up, Teresa?

B. Richard: The second part of….

T. Wat: Can I follow up on this?

B. Richard: On this part first? Yes.

T. Wat: It looks like moving around that often is the root cause, and I am glad to see that you are looking at how to make it happen less. I read the report. One of the youths said: “Well, I cannot even make friends when I keep going from one school to another.”

D. Thomas-Wightman: Exactly.

T. Wat: I guess if we don’t try to solve the root cause, there is nothing we can really help with — raise their graduation rate or their academic achievement.

D. Thomas-Wightman: Some of the things we’re looking at are placements with families. For Indigenous children and youth, if we can place with family, there’s probably more success of that placement not breaking down and the child having to move.

We’re also looking at adoption and custom adoption. Early on, if those things can happen, then the rate of disruption in adoption is less than foster placement. So if we can move children into those systems, when appropriate — it’s not always appropriate — then hopefully they don’t have where they’re in care for seven, eight, nine years with ten, 11, 12 placements. The longer they’re in care without a permanency plan, the more chance that they’re going to be moved around numerous times.

We are looking at it, for sure, and I know the ministry is. But it comes up in almost every single report you write and impacts a child’s life in every area.

B. Richard: Clearly, several jurisdictions are struggling with the same kinds of issues and, I think, by and large, for the same kinds of reasons.

One of the additional reasons is that often children and youth in care are dealing with trauma. They’ve been through trauma. Being taken from their parents is a traumatic experience. Often, no matter how bad the situation was, children love their parents, and it is traumatic for them to be moved. That trauma keeps reoccurring if they’re moved from home to home. They feel not accepted, not loved. They have trouble establishing friendships, and it affects their self-esteem. So dealing with trauma early on would be a wonderful contribution to contribute to the success of these students.

Now, some jurisdictions…. I wish Brian, our researcher on this report, were here. He’s not feeling well. But he identified some jurisdictions in the U.S. and the U.K. which have really set up these kids to succeed by dealing with trauma, by putting together the kinds of supports specific to their needs as children in the care system. With the supports in place, they can succeed, and that’s why we’re making the recommendations that we’re making.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much, Bernard.

L. Throness: I wanted to explore this a little bit more with the representative — just the question my colleague had been raising. I read the entire report, and this stuck out to me as a glaring issue.

I wanted to ask: has the representative ever done a concentrated study on the churn in foster homes?

D. Thomas-Wightman: Not specifically. Some of our reports have talked about…. The Paige report, for instance…. I think she had 50-plus moves. It talked about, as Bernard said, the trauma associated with that, and she ended up homeless, which is often another outcome for kids who move around a lot. But not specifically a detailed report on the number of moves and placements.

L. Throness: Well, maybe the representative would contemplate such a report, because, obviously, foundational to a child’s life is where they live. If they’re out of the home, that’s a point of turmoil already.

I wanted to suggest something. As Parliamentary Secretary for Corrections, I travelled around in the former government to all of the custody centres in B.C. and found that staff placed a great deal of emphasis and time on assessing a client when they come into the system — their past habits, their record, their experience, their motivations, their gang involvements — in order to determine where to place them within the institution, who to partner that person with, if they are bunking with somebody, what kind of work they will do in the institution and so on. A great deal of time, with great and fine detail, is spent assessing that person at the get-go so that they don’t make a mistake and put that person in a wrong place that could cause harm.

[2:25 p.m.]

It could be that children are not assessed thoroughly enough on entry so that they’re put into the wrong level of a home or an inappropriate home — or a personality conflict. Maybe if we spent more time doing that, we could overcome this problem to some extent.

I would simply encourage the representative, in the absence of a recommendation in this report, to do a report that focuses on this very important issue.

D. Thomas-Wightman: We have talked about that specifically in reports around when a child comes into care and matching that child with a foster placement. That’s a significant issue. There aren’t enough resources, which the Chair will know from his past work as well.

I can’t remember the name of the report right now — I’m sorry — but the report talks about the fact that the placements are up on a board, and it’s like a bidding process. The child’s needs aren’t really matched with the foster parent at all. It’s kind of: “We have one home over here that may take a ten-year-old. This child is six. Okay, fit him in there.” It’s, of course, a recipe for disaster. Often the kids move and don’t have a good fit, so we’ve made recommendations around supporting an increase in foster care recruitment and retention, Indigenous placements but also kith-and-kin and family placements so that we don’t have to rely so much on foster homes.

But you’re correct in that there isn’t a fulsome assessment and a match because there aren’t enough resources. There’s an initial assessment but nothing like what you’re describing in your experience.

R. Glumac: I’m actually the Parliamentary Secretary for Technology, and I was at an event last week. There’s a startup in residence program where companies are innovating within government. One of the projects that was shown was a company that created a tool to help social workers match children in care with the best available housing options.

Are you aware of this? In the context of information-sharing, coordination and all that, I saw it as a great opportunity to use innovation in government to help with all of that. It was quite interesting, so it might be worthwhile if we can somehow get that information to you.

B. Richard: We’d be definitely interested — but, more importantly, the ministry. The ministry is primarily responsible for placing children in care, their security and safety, where, as an oversight body, we don’t deliver services directly. But certainly, that’s an issue that would be of interest to us. The ministry may already be aware of this tool. I don’t know. But certainly, we’d be interested as well.

R. Glumac: I see examples in here of how school district 62 is developing a tracking system. There are all sorts of things going on all over the place.

B. Richard: There are good…. That was, I think, quite remarkable. I thought that in the work that Brian did that he identified a number of very good practices here and there. They’re not systematic. There are some districts that are doing some pretty interesting things, and their results are better. The results vary from district to district.

Clearly, there are some good practices, including in B.C., but also elsewhere, that could be incorporated. There are solutions. It’s what we’re saying. If we don’t find solutions, then everybody ends up paying a price, because kids who don’t graduate end up on income assistance, underemployed, on the street, often homeless or addicted. So it’s in the best interest of children but all of society that we find a way to improve these outcomes.

R. Singh: My question on the foster parents. I know you were talking about it a little bit too. I was just reading that most of the foster parents are not expecting…. Or they’re not asking these kids about education because the expectation is very low.

Isn’t it like some kind of connection with the foster parents, like giving them that kind of training or that kind of expectation that we should have from them? It is not that they are just providing them a room to stay or giving them meals. This is also an expectation from them.

B. Richard: I met with the B.C. Federation of Foster Parents. They’ve indicated, including responding to our surveys, that they would love to have additional supports to be able to help kids in school.

It is a challenge — I think a greater and greater challenge, we’re told by the ministry — to recruit foster families. They often end up having several children to care for — so not often the time to spend with each child in terms of education.

[2:30 p.m.]

They provide for their safety and feeding and housing, but often education is left outside of what seems to be the basic needs. They’d be happy to do more in that regard. They certainly have indicated that the children in their care require additional supports in order to succeed.

S. Furstenau: I have a couple of questions, if I may. One is more general. On page 6 of the report, you talk about recommendations that have been made in the past. Can you give me a sense of how successfully these recommendations have been implemented from the other…? I think it’s seven reports that have been done on education outcomes for children in care. Then I’d like to follow up, if I may.

D. Thomas-Wightman: One of our main recommendations that we’ve had in the past was around having a point of contact at the schools for kids in care. So we checked up on that. I believe it was — Jeff, correct me if I’m wrong — 2008, perhaps, that we had asked for that recommendation because we had noticed the same types of issues at that time.

When Brian went out to do this report, we asked: “Who is the contact at the school?” I believe that only 22 percent of the social workers knew who the contact was, and perhaps 44 or 45 percent of the school staff knew who the person was. It was often the principal and often someone who did it on the side of their desk.

That recommendation had some success, again, in some places but not as much as we’d hoped. That’s why we have the recommendation saying that we need a person who it’s their responsibility — their only responsibility, hopefully, but maybe two things instead of off the side of your desk — to ensure that those kids are being….

Because the foster parent might not have time or because a social worker has a huge caseload…. If there’s someone at the school, they can connect and make sure the child’s needs are being met around trauma, moves, etc. That was one of our recommendations.

As far as closing the gaps for Indigenous children in care, that recommendation, it’s getting worse instead of better. So we haven’t been able to answer that, in addition to the one…. With Aboriginal children in care, Indigenous children in care, it continues to rise. We haven’t got those right as….

B. Richard: Over the long term, the analysis of the data shows that there’s been some slight improvement. Unfortunately, our early analysis of the following year, ’15-16…. The numbers are now out. Actually, there’s a drop-off again — under 50 percent graduation rates for kids in care.

S. Furstenau: Thank you, Dawn. You actually went to the next question I had. I was quite concerned, on page 46, about the awareness of the cross-ministry guidelines. You spoke to this a little bit, about the point person, but just generally…. The lack of awareness about the cross-ministry guidelines seems like a pretty significant flag in this report, particularly given that the social workers and the foster parents were less knowledgable than the principals were on this.

Specific to that, what could be done to ensure that the people working right in the system are fully aware of these guidelines?

B. Richard: Certainly, more sharing of information when we…. One of your colleagues — I won’t name him — is a former teacher. He said: “In my” — I can’t remember how many years — “over a decade of teaching, I’ve never received training on the trauma-related impact of children in care. I didn’t know which of the children in my class were from the care system. If I’d known, it might have explained some behaviours. Often I found out because that child didn’t have a permission slip signed, so they stayed behind in school and couldn’t participate in an activity. That’s how I found out they were in care.”

Obviously, there’s a lot of work to be done there. I am encouraged by the response from teachers, principals and vice-principals. I’ve spoken specifically to those two organizations. Foster parents and school districts have a role to play. Superintendents participated in our consultation process as well.

[2:35 p.m.]

It’s easy to lose sight of these things. A report comes out. Everybody says: “That’s not acceptable. We have to do something.” Then, well, we move on to other things. We think the timing is pretty good. There’s a review process within the education system. A fair amount of new money is available to invest within the system. We just don’t want kids in care to be forgotten in that process.

J. Rice: Thank you, and thanks for your reports. It’s good to be back here on this committee. I wasn’t here for the initial one, but I’m glad to be back here. This is an awesome committee. I love being a part of it.

My question. Looking at the McCreary institute that did the work…. We look at educational outcomes of kids with a CCO and kids without. Then there’s a little bit of an examination of Aboriginal kids in care and non-Aboriginal kids in care. I’m curious to know if we ever look at the outcomes to compare rural kids versus urban kids or if that is even worth examining, in your view.

B. Richard: We haven’t examined it as part of this particular research. I’m not sure…. I don’t know if you have evidence based on your work as an MLA for a rural part of the province.

J. Rice: I don’t have evidence, but I have questions. I think when you go back to…. Just a little bit further on, it talks about what the factors are for stability. If you need mental health supports…. If that’s a factor and you don’t have it, that’s an obstacle.

B. Richard: Yeah.

J. Rice: When I look at what the factors are for stability, in a lot of the rural areas, we don’t have supports for kids with special needs. Or we have very limited mental health services. I’m curious to know if that critical care team or whatever it is…. Do we have those in rural areas?

B. Richard: Certainly, there are services everywhere, but clearly, the availability of services is greater in urban areas.

Speaking from my own experience as a former Education Minister, I think there is good and bad. In my own experience visiting rural schools, often the class sizes were smaller, with more attention received from teachers, more community around schools. The schools are really such a basic part of small communities. There’s a lot of community support for schools and additional programs and activities.

I’d be surprised if there were one pat answer to that. But clearly, in terms of specialized services, there are more available in Victoria, the Lower Mainland and the lower Island. That may not be the only thing, but certainly, it is an issue for kids who’ve suffered from trauma and who are overrepresented in youth mental issues and virtually everywhere else.

D. Thomas-Wightman: We do have some regional data that we can pull. I think it’s probably not mentioned in the report because it wasn’t significant statistically, but let me have a look at it, and we can get back to you.

J. Rice: Yeah, I was reading that Stikine and Nisga’a were the two school districts that weren’t included. For me, as a representative of a rural area, often I’m trying to understand my riding better. But because of the nature of our size…. Bella Coola Valley — try and find information on that. The population is too small.

D. Thomas-Wightman: So we’ll connect.

J. Rice: Okay. Thanks.

J. Isaacs: Thank you for the report. It’s pretty thorough. Lots of information in here. My question is in reference to page 23. You’re referring to the Joint Education Planning and Support for Children and Youth in Care: Cross-Ministry Guidelines. So there was, obviously, some work that was done in 2008 between the Ministry of Education and also Children and Family Development. This was to do with the sharing of information practices. A little bit later it says that the guidelines were updated in the fall of 2017.

I’m just wondering if you could maybe update us as to what some of those significant changes might have been and then if they are actually being implemented now.

[2:40 p.m.]

B. Richard: It’s a bit early for us. Certainly, our research flagged the fact that the guidelines had been updated. They’re just being implemented this fall, so it’s too early for us to have a view of the kinds of impacts that the new guidelines will have. Certainly, adding more resources to those guidelines will help as well. I think we may report in a year’s time on the impacts that they’ve had. There have been guidelines in place, as you’ve noted, since 2008.

What the report indicates is that there’s been new language added to the guidelines, using trauma-informed practice, for instance, with children- and youth-in-care supports for transitions. Moving, as well, is a significant issue raised by the youth and children that we talked to in our focus groups. Improving practices for promoting attendance in school is an issue, as well, for youth in care.

That’s an encouraging sign. We’ll see what the outcomes will be. I mean, our main focus is improving the outcomes. It’s too early to see.

J. Isaacs: I understand it’s too early to really measure it. Do you think the trauma piece would be the most significant change?

B. Richard: Certainly, it was flagged by virtually everyone as being very significant. There’s lots of new research on childhood trauma events and how they impact school, social relationships, family relationships. For kids in care, there’s usually significant trauma.

Just the fact of being removed from your family is traumatic. Then, their experience, often, in care may be better than at home, but it still often means moving, having to make new friends. Particularly during the teenage years, the impact is significant.

We’re saying that…. It’s actually one of our first recommendations, if not the first — for MCFD to assess the impact of trauma but then to address trauma early on. Unfortunately, what we’ve heard from kids is that they feel often retraumatizedas a result of their experience in care. They feel not accepted. Often their behaviour leads to them being changed to a different foster home, which often exacerbates their behaviour, because they just feel rejected.

I would say it’s not an appropriate way to raise children. It’s the system we have, but we believe we can adopt measures that will make significant improvements, as other jurisdictions have.

J. Isaacs: I just have one more question on that, then. If trauma is a really significant issue and every child that’s removed has that same trauma…. Obviously, there are other circumstances. Are the foster parents coached or supported or provided resources in how to deal with that trauma in the home?

B. Richard: Not sufficiently. And teachers are not sufficiently trained to identify trauma-related impact and behaviours and how to respond to those behaviours. It’s a significant issue across the board.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you.

At this moment, before we go on, I just wanted to say I’ve neglected to acknowledge Michelle Stilwell, the Deputy Chair of this committee, who is not with us and who may be following along from where she’s getting back into….

Interjection.

N. Simons (Chair): Yeah, everyone says hello.

We look forward to her coming back and joining our committee, hopefully on our December 7 date. I had a text from her last night, and she’s hoping to do that as well.

Just before I recognize Laurie, I thought I would ask a question as to.… Does the ministry, as far as you know, keep track as to how many children in CCO, continuing custody orders, are living with family members, immediate or extended?

D. Thomas-Wightman: Yeah, they keep track of those stats, definitely — what kind of care, whether it be family care, what level of foster home.…

N. Simons (Chair): So with a CCO, you’ll be able to…?

D. Thomas-Wightman: Oh, living with family. So has gone back, returned to family, you mean?

N. Simons (Chair): No, a CCO living with family.

[2:45 p.m.]

D. Thomas-Wightman: Like extended family. Yeah. Whatever the placement is for a CCO, the ministry will keep that stat.

N. Simons (Chair): How would they indicate that statistically?

D. Thomas-Wightman: In the case management system, a CCO and then whatever the living arrangement is — with family, with kin, foster level 1, homeless. They can even track that, if they know.

N. Simons (Chair): In my experience, sometimes family members were made foster parents. How would you be able to tell if it was a family foster…?

D. Thomas-Wightman: It’s called a family foster home. There’s actually a title for that.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much.

L. Throness: I always look for something tangible to come out of these reports. Heaven knows, that’s too few and far between. On page 41, I see just a very small thing, but it’s kind of an obvious thing. That’s permission slips for class outings and extracurricular activities. Foster parents are not allowed to sign permission slips. This is a ministry issue. Have you heard from the ministry regarding this issue?

B. Richard: The ministry has responded favourably to all of the recommendations. Frankly, we think this is one that could be pretty easily addressed. It has been in other jurisdictions. There is a matter of liability that foster parents have raised. Their representative, their association, has raised the issue of liability.

I dare say most parents sign hundreds of permission slips. I know I, as a parent of four boys, have signed hundreds of permission slips. I can’t recall ever refusing to sign a permission slip. I think there are ways to protect foster parents who sign a permission slip and then an accident might happen to a child. It happens, I’m sure, almost every day.

We think this is an easy one but such an important one for something that has really very little cost involved at all. In terms of self-esteem, particularly during the teenage years — I want to stress that — not being able to attend an event with your friends in your classroom because you can’t get the social workers…. They’re busy. They have big caseloads, and it’s not always their first priority. Sometimes a permission slip may be sent to a social worker but just not signed in time. Permission slips may be sent a day or two before the activity, and there’s just no way to get it signed.

For us, that’s a pretty easy one to do, and we’ll be looking for the ministry to address this one very quickly.

D. Thomas-Wightman: I just want to quickly add that they’re allowed to sign some of them. Foster parents weren’t even aware of that, and some social workers weren’t aware. But when we met with the ministry, the policy is that they are allowed to sign some. The ones that are more significant, where there might be some risk, are exactly like Bernard said: the liability issue is present, so it has to go through a special process. The social worker has to send it to risk management branch, and then risk management sends it back. So it’s not even as quickly as getting your social worker.

It could also be an easy fix, though. In other jurisdictions, they’ve legislated that foster parents are protected and have the same insurance that the social workers would have and could sign off. That’s one of the things that we’ve talked to the ministry about. They’re going to try to do a better job of educating people that there are a lot of them that they can sign and not to worry about the liability — but also, then, look at those larger ones where it’s a ski trip, perhaps, where there’s a bit more risk for liability.

L. Throness: Chair, maybe I could suggest that this is something the government could take up.

I wanted to ask, going forward: if we as a committee want to express concerns in this area or any other, will there be a representative from the ministry here to whom we could express these concerns on an ongoing basis?

N. Simons (Chair): Yes, Laurie. Actually, the next meeting will be taken up in large part by testimony from ministry staff, ministry senior executives, and we’ll be able to ask them questions about all aspects of the ministry. I look forward to that discussion.

S. Furstenau: Continuing along this…. I’ve identified that, too, as one of those ones. I was wondering about the possibility that if you have the child-in-care contact person, could that person be able to oversee? Since they’re already in the school system, could they be delegated that capacity? I know a lot of schools right now…. Where my kids go, for example, there are umbrella permission slips, and then you’re not asking for it every single time. Trying to simplify this and trying to put it in the hands of somebody that can have that delegated capacity or authority is really important.

[2:50 p.m.]

Then, to follow up on that, a few of the comments that I’ve heard so far are “social workers don’t know” or “people aren’t aware of the policy who are working in MCFD.”

I appreciate your question, Laurie, because I think this is really…. I was actually scanning the room for somebody from MCFD earlier.

Finding a way to ensure that people working in this ministry are continuously checking in so that they are fully aware of the laws and the policies and the acts…. We’ve seen many occasions in our constituency of incidents where processes aren’t being followed, rules aren’t being followed, policies aren’t being administered and children aren’t being provided the information they should be provided.

There does seem to be this overarching issue of a lack of awareness and understanding of policy and the legislation, aside from the fact that we hear constantly: “The legislation doesn’t let us do this or that.” This is how it seems to be invoked most of the time.

Finally…. These are more comments than questions. That, I think, is a really important piece — the piece in here about the children saying that they feel like they’re being talked about, not listened to. In your experience and knowledge, would that be a common experience throughout their interaction with the ministry? Or is it just specific to their school experience?

B. Richard: Absolutely. It’s a common theme, one that we hear often. We do a significant amount of youth engagement and outreach.

Recently, in Cowichan, we had 32 Indigenous youth in care in workshops for four days, and we gave them lots of space. The workshops were led by former youth in care. We had five elders with us throughout the four days. They could feel safe and able to express themselves. It was a very common theme. They’re often not listened to, but they’re talked to.

We think that, given the convention on the rights of the child and best practice, involving kids in the things that are so important in their own lives is super important.

Allow me to say that we’ve submitted a request to the Select Standing Committee on Finance to be able to do a bit more youth engagement to allow children in the care system to have more to say about their lives and how they’re impacted by the decisions that are made for them. So we’re hopeful that we can do more of that kind of work.

N. Simons (Chair): I will take this opportunity to recommend the Thin Front Line as one of the representative’s previous reports. I think it speaks to the underlying factors of almost every other report that finds challenges with social workers able to do…. I can tell you that I don’t know any social worker who wouldn’t sign a permission slip as soon as they were able to do so.

If there were any canary in a coal mine…. If a social worker can’t sign a permission slip for a child to go on a ski trip, we’re dealing with seriously overworked social workers. I don’t believe there’s any malice or ill-intent in that. It’s just a system that seems to be…. If they’re unable to address just that simple issue…. It seems simple, anyway. Thanks for that observation.

The Thin Front Line does speak to a chronic inability to meet the needs of the children who need it.

R. Glumac: Getting back to information-sharing, coordination and all that, recommendation No. 4 is great — to create positions dedicated to facilitating this across the Ministries of Education and MCFD and school districts. I guess my question is…. Looking through the report, it says: “Across stakeholder groups, participants in this review described examples of effective information-sharing…but this was inconsistent.” There are some examples of good practices there.

With all of the consultation and the stakeholder information that has come in, how is that going to be…? I’m always a big fan of championing success and making sure that that success is propagated.

[2:55 p.m.]

How will that information be carried through to the people that are going to be hired and tasked with those goals of information-sharing and coordination? Will they receive all that information?

B. Richard: We’re hopeful. We’re making that recommendation, certainly. Obviously, it’s a big system, lots of kids in the school system in B.C., so kids in care are a small percentage of those. They can easily be lost. That’s why we’re saying that there’s a requirement for coordination within school districts, a requirement for training for all teachers and principals on trauma and the impact of trauma on children.

We need to keep an eye on this particular subgroup, because their achievement rates are so egregiously poor compared to kids who are not in care. As we’ve said many times in our press release and in our public comments, if these kinds of outcomes were the outcomes of our children, we would not find that acceptable. But these kids are easily forgotten in so many different sectors of our society.

We’re certainly pushing for more attention to be paid to them, with dedicated resources — coordinators; information-sharing between social workers, who work in their silos, often; and school teachers and principals, who work in their silos. Everybody is busy, but we need to make sure that information is shared on these kids because their needs are particular and significant. If there’s no focused attention on their needs and their results, they will fall through the cracks, and we’ll see what we’ve seen over the past decades.

R. Glumac: Exactly. I completely agree with all of that. There’s nothing in the recommendation that talks about looking at best practices or utilizing innovation or technology or anything like that. It’s just a position.

B. Richard: We’re using now, with our reports, what we call a logic model that we’ve shared with both ministries. It’s a significant amount of more documentation that doesn’t find its way into the reports. We’ve identified a number of best practices in British Columbia but also outside.

There are things that are happening that work and should be underlined and replicated, if at all possible. Those are systemic kinds of initiatives that take the will to do it and resources dedicated to that. But there are really some successful initiatives out there, including in British Columbia.

So yes, we’ve identified those, and we’ve spent some time describing them in our related documents to the report.

R. Glumac: Okay. And that’ll be shared with those new people that are going to be hired?

B. Richard: Yeah. Education and ministry folks, of course.

D. Thomas-Wightman: Then we follow that up, and we monitor to see: have they taken the best practices? Are these people trained in that way, and have they taken the innovation? Then we report on how well they did or didn’t do. So we keep an eye on it.

B. Richard: Our recommendations in this report also…. We’d spent a lot more time than we might have usually done in developing the recommendations with officials from Education and MCFD. They’ve provided input.

We haven’t surprised…. No one in those ministries should be surprised by these recommendations. They’ve helped us develop the recommendations — people who work in the system every single day. They’re not just in our office here in Victoria or Burnaby or Prince George. They work in schools. They’re students. They’re teachers. They’re principals. They’ve contributed, including the recommendations.

Then we’ve brought in some folks with a lot of education…. I’m thinking of Nella Nelson, for instance, an Indigenous education leader, and others as well. We’ve tested those recommendations on them, as well, to see if it would make a difference.

We’re pretty confident in the recommendations. They’re not something we’ve thought up by ourselves. We’ve really tested them out on people who work every day in the system.

N. Simons (Chair): I’m pleased to see that the ministry has made some responses and put on some timelines to address some of the issues. Not all of them but…. I’m sure that the representative’s office will keep track of the recommendations.

B. Richard: You can count on it, Mr. Chair.

L. Throness: I just had one more question, about recommendation No. 1, to allocate specific funding to each school district based on the number of children and youth in care.

I look on page 22. It describes several different categories of extra funding. Aboriginal children get $1,200 a year. About half of children and youth in care have a special needs designation, and there are a number of categories there. Then there are vulnerable students, who get CommunityLINK funding to the tune of $63 million a year.

[3:00 p.m.]

I’m not exactly sure how these amounts, which are obviously extra, dovetail with your recommendation. Could you elaborate on this?

B. Richard: We wanted to point them out to indicate that there are precedents within the system of providing additional supports to students who are perceived to need additional supports. These are things that already exist, and we’re saying that if you did something similar with kids in continuing care, we could also help them improve their outcomes in school.

L. Throness: So you would say, for instance, that an Indigenous child who is in care should get more than $1,200 a year.

B. Richard: Yes, exactly, because their needs are additional.

T. Wat: I just want to educate myself — if I ask some questions that everybody understands. I just want to know, going back to the information-sharing…. Under the current legislation, the teachers are not supposed to know whether their students are in care.

B. Richard: I’m not so sure that it’s a legislated issue, but they often, as a matter of practice…. One of your colleagues told us he didn’t know, in his classroom, if there were kids in care or not. He would find out by accident. Or if a child needed a permission slip and couldn’t get one signed in time, for instance, he would know that that was the case.

There is no specific strategy identifying the kids in care, their particular needs, and then adopting ways to address those needs. It doesn’t happen currently. Certainly, it may happen in some districts, but by and large, teachers told us it really doesn’t happen.

T. Wat: Coming from your expertise, do you think that it will be better for those children in care that the teachers are aware that they are in care so that they can address their issues accordingly?

B. Richard: I think that in this area, as we’ve said before — in the area of youth mental health, for instance — information-sharing is critical. Sharing of knowledge…. It happens every single day, many times a day, in the physical care system. Professionals share information. It’s called the circle of care.

We think that in improving the educational outcomes of kids, addressing children and youth with mental health needs, sharing of information, tearing down silos and addressing perceived obstacles due to privacy concerns…. They’ve been addressed in other jurisdictions, and there have been efforts to address those here as well. But that is absolutely critical. The more that professionals work together, the better the outcomes will be for vulnerable children.

T. Wat: So the representative’s office will recommend definitely that there should be information-sharing between the teachers and school staff and also the social workers?

B. Richard: Yes.

T. Wat: Are we going to really push for this?

B. Richard: Yes.

T. Wat: Okay. Thank you.

N. Simons (Chair): I would point out, just from my experience, that most oftentimes the social workers and the teachers would have some sort of a relationship.

I remember that the Sechelt Nation, in fact, assigned social workers to specific schools. The school knew who the social worker was from that delegated agency, so any concerns or issues or questions could easily be dealt with. It was always done in a way that respected the privacy of the child.

Many young kids, or youth, also have a social worker when they’re not in care, so when a social worker goes to the school to speak to a student, they’re just there to speak to the student, and there’s no need for sharing of further information. All of the staff will know that there’s a social worker from the ministry or a delegated agency there to speak to a student.

There are some informal ways that have been used to get past these legalistic kinds of privacy concerns without really demeaning the importance of privacy, at the same time getting better communication.

I think it’s an interesting recommendation to have liaison workers in the schools, or perhaps even social workers, when they’re not called social workers or if they’re not seen as someone…. As a youth, you don’t want a social worker hanging around, necessarily, although I’ve seen situations where people have asked: “Why can’t everyone have a social worker?” There are times when it’s a positive relationship, and we sometimes forget to talk about those positive relationships that social workers have with their charges.

[3:05 p.m.]

We’re speaking about resilience. We’re speaking about resilience among young people to overcome the circumstances they face. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think those recommendations that have been put forward are important ones. I really appreciate the work that’s gone into basically narrowing things down to actionable steps.

Are there any other questions from my colleagues here, at this point? On that note, then, do we have any formal announcements to make about important…?

Well, thank you very much to the representative’s office. Dawn Thomas-Wightman and Bernard Richard, it’s always nice to see you. I appreciate your insight. And thanks to Brian Hill, again, for the work that he did.

Committee Meeting Schedule
and Draft Agenda

N. Simons (Chair): For committee members, we have a meeting coming up on Thursday, December 7, in Vancouver. It’s at the Wosk Centre. It’s actually called the Segal Graduate School of Business.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): It’s down the street.

N. Simons (Chair): Oh, down the street. Okay. Well, we can find it. That’ll be from ten o’clock until four o’clock. I’m not sure if we’re having a lunch.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, you’ll have a lunch provided.

N. Simons (Chair): Lunch will be provided, and we’ll have ten minutes to eat it because we have a lot of work to do.

We have a draft agenda put forward. It’ll involve again speaking to Bernard Richard and other witnesses, possibly from the representative’s office and possibly from others, just to talk about the role of the representative’s office overall. Then we’ll continue with our statutory review of the Representative for Children and Youth Act, which is one of our statutory requirements. We have to have our results in, in February, I believe.

Bernard, you’ll be busy.

The third item on our agenda will be the discussion about the Ministry of Children and Families in general. We’ll be speaking to the deputy minister, the provincial director of child welfare and the assistant deputy minister responsible for policy and provincial services. That will give us an opportunity, while not that long a period of time, to ask some specific questions. We can get answers at that time or at a later date, but we have an opportunity to put those questions forward.

Then we’ll complete the afternoon’s business with discussion around the Representative for Children and Youth Act and the ministry’s own submissions on how we might be looking at legislative changes.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Can I just add to that? Just a reminder to members that we have provided to you all, and uploaded to the committee’s portion of the iPad, a number of documents, submissions with respect to the statutory review process that were first received by this committee in the last parliament. They stand referred, as well, for your continuing deliberations.

I know that Alayna, our research analyst, has also been working through the statutory submissions that have been received. I’m sure that she would be able to provide to you all a summary of the information that’s been received to date. But if you’d like to go to that original collection of documents, they are available on your iPad or through our office.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much. Thank you to the Clerk’s office. Thanks to the representative’s office.

On behalf of Michelle, our Deputy Chair, I hereby adjourn this meeting.

The committee adjourned at 3:08 p.m.