The committee met at 9:03 a.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Good morning, everyone — committee members, guests and presenters. Thank you for being here on this windy Wednesday morning in Victoria.

It’s a jam-packed meeting. I think we have three reports to go through. We have a lot of people who have things to tell us today, and I’m looking forward to hearing from everyone.

We don’t really need to do a lot of introductions. We were here in March, I think. Maybe, actually, for the purposes of Hansard and such, we can go around.

Jennifer, welcome. Maybe you can introduce your colleagues and coworkers.

J. Charlesworth: Great. Thank you very much. I’ll do that in just a moment.

As a way of beginning in a good way, I want to acknowledge that we’re gathering today on the traditional and unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples and the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

On this windy Wednesday, I’m very grateful to be able to do our work and to meet with all of you today.

I will introduce folks at each of the reports as well. But as a general way of starting, I want to introduce Carly Hyman, who’s the chief investigator. Carly will be joining us for two of the reports. Blair Mitchell is the executive director responsible for advocacy and has been acting deputy, as well, responsible for advocacy and Indigenous strategies. Deputy Alan Markwart, whom you know well, is over here. Dianne Buljat is the chief financial officer, so will be with us for the annual report. Linda Hughes is the executive director responsible for monitoring and will be with us for two of the reports.

[9:05 a.m.]

Back here, you all know Jeff Rud, communications ED extraordinaire, who’s been really busy recently, and Jaime Wegner-Lohin, who will be working with us for the second report. There will be other people that will join us for the third report as well. So thank you.

I want to say my deep gratitude for finding time in your schedule to join us. I know that this is a very busy week, but we are delighted. Jennifer has worked hard with our office to create an opportunity for us to meet with you very closely after the release of an important report. We want to try and connect the dots more quickly for you between our reports in recognition of your role as champions in the Legislative Assembly. So that’s a wonderful thing. Thank you very much to Jennifer and your team.

We have three reports to share with you, the first being the annual report and service plan. Then we will move on to the adoption and permanency report and then finally the report that was released yesterday entitled Caught in the Middle.

Consideration of Representative
for Children and Youth Reports

ANNUAL REPORT AND SERVICE PLAN

J. Charlesworth: Let’s talk first about the annual report and service plan. I’m going to — responding to the annual report and service plan — also give you an office update. The annual report covers up until the end of the fiscal, and of course, things have been quite busy since then. So this report was released on September 30, and it covered the annual period, the fiscal year period, from 2018-19. I’m going to skip over. I’m assuming that you’re very familiar with our office, but if there’s anything that you’d like me to update, in terms of the structure of our office, then please ask me any questions at all.

Just to give you an oversight on the structure of our office, we have 66 FTE employees, and we have three office locations: Victoria, Burnaby and Prince George. Most of them work in the three areas that are mandated by our legislation in advocacy, critical injury and death reviews, and monitoring.

Our budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year is just over $9.7 million. We’ve actually asked the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for a 7 percent increase to our budget for the coming fiscal in order to deal with some significant pressures in our workload, and I’ll address those issues in a few minutes.

As I wrote in my message for the annual report and service plan, if I had to choose three words, they would be listening, learning and launching to represent this first year of my tenure. Listening is the most important of the three. That’s what my staff and I have been doing ever since I joined. It feels like it’s a blur, but it’s actually been 15 months since I took on the reins here. It truly remains my dream job, and it’s a privilege, every day, to work towards improving the experience and the lives of B.C.’s children, youth, and young adults.

I knew it was important to listen to as many voices as possible and to constantly be in community. For the few people that were here that were on my selection committee, I said that it was very important for me to say yes a lot, which I have — hundreds of events and speaking engagements that I’ve done over the last 15 months. Our team also has done a rights tour. They’ve been out in community — hundreds of engagements there. We’ve been engaging with youth, young people, families, caregiver service providers, First Nations, Métis organizations and leadership, among others.

Our annual report and service plan shows where we have been and with whom we have met. That’s in the latter part of the report. These visits and meetings are extremely important to create more awareness of our office and what we do. It’s actually quite shocking to me that when I go out into community, often no more than a quarter of the audience actually knows us. So that’s been important, but also, very importantly, to listen in to what is going on for them and what are the critical things that are impacting their lives and their well-being. So it allows me to hear firsthand about the issues that are most concerning to the people we are trying to help.

One of my favourite parts of this report, actually, is on page 66, where you’ll find a graphic that details the most common concerns expressed during our community outreach. We actually heard different concerns being raised by youth, by First Nations and Métis and urban Indigenous folks, and by families and caregivers, so we’ve tried to capture that. All of this rolls into what our leadership team does, in terms of setting priorities going forward.

[9:10 a.m.]

A couple of highlights from that. The things that we heard most frequently, which will be cornerstones of our work going forward, are family supports and preventive measures — absolutely unquestioning. What people…. Parents, family members and service providers told us that they need more help to address the issues that are preventing them from safely raising their children so that with safety still prioritized, fewer young people are ultimately raised in government care.

Certainly, that came up in the report that we released yesterday. It came up in the report that we released in Alone and Afraid. It has come up over and over again in the statements that we’ve made about how important it is that we support families that are struggling in order for them to raise their children within their community and within their extended family.

That was No. 1, for sure.

Number 2, self-determination. We’ve heard from First Nations, Métis and urban Indigenous leaders that RCY can be a strong ally in the resumption of Indigenous jurisdiction over their own child, youth and family services. In this past year, we either have signed off or have negotiated agreements with the First Nations Leadership Council, the delegated Aboriginal agencies, the Directors Forum and Métis Nation B.C., and we’re now starting work with the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres.

Within the agreements that we’ve been making is: how is it that the data that we hold, the information that we gather, could be in service of them as they start to set their criteria and their objectives for self-determination?

That was No. 2.

Youth voice. My favourite part of this job, in community, is meeting with young people. I, in fact, met with 64 young people in Chilliwack on the weekend. It was incredible. All Indigenous young people.

What we hear over and over again…. Whether it’s them wanting to have influence on the public policies that influence them or wanting to have influence on the course and the trajectory of their lives, it’s absolutely critical that they feel heard and that there’s meaningful, sustainable and ethical youth participation and input. That goes for any project that we are part of.

The fundamental piece is “Nothing about us without us.” We’ll talk about a couple of examples where I’m very, very delighted and proud of the way in which we’re trying things differently in order to make sure that that youth voice is heard.

Another key thing that came up was transitions. We’ve got an important role to play in advocating for better supports for youth as they transition from care into healthy adulthood. We also need to pay attention to other key transition points, such as transitions from MCFD into Community Living B.C.; transitions between placements and various forms of care; and transitions between youth custody, mental health or substance use treatment and the community.

We’ve heard loud and clear that when these transitions are not done well, children and youth are harmed. That certainly was a key in the report that we released yesterday as well. There are many different points at which that transition…. It feels like a cliff, or it feels like it’s being done to rather than done with and in a good way.

The final area that I’ll highlight, of our top five overall, is early interventions. We’ve heard that a key to improving the lives of vulnerable children and youth is to act early. I am interested, as you know, in backing up the bus to refocus some of our work on early intervention in areas such as early-years support, children and youth with special needs — that aligns with the committee’s interests, I know — alternative care models and wraparound supports for children and families.

We’re just launching a team that’s going to be taking a look at that, and I can tell you there’s a tremendous appetite for it.

Just as an aside, when we take a look at the critical injuries and deaths of 16- to 17- to 18-year-olds…. If we dive into their backstory, their history, almost all of them we’ve known about when they were much younger. For me, that really speaks to how important it is that we think about what we’re doing at three, four and five years of age, particularly.

That was the listening and the learning of the three l’s. The third is launching. Truthfully, perhaps it’s best to refer to it as relaunching. We’re relaunching our work at RCY in some key ways. I’m very grateful to the staff for indulging me in some ways as the new rep. They’ve been through a lot with three reps in a relatively short space of time, and of course, we all have very different personalities.

We’ve maintained the core functions of our office, which I believe have served B.C. well since RCY’s inception. Our three mandated areas have been very busy, busier than ever in this last year, and we’ll speak to that.

[9:15 a.m.]

We’ve also solidified our fourth major team, Indigenous strategies and partnerships, which is actually being renamed the First Nations, Métis and Inuit relations and engagement team. That serves to establish and nurture relationships with Indigenous partners in communities in B.C. and to advocate for culturally grounded and effective supports for Indigenous children, youth and families receiving government services.

Those are the key teams.

You may recall that I have spoken about having a two-deputy model. Deputy Dawn Thomas is not with RCY any longer. In very short order, we will be releasing a posting for a deputy responsible for advocacy, First Nations, Métis and Inuit relations. We’re very excited about that.

It’s actually quite a unique process that we’re going through. We’re doing it in collaboration with the First Nations Leadership Council and Métis Nation B.C. and having input from community in the selection of that process, as well as input from our staff, because this is probably the most important decision that I will make in my tenure, from a human resources point of view.

To talk a little bit more about shifting focus, while some key RCY functions have remained intact, the focus of our work has shifted in many ways as a result of the things we’ve heard and we’ve learned. For example, we’ve recommitted to featuring the participation and voices of youth in our work and to finding new ways to foster that participation. We’ve shifted towards a greater focus on aggregate reporting, highlighting trends and patterns detected through the study of multiple cases. This is in line with what Hon. Hughes recommended and foresaw in his seminal 2006 report that gave birth to our office.

We’re moving forward toward incorporating more systemic analysis into our investigations to ensure that our recommendations aren’t solely based on single stories but are reflective of systemic issues. I think that’s a critical piece. Those stories are important, but they always have to be grounded in: what are the systemic issues? And that’s guiding how we choose the stories that we bring forward.

We’re trying to make ourselves more accessible to children and youth, to First Nations, Métis and urban Indigenous people, and to others who speak languages other than English as well.

One of the things we’ll explore during the coming year is how best to translate our work into some of those other languages via our website and other means, which was actually recommended out of this committee. We’re also seeing that and profiling the experience of children with diverse ethnicity within our critical injuries and deaths. That has been very interesting. The recommendation that you’ll hear about later, from yesterday, spoke to understanding the ethnicity and the racialization of the children that we’re serving.

During the past year, we’ve continued to navigate the tension that exists between an independent oversight body such as ours and the entities it oversees — in RCY’s case, primarily the Ministry of Children and Family Development. But we know that independence doesn’t mean isolation and that we need to better understand the workings and challenges of a number of government ministries in order to be able to give proper context to our work and our recommendations.

To that end, we’ve engaged in extensive meeting and briefing sessions with the Ministry of Children and Family Development and others, including Health, Education, and Mental Health and Addictions. That has been very powerful. We’ve received in-depth briefings, and we have quite a different process now in which we share the work that we’re doing. Carly’s team, particularly, has done that in a very good way with our investigations. What’s really important is that we always understand the context within which we are doing the reports, making sure that we don’t make recommendations that have unintended negative impacts. We can only do that if we understand what’s going on.

That has been extremely helpful. All of the ministries have been very receptive, and we are doing a number of things to try and, as I say, calm down the central nervous system of the relations so that we actually get the best evidence possible, get the best information, get the most reports that are helpful for us going forward.

Obviously, relationships are important not only with ministries but also with service providers and, more now than ever, with the First Nations, Métis and urban Indigenous people and communities. With the currently shifting landscape of Indigenous child welfare, we’re exploring ways we can be most helpful to those communities, as many plan to reclaim jurisdiction over child welfare services once the new federal legislation comes into effect on January 1 and, hopefully, once the federal government releases its guidelines, its policies and, most importantly, the funding model.

What we’re doing in this context is we’re moving to a practice of ethical data-gathering and -sharing in true engagement and partnership in our relevant reports and projects so that our work is done in a good way and so that communities benefit from the data and research that is gathered.

[9:20 a.m.]

We’re developing an ethical research framework. We’re incorporating different Indigenous ways of knowing and being. We’re reaching out to our partners to understand what is going to be helpful.

I can say, as an aside on that, the First Nations Leadership Council, as you know, is comprised of representatives from First Nations Summit, from Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and from Assembly of First Nations. They took the plan and the joint commitment document to all of their general meetings in September, October and November, and they were unanimously endorsed in every case. So we’re able to move forward with that. That is an example of building the relationships, tending and caring for those and caring for the work that’s underway and reimagining our relationship.

The ISP team also works collaboratively with all RCY program areas to help ensure that our own office is culturally safer, respectful and responsive to the people we interact with, as well as to our own employees — those daily interactions that advocacy has, as well as all the way to the leadership.

Moving across our organization, our monitoring team that Linda leads conducts research, audit, evaluation and oversight of the public entities providing important services to children and youth in the province. Monitoring staff have embraced new ways of working par excellence. In particular, an exciting major project is currently underway by that team, which is conducting a review of the cross-ministry services and supports for children and youth with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. I’ll return to that project in a few minutes.

Let’s talk about a couple of the areas. Advocacy. I’d like to circle back to when I mentioned the workload pressures at RCY, which have created the need for this budget lift. You’ll read in the annual report and service plan that we opened nearly 1,600 new cases. Remember, we carry cases, sometimes, for many, many years. I think, probably, one for at least 11. It’s a long time, yes.

In addition, in July 2019, a change to the regulations for our act expanded our advocacy mandate to enable us to advocate for young adults up to their 24th birthdays who are eligible for agreements with young adults and who are on the tuition waiver program. As you know, through the recommendation that this committee made, we anticipate further expansion of our mandate as a result of future changes to the act itself that will allow us to help more youth from care through what is often a difficult transition phase. Part of the budget increase we seek is to deal with these and other pressures and advocacy. Over the past seven years, there has been a substantial growth in the complexity of our cases.

Now, we’ve circulated several graphs for you. In this, figure 1 speaks to the changes and the advocacy case complexity over time. Then you’ll also see average length of advocate involvement in the case management of cases by the advocates. I think those are important because they really speak to…. An important consideration is that we are dealing with many more complex cases.

There’s also been an average increase in the average length of time spent by an advocate on a case from 4.1 months in 2011-12 to 7.2 months last year. There’s been a 13 percent increase in the number of cases that are being handled by advocates rather than our intake advocates. These statistics indicate an increase in the complexity.

To unpack case complexity a little bit more, we measure that by several indicators, including the number of service providers involved, the number of case meetings held, the number of people associated with the case and the volume of correspondence in supporting documents.

With some of our cases, you might have 12 or 15 people involved, and you might have multiple programs. There might be multiple different interpretations of what the child needs, and the advocate tries to come through and ask those critical questions and hold the space for those parties to come together and figure what is in the best interest of the children going forward.

For these kids, as you can imagine, the higher the complexity, the likelihood of increased vulnerability and significant risk of harm. It’s imperative that we’re able to help these children and their families find their footing in what, as you know, can be a very confusing landscape of services. Essentially, this increased complexity of advocacy cases translates into increased workload for our advocates. Of course, the change in mandate also changes the dynamic.

[9:25 a.m.]

This expansion opened up services to a highly vulnerable population that’s typically in need of ongoing services and supports as well as active outreach. At any given time, we estimate that there are about 4,400 children within that cohort, and we have had no capacity to do outreach and promotion. Despite that, even though it was basically a few tweets out there and our effort to kind of talk about it a little bit when I’m out in community, we have had an increase of about 3½ percent. That translates into an annual review — an increase of 3½ percent, just with no promotion whatsoever. Clearly, what we need to do is get the word out, and we expect that that will increase significantly.

It’s important to remember who these kids are. They’ve often grown up in care. They’re often reluctant to continue to engage with the service delivery system, so we have to figure out really creative and unique ways to reach them. To give you an example of the challenge and what we need to do: MCFD has said that only 13½ percent of young adults who are actually eligible for those agreements for young adults have an open ministry file. So clearly, there is a significant underutilization of a very important service. That means we need to dedicate considerable efforts to reach out to that population, let them know what’s available to them and support them in that process.

We did make a budget request to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services in May, seeking some additional advocacy staffing. That was denied because the regulation hadn’t been brought forward. It was brought forward subsequent to that, so we went back to the committee this fall, and we are awaiting a determination of our request there.

Regardless, we decided that it was critically important that we do something about this, so we’ve actually…. It’s our obligation. It’s an ethical obligation, from our view: that we make sure that we’ve started to live into that expanded mandate. We redeployed two experienced advocates that are just beginning the process of engagement with service providers, communities and young adults in relation to this expansion. Of course, as you can imagine, when you take two very experienced advocates out of the pool, it’s a challenge for us, but it was the right thing to do.

It’s also important to understand who these kids are that we’ve reached so far. Of the 14 active cases, three of the youth identify as gender diverse. That’s interesting. One was a victim of alleged fraud by a social worker, and our advocate has pushed for an exception and extension to the youth’s AYA because of the circumstances of that case.

We have asked the Finance Committee, as I mentioned, for funding for two advocates, and we’re waiting. That will help us deal with the increased pressures, complexity and this expanded mandate. We will see what happens.

Let’s talk about CID. That workload has expanded for our CID team. There is one slide in this one, the last page, that speaks to in-mandate critical injury and death reports over time, and you get a bit more sense of it here in this sheet as well. So it’s important to consider this.

In 2018-19, in our annual report, we talked about the 2,735 reports of critical injuries and deaths of children in care or receiving services. Of these, a total of 1,146 were within mandate — we can talk about that if you’re interested — and each one of those had to be screened and reviewed by our CID staff. They go into the backstory, the file in the integrated case management system, in order to better understand what’s going on and then prepare briefings for us, as executive.

Those totals, both in mandate and out of mandate, are record highs for our office. To put it into perspective, our in-mandate reportables that we received were 43 percent higher last year than they were in 2014-15. As we go forward, based on what’s happened thus far in the fiscal year, our reportables will be up nearly 23 percent this current fiscal. I should just say that that dramatic growth is not because — we don’t believe it’s because — there are more injuries and deaths but because there is a better understanding of when those reports should be made to the RCY. We’re grateful for that. We could talk about that more, if you wish.

[9:30 a.m.]

Obviously, with that kind of a growth and not a growth in our CID staff, we are overwhelmed. Of course, we’re also trying to do a number of things around aggregates and work with First Nations leadership and Métis leadership, etc. We are expecting that to increase even more because we are working with the health authorities now to fulfil their requirement, under our act, that they also submit reportables. I had my first meeting with Island Health yesterday. We’re talking about how they’re going to fulfil that statutory requirement. So it could really significantly increase.

Why does that matter? The review of critical injury and death reports is vital to the effective functioning of the RCY not just because, ultimately, it leads us to investigations or reviews, but it’s also really important because we can do a lot behind the scenes as well. When we see, for example, a child that has come in before us two or three times in a month with a critical injury or five or six times over the course of three months, we pay attention to that.

We track how many times we have heard about this child. We have a number of options that we’ve put in place. We can raise them as a case of concern, directly to the director of child welfare. That’s really important. They’re very appreciative of that because sometimes we see things that their staff, when they’re kind of in the trenches, don’t see. We can raise it as a hot spot or a concern about, perhaps, a geographic area or, perhaps, a population area. We can involve the advocacy. That’s a new area too — being able to refer it over to an advocate so an advocate can bring themselves in.

What’s really important is that behind-the-scenes work because that allows us to do immediate action. It also enables us to report on themes and trends in injury and death data, to make better-informed recommendations and to improve the effectiveness and responsiveness of services to children and youth.

This is also important in the work that we’re doing with the First Nations Leadership Council, Métis Nation B.C. and the delegated Aboriginal agencies.

We have requested funding from the Finance Committee to add one investigations analyst to address these workload pressures. On the finance side, we’ve requested a budget of $10.471 million for fiscal year ’20-21, which represents an increase of $684,000, or about 7 percent, over previously approved amounts. Of that, $455,000 is to cover these three additional FTEs, and the rest is the result of increases that are out of our control and are necessary.

I’m almost there. I’m just going to talk about upcoming work. A few of the exciting projects that we have underway that we will bring to you in the upcoming months…. We actually have, I think, about seven reports and initiatives that will be brought forward to you over the next six months.

The monitoring report that I mentioned, on fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, includes the participation of children and youth in five families. We’ve done a deep ethnographic piece of work there. They’re sharing their lived experience with FASD. It will also highlight the experiences of the parents and caregivers as they attempt to access services within the system.

We’ve also been reaching out to communities. In fact, our team is in Nuu-chah-nulth territory right now over two days, meeting with over 100 people. We were in Ktunaxa territory. We met with about 100 people there. Surrey — I think in a couple of weeks, another 120. We’ll be up in Nisg̱a’a territory and the Okanagan Nation Alliance.

We’ve done that in partnership with the communities. We’ve actually taken their direction as to how best to do it. In each community, it looks different. It’s very powerful. In fact, an elder in Ktunaxa territory said: “I’ve been waiting to have this conversation for 30 years.” And 40 percent of the kids in the Ktunaxa community are living with FAS. He said he’s been wanting to have this conversation, and it has just been hidden.

We’re really hoping that we can do this in a very, very respectful way — bring the research in but, most importantly, bring the voices. Both the chair and the deputy chair participated in a very intimate gathering with the young people, their families and key decision-makers, deputies and ADMs, of the various ministries. It was a very powerful day for us, with the voices. Basically, we just listened to those kids for the first half day. It was quite extraordinary.

Another report on the horizon focuses on youth homelessness in B.C., offering potential solutions. It’s being written by a young woman with lived experience and informed by input gathered from many youth who’ve experienced homelessness.

[9:35 a.m.]

The other project I’m going to mention today is examining legal representation for children and youth in matters that affect them, including mental health detentions, high-conflict family law disputes and children protection cases. This project also includes the views of children and youth, what their experiences have been like and what needs to change in order for their voices to be heard.

You probably are aware that we did make a data request to the Ministry of Attorney General on the legal representation report and that did result in a court case. Just as backdrop, my office requested records from the AG relating to the family advocate program that was cancelled in 2002. The Attorney General challenged my jurisdiction to undertake the work as it relates to family law proceedings. We took the perspective that it was an important public policy matter.

Our case was heard in August, and I’m very pleased that the Supreme Court determined that this work was fully supported by my authority and mandate and required the AG to produce the records requested. The AG decided not to appeal last week. We’re very appreciative that we can get on with that work. We’re also working out a safety valve so that these issues don’t escalate to legal action in the future. On that note, I should say we did try, over a number of months, to resolve the dispute without going to court, but sometimes that’s why courts are there.

I should also mention we’re also working on a very important report that Linda’s team is leading on transitions into adulthood. I think that’s going to be extremely powerful as well.

In conclusion, all these projects are highlighting voices not typically captured in such reports. It’s something we’re very committed to do more of going forward. We are an evolving institution, which is a healthy thing. Sometimes we run into bumps, but most of the time we’re moving forward in a good way. I’m sure our work will progress and change further during the next few years.

One thing’s for certain. It’s just who I am and who the team is. We’ll continue to listen and learn from British Columbians about how we can help improve the well-being of our most precious resource, our young people, and we’ll continue to launch ourselves with energy and commitment into this important work.

Thank you for listening in. That’s the longest of the sessions I will provide today. Clearly, I am passionate about the work, this amazing team that I get to work with and, most importantly, the young people and the families that we get to hear from.

I welcome any questions that you have. We’re all here to answer.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much, Jennifer. I really appreciate that very thorough rundown of your past activities and future plans. I know that my colleagues on the committee have questions, so I’ll ask them to please indicate if they wish to ask a question.

L. Throness: Thank you, Representative, for speaking to us today.

I’m a bit of a skeptic in all things, so I’m a little bit skeptical of your office as well. To suggest that there’s some kind of a moral obligation or ethical obligation on the part of the government to give you the budget lift that you request, I think, is just maybe a little bit much.

I wanted to ask…. You said that you’ve asked for $10.4 million. Your actual budget last year was $9.4 million, which was a 5.5 percent increase over the year before. Now you want an 11 percent increase, it would seem to me, if you want a $1 million increase. Could you clarify that?

J. Charlesworth: Yes. Can I just clarify one thing before that? When I talked about the moral and ethical, it’s like: that’s my moral and ethical responsibility to do what I can. I’m not saying that the government has…. I can’t speak to the morality and the ethics of government. I certainly can speak to mine, and that is it’s important that we do whatever we can to reach out to the young people. So just to clarify that.

Just to clarify, our budget last year was $9.75 million, I believe, not $9.4 million. But I will turn it over to Alan and Dianne to respond.

A. Markwart: The comparison, actually, should be to the previously approved budget lifts. Budgets are approved on a three-year rolling period. The previously approved budget lift for next fiscal year, which was approved last fiscal year, was actually $9.787 million. So the additional amount is the difference between those two, not from the base.

L. Throness: So you received maybe an 8 percent increase from the year before in this fiscal year.

[9:40 a.m.]

A. Markwart: No, it would have been more in the order of 3 or 4 percent.

L. Throness: Because you had an $8.9 million budget in 2018.

D. Buljat: Our lift from 2018 to 2019 was 5.7 percent.

L. Throness: Right. Is this going to be a continuing thing? You got 5½ percent last year; you’re asking for 7½ percent now. Do you project that going forward, the same type of thing?

A. Markwart: Well, that’s hard to say. I think it depends on the circumstances. For example, it was the committee that recommended an expanded mandate around young adults. The current potential population, just in the 19- to 23-year range, addresses about 4,400 potential young adults who have been formerly in care. The proposal is to expand that up to the age of 26, which would bring in more than 8,000. That would also bring in more young adults with special needs.

As our legislative mandate increases, obviously the workload demand is going to increase in parallel with what government has decided should be our mandate. Yes, we will need additional resources. How much that will be will very much depend on the uptake of new cases. On the critical injury and death front, there has been, as indicated, a very substantial increase in the number of reports of critical injuries. Some of that is really catch-up. If you look at the data, the uptake started in June of 2015, where there was a protocol agreement with the Ministry of Children and Family Development about reporting, and there’s been a consequent increase every year.

One of the anomalies about our office is that we have not received critical injury and death reports from the health authorities, even though it is legally required. We’re in the process of discussions with the Ministry of Health to get that corrected. But it is a legal mandate that we are obliged to pursue and that the health authorities are obliged to report. Again, we’re going to have workload increases as a result of that.

Additionally, there is some potential growth around increased reporting from the Ministry of Children and Family Development, although they’ve been doing a much better job around reporting of critical injuries and deaths. We routinely find in our review of current cases…. It is routine to find examples of critical injuries that weren’t reported to us. So if they were to report as completely as they should, the potential for increased workload is, again, potentially greater. That’s kind of a long way of saying we don’t know what the demands are.

We’re not going to be asking for more resources than we need. The implication of not receiving new resources would, for example, be that we would have to put children and youth on wait-lists for advocacy services. These are very highly vulnerable youth. Their advocacy services typically cannot wait. They’re calling because they’re in urgent circumstances.

N. Simons (Chair): Thanks, Alan. I accept that’s a valid question. I’d just say that there’s a Finance Committee that has done a review of the submissions by the office. I appreciate that. I just want to make sure we move so that we get to everything else.

Sonia has a question.

S. Furstenau: A couple of questions. Maybe I’ll try to fit them all into one package and let you respond to them. I guess one of my questions on the budget….

[9:45 a.m.]

I recognize that there’s a committee that’s looking at that, but just a very succinct question about how much of an impact on the budget it is to have two deputies. What is the cost of that, specifically, and how does that translate to other FTEs?

In terms, Alan, of what you just said about advocacy, I’m curious about how much there could be a prioritization within RCY to say…. You know, you say that it could put children on a wait-list for advocacy. To me that sounds a bit like a question of priorities as opposed to, say, putting report-writing on a wait-list or putting other things on a back burner and saying: “Advocacy is the top priority. There won’t be a wait-list.” That’s sort of a question around that kind of thinking.

The critical injuries and deaths reports. I mean, I recognize that you say in 2015-2016, there was a change in the reporting structures, but there’s been a steady increase since then. You’ve also indicated that it doesn’t even capture the full reporting around that. Of the 1,400 that are predicted for 2019 and 2020, how many different individual children and youth is that?

I heard that you said sometimes it could be one reported five times. As a portion of the number of children in care, we’re talking 20 percent if that’s individual children and youth, in which case that is a crisis. I would say compare that to data around injuries and deaths of children not in care, and you start to have to ask really hard questions about what the implications are to a child’s well-being once they’re put into the system. If these numbers indicate that kind of level of danger, there should be real alarm bells going off, more than they seem to be at the point.

Finally, the last one is about your strategic planning and the plan around being culturally responsive and culturally attuned. It says: “To develop a human resources strategy aligned with the Public Service Agency that supports recruitment and retention of Indigenous staff.” My question is: how many staff currently at RCY are Indigenous, and what is the plan to recruit more Indigenous…? As I understand, about 60 percent of your clients are Indigenous, so I was wondering how much your hope is to reflect that in your staff.

There’s my roundup of questions.

J. Charlesworth: Okay. Well, let’s see how we do with covering all of those. Thank you very much for those questions. They’re all great.

With respect to the two-deputy model, it’s an important question that you ask around what the implications are for us. What you should know is that we have actually restructured, so we’re down two EDs in order to create the opportunity to have a second deputy. Why I think that’s so important is that especially at this point in transition, with more nations contemplating resumption of jurisdiction and what that’s going to mean, we have a responsibility at the most senior level to build those relationships, to support that process and to also provide some oversight to that.

I am non-Indigenous. I’ve worked really hard, and I will always have a certain amount of cultural bias and not fully understand, so having an Indigenous deputy is critically important. The way in which we’ve done that to make it cost neutral is to change the configuration of the leadership team, so we’re down two EDs in order to create that opportunity. That’s one thing.

In terms of the advocacy and other priorities and shifting that, of course that’s a constant process. In fact, we’re going in for a one-day session as a leadership team on Monday to take a look at the priorities and how we’re going to deal with the stressors that we’re experiencing right now.

As you say, it’s always like: “What is the most important thing that we need to pay attention to in terms of child and youth well-being.” Advocacy, absolutely. But I would argue, too, that it’s just as important that we get those reports out there, that we do the aggregates, that we take a look at these critical injuries.

That’s because with the critical injuries and deaths, we can figure out who needs help right now and what we elevate as cases of concern. Also, our reports are opportunities to effect systemic change that would try and address some of the things that are bringing these kids into harm in the first place. As an example, with the report released yesterday, all of the recommendations were accepted and will be implemented. That’s the case for all of our reports so far. We’re monitoring that. Seeing the changes systemically is really important for us because it allows us to back up and hopefully reduce.

[9:50 a.m.]

On the reporting, I’ll turn to Carly and Alan on this as well. It’s important that our reportables…. You know that it’s not just children in care. These are children receiving designated and reviewable services as well, so it’s not a percentage of the child-in-care population. There are some young people that are actually in extended family homes or out-of-care options, and we are seeing injuries experienced by those children, too.

That’s important to understand as the ministry pursues out-of-care options. What’s going on? How do we, again, wrap around families so they’re more successful? That’s an important consideration — around the percentage and really being able to understand what is happening and who’s at greatest risk and then being able to reflect that back into the system.

I want to turn to Carly and Alan about other things you want to add in response to that, and then we’ll deal with the strategic plan and our hiring.

N. Simons (Chair): We have two other people on the list for questions, so let’s be a little mindful.

A. Markwart: Okay. Quickly, in terms of the reallocation, as Jennifer mentioned, we added two advocates. We did that by way of an internal reallocation. That’s an ongoing process.

It is important, as Jennifer mentioned around both the advocacy side and the reportable circumstances, that we’re not dealing with just children in care — so the special needs population, a very large child and youth mental health population, as well as a young adult population. You can’t take percentages just against the 6,000 children in care and then all of the…. Even the services under the CFCSA are much larger than that 6,000 that are simply in care.

In terms of the recruitment of Indigenous staff, well, last spring, it was 21 percent of our overall staff, including both permanent and auxiliary staff. And 17 percent of our permanent staff were Indigenous. We took a look at our recruitment over the last 18-month period. Among permanent staff, we lost five Indigenous permanent staff, but we gained nine. So there has been some progress.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you.

Does that satisfy your question, Sonia?

S. Furstenau: Sure. We’ll let the other members have questions.

E. Ross: That’s a lot to absorb, given the graphs and the reports. I’ve been dealing with children in care for the last 15 years. I actually thought I removed myself from that file until I became an MLA and found out my caseload just increased as an MLA in Terrace and Kitimat.

Let’s get right to it. In a politically correct world, we don’t want to talk about the real issues facing First Nations. I was quite shocked to hear that 40 percent number you made in terms of FAS.

I understand there’s very little we can do when we talk about conditions related to the medical community, neuro­diversity. I understand that. But I’ve always taken an approach to go to the source of a problem when we’re dealing with social issues like FAS or other issues like that. I find that nobody really wants to talk about the source of the problem. I always look for the reports to find out if there’s anything really substantially being done to fix the source.

Let’s get right to it. It’s the stability of the family, the stability of the parents. I know there’s outreach in terms of education around alcohol and drugs and all that kind of stuff. But is there any…? I’ve read a number of reports already from across Canada, from Indigenous institutions and from government institutions, that talk about the social issues and the cure for these social issues. But it’s not talking about the actual problem that we’re facing, like we’re addressing here today.

Does your group actually look at the source of the problem and how we can actually address this source so we don’t have to deal with these kinds of numbers in the future?

N. Simons (Chair): Thanks, Ellis. I hope Jennifer will talk about the early intervention and preventative focus.

[9:55 a.m.]

J. Charlesworth: Yes, definitely. There are a couple of other things that I think are important for us to understand. What we’re dealing with is a multifaceted, highly complex issue — the impact of colonization over generations and generations and the way in which that has affected the fabric of the community and their capacities and capabilities.

I think one of the things that we are experiencing when we are out in community is that the communities recognize what’s going on and are trying really hard to figure out ways of going forward. This is why we’re spending time in Indigenous communities and trying to deeply understand what’s going to make a difference.

I can tell you that in Ktunaxa territory, they had an excellent program that was in place for a number of years. It was well researched and was very impactful, and then it lost funding because it was a pilot project. Those are really important things for us to understand. There are really good things that have been done but actually haven’t been able to be sustained. We can speak to that.

I guess I have a lot of thoughts on this one. But of course we’re taking a look at early intervention, at prevention, at community capacity-building, at the wishes of the community to find their health and their wellness and their healing in the face of the impacts of colonization over time.

The other thing that’s important for us is to recognize that this is a phenomenon that kids and young adults and adults are experiencing right now. So the other part of our work is to say: “Let’s not erase them as if they were a mistake, as if they were preventable, but recognize that folks with FAS are among us.” They’ve got diverse abilities, and they’ve got many aspirations and hopes and dreams, just like the rest of us. So how is it that we not only do prevention and early intervention but we also recognize that they’re among us right now and we have to support and lift them up in the best way possible?

N. Simons (Chair): Ellis, do you want to just follow up there?

E. Ross: Yes. That’s not what I’m talking about. That’s a politically correct conversation I’ve read over the last few years. It’s a narrative that doesn’t actually reflect reports from other agencies, including Aboriginal agencies. I understand the programs have good purposes and intentions in mind, but they are unsustainable. They’re mainly maintenance programs to try to monitor a situation like FAS, for example.

What I’m really getting at is…. I didn’t even find this out until probably last year. Even Indigenous organizations said that a large part of the social issues affecting First Nations communities, apart from the narrative of colonization — I’ve never used that term — is that there’s got to be some economic stability in the community, in the family — when a caregiver, male or female, comes in and has a sense of pride, a sense of duty, and then can pay more attention to some moral obligations or family values.

That’s what I’m really getting at. Otherwise, you’re just continually maintaining the problem and trying to create a program that hasn’t actually worked in the last 30 years.

Is there any appetite within your organization or affiliated organizations to say: “Yes, we should be looking at the economic conditions and trying to see if we can actually bring some stability to the family”? I’m not saying a job is the only cure here, but according to the reports I’ve read, it’s a big part of the cure. It’s a big first step. That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t see that in any of these reports. Has there been any consideration given to that?

J. Charlesworth: Thanks for coming back with additional clarification.

One of the things we’ve started to take a look at with our critical injuries and deaths reviews is what we call lifetime issues of interest — what has happened in the backstory of a child. In 35 percent of those young people that we become aware of through critical injuries and deaths, poverty is a lifetime issue. What you’re speaking to around economic capacity or economic viability and the capacity of the family to provide the care is absolutely on our radar.

And economic development. Although my scope does not get to making public policy decisions or recommendations with respect to economic development, it’s certainly something that we are seeing and that we are flagging and starting to track.

The other thing I should say, too, is that in about 56 percent of the critical injuries and deaths that we see, parental substance use has been a factor. In 46 percent, domestic violence. These are things that are important to understand from the point of view of the context within which children are living and what they’re experiencing, going forward, and what impacts their well-being.

[10:00 a.m.]

Absolutely, I agree with you that economic capacity, economic well-being, is a factor in the ways in which families can nurture their children. As Cindy Blackstock often says: “Poverty should not be the reason that children are removed from their families.” So of course, that affects us when we speak about public policy matters.

N. Simons (Chair): Thanks for that, Ellis.

Laurie, do you have a quick one?

L. Throness: I have three quick questions. I don’t know how you want to fit that in.

N. Simons (Chair): Just lay them all out, and we’ll see if we have time.

L. Throness: Okay. I struggled a bit as I went through your report, which is really very detailed, to see what we really need to know about children and youth and what’s happening on the ground.

I picked out three things. First, on page 12, we have 6,263 children in care. That number is dropping quite precipitously. It dropped, like, 10 percent this last year. My question is: have you cast a critical eye on what the ministry is doing in allowing so many children to be left in homes who would otherwise, in prior times, have been removed from homes? Are families 10 percent better? Could you speak to that?

J. Charlesworth: Yes, I can, and I could tell you I just had a conversation with the deputy a couple of weeks ago, who said: “Jennifer, we’re down below 6,000 kids in care.” I said: “Great. What’s happening to all the kids that aren’t coming into care?” So it’s definitely on our radar.

Really, what the shift is, is that the ministry is exploring more of what they call out-of-care options. Rather than a child being removed from the family, they’re trying to navigate and negotiate other arrangements, primarily with extended family or people that are known to the child.

What we are taking a look at is: what is the impact of those out-of-care options? How successful are they? What are some of the things that are important to support? That number one issue that I raised earlier about the wraparound supports and the prevention piece is clearly an important area for us, because when a child….

We’ll give you an example. One of the families that’s connected to us through the FAS project is a grandmother, and she is caring for her grandchildren. She’s got five grandchildren. It’s so important that she gets the support she needs. The kids are not in care; they are in her care. They’re no longer in the care of their biological parents.

She speaks very articulately about what it’s like to do that and not get the support she needs. That now increases the vulnerability for her and her family. So there’s an important out-of-care option that we’re paying attention to, writ large, on a broader scale.

The reason for the numbers is they’re finding alternative approaches. We’re taking a look at what’s happening with those alternative out-of-care options or rescindments or whatever. Are the children safe, and are they being supported?

N. Simons (Chair): So she did have a critical eye.

Go ahead. The second one?

L. Throness: Okay. Great. Page 19. I just saw the 31 percent in advocacy case files that involve higher-needs children. That, to me, is really alarming. I’m wondering: to what do you attribute that? Have you examined the origins of these heightened numbers of children who are coming in with higher needs? What is causing this heightened stream of deeply needy children?

N. Simons (Chair): Is this for Blair?

B. Mitchell: In terms of talking about the complexity of the cases and what we’re seeing? Is that what you’re…?

L. Throness: Yeah. A 31 percent increase. That’s a huge increase.

B. Mitchell: I think, as Jennifer is talking about, there are so many factors that contribute to that. Young people are often involved with multiple service providers. They’re dealing with different workers. They’re dealing with different decision-makers. They’re dealing with issues in their communities of, as your colleague talked about, poverty unemployment.

We’re just trying to understand and support youth in ways that we’re getting to know their issues better.

J. Charlesworth: I’ll add to that, as well, that the work of the advocacy team on outreach has been very powerful. They’ve done the Rights Tour all across the province.

What we’re seeing are more people and more capacity within communities to do self-advocacy or to do locally based advocacy, which is really important. The kinds of things we’re then getting are the more complex cases, because it’s where the organizations or the people involved with the children have exhausted their capacity to do advocacy at the local level. Then they’re contacting us.

I think it’s also that there’s more being done at the local level because there are supports available for that, and more that we’re getting the tricky ones.

[10:05 a.m.]

L. Throness: You’re saying that there’s more awareness of the RCY’s office, so it may not reflect a worsening situation on the ground? That would be a relief to me.

Can I ask one more quick question?

N. Simons (Chair): Yeah, you’re on probation.

L. Throness: On page 29, the critical injuries and deaths that you investigate have gone from 230, ten years ago, to 1,140. That’s almost a fivefold increase. You say the implementation of an updated reportable circumstances policy…. So it is a matter of definition of cases that has led to the increase.

Can you tell me what the policy is? Did you, did RCY, make the new policy? Did MCFD? What do you think of the policy? What was the policy change?

J. Charlesworth: Which one of us? We could all jump in if you want.

A. Markwart: Well, I think I can answer that. Quite frankly, the ministry…. Up until that point, there was a debate about what constituted critical injury. Critical injury is defined in the legislation. We reached agreement with the ministry around what constitutes a critical injury, and as a result, they applied that policy, and we consequently saw a substantial increase in cases. More simply put, they weren’t reporting previously what they should have reported.

If I could return to your previous question, just as an additional explanation. There’s been a substantial drop in the number of children in care. Most likely, those children who are no longer in care are the less complex cases. So what remains are more complex cases. That would, at least in part, explain the increasing complexity.

N. Simons (Chair): Would it also be fair to suggest that the increase in the number of critical injuries reported — the new number — are those that would not have previously been reported because of the uncertainty as to whether or not they….

A. Markwart: Absolutely.

N. Simons (Chair): In other words, they are probably of less severity or acuity of the particular…. You’re not getting…. When it was obvious, all of the reports were made, but when it wasn’t…. Is that possible?

A. Markwart: That’s a good point.

J. Charlesworth: I’m not so sure about that, but I’m going to look to Carly.

C. Hyman: I’m not so sure about that either. I mean, if you look to the report that we released yesterday, this was a youth…. This is in the last three or four years. He experienced many critical injuries that were never reported to our office. In fact, the only report we received was of his death, and we do often see, when the ministry does its own internal reviews of injury and death reports, that we get a bit of a flurry of reports, because they will go through their own files and notice that injuries weren’t reported.

We have experienced…. I think we are seeing much better reporting, but it’s still not quite perfect.

J. Charlesworth: I would like to just say that I don’t think that it’s that we’re getting the lesser injuries. I think what we’re also seeing is that there’s a greater understanding of what impact things like loss of a parent…. That wouldn’t have been reported previously, but we code that now as emotional harm, and there are a significant number of children who are losing parents as a result of the opioid issues. Those kinds of things didn’t used to be coded, but clearly, those are significant impacts on a child’s well-being in their life. That is a life-altering injury, so it is a better protocol.

It’s a better understanding, and it’s also, I like to think, that we’ve been doing more outreach, including into the ministry, to say: “This matters, and this is how we use the data. This is not to find fault or to blame, but it’s to teach us about how a system needs to improve.”

N. Simons (Chair): We’ve gone way over time, but it’s a really thorough report and has a lot of information in it. I really appreciate the questions that are being asked.

Just on your last point, though, if I may — the opioid epidemic and the overdose epidemic and the impact on children. Is there any specific…? Is there data on that? Is there a review of the circumstances of those children? Are there special programs in place? Maybe you can comment.

J. Charlesworth: Certainly, the information that we’re now starting to take a look at in terms of lifetime issues, and the parental substance use is an example of us starting to question what’s going on there. That’s an area where we’ve talked about some aggregate work, as well, and really understanding: how many children? What are their characteristics? What kind of loss? It is something…. As you know, it’s an issue that has been spoken about in the United States, and it’s certainly one that we’ve been talking about as well.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you so much, Jennifer.

Let’s take a one-minute recess as we….

Interjection.

N. Simons (Chair): Okay, one and a half, then.

The committee recessed from 10:10 a.m. to 10:14 a.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Well, thank you very much. We just had a little quick break.

Jennifer, we’re about to go into reviewing the August 2019 report B.C. Adoption and Permanency Options Update. I look forward to hearing your presentation. Go ahead.

Adoption and Permanency Options
Update 2019

J. Charlesworth: This is our second report for the day. I’d like to introduce Jaime and Linda. Linda is the executive director responsible for monitoring, and Jaime was the person who held the pen on this report.

[10:15 a.m.]

It took us quite some time to do it, for a variety of reasons. We are happy to talk about that. I’m really proud of this report because it actually signalled a pivot in the way in which we talk about adoptions and, most importantly, permanency.

Just to give a bit of background, in June 2014, the then representative issued a report entitled Finding Forever Families: A Review of the Provincial Adoption System. It was prompted by the representative’s concern about the nearly 4,000 children and youth who were in the continuing custody of the ministry at the time, 1,000 of whom were eligible for adoption.

In addition, at that point, MCFD’s adoption program hadn’t been reviewed since 2002, and the representative felt it was timely to build an understanding of the important metrics related to adoption. So at the time, those metrics included the number of children eligible for adoption, the number of available and new adoptive homes approved, and the time it took to move a child or youth from a continuing custody order to an adoption and placement.

In order for the system to improve, it was important — and it remains important — to understand the barriers and challenges to finding permanency for children and youth involved in the provincial care system. At the time the report was released in 2014, the representative committed to issuing periodic updates on the status of B.C.’s adoption program. Four updates were released: November 2014, April 2015, December 2015, and December 2017. So our report in August was the fifth and final update on the initial 2014 report, because we have pivoted.

Although the initial report and subsequent B.C. adoption and permanency option updates fulfilled the intention of public and ongoing monitoring of key adoption metrics, they did not provide adequate information, in our view, on the extent of permanency experienced by children and youth involved with the B.C. care system.

So really, in fairness, conceptualization of permanency has been shifting and evolving during the five years since that first report. In 2014, legal permanency, primarily referring to adoption, was believed to be more desirable and much more desirable than the other aspects of permanency, which, at the time, included relational, cultural and physical permanency. So at that time, adoption was prioritized, and it was evidenced by the fact that workers were required to actually obtain an exception from their regional managers if they wanted to pursue a permanency plan other than adoption for a child who was under 12.

The ministry’s practice of prioritizing legal permanency, combined with our focus in the RCY on adoption numbers, led to MCFD allocating resources and setting targets for adoption placements. However, since 2014, First Nations, Métis and Inuit leaders in communities and families have challenged this one-dimensional conceptualization of permanency, and many have suggested that legal adoption is a colonial construct that has caused harm.

These voices have called for more work to be done to prevent removals from family members, greater efforts to place children and youth with extended family members, more attention paid to cultural permanency, and more effort given to supporting customary or custom adoption within Indigenous communities. More recently, MCFD has demonstrated an increased awareness of the fact that adoption is not in the best interest of every child. Effective July 2018, an exception to adoption is no longer required to produce an alternative permanency plan for children under 12.

The ministry also indicated at that time that it was reviewing the permanency plan of each child and youth who had adoption identified as their aftercare plan to ensure that each of them had what MCFD described at the time as a best interest–informed permanency plan.

We recognize that adoption numbers don’t tell the complete story when it comes to working towards permanency for the children who come in contact with the care system. We are concerned, in the RCY, about the bigger questions pertaining to all dimensions of permanency and how the ministry is addressing these. So evidence tells us — and youth have reinforced the message — that relational permanency, those strong enduring connections to family, community, and helping professionals, is the most important. In fact, we spoke about that at the break.

Our office is going to be monitoring key shifts in the ministry’s understanding and practice of supporting permanency through RCY’s upcoming work in the areas of care planning and transitioning into adulthood and through our advocacy work. The numbers presented in this latest update capture some of the efforts made by MCFD to find legal permanency but do not provide adequate information on the breadth and quality of permanency planning.

Due to changes in the ways in which permanency and adoption are understood and the views held about adoption by our First Nations, Métis and Inuit leaders, communities and families, we’ve decided that our future monitoring reports will take a broader view on permanency.

[10:20 a.m.]

Our future work will be informed by youth in and from care who’ve added their voices to the reconceptualization of permanency, suggesting that relational permanency is more important to them than legal permanency. Our consultations with youth advisors have also led to the exploration of a fifth dimension of permanency, which is now beginning to gain traction since we released the report. It’s identity permanency, and that’s defined by youth as the opportunity to develop a more enduring, informed and positive sense of themselves as they move into adulthood. That has many dimensions. Happy to discuss that.

They’ve expressed a desire to have access to information about their family, the circumstances that led them to being in care, what happened to them while in care, access to assessments — this is a critically important piece — so that they can better understand the challenges that they might face with respect to learning, mental health, health, employment, etc., and how they might be more successful, such as through developing coping strategies or different ways of learning, approaching their learning or career paths.

In cases where children and youth may have legal permanency, we’ve not yet examined the extent of relational, cultural, physical and identity permanency in their lives. As we move forward, we believe it’s essential that we better understand how the voices of children and youth are centred in conversations around their permanency and which domains they value and aspire to have most in their lives.

That’s a very brief update on it. I just want to say, too, that one of the things that’s taught me a lot…. One of the first things I learned when I came into this role and I was speaking with our advocates is…. They said: “Be careful of what you recommend, because sometimes there can be unintentional harmful impacts.”

The fact that we had been working on the numbers…. It became a numbers game, and that sometimes is not in the best interests of children. What they reported was that when there were adoption reports or updates going on, then there was a flurry of activity within the ministry, because they were trying to address the numbers and the targets that had been set. Sometimes those were not well planned, the transitions were not done well, and that was not in the best interests of children.

It was a beautiful learning moment for me, thinking about this report but also thinking about what our responsibility is when we issue recommendations — to make sure that we really understood what the impact is. Let’s not ever make it about trying to get targets or numbers. Let’s always make it about what the best thing is for children and families and be more nimble and inclusive of the different ways that we can create good, healthy outcomes for kids.

Before passing it on, I want to let you know that Linda Hughes, who has done an exceptional job over this last year building a strong, vital, progressive, innovative monitoring team, including shepherding this report through, doing extraordinary work with the FAS, is retiring on January 3 and moving to Kelowna, after an extraordinary career over decades.

I just want to say hands up to Linda and deep gratitude for all that you’ve brought to the RCY and to child and family services in Alberta and British Columbia. Philanthropically, her resumé is awesome. I am really sad and very, very grateful for the extraordinary work and for how the monitoring team has just thrived under her leadership.

So hands up to Linda.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you for acknowledging Linda Hughes. Our committee would like to do the same.

Thank you for your work. Obviously, it’s meant a lot to not just the representative’s office but to the children of British Columbia, and we wish you well in Kelowna — beautiful Kelowna.

On that note, I just want to say how pleased I was to see this report, because at the time of the 2014 report, I was concerned about the subsequent arrangement between the representative’s office and the ministry on setting new targets. I always thought that without the ability to allocate resources to the ministry to support those increased numbers, it was a bit like just piling on and causing things to go too quickly, and the planning, the placement and the support after placement would be rushed perhaps. So I really like the renewed focus on permanency and the use of permanency as opposed to the legal terminology of adoption.

With that, I look to colleagues for questions on this report.

[10:25 a.m.]

L. Throness: I have several questions, but I’ll just ask the first one. The first one was…. There is an adoption agency, Choices, which went down a couple of weeks ago. We only have two left in the province. Are you concerned about this, and are you concerned about access — regional access and overall access — to adoption services? Have you examined what happened to Choices and why it happened the way it happened? Do our other agencies…? Is this a viable model for adoption in B.C.? Could you comment on Choices, please?

J. Charlesworth: Yes, happy to comment on Choices. What you need to know…. This is an example of where we do quiet work behind the scenes. We had numerous briefings. We were involved with the ministry. We had consultations with representatives from Choices, the ED and the chair of the board. So we were very involved behind the scenes, not to try to intervene, because Choices is an independent organization. We wouldn’t be in a position where we’d be advocating, for example, for funding to be provided to an independent or a non-profit. That would mean that we would have a lot of business from other non-profits.

Having said that, we were very curious as to: what were the metrics behind this decision? What was creating the challenge, and what did that teach us about adoptions?

Choices primarily did international adoptions, outside of the scope of the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s mandate, for example. What’s really shifted is what’s going on in the world — that many nations are saying they don’t want their children to be adopted out of their culture and their community and their nation. So the number of international adoptions has gone down significantly, which is what’s led to the fact that — Family Services of Greater Vancouver that had one of the adoption agencies, and now Choices — it’s simply not financially viable because of the volume. That’s one of the considerations.

Now, Choices also did some work on what are called domestic adoptions. Obviously, that’s quite a small number as compared to what it used to be in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s, for example. So that’s a very different dynamic as well.

It’s really a matter of…. I mean, I hate to talk about children as sort of a commodity. But basically, it’s about volume and the fact that agencies and the work that’s required…. They’re simply not the numbers that we used to see in previous years.

Alan has been very involved with Choices too, so I’ll defer to him if there are other things you want to add.

A. Markwart: No, I don’t think there’s anything to add, except just to underline the point that there’s been quite a dramatic decrease in the number of international adoptions. That’s affected the viability not just of Choices but of other agencies. It’s not peculiar to British Columbia either. It is a cross-Canada phenomenon. The same thing has happened in other provinces as well.

It’s unfortunate that some families who had committed some funding to international adoption have kind of been left in limbo right now. We’re aware the ministry is working on that to try and support them as best they can. But really, you can’t undo financial unviability, I guess. See, these were self-sustaining organizations, not government-funded.

J. Charlesworth: Just on that note, one of the things that we have been monitoring, actually, is how it is that the ministry is stepping in to support those families who’ve been impacted. That’s the focus we’ve taken, as opposed to making a comment. As you say, you can’t undo financial viability.

What’s of concern to us is what the impact is on those families, because obviously, that’s a very difficult outcome. For some of them, they were with Family Services of Greater Vancouver, and that got closed. They were transferred to Choices, and now that’s gotten closed. So it’s very hard on families. That’s where our focus is right now.

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation on this particular report.

[10:30 a.m.]

This week, earlier, I got to talk about reconciliation in the House during private members’ time. What rose to the top for me was the issue around relationships and how all of the various reports talk about how that’s the base and the driving force behind us moving forward. I’m seeing that, too, in your report here.

It strikes me that, you know, we’re human beings, we are who we are, and we have been through generations, but we’re becoming more and more aware. I’m just curious about the ability to track and support something that’s as amorphous as relationships.

J. Charlesworth: Do you have some ideas? That’s a really great question. Here are some of the metrics that I’m using or ways that I think of this.

I’m just going to refer back to the adoption report. One of the conversations I had very early on was with Grand Chief Stewart Phillip. As you may know, he was adopted out of his community and culture, and it took many years for him to find his way back to his nation in Penticton.

He and I had a conversation very early on about this report. I had been feeling some anxiety about it. It was pretty much ready. In fact, Bernard was thinking about releasing it on his last day and very kindly said: “Well, you better take a look at this because you’re going to have to follow up.” And then, of course, it took me another year to release it because we had to understand this.

For me, the way I measure relationships right now, especially within the First Nations and Métis community, is: are people willing to talk? Are we able to have those conversations about those really difficult, messy, we-don’t-really-know-where-to-go kinds of conversations? For example, this being: how is it that we will imagine permanency? Or the one that we’re in right now: how is it that this resumption of jurisdiction is going to happen? My responsibility to keep the child and the youth in the centre might conflict with the ways in which communities might want to approach child welfare. So my fundamental metric is: are we in conversation and continuing to talk about things, including the difficult stuff?

That’s one thing. The other thing. What are the ways, for example, we now…? With any of our reports, we give advance copies, as part of an administrative review process or an advisory process, to our partners in First Nations, Métis and urban Indigenous. Their openness and receptivity to give us feedback — that’s another metric that I think is really important for us.

A third one, and then I’ll stop there, is that they see us as a resource, so they ask us questions. That allows us to query our data, which is what they’ve been doing as well — a report that will come to you called Stories by Numbers. We’ve been working with community, and they are saying: “This is what we’re curious about. Can you go into your data and find something?” It’s like: “Yeah, we can” or “No, we can’t, but we’ll kind of look at it.”

I guess, actually, there’s a fourth one.

L. Hughes: I think you’re right. It’s very subjective. It’s amorphous. It’s hard to find. But in our care planning project, we’re looking at three elements of planning: cultural planning, permanency planning and transition planning. We’re doing a qualitative review of those files, where the ministry is doing a very quantitative look.

We’re looking for evidence on children’s files that shows there are aspects of permanence being addressed, not by a checklist on a form but by looking for those elements of permanency. Have they connected them to extended family, to their communities, to relationships? So that’s part of this major project Jaime is also working on. We’re looking for those elements of permanency planning that aren’t so easy to identify by a checklist. It’s important to us, and we’re looking for that evidence.

J. Charlesworth: Could I add one more thing that Carly reminded me of too? You will see a report in March pertaining to…. This is an investigation report. This is a child, an Indigenous young woman who passed away from an unintentional overdose. That whole process, from the very outset of the investigation, has been very different and very collaborative with First Nation communities and their band, which is actually out of province. We will talk more about the change in our approach that’s more relationally based.

[10:35 a.m.]

Thank you for adding that. Sometimes this is what happens. I’m kind of up here, and then the people that are doing the real work actually really understand how the relationship works. So thank you.

E. Ross: On page 7, “Adoption and Permanency Options for Indigenous Children and Youth,” “MCFD acknowledges that many Indigenous organizations and communities do not support adoption of their children and prefer other permanency options that are grounded in and supportive of Indigenous cultures,” which is an ideology. It’s a political statement, because there are some…. The only thing I say is, is there any information regarding organizations or communities that say: “No, we like the system where the children come first, regardless of cultural aspirations of any body or organization”?

The only reason I say it is because my band was put in this situation a number of times. Our council, after reviewing all the information on where the child was, looked first to the safety and stability of the child itself, regardless of bloodlines. It was a hard decision to say that the child should stay with the white grandparents because we don’t have the capacity to actually look after the children within the family structure in our community, and we don’t have any resources yet.

I don’t see that as part of the report, in terms of organizations saying: “No, the priority should be the child, and after that, we should consider the wishes of the family. Then after that, we should consider the interests of the community in regards to culture or political aspirations.”

I’ve come across this a number of different times. I’m even facing it right now in my constituency office in Terrace. You’re not going to get this policy right, in terms of First Nations communities. You’re not going to get it right unless there’s a lot of flexibility, in terms of community by community, region by region, family by family and child by child.

Is there any information regarding those communities and organizations that actually take the opposite view?

J. Charlesworth: Looking it over, I wouldn’t say that there’s any community organization that takes an opposite view. I think there are certain…. There is one DAA, delegated Aboriginal agency, right now that actually has delegation to do adoptions as well — it’s up in the Cowichan area — and another delegated Aboriginal agency that’s taking a look at that. So it’s clearly not that adoption is a dirty word, but there is an interest in trying to make sure that adoptions are done in a way that ensures cultural connections and continuity and relational permanency. I think that’s really the focus that we’ve got right now.

I’m going to defer to Jaime and Linda. Permanency has to take a look at what is in the best interests of the child, absolutely.

E. Ross: I agree. I agree totally. But also not from the top-down, in terms of cultural connection, but from the child’s safety and stability, in terms of the family and the child itself. I just see that political correctness on the top actually ignoring the child’s interest, in terms of safety and stability. There are some communities out there that actually agree with that and put culture as a lower priority, as long as the child is safe and loved, more importantly.

Is there any information regarding that, in terms of communities like my band, that actually agree that the child should come first.

J. Charlesworth: Well, I think it would be…. If you asked anybody around any of the nations, any of the delegated agencies, they would all say that the child comes first. So it’s really about how is it that that gets construed or understood within that community context.

Our job, of course, as the child and youth advocate, is to make sure that that child’s voice and that child’s perspective is centred. So we do get involved in situations like this, I can tell you. There are a number of them. Those are complex, for sure.

I want to defer to Linda and Jaime as to whether there’s…. I mean, this also speaks to the things that we would pay attention to in subsequent reports around permanency as well.

L. Hughes: I think that’s true. We didn’t mean to imply in this writing that that wouldn’t be of utmost concern but that it’s a more fulsome look at the best interests of that child, including their safety and their well-being and their context of community and family, and how do we address all of those.

And you’re right. The diverse perspectives represented in this province are vast. Our further work, especially with our own Indigenous research team, would be looking at that context. We didn’t mean to imply that it would be a poli­tically correct response to permanency.

[10:40 a.m.]

E. Ross: I’m not interested in political correctness. Where is it in the report that talks about safety as the priority, and the stability, in terms of Aboriginal children? Is there a section that relates to that?

L. Hughes: I don’t believe we addressed that specifically, but it’s implied in our work that it’s child-centred and that safety and well-being are at the core.

J. Charlesworth: Yes, absolutely. It is an assumption for us that safety is at the centre — safety and well-being. As I say, that kind of goes without saying, in terms of our work. This was really focused on: how do we understand adoption? What has been going on? What are the trend lines? What are the patterns? Where do we think, based on what we are hearing and what is really important in these times…?

Indigenous or non-Indigenous, the number one thing that young people will tell you is that the relationships matter. That’s the most important thing. They want to feel safe, secure, loved, nurtured and stable.

N. Simons (Chair): Nicely put.

R. Singh: I don’t have a question. I just wanted to thank you for the great work — on your previous report as well — and also for the lens you are bringing, like the systemic colonization that happened, especially with this adoption report. I remember talking to you early on. This was something that was a big concern, especially the children being taken away and not being given to their extended families. Now that focus is being reiterated in that report. I really, really appreciate that, and I want to thank you and all the people who worked so hard on it. Thank you so much.

L. Throness: I looked with some concern at the number of indicators on pages 10 and 11, and I noticed that most of them are down. Reunification, number of children and youth reunified with their parents or extended family, down. Number of children and youth in permanent care with adoption aftercare plans, down — 250 in one year. Number of children and youth placed for adoption — the long-term trend is down. Number of Indigenous children and youth placed by Indigenous status of adoptive homes, down. Number of newly approved adoptive homes, down. Number of available adoptive homes, down.

It just seems that there is, overall — institutional — less and less energy being put toward adoption across the spectrum, and that concerns me. So now we get to the dimensions of permanency — the idea that legal adoption is a colonial construct that actually causes harm, that it’s not in the best interests of every child. I find this difficult to swallow.

It seems to me that every child, including Indigenous children, really needs the same thing. They need a forever home. I wonder if all of these different dimensions of permanency are a way of…. It’s hard to find adoptive homes for children. Is this an excuse not to do the hard work of finding adoptive homes for kids, particularly Indigenous kids? Are we accepting something that is not the gold standard for the best interests of the child?

J. Charlesworth: I’m going to look to Jaime and Linda. I also want to say that I think we need to really ask ourselves what it is that we’re trying to achieve — certainly safety, well-being and connection, as I’ve said before.

It’s interesting that in the report that I just mentioned, which we’ll bringing forward to you in March, this child, an Indigenous child, had two adoptive homes, and they both broke down. When we took a look at that, we saw that what happened to this child’s mom and grandmom is happening to her, in terms of removal.

This really has forced us to take a look at just how we understand adoption. Is adoption placement really always going to create a forever home? It sure didn’t for her.

I think we really need to take a look at: how is it that adoption…? We see a lot of adoption breakdowns as well. So it’s important for us to think about. Absolutely, our objective should be those forever connections. There are many ways of doing that, which is why we’re doing the focus on permanency.

I will refer to the experts in terms of any interpretation around the numbers going down.

J. Wegner-Lohin: I just wanted to point out that there is part of the story that’s missing from here, and that’s the number of kids that are coming into care each year and how many kids are remaining with their families.

[10:45 a.m.]

That’s important context information that would offer more explanation into why the permanency numbers may be going down. It might not necessarily be that there are less kids languishing in care. It could also be that there are fewer kids coming into care in the first place, which we’ve seen in the annual report as well.

L. Throness: However, I might rebut that by saying that there are still 700 kids in care who are looking to be adopted. So there’s lots of room for improvement. But it just seems that the institutional focus on adoption is declining in favour of something that may be less. I would ask a concrete question: if not adoption, if not legal adoption, what other kind of care for a child would be better?

J. Charlesworth: Do you want to add first?

A. Markwart: Well, I just wanted to clarify the numbers. If, for example, you look at…. Yes, there’s been a decrease in the number of children who are adopted from the peak year of 2015-16. However, that was the peak. It was distorted, in our view. This is where the phenomenon of the target…. There was a huge push to meet that target and exceed that target. In fact, my recollection was that in March of that year, there were something like 100 children adopted simply to meet that target. So I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison.

As Jaime mentioned, the number of children in care has decreased. So if, for example, you look at 2016-17 and compare the number of children eligible for adoption and then the number actually adopted…. Well, 29 percent, in 2016-17 were adopted. It was actually 31 percent in ’18-19. Relative to the population eligible, there actually hasn’t been a decrease, with the exception of that one extraordinary year.

N. Simons (Chair): There you go, Laurie.

S. Furstenau: I just actually wanted to step back and kind of root this discussion that we’re having in a wider context. Yesterday we unanimously passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. Yesterday the federal government also went to court to fight the decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to provide compensation to Indigenous children and families who have been harmed by the child welfare systems across this country.

In light of the work done on truth and reconciliation, and in light of Canada’s colonial history, which has seen removing children from family and community as a solution, and recognizing, as you’ve pointed out earlier, the systemic issues that we are grappling with in the work that you are doing, that we’re doing as MLAs, that is hopefully informing the work of MCFD, I fret about not rooting this discussion we’re having in that context and recognizing that this has been the history of Canada — to say that the solution is to remove children from family and community.

Over and over and over again, it’s been revealed that that has not been the solution. In fact, we’re seeing multigenerational trauma. The decision of the Human Rights Tribunal, and the decision of the federal government to fight that…. I think we should be recognizing that we have generation after generation of compensation that has been paid out to children and families who have been subject to removal.

We’re currently, across the country, at a higher rate of children being removed from family than we were during the residential school era. The work needs to be rooted in recognizing that this solution has never worked and in recognizing that, yes, we need stability. We need economic support. We need to recognize that if we’re going to change the history in Canada, continuing to do the same thing and expecting different outcomes won’t work.

[10:50 a.m.]

I just wanted to frame this conversation we’re having with a little bit of historical context and current-day context and recognize that there’s no overnight solution to this. But the work that’s being done, informed by truth and reconciliation, is the hard work that needs to be done. I just wanted to add that to this discussion.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you very much. Absolutely, that’s the best way to respond to that. I think that’s the opportunity we have, actually, in re-framing and pivoting this and talking about permanency, because, of course, the ways in which…. The ideal would be that we are creating the conditions in which families can successfully raise their kids. The other thing is, speaking again to the investigative report that’s underway — speaks to intergenerational trauma. That’s a fundamental piece that’s emerged from this that we’re very proud that we’re going to be able to speak to.

Absolutely, those are important things that we need to keep bringing back in many different ways and talking about. And also, you’ll note that in here and in all of our reports now, we also speak about bright spots, the things that are actually going well, where communities are doing some really important things, where there are….

The ministry is also doing some important things. One of the things that’s highlighted here is the harmonization of compensation of foster care givers and extended family providers, for example. Those are important things that create a different kind of context for children and youth. It’s important that we honour and we celebrate, because this is tough work, but we’re not trying to figure it out just all on our own. There are some good things that we can learn from others, as well. So thank you for that.

N. Simons (Chair): Thanks, Jennifer.

E. Ross: On your graphs there, you’ve got a heading, Reunification with Parents and/or Extended Family. Now, I’m going to assume that the criteria that are used in terms of the adoptive family must be strenuous and exhaustive in terms of whether or not it’s a safe option. I’m assuming that those same criteria are going to be applied to parents or extended family to ensure that the child’s interests in terms of safety are actually protected there as well. I’m not sure whether or not there’s a comparable process there.

In saying that, as well, you look at the next graph in terms of the number of available adoptive families which are Indigenous, and those Indigenous homes are actually declining. Now, this is one of the problems I came across when we were talking about making sure that Aboriginal children stay with Aboriginal families and Aboriginal communities. You couldn’t really find those homes — Indigenous — that actually were open to taking in Indigenous kids.

I’m just talking about homes that are not connected to the child, because you’ve already got that covered in another graph with extended family. Is there a reason why there are not many more Indigenous homes opening up to the idea of adoption, and if so, what’s the solution?

J. Charlesworth: A couple of things. Again, I’ll look to you two to add more. In terms of reunification, of course the ministry, as they contemplate reunification, is bound by the legislation that requires them to do best interests and safety and whatnot. So that’s a key thing. There are no different criteria, in other words.

Having said that, in terms of the number of Indigenous homes, I think one of the things that’s important is…. You talked about the number of homes that are open to caring for children where they’re connected. That is increasing. We don’t really have a way of measuring that.

I’m not entirely sure — my colleagues may know better — but what we see here is probably a reflection of the broader issue that adoption away from community or away from family is not something that is embraced within Indigenous communities. That’s why there are not many families that are saying: “Hey, we’re up for it.” If they’re going to be willing to do that, they’re probably going to be looking for that kind of cultural connection through their own community or their extended family.

It’s not to say that there aren’t lots of Indigenous families that are welcoming extended family members into their home. But I’ll look to Linda and Jaime for other….

J. Wegner-Lohin: I think you captured it. The other piece that may account for a small amount of the difference is that these numbers are based on families who self-identify, so unless this is recorded in the information system for MCFD, they wouldn’t be captured here. So it is dependent on the worker to enter that information.

N. Simons (Chair): Can I just ask if the delegated agencies also have that indication? Do they identify families that are willing to adopt? Is that part of the database?

[10:55 a.m.]

J. Wegner-Lohin: I don’t know.

J. Charlesworth: You see, there’s only one delegated Aboriginal agency that is delegated to do adoptions. So yeah, it would just be the one.

N. Simons (Chair): Right. So that could account for the smaller number.

J. Charlesworth: Yeah.

N. Simons (Chair): Also, just from my experience there, sometimes families consider the adoption process, the legal transfer, as something of a hindrance to the relationship, to maintaining a relationship.

J. Charlesworth: Absolutely.

A. Markwart: Just one other potential explanation. If you look at the first graph on page 10, you see an increase in the number of transfer-of-custody placements. So it may be the mechanism by which children are placed. Instead of adoption, there’s a transfer-of-custody placement under the CFCSA that may be offsetting it.

N. Simons (Chair): Okay.

Ellis, do you want to follow up? Then we’ll go to Laurie.

E. Ross: To clarify, the reason why there are fewer homes available for adoption is because these homes, or the people that are actually considering it, can see the success already with custody placements, as well as extended family initiatives, in terms of keeping a child. And that speaks to why there are declining available homes for adoptive purposes.

J. Charlesworth: It could be.

L. Hughes: Also, I just want to say that when we checked adoption data with MCFD and their data people, they were quite clear that there are a number…. It was their experience that a number of Indigenous homes prefer not to formally self-identify. They go through the process for an individual child or sibling group, and they choose not to self-identify. They simply want to go through the process of adoption for those kids.

L. Throness: Just one quick question. Can you suggest an anecdotal, even a hypothetical, situation in which a different arrangement would be superior to an adoptive family?

J. Charlesworth: Yes. I’m going to go to our grandmother and the FAS.

Do you want to speak about her?

L. Hughes: We do have the grandmother in the Lower Mainland who is parenting a sibling group of five of her daughter’s children. As you know, children that are living with FASD don’t get a lot of support to start with, but she does get support via different programs in her region.

I think that if she adopted those children, first of all, it may harm her relationship with her daughter. And secondly, she would lose some of the supports, potentially. Her choice is to continue to very effectively parent that sibling group, and she does an amazing job. But it’s her decision. We think that she gets more supports via this arrangement, and it’s more in keeping with the values of her extended family to parent them in the way she is, as a grandparent.

J. Charlesworth: Yes. And to add to that, from a permanency perspective, there’s relational continuity, cultural continuity, continuity of physical place. They are living in a community that is very supportive. The kids definitely have a strong sense of identity, and it’s actually a beautiful family to watch in action. So, not adoption, but it meets all of the other criteria on permanency.

L. Hughes: Very successful.

N. Simons (Chair): I can think of others, and I’ll tell you about them later. But I think it speaks to just how sometimes the hindrance is the court process, the whole idea that there’s a severing of relationship as opposed to the reassurance of relationship.

It’s a fair question to ask. I really appreciate it.

Any further questions from committee members? Anything else to add?

We’re just really pleased. Thank you very much for this report.

Let’s just take a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 10:59 a.m. to 11:06 a.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much. Welcome back. We’re back. The recess is over. The bell rang.

I’m really pleased to have an opportunity to discuss another report which I hope is a learning tool for everyone. As we read through these reports, sometimes we can get burdened by the weight of the emotion that goes with all the things that we read about. But at the same time, I think our focus is always on how we improve things for other children. I think that is an important legacy or an important part of why we’re doing these reports.

It’s a specific report, but it’s a systemic report. I look forward to your description of your findings. Go ahead when you’re ready.

Caught in the Middle

J. Charlesworth: Thank you very much. I am delighted to be able to present this report to you literally hot off the presses, it having just been released yesterday. Our hope — and Jennifer is working with us — is to make sure that we really twin releases and presentations to you, going forward. We’ll have lots of fun in February-March, I can tell you.

I also want to introduce to you the people that were pivotal in the creation of this report. Carly Hyman, as the chief investigator, has provided overall leadership on this. I’d like to introduce Alysha Hardy, who started this report before she went on parental leave and then, lo and behold, came back and had to bring it home as the senior investigator. Dean Campbell, who is the lead investigator in this, has been working hard on this over many months. Hands up to you.

I’d also like to introduce you to Joanna Lee. Joanna is actually a co-op student from the faculty of law. She decided to come back, so there was a second term with us. We’re delighted. Joanna has been assisting us on a number of fronts, including with legal representation, which we’ll bring to you in the new year. This is a great opportunity for Joanna to see what happens here.

I also want to say credit to Bernard Richard, my predecessor, because he was in this role when the investigation was launched. This is actually the last of the things that Bernard had identified before he left. This is important — to bring him into the room as well.

As is the case whenever we investigate the critical injury or death of a child, this is a very difficult story to tell. In doing media interviews yesterday, oftentimes the last question was: “This is heartbreaking.” These cases certainly are. As the Chair says, what’s so important is that with these stories, we are choosing them because they tell us a deeper story about a systemic issue that is affecting many other children.

The subject of this investigation was a boy who died of an overdose in B.C. when he was just 17 years old. Originally from Alberta, he was moved at least 40 times while in the care of child-serving ministries in both provinces. He also spent some time in Belize. He and his family never received the supports they required to deal with the considerable trauma he had experienced or his complex needs.

[11:10 a.m.]

In Alberta, he was shuttled through group homes, treatment centres, residential treatment homes and numerous secure care placements — in fact, eight. In B.C., he spent time in youth custody, hospitals and emergency bed homes.

That’s a little bit about some of the dynamics. But let me start with who Romain is. I think it’s very important for us to remember a child in their life, not just what happened to them at their death. Romain, by the way, is a pseudonym that the boy’s family chose to use in this report.

He was much more than what happened to him. He loved comic books. He loved superheroes. He loved The Incredible Hulk. That’s why we chose, actually, the artwork for this cover. His family told us, told the investigators, that when he was a young boy, he constantly wanted to dress up as a superhero.

He was also a big movie fan. He loved music. He loved rap music, in particular. He wrote lyrics. As one school official said, he was a total performer. In many cases, people spoke about his spirit, his brightness, his intelligence and his loyalty to friends and family.

Most important…. It’s critical that we remember he was loved by his family and he wanted to be around them as much as possible. Of course, his family was not perfect. None of our families really are, truth be told. But this family did struggle, and this really reinforces what I said earlier about an important consideration around how it is that we support families that are dealing with complexity.

This is one of the tragedies of his story, because Romain was never adequately supported in either province to be able to successfully live with his family, and perhaps, if he’d received that support, his outcome might have been different. That’s a little bit about Romain. Let’s go into the report now.

Romain was just 11 years old when he told social workers that it felt as though he’d been passed around for 20 million years. This was the point at which he was first taken into government care in Alberta, and he’d already experienced significant trauma and instability by then. Children’s Services in Alberta had been involved with the family, but this was the first time he was actually taken into care, and it was very, very traumatizing for him.

Instead of providing some of the much-needed permanency along with appropriate care and services to address his trauma, the child-serving systems in both provinces continued to pass him around until his death six years later. Not only did he move more than 40 times, he was also the victim of physical and sexual assaults.

He began misusing substances from a young age. He was diagnosed with a number of psychiatric disorders. I believe six is what I counted. He exhibited suicidal and violent behaviour on a number of occasions and spent significant time in B.C.’s youth custody system. As our investigation shows, the residential placements and services he received in B.C. were also not appropriate for a boy with his traumatic history and considerable needs.

We chose to investigate Romain’s case because it illustrates what can happen when children in government care or receiving designated services are moved between provinces and territories. Their best interests can get lost, and with Romain, they certainly were, as miscommunication and dropped handoffs between the provinces compromised his care. Of course it’s impossible to say whether the provision of services would have changed the ultimate outcome, but it certainly would have given him and his family a much better chance.

Zooming out from Romain, let’s talk about interprovincial children. There is an established interprovincial protocol designed to facilitate the provision of seamless services to children and youth that are moving between provinces, such as Romain was. What we found in this investigation, though, is that there are significant gaps in this protocol that need to be fixed if we are to keep vulnerable children safe and appropriately served. Our investigation also found that there are gaps in the way that MCFD itself deals with such cases. In Romain’s case, those cumulative gaps were too much to overcome.

This was a young man who wanted to be with his family. He was very loyal to his family. But our investigation found that placements with family in B.C. were not properly supported, essentially guaranteeing that they would fail. And it’s certainly a theme we hear too often in our RCY advocacy cases and, indeed, in our CID cases as well. Families desperate for help to be able to care for their children can’t find that help. Children end up in care, and in some cases, the system can’t provide an appropriate and nurturing place for them either.

For Romain, the situation was compounded by his movement between provinces and the lack of coordination and communication between Alberta Children’s Services and MCFD. Just unpacking this a little bit. The first time Romain was placed here with a sister, Alberta Children’s Services did not notify MCFD that he’d moved to B.C. until two months after he arrived, and remember, he was in care in Alberta.

[11:15 a.m.]

The decision was made by Alberta Children’s Services to move him to his sibling’s home and did not notify MCFD, so there was no way that MCFD would understand what was going on. Of course, that’s contrary to the interprovincial protocol and resulted in little or no planning or support for his care until the family started to be really stressed.

It didn’t get much better during two subsequent B.C. placements for Romain, as Alberta Children’s Services failed to follow the protocol those times as well, making it more difficult for MCFD to provide him with support.

His final placement, in an emergency bed home, was obviously inappropriate for a teen with his history and significant needs. In fact, the staff at that home warned MCFD that they were not confident at all that they could keep him safe.

Alberta Children’s Services informally offered to pay for a specialized resource, but that arrangement was never formalized because the Alberta and B.C. ministries didn’t communicate or work together well enough to develop an appropriate resource.

Of course, it’s beyond the scope of my office to make findings about the role of Alberta Children’s Services in Romain’s life and death, but I recognize — and anybody who reads the report will too — that the Alberta ministry has to share responsibility for this tragic outcome.

As you know, and this is a very important principle of mine, our investigative reports are not meant to place blame on individual front-line staff and their supervisors. In fact, it’s important to note that Romain did receive some exemplary service, particularly from a youth probation officer and a school outreach program, and that’s acknowledged in the report. However, overall, the services and supports — so the systemic delivery of services — provided for Romain and his family were inadequate.

As the purpose of our reports is to point out the systemic deficiencies and make recommendations for improvements so that other children and youth can be spared this kind of outcome and experience, I’ve made six recommendations, and I’ll just go through those.

First, we recommend that MCFD take a leadership role in making improvements to the interprovincial protocol when it is next reviewed by provincial and territorial directors of child welfare in 2021.

There is a five-year review process. There was a 2011 review, a 2016 review, and the next one’s scheduled for 2021. The minister has said that she accepts this recommendation and, in fact, will be directing her staff to try and accelerate that. We know that she can’t compel other provinces to step up, but we have said very expressively that, at the very least, it needs to be done by 2021.

Within that, we’re asking MCFD to push in a number of areas. One is the addition of cultural planning to the protocol, as well as clarification about the delegation of guardianship responsibilities — because it was clearly not clear in this — and about how disputes can be resolved when children arrive in a province or a territory without notice.

In addition, we’ve asked that MCFD seek an amendment to interprovincial agreement forms to include details on financial expenditures and payment mechanisms, because it’s unconscionable to us that it becomes an issue of money rather than focusing on the child. That could be addressed through those agreements.

Internally, within British Columbia, we’ve recommended that MCFD fully dedicate an interprovincial coordinator to work together with an adequately resourced network of regional consultants to support, track and monitor interprovincial cases. This should be a full-time, dedicated role.

That’s important because the reality is that there may be 200 cases going on, either 100 kids here in British Columbia from other provinces or 100 of our children elsewhere. So it’s quite possible that a worker might never see this in their career or might only see one or two in the course of their career. Having that expertise — essentially, who’s also monitoring and keeping track of all those agreements, escalating things if dispute resolution is required — is critical. The minister has also accepted that recommendation.

Related to this, we’ve recommended that the ministry create provincial practice guidelines or policies and develop a mandatory online training course if a staff has a case such as this, so they have a place to go to gather information.

The other thing is that while family connections weren’t supported for Romain, neither were cultural connections. Workers didn’t explore the protective factor that connection to Romain’s black Caribbean cultural heritage might have provided, nor the potential impacts of racialization on him. It was very interesting to us that there were no comments of the impact of race and racialization in his experience of systemic bias.

[11:20 a.m.]

We feel that that was important. We’ve focused a lot on Indigenous cultural connection, but we actually haven’t talked about the experience of children of different ethnicities. We think that that’s critically important. We certainly are seeing a number of children, in both advocacy and in our CIDs, that have different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

We’ve recommended that MCFD direct its staff to speak with all children in care about their ethnicity and desired connections and record that self-identified ethnicity in the ministry’s case management system. It will enable us to start to see the volume. I believe that cultural protective factors can benefit children of any ethnicity. Certainly, Romain expressed interest, and that was never explored.

The final two recommendations in this report address current shortcomings in B.C.’s systems of services to care for children and youth who’ve experienced trauma. So these are familiar recommendations to you, I’m sure. We have recommended that MCFD take steps to ensure that a trauma-informed method is implemented for making decisions about resourcing for children in care who have experienced multiple adversities. I think this aligns with conversations that are being held about adverse child experiences in health, in mental health and addictions.

Finally, I call on MCFD, as part of its current overhaul of the residential care system — it was prompted by a report from various sources but most recently by the B.C. Auditor General — to assess the need for residential care and treatment resources across the province to accommodate children with complex needs and to create sufficient resources to meet those assessed needs in a timely way.

I will end there. Happy to take questions. We have an amazing team that has a lot more information to share.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you so much. We already have a speaking list.

I just want to start, if I may, by thanking the writers of this report and the researchers. Excellent report. It’s really well written. It’s really clear. It’s really understandable, like all of the reports we get. I just wanted to thank them.

My first question, before I go to the committee members, is: did you let Alberta know? Do they have a copy of this?

J. Charlesworth: Yes, they do. Actually, it’s quite interesting. Alberta has known about this report from the very beginning, and initially, there was an agreement that our team would go out to Alberta and do interviews there. That was withheld at the last minute.

Alberta certainly did have an opportunity to take a look at the chronology and provided feedback at that point. They had a copy for administrative fairness. They didn’t provide any comments, which was interesting to us. I phoned the minister, and I phoned the advocate in Alberta as well. I have spoken with them, and the minister has also indicated that they will be taking a look at this report and have directed their staff to do so.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you for that.

R. Glumac: First quick question. Will we have the opportunity to ask questions of the ministry on this?

N. Simons (Chair): It’s a possibility. We’ll talk about it as a committee. But go ahead with your questions.

R. Glumac: I mean, a lot of my questions are directed toward the ministry, but I guess that I’ll direct them towards you.

We have this interprovincial protocol that says here that it’s clear that the originating province is responsible for paying for the cost of a resource at the receiving province’s rate. And the protocol says that services are not to be delayed due to budgetary, administrative or jurisdictional issues or disputes. There was an agreement that Alberta would pay for this specialized resource at a time when it was very clearly needed.

I guess my question is: is the ministry aware of Jordan’s principle? Where does the ministry stand on Jordan’s principle? Because this seems to me like a perfect example of where it should be used.

N. Simons (Chair): I know that you refer to Jordan’s principle in the body of the report, but it’s a good question, because it popped up even before I read that comment.

J. Charlesworth: Yes. It’s a great question. Jordan’s principle wouldn’t have applied in this particular thing. But one of the things that we talked about early on was that we really need something like Jordan’s principle for situations like this so that the disputes around finances should not preclude action on making sure that a child is receiving the appropriate resourcing.

Absolutely, the ministry knows about Jordan’s principle. I think this report is an opportunity to talk about — for the director of child welfare to reinforce — that these kinds of disputes should not be getting in the way of appropriate action.

[11:25 a.m.]

I think one of the things that’s interesting about this is that, yes, there was an informal agreement, but the ministry in British Columbia was waiting for a more formal agreement about the finances and how that would be allocated.

I think what this raises is…. One of the things that we were concerned about is that it didn’t go up the line. There wasn’t a way of, at the local level, saying…. There should have been. But that was one of the areas we felt was missed too — that when there was that kind of misunderstanding or confusion or whatever, that should have been bumped up for a dispute resolution and to have people in the centre trying to deal with it at the director level.

Yes, they’re aware. Yes, this is an important area that they recognize they need to have deeper discussions with their staff, and we feel that it’s very important — with that interprovincial coordinator — to allow for the dispute resolution so that it does get bumped up and can get addressed.

I look to my colleagues for their comments.

C. Hyman: I would just add that in this case, as you’ve rightly pointed out, the protocol does have a Jordan’s principle built into it, which says that services won’t be delayed because of budgetary jurisdictional issues. The protocol is also clear that Alberta was responsible for paying for the costs of the resource, and Alberta had committed money to do that. So it is, in this case, inexcusable that B.C. didn’t act to build the resource that was necessary.

R. Glumac: Just to follow up, he was in B.C. Whatever miscommunication there was around all of this, shouldn’t B.C. abide by that and pay for these services and then seek reimbursement later? Just move forward, and do it. Isn’t that B.C.’s responsibility?

J. Charlesworth: Exactly. The easy answer is yes.

C. Hyman: I think the other thing that we found, and Dean and Alysha might be able to speak to this more, is that the staff involved didn’t have a clear understanding of the mechanisms for paying for a service and then seeking reimbursement from another province. That’s why one of the recommendations we’ve made is that B.C. bring forward an amendment to the agreement, to the protocol, which would outline the financial responsibilities of each province but also the mechanism. Staff in this case were unclear of even how to do what you’re suggesting.

R. Glumac: Just one more follow-up question. They’re unclear of how to do this, but that’s what Jordan’s principle is, isn’t it? It’s just like: pay for it, and then figure it out.

What I’m hearing is that the ministry has no mechanism to implement Jordan’s principle at all, from what it sounds like. Because, to me, this is a perfect example of where it could have been utilized, and it wasn’t. So there isn’t an awareness in the ministry, I guess, that this is an approach that could have been taken? Let’s just pay for it, and figure it out?

J. Charlesworth: Yeah. I think Jordan’s principle applies to First Nations children, not to children such as Romain. However, the idea behind Jordan’s principle — that disputes around money should not be getting in the way of the well-being of a child — absolutely, I think that’s a critical piece. In fact, we did have quite a bit of discussion about how to frame that.

As Carly says, it alludes to that within the protocol agreement right now, but it needs to be much clearer. That’s also the reason that we felt it was important to have that interprovincial coordination role to deal with that kind of misunderstanding, and why it’s so important that any staff who are dealing with a situation like this are given the information, through training, to understand.

There are some fundamentals. One of them being: do not let money and disputes with another jurisdiction get in the way of what you would do with a child if the child was from B.C.

L. Throness: Just a couple of questions. But first, thanks to the team who put this report together. We’ve become used to very deep, comprehensive and well-written reports, so thank you — and a tragic story, for sure, about Romain.

How many children are affected by these interprovincial agreements? Could you give us some idea of the scope?

J. Charlesworth: Well, that’s a great question, because we don’t actually know. There is a guesstimate of about 200 children — so about 100 children that are from B.C. in other jurisdictions, provinces and territories, and about 100 children that B.C. is caring for from other jurisdictions.

That’s one of the things that we were quite alarmed and concerned by. There’s an appendix that speaks to the agreements that we did have the opportunity to review, but there is no central repository for that, so we actually don’t know.

[11:30 a.m.]

L. Throness: This is not, in bureaucratic terms, a huge problem, but it is a persistent one that needs to be addressed. I agreed with the recommendations that you made, particularly the one for a designated interprovincial coordinator. I think that’s really important.

I look on page 43, though, and I read that “MCFD does not have a centralized system to track or monitor interprovincial cases.” I’m wondering why that would not have been one of your recommendations. I would think that a system would be really important.

J. Charlesworth: Yes, absolutely. And that was one of the things in having the interprovincial coordinator. In the discussions that we’ve had with the ministry, that was the understanding — that that would become a central repository and there would be tracking through that.

L. Throness: Do regions of MCFD communicate with other regions systemically, through software and so on, or are there…? With Fraser Health Authority and different health authorities, they’re all silos. Is that the same with MCFD, or do they communicate with each other on these interprovincial agreements?

J. Charlesworth: In terms of regions within British Columbia, if a child was moving between regions? That’s an interesting question. I’m not entirely sure. I would say, based on our experience, that it depends, as many things do. Of course, there would be information within the integrated case management system. That would be accessible through­out. But in terms of when a child is moving from one area to another, the expectation is that the file would be transferred or arrangements would be made. I don’t know that there’s kind of a central coordination.

Alan is leaning forward. Carly is leaning forward.

C. Hyman: Actually, that’s an excellent question, because this is a report about a child moving between provinces. But we do see the same issue with children moving between regions within the province. We have examples where a child will move from one region to another. The file will remain with the originating region, and they’re requesting courtesy supervision similar to what happened in this case. I actually think that the issue is broader than just children moving between provinces and territories. It is within MCFD itself.

R. Leonard: Sonia asked me to bring forward a question, and I’ll probably expand on it a little bit.

She says that your office has been recommending trauma-informed practice since 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017. The question is…. Or maybe it’s a statement; I’m not sure. She put a question mark. Has MCFD accepted the recommendations, and what’s happened? And what are the consequences for not acting? I do see in recommendation 5 a statement which…. I don’t know if it’s a statement of fact or part of the recommendation that MCFD is to have this trauma-informed method to resourcing in place by June 2021.

J. Charlesworth: Yes. That is a recommendation that has been accepted. And you’re right. There have been many conversations about trauma-informed practice, and what we see is there are some resources that are available. There’s discussion about it, but we aren’t confident that it’s embedded in the decision-making process and that it’s really embedded and integrated within practice.

N. Simons (Chair): For some people, it’s part of their practice on an individual basis.

J. Charlesworth: Exactly.

N. Simons (Chair): For those who aren’t familiar with the term, there is a brief explanation on page 60.

Ronna-Rae, a follow-up?

R. Leonard: A follow-up just on…. The recommendation goes to June 2021, which is a significant amount of time from now. I’m wondering what is entailed in embedding this practice into MCFD, why it would take so long.

J. Charlesworth: Well, I guess I’ll take a stab at it, and then others can, please.

It’s a big ministry. There’s a lot of staff. One of the things that it requires is, clearly, training and understanding and resourcing and whatnot, but it also requires shifts in supervision, in the ways in which decisions are made, care planning, etc. to really understand the trauma. Our sense….

This is an aside, but when we’re doing our recommendations, we don’t want to create a situation in which there’s frenzy and fear because there are very short timelines. We are trying to be as realistic as possible, understanding the context.

[11:35 a.m.]

As the Chair says and as your question from Sonia says, this is not a new conversation. But what we notice is that while there might some good individual practice, it’s not a way of being and doing. To shift that kind of culture within an organization and to bring the best practice forward takes time in a big agency, a big organization.

I turn to others.

A. Markwart: The only thing I’d add to that is that it’s not only a very big ministry; it’s a very big agenda they have. There are a lot of issues on their plate, so it’s a capacity issue as well.

E. Ross: The Provincial/Territorial Protocol on Children, Youth and Families Moving Between Provinces and Terri­tories — I’ve read what was in the report there in terms of the vagary and the lack of direction and whatnot. Is it because of the vague terms in the protocol, or does this protocol actually need more teeth, or is it a combination of both?

J. Charlesworth: I would say it’s a combination of both, but I’m going to look to the people that have been working with this most directly and have heard.

C. Hyman: Maybe I’ll start. Because the protocol is signed by every province and territory, it’s written at a level where it can apply across the country. I think the protocol itself is, in some ways, purposely vague. But what we’ve found is that B.C. doesn’t have any policies, guidelines or training for its staff. So if a staff person is dealing with an interprovincial case, they might look to the protocol that really doesn’t provide sufficient direction to guide practice. I think that’s part of it.

The other part of it is that within the protocol, we also think there are areas where additional clarification is needed. I think it’s actually at both levels — at the level of the national protocol, but then, also, B.C. really needs to do more work to provide better direction for its staff and training.

E. Ross: So it’s coming up for review. Who will make the recommendation to ensure that those are fixed within the protocol, from B.C.’s perspective?

J. Charlesworth: Well, that would be done by the directors of child welfare. They meet on a regular basis. But the protocol comes due for review in 2021, so the recommendation is that MCFD become the champion to bring this forward to their colleagues across the country. That’s what we’ll be monitoring — MCFD bringing this forward, and the director of child welfare, Cory Heavener, and the deputy, Alex Scheiber, who’s been working with us on this. That’s who will be bringing it forward.

N. Simons (Chair): I have a few questions, if I may, seeing no other committee members with a question.

There’s a lot of mention of secure care in this report. There are eight placements in secure care — obviously, in Alberta, because we don’t have it here. Has this changed, or has this informed your perspective on the usefulness or appropriateness of secure care in dealing with children with mental health issues such as this?

J. Charlesworth: Yes, it has solidified my perspective, I would say. Secure care didn’t work out for Romain. Eight placements in secure care actually caused, in my view, further disruption and trauma in his life. As I’ve said before in speaking with you, this is not to say that we don’t need to have places where children who are really, really struggling — with substance use and complex mental health concerns and whatnot — can be safe and secure.

But the idea of secure care as it’s been operationalized in Alberta? This certainly didn’t convince me that that’s what we need to bring into British Columbia. In fact, my colleague advocate in Alberta is undertaking a review of that right now because they don’t feel confident that their practice in secure care is the right way to go for children as well.

I always like to bring in a youth voice. A young person spoke about their experience in secure care as: “It was just long enough to fracture every healthy adult relationship I had but not long enough for me to be well.” So taking away those connections, adding to the mistrust and fear of a system and not actually being long enough to provide that treatment.

We go back to other recommendations that we’ve made — in fact, predating my time here — that what we really need is a robust array of voluntary care and treatment options for kids that have complex needs. Once we have that, then we can take a look at: do we need to look at some sort of secure care or stabilization effort? Clearly, we are not there with that robust array.

[11:40 a.m.]

I would also like to add, just as a foreshadowing, that we are doing a review of mental health detentions. That’s fascinating. Carly’s team is leading that as well. I think that will help us understand the ways in which the Mental Health Act right now is being used as de facto secure care.

N. Simons (Chair): I look forward to hearing more about that. It was a bit chilling, I have to say, when I was reading the report about all the handcuffing and the transferring. It was just…. But thank you for that.

I have a question about the interprovincial protocol, and my question is this. Reviewing the protocol will be fine, but if nobody applies it or follows it, that’s another issue altogether. Was there actually an intended effort to get around the protocol by saying that Romain is just visiting and that he’s just here on a temporary basis with his sister or with his mother?

J. Charlesworth: Very good question. I’m going to turn to folks that have been living and breathing this data for a long time.

N. Simons (Chair): Sure.

D. Campbell: Staff were asked, when we interviewed them about this: what did Alberta’s intention seem to be? They all thought it was a dump, that Alberta was intentionally dumping this child onto them to provide care for. That was sort of proven in the three times he arrived with no notification. It was also one of the challenges, I think, of the staff, because despite that, they still are obligated to provide the services they would for any other child in B.C., and there was evidence that that didn’t happen.

N. Simons (Chair): I see an issue as to: where is the child? Like, if the child comes to British Columbia not in care and not with a file and then something happens, then he becomes a British Columbia child. But if there’s already an ongoing case, it would seem to be….

I’m just glad that this is being reviewed and that people are going to look at this, because clearly, what you said, Dean, is that idea of: “If we can just transfer this difficult file, it’ll make things easier.”

C. Hyman: I just want to add to that. I think, to Alberta’s credit, Romain was a child who really wanted to be with his family, and his family was in B.C. The three placements in B.C. were with family, so in one sense, they were honouring his voice and his wishes. However, that being said, there are notification requirements in the protocol that they did not follow on any of those three occasions, which didn’t allow B.C. to properly plan to support those placements or to assess the safety of those placements.

N. Simons (Chair): Right. I have more questions. My next question. On page 30, in the last paragraph, there’s something about: “MCFD actions in response to the internal review included the creation of a placement review committee in January 2018, the assignment of a permanent supervisor for the youth child services team assigned to this case….”

There was no supervisor for this case?

A. Hardy: To our understanding from the interviews we conducted, there were supervisors, but it was a continuing revolving door of people in temporary positions. There hadn’t been a permanent supervisor for quite a long time, and in that absence of a permanent supervisor, there wasn’t that direct guidance to the social worker, who was clearly struggling in this file on how to manage it. The MCFD internal review did recognize that lack and tried to address it.

N. Simons (Chair): Okay. Thank you for that.

My last two questions. Do you know if there were charges laid in the second sexual assault?

J. Charlesworth: There were no charges laid in the second assault. We do know, and there were no charges laid.

N. Simons (Chair): So the police were made aware of a sexual assault. The critical incident was reported. The child didn’t want to pursue it. Was it up to the child to say: “No, I don’t feel like pursuing it”?

J. Charlesworth: Do you have some insights on that, Alysha?

A. Hardy: From what we understand, and we did not review the police-involved…. Their actions weren’t part of the review for this investigation, but from what we understand, there was not sufficient evidence to proceed with charges. That’s why you’ll see through the report that we refer to it as “alleged,” because with the information we had and from what we understand of the information the police had, there wasn’t enough to proceed.

N. Simons (Chair): All right. Well, thank you for that response.

My last question is around staffing. With the current state of affairs with child and youth mental health, can you expand on that? Maybe this is a question for the ministry, but I’m just wondering if their staffing contingent meets the needs or if the positions are filled. I’ve heard concerns locally about that. I guess, ultimately, it refers back to the idea of workload and overwork — the very challenged caseloads of social workers and child and youth mental health workers in the province. Can you just maybe expand on that?

[11:45 a.m.]

J. Charlesworth: Well, you may have noticed that we were all looking at each other. This is something that we talk about almost every week — child and youth mental health. I again defer to my colleagues here on this.

Certainly, we see many children with complex mental health needs that are not able to gain the access to child and youth mental health services. It’s an interesting thing, because CYMH is a voluntary service. If the child, for what­ever reason, says, “I don’t want it,” then there’s nothing that compels. We often see situations where a referral has been made, the child doesn’t want the service or doesn’t show up for the appointment, and then the file gets closed.

It’s actually something that, just speaking personally here, drives me bananas. I think: “What is the alternative here? What we are doing?” These are children that we understand have significant mental health concerns, and for whatever reasons, we are not reaching them or connecting them or making that proposition to be involved with mental health services really viable and welcoming. It’s a question that we often ask ourselves.

As I say, we talk about this a lot, so I’m sure…. I think Alan is just waiting to wade in on that one. I can tell.

A. Markwart: Well, not really. I think the shortcomings in the child and youth mental health system have been well documented, going back to a report by this very committee about two or three years ago. We have a Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions. It’s well established. There are lengthy waiting lists. The phenomenon that Jennifer referred to, where cases get dropped if they don’t show up, is a caseload management tool. There isn’t the kind of outreach capacity, the intensity of day treatment programs. It is a system that is substantially wanting.

There is the Pathway to Hope. Let’s hope.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you for those responses.

R. Glumac: Just following up on one of Nick’s questions. Being placed in that emergency bed, there was this…. It says here, on page 26: “The other male youth already placed in this home had a documented history of sexual intrusion.” How is it possible that somebody with a documented history of sexual intrusion is allowed to be in that situation where other people are coming in?

N. Simons (Chair): Already victimized as well. Yeah.

R. Glumac: Well, whether or not they’re already victimized, this person has a history. That should be a big concern. How can this happen?

J. Charlesworth: That’s the very same question we were asking. Yeah. That was one of those things that’s really heartbreaking to read. I think this is a situation of — again, as we’ve talked about in the final recommendation — how important it is to have those specialized resources and not be defaulting to an emergency home, which is like, “Okay, it’s a bed” as opposed to: is this the right place for this child, especially in light of the other children that are there?

We asked the same question. I think it’s….

A. Markwart: I would just add that this is not the first occasion. We have seen — I’m hesitant to say numerous — several circumstances, through reportable circumstances, of similar kinds of things with both boys and girls where there have been placements with known sexually intrusive co-residents, and bad things have happened.

R. Glumac: One follow-up. These emergency beds fall under…. This is the contracted residential services. There’s a litany of issues with contracted residential services. The Auditor General also issued a report on that.

Again, I would like to request that we have the opportunity to speak to the ministry, to ask them about how they’re doing on their plan in regards to oversight of contracted residential services, because it seems to me that this example falls under the oversight. This should not be allowed. If it’s something that is happening over and over, as has just been stated, this is unacceptable.

[11:50 a.m.]

I would like to ask these questions directly to the ministry. I have other questions, as well, that come out of this report that I would like to ask directly to the ministry. That would be my request.

N. Simons (Chair): Thanks, Rick. Yeah, good comments.

R. Leonard: I feel I need to go back and get some clarification for Sonia’s questions, because I kind of added a little more to it. Has MCFD accepted the recommendation to shift towards trauma-informed practice?

J. Charlesworth: Yes, we have.

R. Leonard: The last question was: what are the conse­quences for not making that shift? I won’t ask any more than that, just to keep it to her question.

J. Charlesworth: Well, from my perspective, the consequences would be that we would not be doing the best service for the children and youth that are being served within the ministry’s portfolio, largely because there has been so much knowledge and research done about the impact of trauma on the brain and on development. If you’re interested, we speak to the adverse childhood experiences in here. I was just at a session last Friday that spoke about the neuroscience and the epigenetics — the way in which trauma gets transferred for three generations — and, of course, adverse childhood experiences.

The other part of that is that this does not define the child’s trajectory going forward. What’s really important is that if we understand the impact of trauma, then we can make better interventions and try and do our work in such a way that we don’t reinforce that trauma and, in fact, create opportunities for — as was discussed last Friday — resiliency, coping strategies and healing to happen.

In the absence of paying attention to the impact of trauma and bringing in trauma-informed practice, my view is that we’re not providing the services and supports. Because the reality is that if any kid is coming into care, by definition, they are experiencing trauma.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you for that.

C. Hyman: Can I add to that? Our office has recently implemented a new process to monitor implementation of recommendations that we’re making. What you’ll see from us in the new year is that we are making recommendations on an annual basis — requesting status updates, assessing the status of implementation. Then we’ll be posting those on our website. Through that process, we’re hoping that there will be more accountability to public bodies that accept recommendations.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much. I really appreciate this discussion.

Jennifer, you want to add something?

J. Charlesworth: Yes, I just want to say one more thing, actually. It’s too bad that Laurie has left.

Actually, just as a way of closing, there are two things. One is I forgot to recognize Jeff, who had done so much report….

N. Simons (Chair): Who?

J. Charlesworth: Yes, he hides in the back. But Jeff did an extraordinary amount of work on this report too. There was so much that we could have done a 150-page report. But thank goodness, we’ve got Jeff, who helps us hone in. I want to acknowledge that.

The other thing is that I think this is indicative of where we are going forward with our reports. As Laurie mentioned, it’s a relatively small number, but these are things that can be done. Yes, it’s 200, but it’s 200. We can look at it from various perspectives. When we see specific areas where interventions can be made, changes can be made that can be practical and pragmatic and implemented right away, this is an important way to shift a system as well.

These would be called niche reports. We’ve already talked about child and youth with special needs. We’ve talked about a number of other big areas that are changing — residential services. I appreciate the comments that Rick made as well. But these are areas where, while it might be a small number of kids, they’re particularly vulnerable. You’ll be seeing more of those kinds of niche areas, bringing forward.

N. Simons (Chair): I would just add to that as well. The interprovincial aspect of this case might be in small numbers — whether the young person gets a mental health assessment, whether they get the school support services, all those things that are broadly applied to the entire cohort, I suppose.

Thanks a lot, everybody who’s involved in this report. It’s going to serve the children of the province well.

I think we have one more agenda item.

J. Charlesworth: We do. We’re bringing it home now.

R. Glumac: Can we have a discussion about whether to bring in the ministry?

N. Simons (Chair): No, not right now. We’ll do that later. Thank you.

Go ahead, Jennifer.

Statement by
Representative for Children and Youth

COMMITTEE REPORT ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH WITH
NEURODIVERSE SPECIAL NEEDS

J. Charlesworth: The final thing I wanted to offer, actually, is hands up to this committee. I just want to offer some brief remarks to echo the public statement that I issued earlier this month regarding your report on children and youth with neurodiverse special needs.

[11:55 a.m.]

As I say, it’s important that we acknowledge the great work that’s going on. I want to congratulate the committee. We want to congratulate the committee on the report, because we believe it takes an important step towards creating a fuller understanding of the experiences of children, youth and their families in B.C.’s system of services and, most importantly, towards improving the services and experiences for children with special needs and their families.

In completing this work, I understand the committee did eight public hearings, heard 87 presentations and received 137 written and video submissions. You’ve created a very high bar for us, I should say, as we go forward in doing our work. I think that’s a really important, thorough process, and it does a tremendous amount to the community to be heard. We certainly heard, through our FAS report, actually, that people that participated or are participating with us in consultations participated with you, and they felt relieved that somebody was listening. I think that’s incredibly important.

We also really appreciate when we can amplify one another’s work. The Alone and Afraid report that we released last year…. By the way, we’ll be reporting out on the recommendations and the progress there soon. But being able to have your further report, I think, means that collectively, there’s greater attention being paid to that. If there are ways that we can contribute to this important dialogue, we certainly are excited to do so. I think our work with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder will complement that as well.

I just wanted to say thank you for doing the work that you’ve done and raising the awareness in our communities and in the Legislative Assembly for the needs of our children with special needs.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you for that comment. Thank you to my fellow committee members for engaging in that process. I think, as you said, it was really important to hear and for people to be heard. I hope that some action comes from our report. I’m sure that awareness is the beginning. I think we do operate in…. Our intention is to improve a system that protects and supports families that are potentially vulnerable.

Thank you very much for all your work and all the presentations today. We’ll just have a minute recess, and we’ll talk about the other issue.

Rick wants to add something.

R. Glumac: Just on this, specifically regarding the 16 recommendations, are there any specific comments on the recommendations themselves? Do you endorse the recommendations in full?

J. Charlesworth: Yes, we do. We’ve been encouraging the Ministry of Children and Family Development, as they do their review and their overhaul of the child and youth with special needs, to pay close attention to those 16 recommendations. We definitely support and endorse all of them.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much, and thank you, Members.

Thank you, Clerk’s office — Jennifer and Katey.

With that, I seek a motion to….

Are we going to do any other business? Well, we’ll have a minute recess, how about that.

The committee recessed from 11:58 a.m. to 11:59 a.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Okay, committee members, I ask for a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:59 a.m.