The committee met at 9:37 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I would like to, first of all, acknowledge that I am joining you from the traditional, unceded territory of the Coast Salish people — the Musqueam, the Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh. Specifically, I’m joining you from the land of the Tsleil-Waututh people.

I think that I would urge all of us to reflect on developments in the last little while and to recommit to reconciliation and forging a new relationship.

This morning we are meeting with the Merit Commissioner, Maureen Baird. This is an opportunity for a check-in.

I will turn it over to you, Maureen, just to give us an update on where you’re at with the budget, your processes, areas or things that you want to highlight for us. Specifically, if there’s anything that you want to tell us about the COVID restart and how that will affect your operation and where people are working and how they’re doing their work, that would be great.

Over to you, Maureen.

Financial and Operational Updates
from Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE MERIT COMMISSIONER

M. Baird: I want to thank you very much for the opportunity for us to meet again and to give me an opportunity to highlight the work of our office. With me today is Mr. Van Swieten, the executive director of corporate shared services.

Ms. Routledge has already given the acknowledgment that applies to my appearance today. Of course, I echo her comments and thank her for them.

I wanted to start off by providing a very brief update on the budget of the Office of the Merit Commissioner and our work in progress.

[9:40 a.m.]

While the ’20-21 fiscal year numbers are still to be verified, we are projecting a surplus of $230,000 in our operating budget of $1.365 million. I’ll have a full reporting on that when we appear again in the fall.

Our priorities this year are the conduct and reporting out of the annual audit and dismissal process reviews. We’ll continue to respond to requests for staffing reviews. Currently, we’ve had nearly as many reviews requested since April 1 of this year as were requested in all of 2021. Our work is progressing as we’ve outlined in the service plan, and we expect to meet all of our performance measures and targets.

My approach this morning will be to tell you about our staff, our premises and address our back-to-work planning. I’d also like to use this opportunity to provide you with a deeper insight into the working of our office and address the work we do, not in terms of our lines of business, which is the way that I usually present this to go along with our budgetary issues, but this time, to have a look at it in terms of the principles that we support for the oversight of merit and the outcomes that we achieve. My goal is to take a little bit of a different view into our work to hopefully provide just a little bit deeper vision about what we do.

Any review of our office and its work must start with a recognition of the importance of the independence of the Office of the Merit Commissioner. It’s as a result of this independence that we can achieve better accountability in our area of statutory mandate and enhanced value of the information which we provide to the Legislature in terms of the quality of the information in our reports.

I want to start off by telling you a little bit about our people. In addition to myself, our office operates with six staff, two of whom work part-time. While the position of Merit Commissioner has always been part-time, my appointment, for the first time, establishes a maximum number of hours which equates to essentially half-time.

Our staff consists of a director of audit and review, a senior program manager, two program managers, an analyst and a program administrative assistant. We also have six contractors who conduct audits of hiring processes year-round. Our auditors are highly skilled professionals. They work remotely on a contract basis and are paid per audit. We’ve recently increased the per-audit fee to better recognize the time it takes to complete an audit and the skill level that these individuals bring to their work.

This small office contingent has been working together for a number of years. I consider myself very fortunate to have inherited from the previous Merit Commissioner not only a highly skilled and professional staff but also one which is cohesive and collegial. This staffing complement has been consistent over the past number of years. Last year, we did increase the hours of one of our part-time program managers. I don’t see any changes in our staffing in the foreseeable future.

The work that we do is often sensitive. For example, unsuccessful employee candidates requesting a review of a competition present us with a wide range of grounds for why they feel that a competition was unfair and therefore should be reconsidered. We appreciate that these people have experienced disappointment in not being successful in their applications. They’re often angry and upset, understandably so. They can be vulnerable. My team is trained to be open-minded and inquisitive in their approach to those impacted by our decisions and to be understanding of the impact of the decisions that we make.

I’m going to move on a little bit, to our work. Our mission is to strengthen and support fairness and transparency. Our authority is set out in the Public Service Act. In short, our jurisdiction is to perform random merit performance audits; monitor the application of the merit principle to appointments to and within the public service; and review the application of government policies, practices and standards to just cause dismissal processes. You’ll note that this mandate is narrow, and it’s not public-facing.

[9:45 a.m.]

As you can see, the issue of fairness is central to our work. With respect to the oversight of hiring, the Public Service Act specifies that merit must be determined within the context of the position and include consideration of six factors: the applicant’s education, skills, knowledge, experience, past work performance and years of continuing service in the public service.

Given that there’s no formal definition of merit in the act, we use a common understanding. Appointments are made on the basis of an assessment of competence and ability to do the job that is non-partisan. As well, we rely on principles that we believe reflect the merit-based hiring approach. Through the reporting process, we support and enforce what we consider to be the general principles that ensure the application of the merit principle. There are four of them. I’m going to list them, and then I’m going to address each one independently.

The first of these general principles, or foundational principles, is open and transparent processes. The second is fair and equitable treatment of applicants. The third is objective and relevant methods to assess applicants, and the last one is reasonable decisions.

We apply these foundational elements both to staffing reviews and to merit performance audits. For every eligible staffing review request, a program manager will do an in-depth review and analysis of the hiring decisions related to the requester’s grounds. It’s through this review and analysis that I determine, based on the facts, whether the merit principle has been applied.

Throughout our rigorous auditing process, we also find examples of poor hiring decisions, which are contrary to these foundational principles. I think it’s informative to have a sense of these types of issues, both that employees requesting a staffing review decision as incidents where they believe the merit principle was not applied…. We discover during the auditing process whether it was or not.

Let me address each of those foundational principles. The first is open and transparent processes. Transparency enhances the perceived and the actual quality of the hiring process. The requirement for transparency applies to all stages of the hiring process. For example, the posting must clearly identify all qualifications to be considered and all potential outcomes, such as the establishment of an eligibility list. The assessment methods used must clearly show how decisions were made. The notification at the end of a competition must identify the successful applicant.

Here’s an example we reviewed. A request for review noted — I’ve got it in quotes, although this is paraphrased — that “it was unfair to restrict the opportunity to a limited group of employees.” In this case, an opportunity was made available only to a group of employees within a specified work group. In this case, I found that the work group allowed for a sufficient pool of applicants and was properly advertised. Therefore, this aspect of the merit principle had been applied.

Another example found in this category during the audit progress, this time related to transparency, is when the employee applicants do not receive communication about the outcome of the hiring process and their status. That’s a common issue that we see throughout the auditing process. In fact, I believe communication is a key consideration for the understanding and credibility of hiring decisions. We often see the issue raised in requests for staffing reviews concerning the feedback following the outcome of a competition.

The next foundational principle I want to review with you is objective and relevant methods to assess applicants. This principle ensures that the stages of hiring from the posting until appointment are designed to match qualifications and their assessment to the position to be filled and that those making hiring decisions use the objectivity and consistency necessary to be fair and to ensure that those individuals to be appointed possess the essential job qualifications.

[9:50 a.m.]

Here’s an example. A recent request for a staffing review wondered why “the position is for a subject-matter expert, but there was no assessment of the relevant technical knowledge and skills.” In this case, I ordered a reconsideration, as the essential elements of identifying, assessing and validating fundamental job requirements were missing. Audit regularly observed the lack of some form of substantive criteria, which is critical to ensure an objective and consistent basis for marking and is noted as an error in the corresponding audit report, as we cannot determine if the assessment was fair.

The third foundational principle is fair and equitable treatment. Applicants deserve the right to be assessed in the same manner as other applicants. I consider this type of consistency to be a key element of fairness.

Here is how it was recently raised in a request for a staffing review: “A supervisor assisted one of the candidates in preparing their application documents.” This paraphrased statement shows how bias may have been introduced into the hiring process. One of the more common errors observed in audit is when a job opportunity has been advertised with a particular qualification as being necessary; however, the panel then considered applicants who did not possess it.

The final foundational principle is reasonable decisions. Again, the issue of reasonableness cuts across all aspects of the hiring process. Those individuals tasked with hiring decisions are accountable to have a deep understanding of the work and their decisions about designing and conducting a hiring process, which may be different than that of the team and myself. When we consider whether a decision was reasonable, we regularly communicate with panel members for context and explanation.

An example of an employee concerned about hiring processes raised the issue that “the panel did not fairly assess my interview responses.” In an audit, an example is when a tie for a final ranking was broken by the marks received in a written test. This choice was made as the issues tested were being considered by the panel to be the best way to distinguish candidates. These are both examples where I found that the decisions made were reasonable but where I had to go back and get further information from those who were involved in the hiring process.

This brings us full circle back to a consideration of the importance of merit-based hiring and why we consider these key elements as being so important. That’s because oversight to ensure merit-based hiring has the following positive consequences for a qualified and professional public service.

By ensuring that fair hiring practices are used, by recommending improvement in hiring practices and by ensuring that past errors are not repeated, the hiring process is improved. Those making hiring decisions know that their decisions and practices may be scrutinized. The results of reviews and audits inform the central agency of necessary changes to ensure merit-based hiring and to correct any systemic errors. Audits provide ministry organization executives with a dashboard of how well their staff are conducting merit-based processes and give them insight into potential issues and opportunities to consider and, possibly, implement changes.

Another benefit of merit-based hiring is an engaged and productive workforce. Our oversight promotes confidence in the hiring process. They know that they have somewhere to go with their fairness concerns and that a thorough, independent review will be conducted. Our work also enhances a credible leadership because they’re subject to independent review.

Lastly but of course very importantly, it enhances public trust in that the appointments of the B.C. Public Service are based on what you know and not on whom you know. In short, the oversight function, as it relates to appointments to and within the public service, ensures the integrity of the hiring system which, in turn, ensures the high quality of public service that British Columbians expect and deserve.

[9:55 a.m.]

I want to say a word about dismissal process reviews. You’ve just seen the first reporting out that we’ve done on these in the May annual report. Our just cause dismissal review process is still, as you know, at an early stage. However, having reviewed 19 cases, it’s clear that these reviews should provide, to the public and the government, a high level of confidence that government’s standards, policies and practices are being followed in just cause dismissals. We’ve also been able, through these 19 cases, to make recommendations for improvements in the dismissal processes themselves.

In terms of our workload, the legislation provides for a semi-annual notice to us of dismissal cases that are pending eligibility, so that we have some notice as to how many to expect to receive in the future. Since our reporting in May 2021, we now have one complete file ready for review, two files which are eligible and are waiting for file materials, two further that we expect to receive within nine months and nine that are pending, which means that they are engaged in some other form of process — litigation or arbitration — and will become eligible in the future. Overall, we’re able to manage these files within our budget and within our office workload.

Space planning and return to work. Our office at 947 Fort Street occupies a part of the fifth floor, which it shares with the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. We participate, as you know, with three other independent offices in a corporate shared-services model, which is funded on a per-capita basis. We don’t see any changes in our premises being required or necessary for the duration of our lease. As our lease ends, we’ll be re-evaluating space needs. Without being able to make commitments, we anticipate that the preference for greater flexibility to work remotely will lead to office design that will be more economical in terms of office size needs.

As for reopening our office, we’re still in relatively early stages. I’ve done a survey of the individual wishes of our six staff, who reside in Victoria. We have decided that we will operate as we are doing now, until the fall, as there’s been little impact on our ability to conduct our work, particularly given the technology supports and flexibility of our staff. What I can say is that pre-COVID, our office supported a variety of flexible working arrangements for staff. That will continue in the fall. We’re looking at various models and will evaluate those in the context of the nature of our work, the needs of our office and the technological supports that are available.

I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak about our work. Of course, I’m happy to answer any questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Commissioner Baird, for what is a thorough and accessible overview of the work of your office. You’ve given us some insights that remind us of the complexities of the work that you do. I note that you’ve pointed out what some of the sensitivities are in the work that you do and the impact on people, on their emotional reactions to your work. Thank you for that.

Can I open it up now for comments, questions from the committee?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that excellent report and taking us through it. It really helps understand a couple of things.

I guess when I look at the work that you’re doing, is it for…? I’m just wondering. The people that are applying for different positions — are they within the structure of the unionized labour agreement? Or are they only people that are outside of that?

[10:00 a.m.]

The other question that comes to mind…. If I unsuccessfully asked for an opinion or a review of a position…. Are there people that are reoccurring, in the sense that they almost always feel like there’s some unjustness or whatever? I don’t know. I’m assuming, because we see that in our office as well. As MLAs, we get people that just are never satisfied with the answers.

If you could elaborate a little bit more on that, Commissioner Baird.

M. Baird: Yes. With respect to your first question, most people in the public service come within our jurisdiction. Those that are excluded…. Of course, those in the Legislature are beyond our jurisdiction. I don’t have this exact number right at hand, but I believe that it’s about 90 percent of people in the public service that are within our jurisdiction.

In terms of repeat requests, because those would come in the issue of staffing reviews, I believe that there have, over a period of time, been some individuals who have brought more than one staffing review. But certainly, this is not a problematic issue from the point of view of our office. Every staffing review that’s eligible, is legitimate on its own grounds, and what happens in one competition that gave grounds for a review might be different than what happened in a second competition.

Certainly, it’s possible that we will have the same individual requesting more than one staffing review throughout their career, but that doesn’t cause us any issues. We review them on the grounds that they present when they come before us.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Can I just follow up with another question, Chair?

In your opening comments, you talked about the fact that you already had more reviews or requests since April 1 for the entire 2020 fiscal year, I guess. Let’s go back a year prior to that, when things were more normalized. How is it trending? What is the reason that there’s this apparent increase?

M. Baird: This is something that we do think about in our office. There is really no way to determine trends. This year, yes, there is what we anticipate to be an increase, given where we’re at mid- to late June. Given that we have a number of months yet to go in this year, we expect that there will be an increase.

Because of the nature of staffing reviews, which is what this is, those who’ve been in the office longer than I and have watched these trends have told me that there’s no statistical certainty, no statistical validity to trying to determine any trends. Some years will be higher than others.

Having said that, if there was something that we noticed at the end of this year, given that there has been an increase that we’ve noticed, that might be something that we would comment on at the end of the year. But at this stage, it’s just too early to know that.

It may be, as has been in the past with these variations in the number of staffing reviews that we get, that there will not be the ability to extract from that any legitimate reason for why there is. It may just be one of those things.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thank you. I’ll leave it to others to ask their questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions from the committee?

G. Kyllo: You mentioned the current facility that you share — that the lease will be up for renewal at some point in time. But I don’t know that you indicated when that lease would be up for renewal.

[10:05 a.m.]

I’m just wondering if you might elaborate: when that does occur, would the intention be for you to continue to cohabitate office space with some of the other offices, or would you be looking to potentially give consideration to your own office?

M. Baird: Yes. Our lease is up in 4½ years. So there’s some considerable time left on the lease. I think all I can say is that the shared corporate services model, working with three other independent officers, has worked well. It’s a model, perhaps, that could be expanded to include other officers. But this model has worked well.

It’s worked particularly well, given the size of our office. We benefit from having available to us the services of corporate shared services. So certainly from my perspective, a year or so into this position, it is a model that I say works very well.

In terms of size, of course — office size and design — that’s something that I expect everyone will be looking at in the future, and certainly we will be as well.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I don’t want to monopolize.

Thanks again, Commissioner Baird. The surplus that you said you’re projecting — is that…? I think it was $230,000 on a budget of $1.365 million.

M. Baird: Yes.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Is that the last fiscal year? I just wondered which fiscal year we’re talking about. And then why has there been a surplus or an unused portion of the budget? What’s driving that?

M. Baird: This surplus isn’t a surprise to us. It’s included in the 2020-21 budget, and what it relates to is that a position was budgeted for and additional funding was made available for professional services relating to the introduction of the dismissal process reviews.

What we’ve found now with the experience that we’ve had with the 19 cases is that our office can manage the workload of the dismissal process review cases without needing to hire an additional person. So that’s what has created the budget surplus. Of course, that’s something we’re going to be monitoring, and I expect we will report more fully to you in our fall presentation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I think that pretty well wraps it up. Thank you so much again for your very thorough and very informative check-in. We look forward to seeing you again next time around.

Our next report is from the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth.

[10:10 a.m.]

Perhaps, just so there’s no pressure — and we do have time — why don’t we just take a recess for a couple of minutes to give them time to connect?

The committee recessed from 10:11 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I’d like to welcome Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth, the Representative for Children and Youth.

This is an opportunity for you to check in with us in terms of how your annual plan is unfolding, how it’s tracking with your budget, any things that are coming up that you want to bring to our attention. I’ll give you an opportunity to address the restart after COVID and how it affects your operation and anything we need to know about.

I’ll turn it over to you.

OFFICE OF THE REPRESENTATIVE
FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

J. Charlesworth: Thank you so much, Chair. Much appreciated.

Wonderful to be in a virtual circle with all of you today and to have the opportunity to provide you with an update on our office, what’s going on and, most importantly, the restart as we move into the fall.

Just before I begin the formal remarks, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m coming to you today, via Zoom, as per usual, from the traditional and unceded territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ people. It’s just north of what is known as Victoria. I’m very grateful to the keepers of these lands.

I hope, too, that National Indigenous Peoples Day was a significant day for all of you — the full range of emotions that we’re experiencing at this time and very much showing up within our office as well.

I’d also like to take a moment to introduce the other members of our RCY leadership team who are with us today: deputy representatives Samantha Cocker and Alan Markwart, Chief Financial Officer Dianne Buljat and Executive Director of Communications Jeff Rud.

During the presentation, I’d like to provide you with a brief financial and operational update of our office, including what we’ve done to adjust to the impacts of the pandemic, both for the children and families for whom we advocate and also in our operations. I’d like to outline our plans and priorities as British Columbia emerges from the pandemic. This presentation will include an update on key activities since we last appeared before the committee in February, the key strategies and planned initiatives for the next year and our budget expenditures and resource needs, including attention to the COVID-related impacts on the operations of the office.

There’s a lot of elements to cover today. Of course, I look forward to answering questions from committee members. I really appreciate the attention and care that you bring to the work that you do for this committee.

Just briefly, as you’re aware, our office is responsible for supporting children and youth and young adults and their families who need help navigating B.C.’s often complex child-, youth- and young adult–serving systems, advocating for improvements to those systems and services and providing oversight of the Ministry of Children and Family Development and other ministries and public bodies that deliver services and programs to children and families.

Our approved operating budget for fiscal 2021 was $10.471 million. We completed the fiscal year by returning a surplus of $441,460 or 4.2 percent. That surplus was attributable primarily to pandemic-related savings in travel, in office supplies and expenses, the latter of which includes, for example, events and in-person training costs that we didn’t incur.

We expect that similar savings in those budget lines will be realized during the first half of this current fiscal year, although there will likely be additional offsetting costs in other budget lines to, for example, address service pressures and online engagement expertise. I’ll talk through that with you.

We also expect to incur increased costs in the latter half of this fiscal year as we ramp up in-person and community engagement if, as expected, the health regulations permit a return to something approaching normal, whatever that’s going to look like. I’ll talk more about our re-engagement strategy and the work that we’ll be doing out in community a little bit later in this presentation.

Our operating budget for this fiscal year is $10.64 million. We currently have 77 FTEs at RCY, which includes FTEs related to delivering shared corporate services to the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, as you well know.

[10:20 a.m.]

Let’s talk a little bit about our operations. I want to focus primarily on reviews and investigations work and caseloads, to begin with, and to say that it’s been an unrelenting and difficult year. Caseload pressures continue to ramp up, and we don’t see any end in sight in that.

Just to give you a context, we conduct reviews and, in some cases, undertake investigations of critical injuries and deaths of children and youth who have received reviewable services. That’s what’s laid out in our act. We also identify and make recommendations for improvement to services, with the aim of preventing similar injuries or deaths in the future.

In fiscal 2021, our office received a record high 4,525 reportable circumstance reports, 1,883 of which were determined to be within RCY’s legislative mandate. So we receive injuries, and those that are in our mandate really speak to the critical or life-altering injuries. So that’s what we do a deeper dive in.

These in-mandate reportables included 1,788 critical injuries and 95 deaths of children and youth, which is a 42 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. This continued trend of sharp increases in reportables is showing up this fiscal year. In fact, there’s been — when we take a look over year over year — a 134 percent increase over the past five years.

What is this dramatic increase attributable to? It’s largely due to better reporting by MCFD over the last number of years, but other factors have also had an impact, especially, I think, in the last few years. That includes the opioid crisis and drug toxicity, particularly during COVID, mental health–related incidents increased, sexual exploitation and gang-related activities. That’s what we’re seeing in our trend lines.

We expect to see further incremental increases in reportables as health authorities begin to report critical injuries and deaths in relation to mental health and addiction services for children and youth. Just to give you a sense of that, although in our legislation it’s always been a requirement for public bodies to report critical injuries and deaths to us — for the public bodies that are delivering reviewable services — the health authorities have not done that in the past.

Happy to speak to that in our conversation a little bit later. But we have been working towards that over the last few years. In fact, my predecessor, Bernard Richard, started that process, to try and get the health authorities online. COVID had some significant impact in that process. But the new reporting stream began in March of this year, with child and youth mental health services in Vancouver-Richmond, and is expected to be followed by child and adolescent mental health hospital services later this year, and, hopefully, substance use services for youth in the next fiscal year.

Not only are we seeing an increase in MCFD reportables, but we will be getting a whole new line of reportables from the health care system in the next fiscal. I can say that the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions is very supportive of that, because it will increase the capacity for data and understanding of what’s happening for children and youth in our province.

As our report that we submitted to you notes, this continuing growth in reportables and the consequent impact on our workload has been very challenging. So gratitude to this committee’s approval of the reallocation of our funding arising from the closure of our Burnaby office last fiscal year.

We’ve been able to hire an additional permanent investigations analyst. That person is now in place to help ease the pressures caused by this continued increase. As a further step to cope with the workload, a second new temporary investigations analyst position has been added for this fiscal year only. We’re funding that position from expected pandemic-related savings — in particular, the continued pause on travel in the first half of this fiscal year. We will continue to monitor these pressures and the staffing needs of our reviews and investigations team. These will be addressed in our budget submission in the fall.

Again, to carry on with the reviews and investigations work, our team screens more than 350 reportable circumstances every month, just from MCFD. They conduct initial reviews of the in-mandate reports. They carry on, in some cases, in the complete comprehensive case reviews, and we make referrals for particularly concerning cases that require attention and follow-up, either to our own advocacy team or to MCFD — the provincial director of child welfare, for example. But the review team also produces publicly reported statistical aggregate and full investigation reports. The analyses of critical injury and death data are typically referenced in other public reports produced under our monitoring or special report mandates as well. So it’s a busy office.

[10:25 a.m.]

Last fiscal year the reviews and investigation team produced four public reports, completed 13 comprehensive reviews, and made 126 referrals of concerning cases, either to advocacy or to MCFD for follow-up.

Earlier this month the team released an investigative report entitled Skye’s Legacy: A Focus on Belonging. This report explores the importance of belonging in the lives of children and youth, with a particular focus on Indigenous youth.

It tells the story of one First Nations girl who tragically died at age 17 and how both she and her mother could have been much better served had the effects of intergenerational and historical trauma been better understood and had greater attention been paid to the importance of all dimensions of belonging in her case planning and decision-making — that is, relational belonging, cultural belonging, belonging to place and community, belonging in a legal sense, legal permanency, and then also having a sense of themselves and their identity and their hope for the future.

It’s a very powerful report. If you haven’t read it, even reading Skye’s story in the first part, you’ll get a much better sense of not only the challenges for our young people in our midst, in our community, but also just how important it is that we have a mindset and whole approach to thinking about how we connect children to places of belonging and to people that care and that they feel they belong to.

In addition to exploring the important issue of belonging, this report also illustrated how our office has begun to incorporate Indigenous research methodologies into our work. That approach will continue as we move forward and is woven into a number of other pieces of work that we’re undertaking right now.

The reviews and investigations team is completing a second report on child participation, voice and representation in legal proceedings. This report will complement the report we did and released in January that was entitled Detained: Rights of Children and Youth Under the Mental Health Act, but this one will focus on family law and Child, Family and Community Service Act proceedings. It too has a very beautiful focus on uplifting children’s voices. Despite the pandemic, we were able to get some very profound input from young people themselves.

In the coming months, the reviews and investigations team will also be commencing a new investigative report, as well as an aggregate report on critical injuries and deaths involving girls with complex needs. These are young people for whom there are multiple things going on, and their lives are quite chaotic and complex. The system really struggles to meet their needs, so it’s important that we learn what makes a difference in their young lives.

That’s reviews and investigations. Moving on to monitoring, our monitoring team monitors, reviews, audits and leads research on the provision of government-funded designated services or programs for children and youth and their families and identifies and makes recommendations for change to improve the effectiveness and responsiveness of those services.

In April, the monitoring released a special report entitled Excluded: Increasing Understanding, Support and Inclusion for Children with FASD and Their Families. This report takes an intensive look over time at the day-to-day challenges experienced by a cohort of children and youth affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. It’s a detailed examination of the services and supports available to these children, or the lack of, and makes recommendations on how such services and supports can be improved.

What was very powerful about this report is not only the centering of young people and their families’ voices but also the outreach that we did to Indigenous communities and service providers. It was very extensive engagement using some Indigenous research methodologies and story work as well.

The other thing that was quite beautiful about this is we had a lead co-researcher who is an adult with FASD. So in the spirit of “Nothing about us without us,” Myles was involved. I can tell you that when we presented to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, Myles and the parents who came to present stole the show. That committee, I’m very delighted to say, has decided that this is going to be a major focus of their work and their energy over the coming year, because one of the things that was being called for is to raise awareness. There’s simply a profound lack of awareness and tremendous inequities in the services made available to those young people.

[10:30 a.m.]

We are moving forward in a new way with this report. We’re developing a knowledge mobilization strategy to enhance awareness, understanding and action in support of children and youth with FASD and their families.

This knowledge mobilization strategy is a new approach for us. We have not done that in the past. Typically, we’ve done a report, and then we’ve moved on. But we want to enhance the reach and systemic impact of our work so that the recommendations land and we are not coming back five years from now with similar concerns. We’re also developing a knowledge mobilization strategy for Skye’s Legacy report as well.

A monitoring team is nearing completion of a quantitative and qualitative review of care planning for children in care, and this one focuses on cultural planning for Indigenous children, planning for youth transitioning into adulthood and permanency planning, which we might refer to as belonging planning now.

Public reporting on care planning and how that planning can be improved is expected to be released this fall and actually coincides very well with where the ministry is wanting to go. They recognize the need to improve care planning, so they’re awaiting our advice and feedback, and that will inform their progress in that area as well.

The team is also leading the development of a public report on children’s early years, including an examination of how more families can be kept safely together and the economic and social value of prevention and early intervention measures — again, a new area for us. We have not talked much in our reports around prevention and early years, so that’s an exciting project, again with tremendous input and participation from academics, from community leaders, from people that have been working in this field for many, many years. We’re very grateful for that.

The monitoring team is also beginning work this year on a range of identified issues related to contracted residential care services funded by MCFD. And finally, the monitoring team will lead the production of detailed public reports on the unique needs of our services for gender minority and sexual minority youth. This work will be done in collaboration with university researchers and other RCY teams. So that’s monitoring.

Moving on to advocacy. RCY’s advocacy team provides information, advice and assistance to children and youth, young adults and their families who need help in dealing with designated services or programs provided or funded by government. Our advocates help children and youth and young adults. Our age range is up there, up to the age of and including 23.

They help young people become effective self-advocates with respect to those services and supports, and they promote the development of advocacy services within communities so we’re not always the ones that are doing the work. We’re trying to build that capacity within community.

Interesting…. Unlike our reviews and investigations, which have seen a significant uptick in activity, the pandemic has had a clear effect of reducing calls and cases for our advocacy team. But this appears to have been temporary, and it actually matches quite closely the number of calls coming into the ministry, for example, and some other colleagues’ experiences.

There were decreases in total calls in cases for the 2020-21 fiscal year. These are primarily attributable to substantial decreases in the early months of the pandemic. So you can just imagine it went down significantly in the early months, but by the end of the fiscal year, our advocacy cases had recovered to previous levels. In fact, during the last quarter of the fiscal year, they were actually 8 percent higher than in the final quarter of the previous fiscal year — those three months just before COVID hit with vengeance. So that’s encouraging, but I’m also going to come back to how we’re going to make sure that people are aware of our services.

The other thing to bear in mind with the advocacy team is that the cases have become increasingly complex in recent years. I’ve raised that before with this committee. But it continues to be the case, and it necessitates much greater lengths of involvement by advocates and therefore increasing caseloads and workloads.

This is illustrated by the fact that the total number of active cases with more than two weeks’ involvement by our advocates increased by 16 percent, as did the total number of complex cases that required more than nine months’ involvement with an advocate. That grew by 13 percent. If we take a look at the number of complex cases with more than nine months’ involvement, that’s doubled in the past five years.

What’s contributing to that? Well, one of the things that’s adding to the complexity and that will continue to add to the complexity is the reassumption of child welfare jurisdiction by Indigenous nations and communities. What we are all figuring out is: how do you balance the collective rights and inherent jurisdiction and then the individual rights of children and youth, especially those that have been in care for some time and are remaining in the system right now?

[10:35 a.m.]

Recent changes to the Representative for Children and Youth regulation expanded our advocacy jurisdiction to include young adults, 19 to 23 inclusive, who are eligible for agreements with young adults and our tuition waiver. That complemented the ability that we have to provide advocacy for young adults receiving services from CLBC. We were expecting a considerable increase in the activity in that area, but that has been suppressed by the effects of the pandemic. The number of new mandate young adult cases from last fiscal year was actually small — just 36 young people.

We received funding for two additional staff positions to address this expanded young adult mandate effective April 2020, just as the pandemic heightened, meaning planned, in-person outreach, education and engagement couldn’t be undertaken. That’s why we think the uptake has been less than we anticipated and that had been indicated by our early work in this area.

Really, intake is dependent upon awareness by young people, caregivers and service providers of the availability of our services, which speaks to the need to engage in different ways. We’ve definitely used online engagement, and we’ve introduced talk and text capability, which is helpful, but it also requires assertive in-person youth and community engagement as the pandemic increases. Our office is in the process of recruiting a youth engagement coordinator to assist us in this regard — actually, for the whole organization. That should promise some increased young adult intake over time.

We also expect amendments to the act that were recommended by the Standing Committee on Children and Youth a number of years ago. We’re expecting those changes will be introduced later this year. That will further expand our advocacy jurisdiction by broadening the age range of young adults formerly in care and young adults with special needs to include those up to their 27th birthday. That is being looked forward to by many young people. This will increase the size of the young adult population eligible for our advocacy services by about 60 percent.

Moving along, our First Nations, Métis and Inuit relations team is dedicated to improving services for Indigenous children, youth and young adults, supporting First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities in reassuming jurisdiction over child and family services and helping us to become a more culturally attuned and culturally responsive organization.

Indigenous child welfare is a key priority for our office. As we all are becoming increasingly aware, the continued legacy of colonialism and racism has led to a situation where more than two-thirds of B.C. children in care are Indigenous. In fact, an Indigenous child is nearly 18 times more likely than a non-Indigenous child to be brought into care.

Indigenous nations and communities are beginning to journey towards the reassumption of jurisdiction over child welfare services, enabled by federal legislation — An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families — but that will take time. During this period of time, as the transition evolves, steps must be taken to support not only the transition but concurrently to better ensure that Indigenous children in the care of the existing system are receiving the comprehensive and culturally appropriate services they need and deserve.

I am very fortunate that we have been able to establish strong working relationships with key Indigenous leadership, including First Nations Leadership Council, the Delegated Aboriginal Agencies Directors Forum, B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres and Métis Nation B.C. The richness of those conversations enhances our work and our priority-setting.

Our team’s community outreach staff engage, as well, with Indigenous communities, agencies and service providers at the grassroots level. They focus on building relationships and on child rights education.

The team is developing a program to monitor progress in Indigenous child welfare, with particular attention to how the province is implementing recommendations of a range of key reports: the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the “Calls for Justice” of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and the 2016 report Indigenous Resilience, Connectedness and Reunification: From Root Causes to Root Solutions — A Report on Indigenous Child Welfare in British Columbia that was commissioned by the minister of the day.

[10:40 a.m.]

Obviously, many of those calls to action and calls for justice or recommendations are pertinent to other public bodies — federal government and whatnot — but there are many that are directly relevant to the provincial context, and that’s what we’re monitoring.

The other thing that we’re excited about is…. We’re working with the University of Ottawa’s Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy on a comprehensive review of provincial and federal funding of services to Indigenous children and youth with a particular focus on child welfare services. That work will be completed and released later this fiscal year — late fall, we anticipate — and is such a critically important piece that’s being done with the blessing of leadership throughout the province, because it helps us understand what fiscal resources are available and what is going to be required in order for communities and nations to be successful.

Further reviews and public reports regarding use of Jordan’s principle and of roots- and family-finding services for Indigenous children were also planned. The team works collaboratively with all of our program areas to ensure that our office is culturally aware, respectful and responsive and that we’re building a culturally safer environment for our Indigenous staff and Indigenous people who we serve.

I’d also like to mention that earlier this year, this committee approved the reallocation of some of the funding from the closure of our Burnaby office to enable us to obtain specialized legal services respecting Indigenous child welfare and for expert knowledge-keeper and Elder services. I’m delighted to say the specialized legal services are in place. We are working with Halie Bruce — Tlingit, Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw and Scottish heritage, deep experience in Aboriginal law and child welfare. We’re very close to hiring the knowledge-keeper and building our Elders and matriarch circles around that.

Those are the activities in our office. Let’s look to the future in terms of our strategic directions.

We’re undertaking an annual review of our strategic and operational plan. That was first developed in 2018, before I came, and we’ve sustained that work. It articulates our vision, mission, goals and states key strategies and priorities, along with a very detailed list of activities to operationalize those strategies. We review that annually, but we’re coming to the end of that one, and we’re starting to look ahead, especially in light of what’s happened over the last 16 months.

To give you a sense, our strategic priority over the next 18 months — we don’t dare plan for longer than that these days — is Indigenous child welfare, including, as I’ve mentioned before, supporting the resumption of child welfare jurisdictions by First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities and concurrently working to ensure services to Indigenous children in care are improved while that transition is occurring.

As an aside, the communities may or may not wish to have our ongoing services, but they are very appreciative of the work that we’re doing in terms of sharing information, of supporting this work, and have continued to say: “Keep your eye on the ball of what’s happening for our children in care, particularly with children who may come into care right now.” We know that we’re doing the work that is in the service of those communities.

The other priority areas are services for children and youth with special needs; mental health and substance use services for children and youth; transitional support services, including housing for young adults who’ve left care; residential services for children and youth, including those with very complex needs; children’s rights, including the promotion of children’s participation, voice and representation in decisions affecting them and the rights and needs of minority children; early support and intervention services to better assist keeping families together, doing that in a good way to support families to be healthy and successful in raising their children up within community; and care planning for children in care, particularly in relation to belonging, cultural planning and transitions to adulthood.

Those are the key priority areas, and each one of those has multiple layers of activity — some building on work that we’ve already done and some brand new work as well.

I’ll just shift now, because I think this is an area of keen interest that you all have. What are outreach and engagement going to look like, going forward? First, I want to situate our work in terms of what we have done during the pandemic and then shift to where we are going, what we’ve learned.

[10:45 a.m.]

Outreach and engagement are vital for us, because we have to create awareness of our services and ensure that children and youth are getting the information and help they need. Also, it’s the way that we understand what’s going on in communities that helps inform our strategic priorities.

We’ve completed, during the pandemic, a considerable amount of online outreach and engagement with community partners; service providers; provincial bodies; organizations supporting youth in transition; some families, including families of children and youth with special needs and families who have lost children to the toxic drug supply — for example, Moms Stop the Harm — and other parents.

We’ve connected with staff at each friendship centre throughout the province. We’ve connected via phone with more than 65 First Nations communities in the province and built relationships there to not only describe our services but also find out what they would find would be helpful. We’ve planned Zoom workshops that are right-spaced for them. We’ve invested in staff training and in online platforms and worked with an online engagement expert to assist us to pivoting to these different forms of engagement.

We’ll continue to do this online work, going forward. It supports enhanced access through this very large province and offers obvious cost efficiency but also makes things much more accessible to family members and to young adults, for example.

However, there are some groups for whom online engagement is either inappropriate — so young people who are homeless, dealing with substance use or mental health challenges or in precarious circumstances — where a more relational approach is called for, and for First Nations communities in which presence and time is needed to build relationships and trust with an organization such as ours.

Sometimes online engagement is just simply not accessible — there are many young people in families without access to technology — or it’s just not very engaging or relevant. For younger children, when we do our right-spaced workshop, there’s play, there’s creativity, and there are lots of activities with them when we’re able to do it in person. You just can’t replicate that in an online environment. When we introduce rights and perspectives, we’ve tried many different things. We’ve had some delightful experiences. But it’s just not the same.

Given that there are some times that online engagement is inappropriate, inaccessible or simply not engaging or relevant, we have to think about how we are going to bring the best of online engagement, do that with those parties where it makes a lot of sense, continue to build our skill sets but then also re-engage at the community level.

In-person engagement efforts during the end of this fiscal year, starting in September, will focus on several areas — first of all, young people who are in the most precarious situations and unlikely to have access to technology or unlikely to engage in work with the RCY through technology. There are young people who are most on the margins. They might be dealing with mental health, substance use, housing instability, disconnection. Their voices are so important if we’re going to get it right in terms of services. And online engagement doesn’t work. We have to be in their world.

To help that, advocacy staff will also be connecting with young people in shelter locations, alternate schools, with our community service providers — things like Broadway Youth Resource Centre, the friendship centres, custody centres, treatment centres, Maples and adolescent psychiatric units in hospitals. We hope that that will provide an opportunity to reconnect with those very vulnerable populations. The closure of our Burnaby office actually has enabled us to think more creatively about all the different places within community that we can go and connect with young people.

Our advocates will also be connecting with young adults on AYAs, the tuition waiver program and those transitioning into CLBC or eligible for services with CLBC to ensure that they’re aware of our services and there’s a robust plan there that will pick up from last April. This outreach will be particularly important for young people who’ve accessed the COVID-19 emergency measures, because those come to a close. The emergency measures come to a close between September 2021 and March 2022. We want to ensure that they’re getting information and transitional planning supports that they need.

We are connected with a number of networks: Federation of B.C. Youth in Care Networks, TRRUST Collective and other partners that are connected with youth transitioning to adulthood. They’re going to be key to us.

[10:50 a.m.]

We’ve revamped all of our communication materials for young people to explain our expanded mandate. We’re reaching out to alternate school counsellors to support those conversations about youth in care, access to tuition waivers and agreements with young adults. We’re connecting with youth advisories across the province as well.

That’s the youth part. If we think of First Nations and Métis communities and organizations, including delegated Aboriginal agencies that are working towards the transformation and resumption of jurisdiction, we’re creating a whole series of rights-based workshops. We will resume our RCY Rights tour, and that will cover the northeast, the northwest and Haida Gwaii, as a first step. And we’ll start with some online webinars and then build those relationships and then be out there in person to meet with organizations, foster parents, social workers and young people.

Of course, the senior leadership team of myself, the deputy representatives Alan and Sam and our advocacy team members will be focusing on communities that we haven’t been to in the past three years or where there are lower levels of engagement with our services. I will be doing a lot of work with allies and public bodies that are extending beyond those ministries and public bodies with whom we work most closely.

We’re setting up presentations, events and dialogue sessions with chiefs of police, school superintendents, principals’ and vice principals’ associations, the school trustees association, school counsellors, the Teachers Federation, the health authority CEOs, health practitioners and Allied Health professionals and the post-secondary institutions. I think, in my first year, I did 200 community events, and I’m imagining that I may well be doing about that same amount in the latter half of this fiscal year because of how we need to get back out and connect with community.

That’s where our re-engagement is. Just coming to a close here, we’ve also taken steps to build partnerships with universities and research institutes so that we can bring together the best available evidence to inform our work.

We were active last year in commissioning research and providing feedback to ministries and public bodies about the impact of COVID-19 on children, young people and their families and promoting better support services, especially in relation to mental health, children and youth with special needs and transitional services for young people leaving care as well as domestic violence. Of course, although we’re emerging from the pandemic, we know that those effects are going to be continuing and longstanding, and we’ll continue to monitor them.

These partnerships with the universities and affiliated research institutes actually are expanding so that we can make sure that we’re getting the best current research evidence to inform ourselves and our work with the public bodies. There is a whole array of things that we’re engaging in.

We’ve worked with Children’s Health Policy Centre at Simon Fraser already on two reports, and they’re doing ones on mental health services for Indigenous children and youth; dual-diagnosis, which means mental health and intellectual disability; and concurrent disorders — mental health and substance use coming together.

We’ve got research reports with UBC’s Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, an impossible-to-pronounce acronym. That’s on the characteristics and experiences, needs and services for gender minority and sexual minority young people. That combines with our research, where we see a very different characteristic in terms of injuries and deaths for that population — different vulnerabilities.

We’re working with researchers relating to girls with complex needs, both Simon Fraser and UVic. We’ve got research reports underway with UVic, UBC, Simon Fraser, UNBC and UBCO in relation to early intervention services to support keeping families safely together.

We’ve learned some very important things over this last year, as I reported to you in February. We’ve permanently moved to voluntary remote and decentralized working arrangements for staff, and we have hub operations in Victoria, the Lower Mainland, Prince George and Kelowna. We closed the former Burnaby office in February, and we reallocated those office costs to address the service pressures so that we didn’t have to come to you for more money at the end of last fiscal.

We’re now taking a look, with our staff, to find out what their intentions are post-pandemic. We expect that there will be continued mixed arrangements, with most staff continuing to work remotely, at least on a part-time basis.

[10:55 a.m.]

The beauty of this is that the decentralization of staff has enabled us to recruit from around the province. It’s also helped us around space utilization, because previously our reviews and investigations team was entirely based in Victoria. We’re now able to spread that out a little bit. And we were double-bunked. We had significant space limitations and had begun to think about getting additional office space, which we will not have to do now, with these new arrangements.

At the same time, as we’re saving in some areas, there are offsetting costs arising from the decentralized and remote-working arrangements — greater travel for in-person on-boarding, training, supervision and periodic in-person team meetings to make sure that we stay cohesive and we’re working together in a really good way. We don’t anticipate further office closures or reductions there.

Our Prince George office is very small, and it’s actually the best office for walk-in clients. The Victoria office — as I said, we were already bursting at the seams, so now we won’t have to find other space. Our lease there is till 2027.

We continue to offer services and supports to the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, and that’s working very well. We’re exploring other shared-service arrangements with the independent offices — things like procurement and joint training. We’ve made changes in a few other areas this last year around recommendations development and monitoring of recommendations, continuing to build on the pilot for the last 18 months. We’ve recently consulted with all of the affected ministries and are improving that system.

We are going to be continuing to report out on action plans on an annual basis from all of the recommendations but then expanding the ways in which we do monitoring of change. We’ll do comprehensive special reports to the Legislative Assembly on public bodies, progress in implementing recommendations in our priority areas, particularly over the next couple of years — children and youth with special needs, mental health and substance use services and transitional support.

Finally, we have continued our work to be [audio interrupted] to our organization. We have a cultural safety adviser. We’ve done a tremendous amount of in-service work in a number of key areas. We’ve also begun working with an anti-racism consultant who will build on the work that we’ve done on cultural safety.

We’re building our data collection and analytical capacity, taking to heart the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner’s report on data disaggregation. We’ve completed a refresh of our case information system, our CITAR as it’s called. In respect of advocacy data, we’d already done that, within budget, for our reviews and investigations. We are developing a data warehouse that will allow us to enhance our analytical capacity in comparing information across sources.

We’ve refreshed our website, also within our budget allocation. We’ve got the functionality. Content translates into 16 languages. It links to our chat and text functions, and we’re now taking a look at a more fulsome refresh of the website and translation of our resources into Indigenous languages associated with the territories in which our offices reside.

Continued service pressures. It’s going to be a very interesting and challenging year but also an exciting year, as we move forward. There’s been tremendous learning, strength of relationships. Seeing the resilience and the creativity on the part of public bodies and our allies in community partners has been informative. We’ll continue to do our very best work on behalf of children and youth.

That concludes my formal part of the presentation. Any questions, of course, are more than welcome.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Jennifer. Before I open it up for questions from the committee, I just want to thank you for the breadth and depth of your report but, more importantly, the very important work that that report represents — the work of you and your staff. It’s work in an area that I think is top of mind for all of us and, I think, increasingly top of mind for most or all of British Columbians.

I also want to acknowledge that the work that you and your staff do, by definition, is heartbreaking. While we may find the statistics shocking, you put a human face on it, and you deal with the human faces. So thank you, again, for what you do.

[11:00 a.m.]

J. Charlesworth: Thank you very much. I really appreciate that acknowledgment. It’s a whole team effort.

Yes, this has been a tough year, and our hearts break. As I say to people, my heart breaks almost every week, and there are always lots of tears. I care so deeply about this work, and it’s sacred work. We’re grateful to be able to do that on behalf of our children and youth.

M. Starchuk: Jennifer, I think there’s only word that describes your presentation, and that’s “wow.” It has wowed me from beginning to end, not just facts and figures but the breakdown of what you’ve provided to us.

I have a question around your training. You kind of touched on it, where there is a cost factor, where there are savings with this. But now to get together, I’m curious, because I’ve got a family member that’s 30-something. They find themselves more needy than the 50-somethings to be together — to get that coaching, to get that training — where they don’t feel that it’s available to them in the 2D world of Zoom. Are you finding that with your staff?

J. Charlesworth: It’s so interesting. Thank you for that question, and thank you also for the acknowledgment. I really appreciate that. We all do.

Yes. It has been so fascinating, because I think — and I think we’ll all notice this — that at the first part, it was like: “Oh, well, this is interesting. We can kind of handle the working at home.” But what we’ve noticed is that more staff are saying: “I think I’m going to come back, at least part-time, because I’m missing the human contact. I’m missing being part of a team.” That’s where we’re surveying our staff, to find out what is going to work best for them.

I completely agree with you. I think people need — especially with this work, and the heartbreaking work that you’re talking about, Chair — to have a sense of community, that we’re in this together and to support one another. I think we’re going to see a hybrid model emerge.

Having said that, it’s also been really interesting, because we immediately put in place all sorts of mechanisms, despite the limitations of Zoom, to actually have more connection with one another. We went from monthly all-staff gatherings to weekly all-staff gatherings. We’ve created all sorts of working teams — cross-teams that are working on everything from complexity thinking to cultural safety to the language we use — to try and create opportunities for people in smaller groups to have a sense of working together and not feeling as isolated and alone.

To the teams’ credit, the staff’s credit, they’ve also done a lot of really lovely things. We’ve got little pods where people come together, just for an opportunity to get to know one another. We’ve had a much better sense of people’s pets and kids, and that has been a beautiful thing too. We’ve tried very hard to make this two-dimensional world not something that separates us, but to use it, to the best of our ability, to bring us together. All that being said, we miss each other, and we’re looking forward to the in-person time, for sure.

J. Routledge (Chair): Anyone else from the committee?

P. Alexis: I certainly echo my colleague’s words — just absolutely remarkable.

I have a question about the 350 cases every month from MCFD. That, I take it, is up. How long is a file active for? Is the file active for a year? Are some of these previous cases that have come back again? Can you just comment about that, if you could, please?

J. Charlesworth: Yeah, a lovely question, to give you a sense of what we see.

The ministry has a team that pulls together these reports and brings them over to us. They’re all completed by the front-line staff that know these children. When they come into our office, our investigative analysts review every single report, and then they screen them. Some go into what’s called non-mandate. We track all of those. We can still see some trends there, but it’s a very light touch. Those that are consistent with our legislative mandate for reviewable services and critical injuries and deaths come over. Those get a more in-depth review.

[11:05 a.m.]

What’s interesting is that our management information system allows us to see all prior advocacy contacts that we’ve had, all prior reports that we’ve had, any other kind of activity that we’ve had with those files. We can see, for example, that a child might become known to us, and we might, sadly, get to know them quite well, in the data that comes in, because they might have had numerous critical injuries. But we actually can see that in every report that comes to us.

All of those reviewed reports are rolled up on a monthly basis. They come to our leadership team, and we review every single one. The reason we review every single one of those is because we’ve got many different eyes and we see different things. We’ll pick up different nuances associated with that, and we make a determination, as a group, as to whether we need to get more active in the advocacy, in which case, we would refer it over. If we see a child that’s just not getting the services we think they should and that that has increased their vulnerabilities, our advocates will take that on.

Sometimes we see cases where we think, “This is not going well,” and we’re seeing a very unhealthy trajectory for the child. So we’ll raise that with the provincial director of child welfare as a case of concern. Others we put to what’s called comprehensive reviews. To give you a time frame, that’s a very in-depth, three-to-four-month review of all the paper files, all the records that we can muster on that child. We’ve got pretty far-reaching authority to gather records.

Then for some young people, we decide to go to a full investigation. That actually might take two to 2½ years. Skye, for example, that investigative report, took three years. I guess, from comprehensive review to when I decided that we wanted to do a full in-depth review, it was about 2½ years. It gives you a sense of it. We’re not involved with that family throughout that period of time, but we stay connected to the family members for those single stories.

Sometimes, too, we see patterns. Gosh, we’ve seen a whole increase, for example, in children under the age of 12 going to contract group homes. That concerns us. We don’t think eight-to-ten-year-olds should be in group homes. When we start to see patterns, we say: “Okay, well, what do we need to understand about that?” We could do in-depth special reports. We might do an aggregate review, that kind of thing. The reason we invest so much time and energy in all those different steps is that it teaches us so much. If we understand what’s happening to our most vulnerable children, it teaches us about the system.

That’s a very long-winded answer. I hope that was helpful, Pam.

P. Alexis: Thank you. I just have a follow-up comment, if possible, Chair.

Many moons ago the school district in Mission — I was a school trustee at the time — started meeting with our Indigenous Elders, who helped guide us. They became pretty much the go-to for the children that needed a little additional assistance with respect to direction and everything else. They are still very strong and certainly help improve graduation rates. It’s just a phenomenal thing, but it has taken time and long-standing good relationships, good working relationships with our Elders.

I know that you’re on a similar path, and I think it’s just a wonderful thing. Certainly, I can’t emphasize enough the value of good working relationships. I just wanted to share that with you.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you so much. Yes, it makes a huge difference in our work. We’ve been very, very fortunate not only with the relationships, but also…. Tsow-Tun Le Lum treatment centre society has supported us as an organization.

Sometimes our hearts are broken, and we need to circle in and support one another. We’ve been fortunate to have Elders and healers work with our staff as well. With the knowledge-keepers and the Elders and matriarchs circle, I think we’re just on the verge of going to even greater places.

I love hearing those stories of when things have happened out in community, like you shared with us. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

[11:10 a.m.]

L. Doerkson: Thanks for the very comprehensive presentation. I really appreciate it. I just wanted to go back to the very beginning of your presentation. You referred to a 42 percent growth in case counts, and you were referring to most of that in reporting.

I wonder. Can you drill down on that and give some sense of how much of that 42 percent actually is reporting? It just seems like such a staggering number.

J. Charlesworth: Yeah. That’s a great question, and I don’t have a good answer. I’ll also turn to Alan for some help on this one.

We think that a lot of it is associated with better reporting from the ministry. There are a number of reasons for that. There’s a stronger protocol between our office and the ministry. So there’s been greater clarity about what we expect. We’ve also been able to clarify terminology so that they understand, to give an example, emotional harm. We code emotional harm to include things like the loss of a loved one. So we are seeing many children lose loved ones to drug toxicity. Now that the ministry also sees that as a critical injury — that can be life-altering for a child — they are reporting those kinds of things.

That’s part of it. To what extent is that reporting compared to an actual increase in injuries, we don’t have a good handle on that. We think that there are things like…. We’re seeing an increase in gang affiliation. We’re seeing an increase in sexual exploitation. We’re seeing the drug toxicity continue to impact children and youth in multiple ways. And mental health, of course.

We think that there’s an increase in injuries just because of the complexity of life for young people right now. I can’t give you a clear breakdown on that 42 percent, but it is something we’re taking a look at.

Alan, would you like to add more on that?

Alan is the deputy responsible for reviews and investigations. We puzzle over this regularly to try and understand what we’re dealing with.

A. Markwart: I don’t have a whole lot to add to that in the sense that we don’t really know. It’s probably not completely knowable.

Maybe a good barometer would be…. We receive reports of both critical injuries and deaths. There has not been an increase in deaths. So that would suggest…. A death is not going to be missed by staff.

We do know, for example, when we take an intensive look at case files, that staff out in the field often miss reporting critical injuries. So that leads us to believe that they’re just getting better. They’re more aware of the need to report. So most of the increase would be related to better reporting, to their credit.

What’s really unknown is how much the kinds of issues that Jennifer mentioned, say, for example, around the deaths and drug toxicity of loved ones…. Certainly, those would be contributing factors, but it’s probably, principally, better reporting.

L. Doerkson: Heartbreaking.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Dr. Charlesworth. That was a very moving report. It reminds me of, on the selection committee years ago, when we were reappointing…. There are just things that can always be done better.

We invested heavily, between Social Development and MCFD, in a program called integrated case management. I guess the question is…. There was a gap in communication. You talked about the reporting and better information. There was no sharing of information between the two ministries unless it was accidental. Has that improved to the level where a caseworker in MCFD can find out some of the history about the family and the people that are there? That’s one question.

That was the idea. The intent was that we were going to do that, and then it was going to expand to other ministries.

Secondly, the other question I have…. Having just toured some of the shelters in Victoria last Sunday with a group of residents that have been in the areas where there have been particular concerns and seeing the different people that are populating these, I do….

[11:15 a.m.]

You mentioned some comments about youth that are in these facilities, etc. I do wonder…. There’s a growing demand from mayors and councils across British Columbia for more complex care in these shelters. The problem is, even during estimates with the minister, it isn’t really very clear to both the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Housing as to what that looks like. I guess that’s the problem. Maybe that’s something we could talk about all day long. I guess the only thing about it is that collaboration, I think, is super important in the files that you’re dealing with. If there’s anything, maybe, that you have to comment on that….

I know the other committee members are part of government. It’s important that we do try to do the right things to help support what your objective is.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you so much. I couldn’t agree more that the complexity that we’re seeing is increasing — and the need for collaboration and taking a look at things sometimes from a different vantage point or perspective.

With respect to the ICM, I think that’s probably a question best for MCFD and Social Development and Poverty Reduction. But certainly, my understanding is that there has been much better cohesion or sharing of information. In fact, there is an assistant deputy minister that is cross-appointed to the two ministries to ensure that there is better coordination of information-sharing and data with the integrated case management. So that’s one thing.

With respect to the shelters, I’m inspired that you took the time to go and learn firsthand in the community what’s going on for folks. But you speak to the complexity, and that’s something that we see as well. The young people that keep us awake at night are the ones for whom…. Their family has really struggled. They are struggling. They’re dealing with mental health substance use. They’re being exploited and trafficked. They are housing unstable or refusing…. They’re using their feet, and they’re not going to their placements. They pop up in different communities. We’re trying to find them.

That’s one of the things…. And then you will see those young people transitioning into adult services and the adult shelters. You don’t turn 19 and then everything goes away, right?

We’ve been doing some work. We’ve got some collaborators that have been taking a look at that population as they move into adulthood, and that’s the area that we’re looking at with what we call our complex girls cohort, our complex needs group. None of the systems are able to figure out what to do, so our intention with this one is to actually do just what you’re saying. What do we know about these children that will help the system writ large — Mental Health, Health, Social Development, Housing, MCFD, Education — better support those kids so that their life outcomes are better in the longer run?

It’s been a project I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and the stars are aligning. So that’s what we’re going to do. It will speak to the complexity that your community colleagues spoke to for our young people. Does that answer the question?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, yes. From your presentation, I’m sure that it is not simple, but I do think that the initiative is important. It’s just that when you visit these facilities…. I’ve visited quite a few in Victoria, Vancouver, the Okanagan, and I have to say that I am distressed when I see younger people that are caught up in that. What could we have done earlier to intervene to support them or their families? I’m sure that that’s the goal.

J. Charlesworth: Absolutely. Yes, with our early-years project and with our complex care project, exactly. I, frankly, would much rather….

Most of the reports we get are 15- to 18-year-olds. We’re trying to figure out what’s happened to those kids that we’re seeing multiple reports sometimes in a month of critical injuries. What’s happened to them where we can back up the bus and change the life trajectory? I think that’s what we all want. We don’t want kids to be suffering.

J. Routledge (Chair): Does anyone else have a question?

[11:20 a.m.]

G. Kyllo: More of a comment.

Jennifer, thank you very much for your very professional presentation. I certainly do appreciate the time that you have provided.

I had an issue in my riding. I did reach out to Jennifer a number of months ago. I’ve just got to let the other committee members know that I was very happy with the very professional and prompt response of the representative.

Thank you very much.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. These are difficult cases, but it’s also something for you to know. We will be offering something for your constituency assistants come the fall, as well, so that they know how to use…. But also please, don’t hesitate to reach out to myself.

I really appreciate it, because you’re working. We learn through these kinds of conversations too.

Thank you, Greg.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, I think we can wrap it up. Once again, I’d like to thank you and your staff for the work that you do and talking to us about it in such an accessible way. It was apparent that it was very meaningful to everyone on the committee. Thank you again.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you so much. Take care. Bye now.

G. Kyllo: Madam Chair, if I may, I’ve got an important call that I’ve got to make in about five minutes. My apologies, but I’m just hoping that you would grant me leave for about 15 minutes to take a very important call. I need to be off in about four minutes.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Should we maybe take a recess before we move in camera?

J. Arril (Clerk of Committees): I expect that the discussion in camera won’t take very long, so members may want to proceed directly to that short discussion.

J. Routledge (Chair): Let’s do that, then. I’ll entertain a motion to go in camera. Megan has moved it.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 11:22 a.m. to 11:32 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn our meeting today.

Harwinder has moved that motion.

Motion approved.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, everyone. We are adjourned. See you tomorrow.

The committee adjourned at 11:33 a.m.