2008 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 38th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

9 a.m.

Douglas Fir Committee Room

Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

Present: Ron Cantelon, MLA (Chair); Nicholas Simons, MLA (Deputy Chair); Jagrup Brar, MLA; Leonard Krog, MLA; John Les, MLA; Dennis MacKay, MLA; Claude Richmond, MLA; Valerie Roddick, MLA; John Rustad, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Maurine Karagianis, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 9:01 a.m.

2. Resolved, that the agenda as circulated be adopted. (Claude Richmond, MLA)

3.The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the report titled: Amanda, Savannah, Rowen and Serena: From Loss to Learning.

4. The Committee recessed from 10:32 a.m. to 10:41 a.m.

5.The following witnesses appeared before the Committee, provided a general update on the work of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth, presented the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth: Service Plan 2009/10 to 2011/1 and answered questions.

6. The Committee recessed from 11:41 a.m. to 11:46 a.m.

7. Resolved, that the Committee meet in-camera to consider child death cases for referral to the Representative. (John Rustad, MLA)

8. The Committee met in-camera from 11:46 a.m. to 11:56 a.m.

9. Resolved, that pursuant to its terms of reference, the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth refer to the Representative for Children and Youth for investigation the deaths of children in the following two cases: K.L., who died in 2003, and M.W., who died in 2007. (Nicholas Simons, MLA)

10. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 11:57 a.m.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

select standing committee on
children and youth

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Issue No. 17

ISSN 1911-1940

[ Page 247 ]

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2008

The committee met at 9:01 a.m.

[R. Cantelon in the chair.]

R. Cantelon (Chair): Good morning, everybody, and thank you all for coming.

Interjection.

R. Cantelon (Chair): I realize that, and you can carry on.

We have had an agenda forwarded and circulated ahead of time, and it's a full agenda. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the motion as circulated.

Meeting agenda approved.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Then I'd like to turn it over to Mark Sieben, the chief operating officer for the Ministry of Children and Family.

Mark, maybe you would begin by introducing the people at the table that you've brought, and then we'll introduce ourselves.

M. Sieben: I would. Thank you, Chair.

Beginning on my right, Del Graff is our director of operations in the north region. Seated beside him is Peter Cunningham, the regional executive director for the north region. To my immediate right is Joan Easton, senior director for research and quality assurance.

Robert Watts is our director of integrated practice in the north region. Sandra Griffin is our assistant deputy minister for integrated quality assurance, and Annemarie Travers is our acting director for learning, education and development. Thanks very much for all of our MCFD folks, particularly those from the north region, to come and join us here today.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Well, we appreciate your travelling all this way so we can get a much better direct overview and interplay with you.

I'd ask, starting with Mr. Krog, to introduce the members of our committee.

L. Krog: Leonard Krog, MLA for Nanaimo.

N. Simons (Deputy Chair): Nicholas Simons, Powell River–Sunshine Coast.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Ron Cantelon. I'm the Chair.

J. Les: John Les, Chilliwack-Sumas.

C. Richmond: Claude Richmond, Kamloops.

V. Roddick: Valerie Roddick, Delta South.

D. MacKay: Dennis MacKay, Bulkley Valley–Stikine.

J. Brar: I'm Jagrup Brar, MLA from Surrey and a member of the committee.

R. Cantelon (Chair): All right. Let's proceed.

Representative for Children
and Youth Report:
Amanda, Savannah, Rowen and Serena:
From Loss to Learning

M. Sieben: We are indeed very pleased to be able to be here today and speak to the representative's Loss to Learning report. We have been looking forward to this opportunity since the report was first tabled before the committee.

While we didn't have opportunity to meet with the committee in advance of it considering its recommendations, we have had opportunity to discuss the report a number of times with representative staff, informally and then formally, in one meeting prior to the last select standing committee meeting and then twice since then — and very fulsome and positive discussions that have informed and, I think, helped both sides come to some reckonings relating to how best to move the recommendations forward and, on our side, be able to indicate how best they'd frame up with MCFD's Strong, Safe and Supported action plan.

Our intention today is to provide a brief overview relating to child welfare activities in the north region, and Peter Cunningham is going to start that off for us this morning. Following that discussion, we'll tuck right into the recommendations.

There are a number of recommendations, as you've likely noted in the report and in the materials that we've also tabled, which is MCFD's sort of response to the recommendations at this point. Therefore, we've clustered a number of them under two important headings, one relating to human resources and training and another relating to integrated quality assurance.

[0905]

By doing so, we hope to provide some further context about work that MCFD is engaged in, in both of those areas — both specific to the north and elsewhere — so that when we come to considering the individual recommendations, there's a bit of context for how all that work is moving forward.

Enough for me. I'll turn it over to Peter now and ask that Peter lead us off and present a brief chunk of information relating to what he and his staff are engaged in, in the north region.

P. Cunningham: Good morning. Thanks very much for the opportunity to be here. I appreciate the chance
[ Page 248 ]
to come and speak to you. Mark mentioned "brief" a couple of times, so I'm getting the hint that this should be brief. I'll try and make it that way.

I have a fair bit of material to go through. I'd like to basically take you on a bit of a tour around the north. In doing so, I'm going to talk about the work that's being done in the various areas that are outlined in that first slide. Throughout the discussion today I'll also try and make reference to some of the themes that I have identified in the report.

I want to begin with a brief discussion about context, the context within which the work takes place in the north. I know that for some of you, this is probably old news, but for those of us who live and work in the north, context is not something we read about. It's something we live every day. It's significant in that it affects the way we understand, how we do the work, what the problems are that we encounter and how we go about addressing those problems.

I'm not going to read all of these things, but I do appreciate the opportunity to talk about the north. I do this everywhere I go, and my colleagues within the ministry will attest to that fact. Again, I think it's important to understand the vastness and the diversity in the north.

There's a great variation in the north in terms of economic development. We have quite a range, as I'm sure you're aware. In the northeast — for example, in the Peace River area, where there's incredible oil and gas development — we find it very difficult to find individuals to get involved in service delivery jobs, for example.

They pay people $21 an hour to work in Tim Hortons. The price of a house in Fort St. John is the same as the price in Kamloops or Kelowna. So it's significantly different.

On the other hand, we have communities where there is 80 percent unemployment, where the average family income would be about $11,000 a year. So there's quite a range in terms of the challenges we face as a result of that.

The population in the north is about 291,000. That's expected to grow by about 3 percent by 2018. Most of that growth will take place in the northeast. The population will increase there by about 11 percent, and it will reduce accordingly in other parts of the region.

Here's a quick picture of what it looks like in the north. We have 18 offices that cover the geography. It gives a bit of a sense. Our regional office is in Prince George.

There's a picture of the region in the context of the rest of the province. If you look at this, the geographical land mass of the north region is about 62 percent of the province, a considerable piece of territory to look at providing services to. We get about 13 percent of the ministry's budget for regional service delivery to provide those services.

I'm going to talk next a little bit about child welfare practice in the north. Child welfare practice in the north is a practice where the majority of kids in care are aboriginal. It's a practice that's diverse, with 51 first nations communities included in that area — Métis and aboriginal people living in urban centres too.

This next slide will give you a slightly different view of what the north looks like in terms of identifying where the aboriginal communities are located within that same geographical area. The ministry is responsible to provide child protection services within those communities as well.

Sometimes this is solely the ministry's responsibility, and sometimes this responsibility is shared with the delegated aboriginal agencies that we're working with in partnership in the north. There are six of those agencies in the north at the present time, in addition to the ministry offices.

There's one in Haida Gwaii; one in NIFCS, around the Terrace area, that serves the Stikine; and the Nisga'a Child and Family Services. As we move further on down along the highway, we have Gitxsan Child and Family Services located in and around the Hazeltons. We have Nezul Be Hunuyeh Child and Family Services in Fort St. James, and then we have Carrier-Sekani Family Services, which are located in Prince George.

In addition, we're also working with the treaty 8 chiefs in the far northeast of the province, in the urban aboriginal communities, around the creation of a child welfare system for them. We're also working with the Wet'suwet'en Nation around an agency for them as well, and we're also working with the chiefs in the Northern Nations Alliance in the far northwestern part of the province around a service delivery model for them.

[0910]

A sizeable piece of geography. The issues of distance and isolation, I think, are pretty obvious. The work in the north is impacted, really, by issues of colonization and by residential schools in a fairly significant way in terms of the capacity and the ability of families to look after and care for themselves.

So just in talking a little bit about child welfare practice in the north, most of the children in care are aboriginal. The issues in relation to colonization in residential schools and working with the aboriginal population are significant in this way: the calls that come into the ministry come in about 50-50. So 50 percent of the calls are related to aboriginal families; 50 percent of the calls are related to non-aboriginal families.

After that initial contact, that's where things change. Following that contact, an aboriginal child is far more likely to come into care, and 75 percent — I think slightly higher than when I prepared this material — are in-care aboriginal.

I often recall my discussion when I applied for this job initially. The deputy minister at the time asked me why I wanted a job working in what was arguably one of the most complex child welfare environments in North America. I gave some answer at the time, but I've come to better understand his question, I must say, as time goes on.
[ Page 249 ]

I'm going to talk a little bit, quickly, about the vision and mission in the north. This relates to one of the themes that were identified in the representative's report in terms of collaboration and partnership.

So 2007 saw the development of our strategic plan, Vision 2010. We began a structured process in the north. Again, this is an approach where we invited the representatives from across the north — from the aboriginal community, from the non-aboriginal community — to come together to talk about what the ministry could do to better improve its practice and provide better safety for children and families within communities.

This was the result of that work. It resulted in our regional vision statement, our mission statement and the four key directions around innovative quality services, improving relationships through engagement and relationship-building, working with aboriginal people and working on the strength of the north region employees. So that has formed the frame for much of the work that we've done over the past little while.

I'm going to talk a little bit, quickly, about the key activities in the north and shifting the practice. One of the key directions that came out of our strategic planning session that was done in a collaborative nature in the north was around the importance of relationship-building and engagement. It was a pretty clear message to us, so we focused some of our work in that area.

I want to talk briefly about just a couple of those things to give you a bit of an example about what that actually means for individual people that live up in the north. I'm going to talk a little bit about homecoming events. Homecoming events are events that are focused on reuniting aboriginal children with their home communities. Some of these children might have had no contact with their communities. It's through a community-driven process. It's not a ministry process; it's a community-driven process that the ministry supports. Children are brought home to their home communities.

To give you a bit of an example…. A recent one was in Haida Gwaii. I think the representative had attended, and some of her staff had attended that event. The homecoming event in Haida Gwaii saw 55 aboriginal children with foster parents and with staff and support people boarding the ferry in Prince Rupert to go over to Haida Gwaii, to make the trip over to the island to meet who knew what? You can imagine there'd be a fair bit of trepidation on the part of individuals there, some nervousness about what they were going to encounter, how they were going to be welcomed.

When the boat arrives and the ferry arrives on the other side, all of those individuals are welcomed by the chiefs and by the community dressed in their full regalia, drumming and dancing and singing and welcoming these children, their foster parents and their caregivers to the community. An incredible situation, really unbelievable. I can tell you that at that time, lots of the trepidation and the concern on the part of foster parents, or the concern on the part of the kids, disappears.

Now, the children spent three days there immersed in Haida culture, connecting to their families — their aunts, their uncles, their grandparents, their brothers, their sisters, their relatives — making connections that some of them didn't know that they had. Really quite an involved experience.

The children are gifted many times throughout their stay there. There were a couple of very large community feasts in two different areas, where you'd have 300 or 400 people at each of these feasts acknowledging and welcoming these kids and letting these children understand where they belong, which is a critical piece, and how they're connected to their culture and how they're connected to their community.

[0915]

But the biggest thing of all that the children get in terms of coming there is a sense a pride in being Indian, a sense of pride in being aboriginal, a sense of pride in who they are and being connected to their culture.

I can give you a little bit of an example of that. I had occasion to drive back to the airport with a group of kids in a van and some foster parents. The foster mother had described this one young boy to me as being a rather sullen, acting-out kind of teenager who had absolutely no interest whatsoever in coming to this event. I don't know how they got him on the ferry, but they did manage to get him on the ferry.

I can tell you that going back to the airport in this van, this child was beating on a drum that he had made with the help of the elders. He was singing, and it was clear that he was absolutely, totally enthused about the fact that he had this opportunity to connect with his cultural roots. A huge impact on that kid's life. You can only imagine what that impact would be in terms of someone who does not understand where they belong or where they fit in terms of their roles — right? That's an example of some of the work.

Why is this important? You might ask why that's important. I think that connecting children to community and culture is one of the ways in which we can provide protection and safety for kids. It's important that children understand where they come from, particularly children in their adolescent years. We all know adolescents and some of the activities that go on there.

For aboriginal kids, in terms of looking to find out and discover who they are, sometimes that can lead to some fairly destructive kinds of behaviours. So maintaining this connection, maintaining cultural identity, is critically important for kids.

There's tremendous power in these events. The cultural camp itself or the homecoming event itself is really like the tip of an iceberg, and underneath that there's a tremendous amount of work that goes on.

I've explained to you the impact on the kids. At the community level, for the community, it's a great
[ Page 250 ]
community-building exercise for those individuals that are involved in pulling together to try and organize around the kids, refocusing on what's important within their own culture, because much of that has been challenged by the treatment of aboriginal people in the past.

For our foster parents. Some foster parents, I think, attend these events with a fair bit of trepidation, because they're not sure if they're going to be welcomed. Foster parents are honoured in these events and thanked for the work that they do in looking after community. For foster parents it gives them a renewed sense of understanding of the importance of culture for those children that they are caring for and the importance of maintaining those links in terms of developing a healthy human being.

In terms of the impact on staff, we see some incredible things. There's not a staff person that I've talked to who's attended these events that says this hasn't fundamentally impacted on the way they do their practice, the way they understand the importance of working with community, the way they understand aboriginal culture and aboriginal community and how that impacts on the way they do their work. So on many different levels these are very, very significant kinds of events.

In terms of time, I won't talk about the cultural camps. But one of the challenges that we have is that when things are going well in communities and there are no issues, everything is fine. That's okay. The ministry doesn't have to do anything. The aboriginal community doesn't need to do anything. It's when things are going badly and there are issues around child protection that we need to engage on that level in terms of looking after the safety of children.

That is best done when we have relationships with those people in those communities. If we have no relationships with those people, we cannot understand really what's happening in a community setting. As my friend Mr. Watts has been fond of saying: "Really, when you have a child protection issue, what's required is an honest conversation." And in order to have an honest conversation you need to be able to have a relationship and an understanding with the people that you're working with.

So this work around connecting staff and community together and culture together is critical in terms of the capacity of ministry staff to be able to carry out their mandate, in terms of working with community to provide safety for kids.

I'll just talk very briefly about the circle of courage. The circle of courage is an example of how we've worked with high-risk youth in a different kind of way — a more broad-based community kind of approach to support kids and families. The circle of courage is a strength-based approach to training that's grounded in research and brain-based science. Basically, it's an understanding of how an adolescent brain works. It's significantly different, as we've all experienced, but maybe not quite understood — significantly different in terms of how it operates as opposed to the adult brain.

This training basically is community-based, community-driven training that's fairly intensive. It began in the community of Quesnel. Quesnel has trained approximately 280 community members in this approach — a significant number. It is the kids from that community who tell us that this has resulted in them being treated differently.

[0920]

So it's an orientation around an understanding for professionals and those in the helping field that work with children and work with adolescent children that is different. RCMP take the training, hospitals take the training, and ministry staff take the training — and other interested individuals. This results in a different orientation and approach to working with kids.

We had a springboard event for this in the north in January of 2008 — again, inviting individuals from the aboriginal community and the non-aboriginal community from across the north to attend. We basically offered the opportunity for communities that wanted to go back and form coalitions to provide training in their communities to do so.

At the present time we have 16 communities that are involved in that process. Again, it's a way of us expanding the capacity of the broader community in terms of understanding the needs of high-risk youth and being able to engage and provide service for them in a different kind of way.

Some of you will be aware, most likely, of the issues in relation to suicide in some of the northern communities. We've taken some unique approaches in terms of trying to work with youth in those areas. We work with all levels of government and community, but we've also done some significant engagement of the Gitxsan youth. We've done a lot of work in that area. Who better to tell us about what the issues are in relation to youth, in relation to suicide, than youth, in some respects?

We've worked with about 150 Gitxsan youth over the course of the summer, with some support from the representative's office, I might add, as well. They have developed a strategic plan with some fairly pointed direction for adults about the kinds of things that they need to do in order to make things different for them. That's just another example of the kind of approaches we're trying to take.

I'm going to talk, again just briefly, about our staff. First off, let me say that I'm extremely proud of the work of the staff in the north and the managers. It's really a privilege for me to be able to work with them, and I mean that in all sincerity. Basically, when we look at our staff, we could say that they're characterized by the fact that they're very young and they're mobile. They're usually at the beginning of their careers. That sometimes means that they would have less experience than some staff you may find in other parts of the province.
[ Page 251 ]

Keeping that in mind, their youngness…. They also bring with them a fair degree of enthusiasm, interest and inquisitiveness about the work, because they are, again, new to their careers. Our job, our challenge, as managers in the ministry is organization, to try and support them in their growth.

Basically, the work in the north. There are probably about 400 intakes a month, about 18 requests for family service and about…. We provide support for about 893 children in care just on the child and family services side of the business.

I'm just going to talk a little bit about some of the things we've done around recruitment. We've had some challenges in recruitment in the past, but I can say that right now about 95 percent of the vacancies in the north are filled. This is good. The situation for the ministry in the north is really no different than other social service–type agencies in the north.

Staffing is a challenge for the Northern Health Authority. It's a challenge for education. We've done some fairly targeted work around trying to look at getting staff in place.

We've looked at going to specific universities. We were the only government organization that's ever been allowed to do a presentation at the First Nations University of Canada in Saskatoon. They've never let a government organization come in to do a presentation to their staff. I think it's an acknowledgment of our approach in terms of trying to recruit aboriginal people to work in the north and our approach and our uniqueness in terms of the work we're trying to do.

Three years ago we looked at the number of aboriginal staff in the north. Again, another recommendation or another point of discussion in the report was around the numbers of aboriginal staff. We had six staff that identified themselves as being aboriginal, and that's out of a staff complement of about 450 people. Now, I think we had more aboriginal staff working at the time. But the question was: as an organization, why was that the case, and what are we going to do about increasing the complement of aboriginal people that worked in the north?

So we brought our aboriginal staff together, talked to them and put together an approach that was a collaborative approach, working with the delegated aboriginal agencies, with UNBC and with the ministry around a specific, proactive, employer-driven initiative to bring staff together — aboriginal people who have their basic BSW degree — and put them through some specialized training to actually support them as a cohort to move through this system, connected to delegated agencies and connected to aboriginal communities through the process, and to provide them with the kind of support they needed.

[0925]

Today we've got 49 self-identified staff, and we're in our third round of discussion, third round of training, with the aboriginal social worker recruitment program. There have been, I think, 28 graduates from the program to date. I think about 20 of those are working in the ministry, and some are working in delegated agencies in the north.

Our intent was to increase the capacity of aboriginal staff working for the ministry but also working for delegated agencies, because our problems in terms of recruitment and having qualified staff and having aboriginal staff that are qualified to do the work are across the board.

I'll talk a little bit about training and support. Similar to some of the practice issues that were identified in the northern report, our current audit themes are suggesting that we have issues in the areas of assessment and planning in our children and family services areas. So we've taken some steps to actually address those specific issues, as are outlined right there. That's an ongoing challenge for us and a piece of work that we continue to focus on.

I was going to talk just briefly about the SCAN clinic again. SCAN stands for screening suspected child abuse and neglect clinic. The SCAN clinic was referenced in the representative's report as well. The purpose of the SCAN clinic is to provide high-quality assessments in the areas of abuse and neglect to doctors, to the RCMP, to social workers and to other professionals in the community. It has been a longstanding program in the north for about ten years now.

We've increased the capacity of the SCAN clinic. We are increasing the capacity of the SCAN clinic to perform more assessments for us. We've done some collaborative work with them in terms of training. We're always looking for opportunities to do that, and both of those were issues that were mentioned in the representative's report as well.

I'll just talk briefly again about engagement. Again, this relates to the information that was provided to us by members of the aboriginal community and also was a theme that was referenced in terms of developing partnerships in the north. We've done this in a variety of different ways, in some unique fashions as well.

As part of our strategic plan's suggested focusing on developing relationships and building aboriginal capacity, we have some unique service approaches. We've got the Nenan Dane Zaa Deh Zona child and family services, which is in the northeast part of the province. It consists of representation from all of the treaty 8 chiefs and from the urban aboriginal communities. We're in the process of working with each of those communities in developing a child welfare model that is being built from the ground up.

So it's some very basic, fundamental community development work at the community level with each of those 13 or 14 communities in that part of the province. We're trying to look at the actual key pieces from a community perspective that need to be in place for a successful child welfare model. Given some of the
[ Page 252 ]
isolation, the remoteness of some of those communities, as I've shown you previously, this provides us with a different view of how we may be able to provide effective service for those community folks.

We're also undertaking a similar process with what you might know as the northern nations alliance. Those are chiefs in the far, far northwestern part of the province. Certainly, it's an example of our interest and our challenges in terms of providing service delivery in very rural and very remote communities.

Lastly, just to sum up, this was moving forward, and I think we've moved ahead of this already, because this was prepared for our last meeting. At that time we were involved in a process around the reconciliation between child welfare and the ministry and aboriginal communities in the area of child welfare.

There is some significant history between aboriginal communities and child welfare. One of the things we had done recently is have a meeting in Prince Rupert with about 150 folks from across the north — aboriginal leadership and ministry leadership, about 60 percent aboriginal people and about 40 percent ministry and other staff. The intention was to begin to have that honest dialogue around some of the issues related to colonization and residential schools and begin to move forward from the place of where we're at to a place of developing a more collaborative kind of approach to moving forward with child protection.

This is a process that…. I just read through the evaluations. There was not a single evaluation that had a negative comment, and these are some pretty tried, true and tested individuals who have been fairly critical of work that has gone on. As one of the delegated directors said at the meeting, this event would not have happened five years ago. It's a different time, and the interest in moving to a different place and being able to work with the community in a really specified kind of way is renewed.

[0930]

As an organization and as a region in this ministry, we're going to be taking forward this notion of reconciliation in a fairly major way and working on a community-by-community level as the opportunities arrive to have that discussion and dialogue.

If you look at the geography in the north, ministry staff cannot do everything that's required for the safety of kids and families. We need to have a broad base of community support for kids. Those of you who have children all know what it takes in terms of resources to support and raise children. You need relatives, you need community members, you need religious leaders, and you need cultural leaders in order to really raise a healthy child. None of us really do it by ourselves. That's our interest in having capacity widened and that ability developed.

One other thing I would just say is that when I started working for this organization, I had worked for the Ministry of Health prior to coming here. The first meeting I attended that was a regional meeting might have had six aboriginal people in it. The last meeting I attended had 60 percent aboriginal people in it.

Again, it's an indication of a change, I think, in terms of focus and approach and the direction that we're going. If our issues are with caring for aboriginal children, our capacity to work with aboriginal communities, our capacity to work with delegated agencies and our capacity to be able to have those relationships are critical if we're going to be thoughtful about how you move ahead with child welfare.

These are the three key areas of focus that we have concentrated on in the past, while in no particular order. With that, thank you very much for your time.

M. Sieben: Thank you, Peter, for the further insight relating to activities in the north and some of the context to the work to help shape our discussion now on the recommendations. We'll look to devote the rest of our time with you this morning on the recommendations as we lead into that.

I'll note for members that the response document that we've provided is not only the collective and public response document for MCFD to the report and to the representative's recommendations. But individually in the MCFD response box, each of those responses constitutes our individual response specific to the representative for each of the recommendations.

The wording there is what we've looked to discuss with Mary Ellen and her staff and what we anticipate that MCFD will be beholden to as the representative revisits her recommendations from time to time and keeps MCFD accountable to them.

As I noted during the introduction, two of the biggest and strongest themes that ran through the Loss to Learning report pertained to human resources and staff training, and then secondly to quality assurance activities as well.

With that in mind, I'm going to ask Annemarie Travers to spend a little bit of time talking about the first of those themes. A couple of slides have been prepared in order to facilitate that. Then Sandra Griffin will spend a little bit of time providing some information specific to the topic and theme of quality assurance as it pertains not only to the north but to MCFD activities in this regard generally.

A. Travers: I'm going to be speaking basically on the first two sets of recommendations — supervision and training — and the second set on staffing and resources just as it relates to staffing. I'm not going to go through what's in this update document but will mostly give you a brief overview of the context of where we are right now in terms of what we're doing and what our programs look like in relation then to the recommendations.

With regard to learning and development, the report is called From Loss to Learning, and learning is really key
[ Page 253 ]
to us in making sure that our staff have the competence and confidence to do the work that they do. The report speaks specifically to four areas relating to learning and development: first of all, programs for new-hire child welfare workers; secondly, programs for supervisors and team leaders; the reporting and evaluation we do around our learning and development programs; and then specifically opportunities in the north.

[0935]

Peter has outlined some of those learning opportunities in the north, and I'll just touch on them briefly. With regard to our new-hire programs, when an individual comes in to work for the ministry, they usually have a degree in social work or child and youth care. In both of those degree offerings they have the opportunity to take a child welfare specialization, which is aligned with what we do in the ministry.

If they don't take a child welfare specialization, the way we approach training for them is slightly different.

We have a new-hire program for child welfare workers that's basically in two streams. One is a three-week program for people who have the child welfare specialization, and the other is a 19-week program for those who haven't completed a child welfare specialization.

The program has been in place since 2002 and is delivered through the Justice Institute and includes a combination of classroom and field placement. The Justice Institute integrates senior practitioners from the ministry as instructors, ensuring that the program remains current and relevant to field practice.

Particularly in the north, there's a high aboriginal population, and we have a lot of delegated aboriginal agencies. I want to speak a little bit about what their program is as well.

It is a different track for the delegated aboriginal agencies. It's delivered through the Caring for First Nations Children Society. Their model for training is significantly different than the ministry's model because their context that they operate in is different. It addresses voluntary services, guardianship services and child protection services.

In total, that training program ranges from 16 to 20 weeks in length, and in the last year the ministry has increased the training available to agency staff by 33 percent.

In the past year we've been realigning the ministry programs into distinct courses, both the three-week and the 19-week, allowing us more flexibility in our hiring practices and allowing us the ability to more readily revise content and curricula so that it remains relevant and current.

With regard to supervisory training, the clinical supervision program that we launched in 2005 serves as the basis for the supervisory training. It is enhanced, though, with a number of other training programs, dependent on where you sit and what's available in your region. The clinical supervision program is offered in two parts over a five-week period. It allows an opportunity to apply the learning from the program on the job.

Some of the other range of learning opportunities available to supervisors, particularly in the north…. They had an ultimate supervisor workshop and a front-line leadership training. We've done a bit of a review of the range of supervisory training programs that are operating around the province, and each region has a distinct set of programs available for their supervisors.

With the delegated aboriginal agencies, a new supervisory program was introduced this year which consists of three modules. It will be delivered on an ongoing basis.

With regard to reporting and evaluation, the representative asks that we report out annually on our training programs. We do collect data, and we have provided, internally, a rollup report of what we've been doing each year. We're quite happy to provide that to the representative.

Some of the data from that report is in your update response here, in terms of the number of offerings and the range of things that we're involved in broadly from a learning and development perspective. One of the things that stands out in that report is that the north region actually leads the way in relation to inclusion of non-ministry staff in our learning programs.

That's certainly a way that we are wanting to develop on an ongoing basis — to be more inclusive of the range of partners that we work with in the communities in a learning environment, so that we can enhance relationships that way as well.

With regard to learning opportunities in the north region, Peter did talk about the aboriginal and the recruitment efforts and how they're aligned with our learning programs and the three-week new-hire program that is piloted there and now running.

[0940]

I think that Peter outlined that quite effectively, and I don't think that I need to speak anymore to that.

With regard to the next slide, "Recruitment and Retention," again, Peter outlined that in his discussion of the north, and it really is focused on the north in terms of the recommendations here. In 2005, 56 percent of the social program officers in the north have been retained compared to a 79 percent retention rate in the remainder of the province. Currently the north has a 5 percent vacancy rate and only a 3.4 percent vacancy rate for direct child protection work positions. So we've made some progress there, but we do have work to do.

In 2007 we initiated a recruitment campaign that includes career fairs and presentations at post-secondaries, as Peter outlined, and more than ten employees have joined the north region's workforce as a result of those kinds of efforts.

We do have a draft northern and remote recruitment plan, which includes a number of enhancements for
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employee benefits. Currently we're in the process of negotiating that plan and working with the BCGEU and the B.C. Public Service Agency to be able to implement that.

We're also working with delegated aboriginal agencies around recruitment and retention, as Peter outlined.

That's my update in relation to those two sets of recommendations.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Thank you, Annemarie. We'll move to Sandra, and then we'll look to questions and discussion.

S. Griffin: I'm pleased to be before the committee once again to present on the work of the MCFD in the design, development and implementation of integrated quality assurance system and also to reference, of course, how the recommendations in the report From Loss to Learning are fundamentally reflected in our overall planning as we build the system.

I won't go over the next three slides. They're for your information. They just describe the new integrated quality assurance team within the Ministry of Children and Family Development. This describes for you the work of that team. We are a new team within the ministry that has both new components and has drawn together other components within the ministry specific to research evaluation and quality assurance.

We are pillar 5 in Strong, Safe and Supported. It is our task to develop a system that assists us in knowing when we are doing good prevention, early intervention, intervention and support, and support to aboriginal communities. It is our task to build a strong quality assurance system within the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

It is our task, then, to be able to report out to you publicly on an ongoing basis that we have in fact increased our effectiveness, our efficiency and our accountability of supports and services for children, youth and their families that are being served by the ministry.

We would expect to see from this key indicators of success. You will see increased regular public reporting on data collected through our system. You'll see an increase in the use of evidence in policy and practice. You will see an increase in the use of evidence gathered through our quality assurance that's going to inform, on an ongoing basis, staff training and day-to-day practice. You'll see an increase in comprehensive and accurate information used to inform continuous service improvement, and you'll see increased engagement of staff, service providers, partners, other ministries, children, youth and their families in the overall quality assurance process.

When I presented to you last time, I said that we are working in three major areas for quality assurance. It's in information and knowledge management. It's how that knowledge is used to inform learning, and it's how a system is set up that actively engages those people being served — the children, youth and families, the practitioners working within the system, the policy-makers within the system — so that there is active engagement of all in terms of informing, on an ongoing basis, continuous quality improvement.

[0945]

Information is both internal and external. Our task is to look at the kind of information that we do collect internally and the kind of information that we don't collect internally, which we need to inform us on the impact of our programs, services and practice on the long-term outcomes of the children, youth and families served.

Some examples of work that we're doing in this area. We have developed a preliminary research framework. We're doing an inventory of ministry research activities that are underway. We are looking at pilots we have in all of our regions that are testing new and innovative strengths-based developmental approaches to practice.

We are also working actively with our partners across Canada in terms of what other jurisdictions and academic institutions are doing, the research that should and could be informing our current practice. We are both solidifying the longstanding relationships that we already have in this area and then also developing frameworks to increase the amount of information, data and learning that we can pull from these institutions.

We are an active member of the federal-provincial-territorial table of directors of child welfare. On that table, of course, there is a very shared interest area of children in care and outcomes. As part of that work I co-chair an internal committee for that group, where we are sharing experiences across jurisdictions and having a look at how we can learn from one another in improving these services.

We are also active members of the national committee on national outcomes measures and a number of other opportunities and committees that we are members of that are really serving to increase our networks in terms of outcomes and also our opportunities to both contribute and learn from our partners in this area.

In engagement, we talk about not only evidence-informed practice but practice-informed evidence — that in fact our system has got to be able to capture the experience of the children, youth and families served, the experience of our practitioners and the experience of our community partners in delivering services. A big part of our task is looking at how we create concrete avenues of engagement where that experience is also informing our evidence.

Our task is really getting the right information to the right people at the right time, and that includes over 4,500 ministry staff, up to 20,000 community partners that are delivering services and 24 delegated aboriginal agencies with a staff of approximately 250 people.
[ Page 255 ]

On average per month, we are serving approximately 70,000 clients — children, youth and families. There are approximately 40,000 requests for service intakes per year. That includes across our range of programs, and there are approximately 30,000 protection reports per year that the ministry acts on.

It is our task to build the system around all of those people in the delivery of those services to best support that system. So this is bringing it all together. The information, the learning and the engagement mean that we will have evidence-informed, knowledge-based and client-focused practice, policies, service delivery and processes. This is all pointed to improving outcomes for children, youth and families.

Work underway specific to recommendations 4 through 9 in From Loss to Learning. Consistent with our Strong, Safe and Supported operational plan, we're reviewing all of our reporting and monitoring activities.

Some of the examples underway. We are now posting executive summaries of all case reviews, and they are being posted twice a year. Case practice audit reports are being posted on a regular basis on the ministry Internet. The most recent reports occurred in September, and we have more reports that are being summarized and getting ready to be posted now.

[0950]

Reportable circumstances are monitored on a daily basis, both by regional staff and our integrated quality assurance team. Fatality statistics are posted on the ministry Internet twice a year, and all recommendations related to quality assurance activities are monitored by a provincial office. We have set up databases where we're tracking all recommendations, where we're able to do summaries of recommendations. We're doing analysis of recommendations for trends that assist us in better understanding some of the systemic barriers and some of the systemic strengths that we can build on to continue to improve services.

The integrated case review framework was developed where…. We are really looking at bringing together all of the people involved in a child's life when there are challenges and issues, and we are looking to break down the silos of individual practitioners working with the children but, rather, creating that framework where you bring together the whole to discuss the child, youth and family served. This is being rolled out this year.

We have three pilots that are underway in the regions, and we will be doing evaluation of this as we move along, and that will certainly then be informing the overall development of a more integrated case review approach to working with children, youth and families.

We are also looking at the standards related to case reviews. In fact, we're doing an overall standards review to determine if we have standards that really support us in the direction of strengths-based development and what we need to do to adjust and move forward to have standards that are both fundamentally supporting and directing the work of practitioners and programs that are really building on the strengths, that are developmental in their approach and that are improving outcomes demonstrably for the children, youth and family served.

We are undertaking an external comprehensive evaluation of our current case practice audit program. We have just signed the contract with the research firm that will be doing this work. We are developing a working group that will have representation both from my team at provincial office and from all of the regions that will be working closely on this research initiative, where we are going to have a really good look at what we learned from our current audit system, what the strengths are, how it monitors, what it tells us.

Is it moving us closer to being able to report on outcomes? What do we need to do to redesign that system to better reflect the direction that we're moving?

The recommendations will be developed, and we'll be working closely with all of our regional partners and our community partners in developing, then, a long-term system where we will be able to report out on improved outcomes for the children, youth and family served. We will be able to identify, for practitioners and for programs and services, those kinds of practices that are working, those kinds of programs and services that are demonstrating the kinds of results that we would want to see.

Work is underway right now with the northern region on being able to report out on children in care in the north. This was one of the recommendations in From Loss to Learning, and we expect this report to be out in December. It's one that Robert Watts and his team and Joan Easton and her team have been working on.

We are committed to the ongoing development of outcome measures for children in care, and we, in fact, have just finished a comprehensive background report on looking at the kinds of outcomes that are reported on internationally in other jurisdictions across Canada — what's working, what's not working. We have been working closely with our other ministry partners on the kinds of joint work we can do on promoting and supporting enhanced systems for collecting data on outcomes.

This has actually included very productive and fruitful discussions with the representative's office — a real shared area of interest on how we all can collect the best information possible on outcomes. It's been a good, cooperative working relationship on how we combine our experiences and expertise on outcomes and bring that together for the richest experience possible.

The ministry is committed to the key elements of an effective child, youth and family development service system and the achievement of the key outcomes for the children and youth who received services either delivered or funded by the ministry.

[0955]
[ Page 256 ]

We fundamentally believe that the work we are doing on our integrated quality assurance system is going to assist us in reporting out to you, to the public and internally to all of our staff on how we're doing, what we're learning from how we're doing and how we can continually improve our work. Why? So that the B.C. children and youth are strong, safe and supported to reach their full potential.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Thank you very much, Sandra.

M. Sieben: Those with a scorecard no doubt noted that we speak somewhat summarily to recommendations 1 and 2 as they address the recruitment and training and then, as Sandra noted, recommendations 4 to 9, which mostly speak to quality assurance.

There are a couple of other strong themes in the report and in the recommendations. One theme pertains to policy development and a review of standards and some specific work relating to perhaps investing in further direction and guidelines for staff, addressing the medical needs of children.

The other is relating to further protocol development and review in the north. Suffice to say that not only in those areas but, as Annemarie noted and as reflected in the document, MCFD is doing those things. In a number of cases…. One of the opportunities that we've had over the course of the last couple of months now is to engage in further discussions with the representative and her staff relating to the report as a whole and the recommendations.

Included in that is our having identified, then, in a number of places, time frames for us to be able to undertake the work necessarily needed to be a little further along than referenced in the report. We've had discussions as to why that's the case. In most cases, it's due to the comprehensive nature of the work involved. Certainly, that's the case on the strategic human resources side.

Also, most of the recommendations are consistent with and approachable within the context of MCFD's Strong, Safe and Supported operational plan. As those activities begin to show progress, we're best able to ensure that they also speak to the intent and the purpose of the representative's recommendations.

With that, we've made a point of making sure that we've left a good period of time in order to address the committee members' questions.

I also note that we have a few additional people with us, behind me. That includes Deb Foxcroft, who is our assistant deputy minister for aboriginal policy and support services, and Rob Parenteau, a senior director in her groups. Should questions pertain to first nations, aboriginal or delegated agencies, activities, we might call on them to assist, given that they're the MCFD leads and the experts in that matter.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Thank you, Mark.

I'd like to thank Peter for coming down and giving us an excellent presentation, and Annemarie and Sandra and you, Mark.

We have approximately half an hour for questions, and I know that my colleague to the left has his hand up.

N. Simons (Deputy Chair): Thank you all for the presentations you provided us with this morning — much appreciated. A lot of work has gone into many of the issues raised.

I have two questions. The first is…. My understanding of the From Loss to Learning report was that the recommendations were essentially for the entire ministry. I'm just wondering if there was a particular reason…. I know that Amanda, Savannah, Rowen and Serena were children who lived in the north, but were not the recommendations really designed for the entire ministry to incorporate? And wouldn't that possibly suggest that a response to this report should be a provincewide response, as opposed to a northern response? — although I know that there were some specific, obviously, relationships there.

In case the Chair doesn't recognize me the next time, my second question has to do with pillar 4, with the aboriginal approach. Does regionalization in the formal regional authority's process hold any part in this plan still? Or has that been abandoned by the ministry?

[1000]

M. Sieben: I'll look to bite off No. 1, and then I might ask for assistance from my colleague Deb to speak to No. 2.

The member is absolutely right. There is a suggestion within the Loss to Learning report that much of the learning that there is opportunity for there might be extended to the rest of the province.

With that said, there are a number of recommendations that have a specific northern context and purpose, and we've looked to approach them with that in mind. For example, there is a need…. As Peter noted, we're in a positive place now, where we have a 95 percent completed rate relating to what staff we have. However, there's a need for an ongoing recruitment and retention plan for the north specifically. We're going to do that.

On the other side, there is a need provincially for us to take a look at our current policy and standards — some in the quality assurance area, some pertaining to looking after children in care — and perhaps also to reconsider how we approach the medical needs of children in care. Those have provincial application, and we'll ensure that that's done.

R. Cantelon (Chair): We'll ask Debra Foxcroft to come forward and talk about policy on the aboriginal issues.

D. Foxcroft: Good morning. I was wondering if you could repeat the question for me, please.
[ Page 257 ]

N. Simons (Deputy Chair): Deb, it's nice to see you.

My question has to do with pillar 4 of Strong, Safe and Supported and the aboriginal approach being a pillar. The aboriginal approach is obviously evolving, but there had been a serious commitment of funding and resources into the development of five regional aboriginal authorities. We know that the outcome either stopped when the legislation wasn't tabled or that it slowed down significantly.

My question is specifically: is the aboriginal approach including the enhancement of the delegated agency system, or is it going to be the regionalization approach in formal regional authorities?

D. Foxcroft: You're correct. There has certainly been a shift since the legislation was tabled. There have been a few, as you know, probably significant Indigenous Child at the Centre Forums in the last year — actually, the last in the summer — where the first nations aboriginal communities have basically said that, in solidarity, this is going to be a priority and that they're going to work on aboriginal issues in this province.

That shift has gone to the first nations and aboriginal communities in terms of nation to nation, in terms of child and…. There are interim child and family wellness councils that have representations of chiefs in all of those regions. So certainly, there has been a significant shift.

In terms of regionalizations, it's going to be more a nation to nation within the regions. That process is still evolving and developing. You were saying, about the resources…. We will be looking at supporting both in terms of the delegated agencies and these new evolving indigenous child and wellness councils.

N. Simons (Deputy Chair): Can I just follow that up?

R. Cantelon (Chair): You may have a follow-up.

N. Simons (Deputy Chair): Are these councils…? I'm confused about the nation-to-nation negotiations on the delivery of child welfare. Maybe to make it a little clearer for people…. What is the ministry's plan? As the only authority to delegate child welfare, what are their plans in terms of service provision by aboriginal communities on and off reserve? How is that structure being developed? Maybe you can elaborate on what these councils are, how many there are and who's involved in them.

[1005]

D. Foxcroft: Certainly, there is a shift and a change, but we are going to be supporting, as I said, delegated agencies, because that's where we have the authority.

How the nations are going to come together. I think Peter talked a little bit about that in terms of different approaches. Where there's a community development approach…. Those will be recognized, but we will continue with the work in terms of child protection with the delegated agencies.

I guess the direction will come from the chiefs, from the Indigenous Child at the Centre and the wellness councils. This is an interim process at this point that is provincial but that has representation from all of the different communities. They will come up with a plan. There is going to be an action plan for how they're going to move forward and how they're going to work. It's really going to come from the community level on what their direction is.

R. Cantelon (Chair): If I may, I'll just interject a question while we have you there, Deb, with respect to the services provided by delegated agencies. My very brief experience on Vancouver Island is that the first nations bands seem to wish to retain the independence of selecting and operating with the delegated agencies. It gives them a measure of independence from a cross-broad-brush approach. I wonder how you see that up in….

D. Foxcroft: I think, certainly, in terms of the independence, there is that autonomy, because they are independent in terms of how they're resourced and how they do their practice. We support, as I said, the training and delegation to those agencies. I think that all first nations, from the very beginning of the delegation process 20 years ago, have seen this as an interim measure and that they really want the full jurisdiction over their children and families.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Now, do you see that happening within the band, or do you see bands cooperating? How do you see that evolving?

D. Foxcroft: I don't have the answers. I think it's really going to be the communities that are going to decide on how that's going to happen.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Well, of that there is no doubt. Thank you for the answers.

I have Jagrup on this side, but in a very non-partisan way, I'm going to go back and forth.

C. Richmond: Thank you for your presentations. They were very good and very informative. I just have a couple of questions.

Mr. Cunningham, in your report, which I enjoyed very much, by the way, you mentioned a figure of 75 percent — I can't find it right now when I'm looking for it — of people on welfare in the north being first nations people.

P. Cunningham: No. What I meant to say and what I thought I said was that 75 percent of the children in care are aboriginal.
[ Page 258 ]

C. Richmond: Children in care. Does that include both on reserve and off reserve?

P. Cunningham: It is a mix.

Robert, do you have the actual breakdown of those?

R. Watts: I do not. The 75 percent would include children both that were resident on reserve and in the urban type of environment.

C. Richmond: So you don't have a breakdown of….

P. Cunningham: I can get one. I can certainly provide that information for you, but I don't right now, no.

C. Richmond: But that would have quite a significant impact, if on nothing else, on the funding — would it not?

P. Cunningham: It is connected. We're still responsible for providing the full gamut of child welfare services to children on and off reserve.

The delegated agencies that provide those services are at different levels of delegation, or they have a different ability to be able to provide the full range of services. So they may provide resource services on reserve, but the ministry still needs to provide child protection or intake and investigation types of services.

C. Richmond: I guess what I'm getting at is that there's federal money that comes into it for on-reserve.

P. Cunningham: Yes.

C. Richmond: That's why I was interested in the ratio — because it has quite an impact on budgets and on funding, I would assume.

P. Cunningham: Yes.

C. Richmond: Do you use private contractors? And this would apply not just to you but to the other presentations. Are all the social workers under your ministry? Or are there private contractors involved?

P. Cunningham: In terms of the budget in the north, about 60 or 65 percent of the budget is with contracted service providers, and the rest are with direct ministry staff.

[1010]

M. Sieben: With that said, for actions and responsibilities taken under the Child, Family and Community Service Act, in order to perform those duties, the individuals have to be delegated by the director. In the case of the north, the director is Robert Watts, seated to my left. Those delegated are either MCFD employees or employees of delegated agencies.

There is a large component of MCFD business and budget that is devoted to the contracted agency, often non-profit side and increasing on the first nations aboriginal side these days. However, the actual duties and functions required under the CFCSA on the whole are performed by those within MCFD or through delegated agencies.

C. Richmond: If I may just pursue it a little further, it seems to me that it would create problems in supervision and the level of service and the quality of service. Or do we have a hand on controlling that through the private contractors?

M. Sieben: Private contractors — again, often community-based agencies, many of which have been extant longstanding as places for support and services in those towns and cities — have a particular role to support services and children and families at a primary level, inclusive of providing, in some cases, foster support and family support services. Often they are the components and the work behind the initial plans of care and social work plans put together by MCFD staff and delegated agency staff.

So yes, supervision and the control of that is an issue for us. That's why there are guys like Robert — with assistance and staff, thankfully — in order to look after that sort of thing. Most of Robert's scope of duties and activities fall to those that are exercising responsibility under the Child, Family and Community Service Act. Those that have things to do through community agencies…. That's done through contract in response to individual social work plans for kids and families.

C. Richmond: I gather that you're satisfied with the results and the way it's working.

M. Sieben: Well, "satisfied" is a big word. As the representative's report is entitled, From Loss to Learning, MCFD is looking to embrace further a culture of continuous learning, so satisfied for the time being but looking to make improvement.

C. Richmond: Just one final question, more out of curiosity than anything.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Claude, if I may, I think Sandra wanted to add her response to that too.

S. Griffin: Just to add to that, you will note, on the quality assurance team, the accreditation team. In fact, we do have within the ministry an accreditation program, where any of our service agencies with contracts over $500,000 must be accredited.

These accreditation standards are North American
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standards for quality. I think it's important to note that from one of our largest accrediting bodies…. They note that B.C., in fact, has a North American reputation for some of the greatest numbers of exemplary accredited agencies within our province. So that is an important component in our quality assurance.

As well, we have initiatives within the ministry, like at present with our finance department looking at procurement and contracting and how contracts themselves support better outcomes for children, youth and families. That work is being done in partnership with the B.C. federation of family-serving agencies. So we have excellent partnerships with our community service partners, where we are in fact engaged actively in continuous quality improvement.

C. Richmond: What's the starting salary for a social worker these days?

R. Cantelon (Chair): Who wants to take a shot at that?

Annemarie, do you know off the top of your head?

A. Travers: I don't know off the top of my head. I'd need to look that up.

M. Sieben: I think it's around 35, but we'll look to confirm for you.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Sandra, the quality assurance program that you have put in place is across the entire ministry and across the entire province, is it not? It is not just for the northern….

[1015]

S. Griffin: Yes. My entire presentation to the committee this morning is on our integrated quality assurance system and initiatives, and that is provincewide. All of the regions are actively engaged with our integrated quality assurance initiatives, and the system that we will be implementing is provincial.

J. Brar: Thanks for the presentation. What I see during this whole presentation is quite a bit of recognition of the challenges that we have in the human resources area as well as in the cultural component.

The number of staff members who self-identified themselves as aboriginal staff members has gone up from six to 49, so the first thing I would like to clarify is: are all those 43 people new people, or has something changed in the culture of the organization, where more and more people are identifying themselves as aboriginal staff members?

P. Cunningham: I do think it's a mix. We know we have more aboriginal staff that have come to work for the ministry as a result of the aboriginal social worker recruitment program. Probably about 28 of those positions come from that program.

As a result of the work that we've been doing around trying to reorganize and reorient our organization around supporting a different kind of practice to support aboriginal people, we have attracted additional staff as well. The exact breakdown of the numbers — I don't have that currently. But that could be a partial explanation.

J. Brar: We also saw that the number of calls coming in is almost 50-50 from the aboriginal community and the non-aboriginal community. After that, the number changes significantly. Seventy percent of children in care come from the aboriginal community, so what changes after the call?

P. Cunningham: The calls come in to the ministry at 50-50, and I think that in a lot of cases in the non-aboriginal community, we're able to work out arrangements more successfully to return children home, because they have better supports and better systems. It's a bigger challenge within the context of some of the other communities that we work with, so it's more difficult to return kids home.

M. Sieben: The relationship work that Peter noted in his presentation is fundamental to our ministry's ability to facilitate better results and better outcomes for first nations aboriginal kids, beginning at the front end, at the gate in, where the call is received, and then working all through our model relating to what services might be made available, how best to provide support and care to vulnerable children so that we might stand a better chance of moving that figure back down to where it should be.

MCFD has had relative success over the course of the last five or six years in having a stable child-in-care population — the number of children in care. However, our successes in that area on the whole have been on the non-aboriginal side.

A number of factors contribute to that. The inequity that's been sort of the hallmark of the INAC-based funding for children in care without providing opportunity for investment in prevention services on reserve has been a problem of our own. Within that, as we develop policies, which are spoken to in Hughes and referenced by the representative, that we believe strongly in…. Our opportunity to invest in those is also limited, then, for some of the same reasons.

Some of those rules are changing now, we're pleased to say, as a result of work that's gone on between the province and the federal government. We're hopeful that we might see more of the type of practice that we somewhat ironically associate with caregiving within first nations communities, which we look at as an enlightened child welfare practice that we believe is going to produce better results.

J. Brar: The last question I would like to ask, Mr.
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Chair…. My understanding on this one is that culture has a role to play in this, whether it's the uniqueness of the culture or a lack of understanding of the culture of the aboriginal community. I see a clear recognition of that component as well, where the ministry is trying to recruit more people in the staffing as well as developing new programs like cultural camps and the homecoming events and all that.

[1020]

But when I look at the vision statement of the ministry or division…. I don't know whether it's the ministry or a particular division. It does not recognize the cultural component in that one. So I would like to ask the question as to how, with one set of thinking, we can make the child welfare system better or more effective for that community.

M. Sieben: Vision statements are always a bit of a tricky business. To a certain extent, you're looking to include all of a ministry organization's activity in a somewhat sublime and summary statement that does justice to everything that you do.

Our intention, as framed up in Strong, Safe and Supported, is to devote a significant amount of our focus particularly on first nations, the aboriginal activities, but inclusive of other cultures and ethnicity, religious heritage. There is specific reference to that within the Child, Family and Community Service Act as well as in the Adoption Act — two big areas of our business that are purposeful.

We tend to look at "strong, safe and supported" as somewhat being reflective not only of physical and health well-being but also of cultural, emotional and spiritual well-being, and certainly of…. The commitment to address child welfare concerns on families' own turf, both geographic as well as cultural, is a commitment that MCFD is looking to meet.

J. Rustad: Thank you for the presentation. From what I understand, the relationships in the north between the first nations community and MCFD have been improving over the years, and I look forward to the report that you're going to be bringing out in December with regards to the progress.

I'm just wondering if you can give us an idea of some of the indicators that you're going to be looking at in that report — some of the types of, I guess, measurements, in particular for the children that are under the different agencies, the different groups that are supported under MCFD and also with regards to the educational outcomes and how those are progressing.

M. Sieben: Last January, in response and with some support from the representative, we tabled an initial annual report on educational outcomes for children in care. We have expectation for a subsequent report this January specific for that topic. Specific to the task at hand here in these recommendations, we will be completing and making available a report that's specific to child welfare activities in the north.

Joan is our senior director responsible to manage and develop both of those products, so Sandra and I will ask her to respond to your question.

J. Easton: I'm also going to defer to Robert Watts, particularly with respect to the northern report.

In terms of the educational outcomes for children under a continuing custody report, we are tracking items such as…. In addition to basic demographics and location of those children, we're looking at age-appropriate grade measures, and we're looking at measures which look at achievement from the various testing that is done of children — for example, grade 4, grade 7 fundamental skills assessment results.

We have looked at high school completion in the form of whether a Dogwood certificate is achieved within a six-year span. And for the forthcoming report, we are also doing work to look at grade-to-grade transitions.

That's just a sample of the types of measures that we're currently looking at in terms of educational outcomes for children.

Our work with the Ministry of Education to try and obtain more insight in terms of educational performance for the children in the ministry's care is ongoing. We have been doing some work around the special needs area, which we also expect to include in the educational outcomes report.

[1025]

In terms of the link to the report for the northern part of the province, we are currently engaged in obtaining some regional breakdowns of some of those measures, and Robert and I are working in terms of identifying the best indicators to include in that more specific piece.

With that I'll hand over to Robert, so he can talk more about other indicators in that piece.

R. Watts: A little more broadly, we were looking to report on many of the indicators that have been mentioned in the Loss to Learning report. We anticipate being able to report out, at least initially, on most of those for the northern children in care.

There are some that we will continue to look at our data to determine how we can interpret that data and report out. Joan and I are doing that together in cooperation so that both the provincial reporting and the northern reporting for the northern children will line up.

J. Rustad: If I could just have a quick follow-up. One of the things I'm particularly interested in…. I know that with all children, when they enter into the education system, their level of preparedness coming into the system is critical. So I'm just wondering if that is one of the measures that
[ Page 261 ]
you're looking at for the children in care as well.

J. Easton: We look at the early development instrument for school readiness for the province as a whole. We do not currently have a good ability to match our data to the broader array of education data that is used by the human early learning partnership of UBC.

We are continuing to explore those opportunities, and we hope at some point in time to be able to look specifically at how children in care are performing with respect to that instrument. Unfortunately, we cannot do that currently, as the data is not available, but we definitely do look at that EDI, or early development instrument, because it's quite informative in terms of patterns that are happening across the province.

L. Krog: Thank you very much for the presentations, everyone, this morning. I appreciate that. The simple question: is the regional aboriginal authorities process dead?

M. Sieben: A simple response: in my view, that's probably a better question to take to our minister. Deb spoke to that to a large degree in her response to Mr. Simons's question.

Our intent and our commitment is to work with the first nations leaders, chiefs and provincial leaders, in order for a process that is going to work for them. If that takes us down the road of regional authorities, then it will be regional authorities. If it takes us to a different end place that best meets the needs of aboriginal children and families, then we'll go down that road.

L. Krog: A very, very quick question, and it's based on numbers. You've got 13 percent of the MCFD regional funding as the northern half of the province. Of the total children in care in the province, how many come from that region that gets 13 percent of the funding?

R. Watts: I don't know the accurate number, but I would believe that it would be in the range of 11 to 12 percent of the province's children or children in care in the north. That would include both the children in care of the ministry and the children that are in care of the delegated agencies in the north.

L. Krog: The reason I ask that specifically is that the Ministry of Education recognizes that the budget for heating the school in Fort St. James is probably somewhat more problematic than for the school on Saltspring Island. It strikes me that with your significant geographical issues…. I mean, even apprehending a child in a village that is 70 miles from the nearest centre is a bigger problem than driving two miles across Nanaimo to apprehend. That's the reason I raise that issue.

The second thing is that you've talked about retention and that you're now at 95 percent, which is very good, but does that include the delegated agencies, which represent 65 percent of your budget? In other words, you can talk about your numbers, but what I want to know is: what are the numbers for the delegated agencies? Are they retaining the staff?

P. Cunningham: The delegated agency budget is separate from our budget. But as I said when I was speaking earlier, I think that the challenges around recruitment are across the board.

[1030]

We recently had a meeting with delegated agencies and our strategic HR folks and offered our assistance in looking for some more collective ways of recruiting and retaining staff, both for delegated agencies and for the ministry staff.

M. Sieben: Most of the funding for delegated agencies runs through the federal government. With that said, MCFD recognizes the responsibility to provide support, as best we can. As spoken to in the representative's recommendation and as addressed in our response, our recruitment and retention plans for the north and training plans for the north are inclusive of delegated agencies.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Peter, the last word will go to you.

P. Cunningham: Great. Thank you so much. I just wanted to offer a Christmas present to the members of the committee. Is this unusual?

R. Cantelon (Chair): Are you going to sing or…?

P. Cunningham: Heavens, certainly not. That would be very bad if I was to sing. You wouldn't appreciate that.

We've done a lot of video documentation of the homecoming camps, and I've ordered for each of you a DVD that I'll send to you that will show just what the camps are like. I would offer to assist any committee member with an invitation to a camp if they're interested in attending. Just let me know, and I'd be happy to facilitate that for you.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Well, we've heard much about the camps from here and other sources. I think the committee members would like to take you up on that opportunity. I think that would be something that would be very informative for us.

Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for coming so far. I understand the snow is on the ground in Prince George, but not here. Mark and staff, thank you so much.

We'll now take a brief recess and reconvene in about five minutes.

The committee recessed from 10:32 a.m. to 10:41 a.m.

[R. Cantelon in the chair.]

R. Cantelon (Chair): All right, I'd like to call the meeting to order. I now invite the representative to begin with an update on the work of the representative for the next half-hour.

Mary Ellen, the floor is yours.

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, good morning, everyone. I thought I would first just make a few comments about the progress on the Loss to Learning report, as part of the general update, to say that as the ministry officials indicated this morning, we've had several very helpful meetings to debrief on the report since the last time we were before the select standing committee.

We weren't able to proceed on that date, so in the representative's view, there was a very helpful period to allow us to have a discussion. We are now much more aware of the work that the ministry is doing, and we are delighted with the presentation that they brought forward today.

The representative would say, though, that there remains much work to be done. We will support the ministry and the region, but there remains much work to be done, particularly in the area of child safety and ensuring that there is a prompt and appropriate response when there is an allegation of child abuse, neglect and maltreatment.

Certainly, some recent audit data coming out of the north region suggests that the challenges remain. So we are engaged very much with the region and the ministry on this, and we will be looking very, very closely at the variety of other plans that they've spoken to that they intend to move forward on.

One other issue wasn't touched upon, but I would like to just bring the committee's attention on that. There was a recommendation in the Loss to Learning report which is a recommendation to establish in the north region an aboriginal children's council. That wasn't a recommendation to the Ministry for Children and Families.

That was a recommendation to the government of British Columbia. The explanation for that in the report, as the members will recall, was the sense that the representative had that there are very pressing issues in the north for aboriginal children in particular.

I think we now know more, now that the most recent aboriginal children's survey from Statistics Canada has come out. It describes, particularly the north regions, that aboriginal children have circumstances such as that they are growing up in large families, often raised by very young parents, with a very significant experience of poverty, and there are major issues around addressing the use of physical discipline as well as some issues around neglect and abuse.

So the representative is still concerned that that recommendation not fall off the table, if you like.

While the ministry's engagement with aboriginal communities is very positive and is certainly supported, the representative was of the view that something more than that was required and, in particular, the engagement of local authorities — municipal governments and leaders, first nations, appropriate government representatives who are either MLAs in the north or in senior positions in the north — to actually look at the experiences of aboriginal children in the north and make this more meaningful around improving at the local level the conditions for aboriginal children.

[1045]

I'd just say that the update that was provided by the ministry speaks to their role, which I appreciate very much. They are doing more work. However, there is still a need at the government level, I think, to consider this recommendation and respond to it. So the representative's office will continue to raise that and hope that that will be considered, because there are unique circumstances that, in the view of the representative, call for some greater action to bring people together to address these issues.

I do note that I will participate, in January, in a meeting of all the chiefs in the north region, where they will be specifically talking about the Loss to Learning report and talking about the issues around the response to situations where children may not be safe. I think that's a welcome opportunity. I will bring that concept to them as well. I know they've endorsed and supported the recommendations in the report, but I will bring it to them again in January and suggest that they take it up and push to get some other people at the table to talk about these important issues.

Moving on from that, a few other areas….

R. Cantelon (Chair): I wonder, Representative, if I could just interject. You mentioned the MLAs to be engaged with this. It was in the recommendations, specifically, to MCFD. Have you brought it to MLAs in the north, such as Mr. Rustad, to suggest that this might be an avenue? If it is, I'm sure that you'd get uptake from MLAs from both sides of this House. I think it represents a great non-partisan opportunity for the MLAs to engage in developing these dialogues.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I agree with you fully, Mr. Chair, and I think that that was the intent as well, to get members who are sitting in the Legislative Assembly from that region, from both sides of the House, to sit with municipal leaders, first nations leaders.

The most important piece of it was to have the information about how the children are doing, not the sort of 30,000-feet level information of how we want to engage in broad-based change but actual detailed information about the children in care; the children in the home of a relative; the education, health and safety outcomes for aboriginal children in that region.
[ Page 263 ]

I've spoken to individual MLAs about it, and I will continue to promote it. I think there's a good opportunity in this committee to sort of monitor that, track that and support that as well. Again, one of the purposes of this committee is to find the work that really focuses on improving outcomes for children and engages with their circumstances.

Particularly when we see, again, the child poverty information and we look at that regionally…. We look at the north region. It's a daunting, daunting situation for the consequences of child poverty for aboriginal children throughout British Columbia, but particularly in that region. There's always, I think, an opportunity to take a fresh look at that, and I certainly would recommend it and encourage this committee and the members of the committee to consider that further.

R. Cantelon (Chair): As an MLA in Nanaimo, I certainly would welcome that opportunity.

Now just a piece of housekeeping for Hansard. If you would be so kind as to introduce the members that you have at the table with us.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, good. Now that they're all here, I will. I have my deputy, Bill Valentine, with me to my right. I have my chief investigator and head of critical injury and death area, John Greschner, and I have the director of investigations and reviews, Cory Heavener, with me as well.

Just a few other operational points that I will speak to before I deal with the service plan issue, and that is that you've been given a copy of a report from the summit that we held, the Champions for Children and Youth Summit, which was really quite a remarkable event.

I will note that some members of this committee also attended, and I was very delighted with that, as were all of the participants in that. The Chair was able to participate. Thank you very much. Nicholas Simons was able to participate throughout the event, as well as Val Roddick. Thank you very much for participating in it. I also note that Minister Christensen was able to participate throughout the event, which was extremely positive as well.

At the event the representative presented, with the assistance of the Lieutenant-Governor and others, the first set of Representative's Awards for work with respect to children and youth in British Columbia There is some detail about that. It was an extremely good opportunity to recognize the important work of people who are striving to make the lives of British Columbia's children improved, particularly those most vulnerable children.

[1050]

I also note that this was an event that was very much sponsored by and supported by the business community and the private sector. I think that's one of the things that was extremely important to me as representative — to see that the commitment to make improvements in the child-serving system in British Columbia has a broad social consensus behind it, and that it is supported, of course, by all parties in the Legislature and all members of the Legislature as well as those in the private sector, the child-serving sector, the community-serving sector and, of course, children and youth. So I leave with you a copy of that report, and you will see what we heard.

We particularly focused for this first time on how we understand the child-serving system in British Columbia and on what we can learn from other jurisdictions about improving it — particularly other jurisdictions that by all measures do better than British Columbia in terms of supporting vulnerable children, seeing progress on improved educational outcomes, improved health standards, better infant mortality rates, stronger attachment of children to parents and families, and prosocial attachments to communities.

This was a very positive event, which gave us some meaningful work to be done in the future. I leave that report with you, and it does speak to some things that will come up in our service plan.

I also want to note for committee members that next week we will go before the Finance and Government Services Committee to present our budget for the next year. We'll talk about the service plan, but I'll indicate, given the current circumstances with respect to the economic uncertainty in the province of British Columbia, that it is a very modest request to allow us to continue operating.

I think, like many other entities and independent offices across British Columbia, we are looking at how best to optimize the resources we have in these uncertain circumstances. So I'd just make the committee members aware of that.

Circulated to you, you would have received an electronic version from the Clerk, but you will have a copy of an update that I've prepared, which is an update on the system of services and support for children and youth with special needs.

Some of the new committee members, I know, have joined us in progress, but the representative's office prepared a monitoring brief for this committee in February of this year. It called for some specific action to be undertaken to improve the system of support for children and youth with special needs. The representative's office has had extensive involvement with CLBC, the Ministry of Children and Families and others in the sector working on special needs.

The representative has an advisory committee that I meet with that comprises people who have specialization and experience with respect to children and youth with special needs in all systems in British Columbia, including parents. We have tracked the situation very carefully, particularly around some shifts that occurred in the summer months, when there was the expression on the part of the government to return the services for children
[ Page 264 ]
and youth with special needs from CLBC to the Ministry of Children and Families.

You will see in my report today that the update is that that will not be completed now until October 2009. The transition was announced without the transition planning in place, so it was announced and then the transition planning happened after.

The representative was a bit concerned about the instability that that causes to children and youth, but in any event, this update will provide members of the committee and the public with a glimpse as to where we are now, what has transpired since that and what the work is that remains to be done.

I've provided, as well, a bit of an update on the areas of activity, and I do positively note that the ministry, the CLBC and others did take the brief and accept the areas for work around how accessible the system is and how responsive it is. I would say, though, to members of the committee that there remains very much work to be done in this area, and there is still a fairly significant degree of uncertainty about what the system changes will mean for the lives of children and youth in British Columbia.

I particularly want to bring to the attention of the committee the concerns that I have about wait times and making some progress on wait-listing and wait-timing. Of course, all of you will know this very well, but a wait time even of several months can be very devastating for the development of a child and can be very difficult for families. A 12-month wait for, say, a four-year-old is of course one-quarter of that child's life and is very significant in terms of supporting change.

The representative's office continues to monitor this very carefully, continues to be engaged extensively with individuals who are providing the service and will continue to keep the committee up to date on the progress of these developments.

[1055]

One particular area that you'll see reported on is the issue of young adults — the 19- to 24-year-olds that we reported on before. As members of the committee will know, in the summer months there was a change in eligibility. I have had a chance to meet with the responsible minister and with his officials — Minister Rich Coleman — to bring to the attention of the minister several hundred children who lost eligibility for service when they turned 19 and to ask the minister to please direct his officials to re-engage with those individuals who I felt were particularly needy, particularly those who had aged out of care.

The mandate of the representative's office terminates, if you like, at age 19. I have left that with those officials but continue to bring to the attention the need to see that the transition from 19 into the adult system, for vulnerable children who become vulnerable adults, be appropriately supported. The office is working with a number of children and youth on the advocacy side, where there is some uncertainty about their future when they turn 19 and must then apply for voluntary services and are assumed to have full legal capacity, when they've been in care, of course, and they must go out into the world and navigate a complex world on their own. That is also addressed in the brief.

I also wanted to just say a few words about the area of reviews and investigations. I know we have an in-camera item that we'll deal with at the bottom of the agenda today, with the permission of the committee. I wanted to just give you a little bit of an update there.

With respect to reportable circumstances of critical injuries and deaths, up to September 2008 we have 111 critical injuries and 46 deaths before the office. You've heard recently about the north region. I can just say that 14 of those deaths are from the north region, and 48 of those critical injuries are from the north region. So we're seeing a bit of a greater representation in that region, from other regions.

There has been one investigation report completed, which you met on today. From now to the end of the current fiscal year, we anticipate completing two individual investigation reports and one aggregate review report.

I'll say a bit of a word about what those mean. Individual investigation means that it's a case that requires, actually, a full-blown investigation and stand-alone report. An aggregate review is when we take a variety of cases that have some similar characteristics and bring them together to see what we can learn.

There are two main aggregates that the representative's office is working on. One is the early infant sleeping-related deaths, and the other is the suicide attempt and completed suicides. These are two groups that we're now at the point where we have a sufficient aggregate to be able to prepare a report.

Again, just for the members of the committee who are new or to refresh the memory of others who have been on the committee from the beginning, every child death or injury that's reviewed to my office receives a thorough review, which examines the circumstances of the incident and the services delivered to the child. The purpose of our review at the representative's office is to determine if there are service delivery issues or other circumstances that would require an investigation. These reviews are also, as I say, aggregated and analyzed.

Once a review is complete, which is where we look at all of the circumstances and the information, and if there's evidence to suggest that the policies or practices of a public body may have contributed to the critical injury or death, then we look at these circumstances and decide whether or not there is an investigation required. There are a number of active investigations underway, and you will see the results of those fairly soon.

I will remind the committee, as well, that to date the committee has referred 12 deaths and one critical injury
[ Page 265 ]
to the representative's office. These are those ones that were right in the period between the creation of the office, the completion of Mr. Hughes's report and the operationalization of this mandate, which was in June of 2007. So there are some cases in there that you've referred to the office that we are progressing on, and we've reported, of course, on four of them in the first report.

[1100]

The remaining eight cases. The reviews have been completed. For the most part, these will go into aggregate reports, particularly because many of them relate to suicides. They fit very well together in the area of whether or not the system of supports for vulnerable adolescents in the mental health side — if we see anything common around some of the concerns there….

The critical injury of the infant that was referred to me by the committee in June 2007 — that review is complete, and that is one of the matters under which the investigation will be prepared. It is our plan to report on that before the end of the fiscal year. So that work progresses.

In terms of other upcoming reports that are more immediately on the horizon, I can report to the committee that the progress report on the implementation of the Hughes review for 2008 is…. The plan is to release it during the week of December 8, so it's pending, if you like. It is to be in the hands of the ministry for them to have an opportunity to do an administrative fairness review of it — to respond to my office and for the report to come out in the week of December 8.

I appreciate that this committee may not have an opportunity to convene an actual hearing at which I can present the report because of the other demands that might be placed on your time. However, that would be the time frame. I want to get the report out in 2008 as it is pertaining to progress that has been made in the last calendar year.

R. Cantelon (Chair): If I may interject. So you expect to release a draft or have some response from the ministry before that, I presume, Mary Ellen? At what time do you anticipate giving it to the ministry, so I can gauge time?

It had been our intention and our aim to review that report before the end of the year. I think the committee would still like to do that if it's feasible. If their response comes back before the release period, then perhaps we can do it during that week.

M. Turpel-Lafond: The work on the report, of course, has involved fairly extensive collaboration and information-sharing with the ministry. I had hoped it would be a joint report. It is not a joint report; it's a report of the representative's office. Nevertheless, the comments of the ministry have been invited to be returned to the representative's office.

I remind the committee members that it's for the purposes of administrative fairness that the representative shares the report in advance and allows the ministry to identify any factual inaccuracies, for example. That will be returned in the first week of December, and the second week of December will be the date for the release of the reports.

I will speak further with the Chair and the Deputy Chair as to whether or not we can convene a hearing for that purpose. It would certainly be my preference to do it in that form. However, the office needs to get the report out.

I would note to the members of the committee that that report will not be on all recommendations. It will be on the 15 recommendations that are most critical, in the area of regionalization, quality assurance and a few other items. We had hoped to report on new approaches to aboriginal child and family services and some of the new practices around child protection.

The information exchange has been somewhat delayed on those, so there will be a second part of the Hughes report released early in the new year, as we have an opportunity to have a more fulsome look at the information.

This first report that we will issue in the week of December 8 will look at what I see as some of the key areas. I've advised this committee, earlier in this year, as to what the priorities of the representative's office would be this year. We also advised the ministry of what those priorities would be this year. We look forward to releasing that report.

I also note that early in the new year, a report that is virtually completed and has gone to a variety of ministries for fact-checking, if you like, is our comprehensive report on youth justice. We would anticipate releasing that in the new year. Again, I appreciate that the work of this committee is such that there may not be opportunity to convene, and I will certainly discuss this further with the Chair as to the manner and form of that release.

It does seem to me, as representative, that that report would be appropriately considered with the other report that was released in the fall, which was on the Burnaby centre and the medical examinations of children in the criminal justice system and the issue of the breast and genital examinations of children.

[1105]

Those two reports go quite well together, I think, to look at. I can say in the preparation of the justice report, we've had widespread engagement and discussion with the representatives from a variety of ministries affected in doing this. That, again, is a report that looks at all children born in one calendar year in British Columbia and analyzes who became involved in the criminal justice system and what interventions we might consider in British Columbia.

That gives you a bit of an idea of the work that's been underway and will continue in our office. I'll pause at this point for questions.
[ Page 266 ]

R. Cantelon (Chair): I think that in consideration of the time, we'll move forward with the service plan, which we do need to deal with so that you can go to the Finance Committee.

Office of the Representative
for Children and Youth:
Service Plan

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, on to the next agenda item, then. You will have a service plan before you, which is the second service plan of the representative's office. It is actually looking at the period, of course, of '09-10 to '11-12.

The service plan was sent to members electronically in advance. However, there is a requirement under the Representative for Children and Youth Act that the service plan be placed before the committee. It's not necessarily for approval but is placed before the committee to allow us to have a discussion today or into the future about the work of the representative's office.

Having said that, I don't intend to take up the valuable time of the members of this committee by reading through the representative's service plan. However, I will highlight a few particular areas with respect to our work.

There's a good history, obviously, of where we are and where we've come to, to this date, including looking at important issues such as amendments to the legislation and other improvements that have been made to allow us to be more effective in the last year.

Page 7, I think, is the beginning of the real substance of what our vision is. The vision for the representative's office is that we be highly valued for championing the rights and better outcomes for vulnerable children and youth, and that we are really very much focused on results. We are very committed to evidence-based approaches to supporting the Ministry of Children and Families to succeed and to play a role, in our oversight capacity, to ensure that that evaluation and effectiveness is part of how the child-serving system functions.

Again, the key legislative mandate of our office is, first of all, the advocacy — to support, inform and advise children and their families. Obviously, this will continue to be a major program area for us. We've seen an increase in advocacy, and meeting those needs of the vulnerable children and youth to ensure that their voices are heard is a very significant case-by-case task of our office.

Our second mandate is to monitor, review, audit and conduct research on designated services. We've spoken just a moment ago about some of the reports that have been prepared. The service plan speaks to some of the areas that we're taking as a priority for the next year.

The third area is the review and investigation of the critical injuries and deaths. We certainly have a better understanding now of how large the in-box is on that and also of the task for that part of the mandate. You will see, again, that it's significant to us that this program area operates effectively and plays a positive role to look at systems of support for vulnerable children and to ensure, where appropriate, that improvements can be made.

I won't go through those functions in detail. I will just make a couple of points in terms of fulfilling our mandate.

A number of things are extremely important to the representative's office to become an effective public body to carry out the task assigned in the statute and also as contemplated by Mr. Hughes in his 2006 review of the child welfare system. The one issue is that the independence of the office is important; the integrity and the effectiveness of the office in carrying out its duties and responsibilities; and of course, above all, the maintenance of a strong child-centred focus on supporting children and youth.

How we carry out our duties and responsibilities is significant. We have a code of conduct and ethics to require very high standards of ethical and professional behaviour. We are undertaking to be transparent in our conduct and to work in a collegial fashion with others in the child-serving sector. We feel very much that we will earn or maintain the respect that we require to do the work by having a thorough analysis of the issues, by maintaining our child-centredness and by demonstrating an understanding of the complexity of the issues and the opportunity for improvement.

[1110]

Of course, as this committee is well aware, we also are very strongly committed to the reporting relationship to this standing committee as an important part of achieving what we think is the goal for this office — which is to move toward a stronger child-serving system in which we take the issues above and beyond the larger "P" political issues or partisan issues into a more non-partisan realm of common support for a stronger child-serving system, where there can be a stronger commitment to outcomes and seeing year-to-year progress and improvements for vulnerable children so that we don't have the instability in the child-serving system that we've seen at times in the past.

We're guided in our performance, of course, by the UN convention on the rights of the child, which is very significant in British Columbia — it's even in the preamble to the Child, Family and Community Service Act — and a strong emphasis on the rights of children.

As we all are acutely aware in this committee and in society, children have no legal standing on their own to sue or be sued. They don't vote, and particularly for the most vulnerable children who are out of the parental home, they are largely invisible in our society.

For other vulnerable children — whether they're the group with special needs that I've spoken about earlier or they are aboriginal children who in and of themselves
[ Page 267 ]
have vulnerabilities because of their poor outcomes — it's very significant that we strengthen their position so that as independent citizens, if you like, they have rights recognized.

We've this morning talked extensively about the death report from the north and the representative's very strong view that we must commit to a vision in British Columbia that children have a right to be safe, that our system supports their right to be safe and an expectation that they will be safe from physical punishment, abuse, neglect and maltreatment, as well as supporting their well-being more generally.

The office, as you'll note on page 11, has taken a very strong emphasis on aboriginal people and aboriginal children. That was mandated in the statute and also identified clearly in the Hughes review.

I am in some ways very sad to say that when I took the appointment as representative, almost 51 percent of the children in care were aboriginal children. Today it's 59 percent. In a few short years it has increased to 59 percent.

With the demographic trends, with the vulnerabilities in that community, I would be very sad to see, at the end of my term as representative, if that was closer to 65 to 70 percent. But if the trends are unabated and we do not work more effectively in this area, this will happen. One out of ten aboriginal children in British Columbia is living out of the parental house, and one out of eight aboriginal children in their childhood or youth will be involved with the child welfare system.

Of course, we know — and we will speak further about it — from our justice study, for the aboriginal adolescents who become involved in the justice system and for aboriginal adolescents in British Columbia who are out of the parental home, they are more likely to see a jail cell than a high school graduation certificate.

Unfortunately, these are the trends that our office must work diligently to support all people who are supporting that change. That includes government, opposition, the child-serving sector, first nations leadership. So in conducting our mandate, we have entered into memoranda of understanding with first nations leaders, with Métis leaders, with friendship centres, with a variety of other organizations who have common concern with these issues.

It's extremely significant that our staff reflect the diversity of British Columbia, including that we have a strong complement of aboriginal staff who are dynamic and engaged with community, to ensure that the voices of aboriginal children and youth are heard and heard very loudly. We will continue, in all of our program areas, to have this as a main priority.

We are very concerned about the situation for aboriginal children in British Columbia. We are very concerned that there may in fact be a decline in the well-being of aboriginal children in the past number of years, and not an improvement in their circumstances.

R. Cantelon (Chair): I wonder if I could just interject a question. Fifty-nine percent was the number. How does that compare with the change in demographic? We certainly recognize that the non-aboriginal is declining, to a certain extent, whereas the aboriginal population is growing at a much faster rate. Does that parallel that, or does it exceed the demographic?

[1115]

M. Turpel-Lafond: It exceeds it. Aboriginal children in British Columbia comprise approximately 8 percent of the child population and 59 percent of the caseload of children in care. What we have seen, though, is a decline in non-aboriginal children in care and an increase in aboriginal children in care.

I haven't spoken about the children in the home of the relative — and as you know, I have a great interest in monitoring that — or the children in the guardianship financial assistance program. That's 4,500 children in the home of the relative and approximately 1,500 children in the guardianship financial assistance program on reserve. Again, those on-reserve ones will be all status Indians or first nations. The children in the home of the relative are significantly also aboriginal.

I think that what we're seeing again are the issues around family stability. As I mentioned earlier, looking at the circumstances for aboriginal children in British Columbia, we are looking at aboriginal children living in larger families. To use a term from economics, the dependency ratios are such that there's often a single parent with four or five children, and that parent is a younger parent. So the context is there.

Aspects of the child-serving system and services, as we heard this morning, may not have been designed or executed in the context of understanding this reality, so parenting programs and other services that might be valuable and important have not really been designed to respond to these circumstances.

There is a great need for the work of our office to constantly illuminate this, to try and ensure that anyone in the child-serving sector with any degree of responsibility for the public services of British Columbia must have a very good understanding of the circumstances of aboriginal children and must have good competency to engage to support those children.

Of course, as a representative for children and youth, I'm interested in supporting the adults that support the children, but I want to see improved outcomes for the children. I think we can make major investments into adults and see no improvement year to year for the children. And we may make major investments into changes in structures, like child-serving structures and planning processes, that do not lead to results, and meanwhile year to year the circumstances for the children may not improve.

This office has a very strong focus on the children and
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outcomes for the children — their health, their safety, their education attainment and their well-being.

In terms of the opportunities, the representative's office feels that there are ongoing and valuable opportunities. Certainly when we look back at the work that we have done to date, we think there have been multiple opportunities to engage, to see some improvements in areas, to move the understanding of the issues to different levels and to earn the support of a number of important decision-leaders with respect to working on these issues and, of course, to ensure that the voices of children and youth are more heard.

On page 14 of the service plan you will see our goals and objectives. The goals are very straightforward. Slightly different emphasis this year than last year, and I will just highlight that.

First of all, again, vulnerable children and youth have their rights and interests protected and upheld — number one. Their voice is heard; they're active participants in decisions affecting them. Our definition of who the vulnerable children are, again, those out of the parental home, those with special needs, aboriginal children as a group and, increasingly, a focus by our office in this year on children in new immigrant families, as we see greater needs for support there as well.

The office's goal is to really, as I said at the outset, focus on the outcomes and to see progress from year to year in British Columbia in supporting optimal developmental milestones.

The third goal is one that has been refined a bit from previous years, and the representative is of the view that there will be greater focus in the office of the representative this year on this third goal, and that is the right of children to be safe from violence, abuse, neglect and, I add, exposure to familial violence.

[1120]

I will note that when we place before you the report of one of our investigations, it will be touching upon children exposed to domestic violence and particularly lethal domestic violence. This is an area of increased concern to us this year because of the work that we've done, and also seeing the commonality of the exposure of the vulnerable children to violence and their susceptibility to experience violence.

We think it's a very significant issue in British Columbia, and a result we will be looking very much at whether the systems of support adequately respond to children in the situation of being exposed to domestic violence; responses to domestic violence in the system, including the collaboration between police officers, social workers — whether or not there is a common assessment framework in British Columbia.

It may well be that the representative may recommend to this committee in the year ahead that this committee consider having some hearings around British Columbia to actually hear directly from children and youth who have been exposed to and been victims of domestic violence, because I think it's an area that we have not heard sufficiently from. I think there could be great merit to the members of this committee to appreciate the circumstances for those children and how we might be able to strengthen the system to support them more effectively.

Finally, again, the collaborative accountable way in which we want our office to function is important. I won't go through each of the strategies in detail, except to say that you will see some of the similar measures that we have this year to identify whether or not we are achieving the mandate that the act and that the Legislature has placed before us.

We did produce an annual report, as you know, for our first year of operation. We will have an opportunity with our next annual report, as well, to report more around these measures and how we have been able to accomplish them. I would say around that that we're not a ministry, obviously. When it comes to looking at gauging performance, it is difficult to measure whether or not an office such as ours is effective.

First of all, of course, it's a function that has come into play in the context of what Mr. Hughes said — a system that was buffeted at stormy seas, if you like. So to provide some calm, some focus, some progress year to year, some visibility to these issues and some meaningful engagement across the system on them — these are the more practical, I think, accomplishments and achievements.

We have attempted in the service plan, again, to follow the advice that you had last year to find some way that we can report to you — I would say particularly in the area of advocacy, where we've really developed a very strong plan of how many communities we get out to. We are not simply a call centre where children and youth and their families call. We actually meet children and youth; we get out to communities; we talk to communities.

In the northern presentation they talked about the Haida homecoming, where my deputy Andrew Robinson and I participated in that and other activities. We would participate in that but also use that as an opportunity to have multiple discussions with the children and youth and how they are doing and what their needs are.

Certainly the Haida homecoming, as an example, was a wonderful connection of children in care back to their community. Yet the children in the community who lived there year to year were very loud to us to say: "We have no recreational facility in this community. We need something to happen so we have somewhere to do something."

Again, the great opportunity we have with community engagement is to get out. In the first year we focused on the north. We did extensive work on the north. We continue to do fairly extensive work in the north, but we have an advocacy plan that sees us throughout British Columbia.
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If anything, I would say that my deputy representative Andrew Robinson is overly ambitious in his commitment to going out and wanting to be everywhere and certainly has done a very impressive job with the advocacy staff getting out and really increasing the profile and the voices of children and youth in terms of what type of society they'd like to see and what types of supports they'd like to see to do better. So that continues to be very important to us.

I won't say very much more about other aspects of the plan, except to say that certainly in terms of operationalizing the program areas, we now have offices and are more established now in Victoria. We have a new office whereas we had staff in different offices, and we were co-located.

[1125]

I inherited the Children and Youth office when I was appointed, which was co-located with the Public Guardian and Trustee, which was a very nice relationship. We enjoyed that, but it was inadequate to meet our needs. There were also some significant information issues around the privacy of records that we have and so on.

So we had to find an independent space, which we now have in Victoria. We're very pleased about that, because it's not the easiest task to find appropriate space and a space that's accessible to the disabled, and wheelchair-accessible in particular. We were in a building that wasn't wheelchair-accessible, so we've changed that.

We also have our office in Burnaby in the Lower Mainland and our office in Prince George. Attempting to reach out from all of those points has been important.

With respect to the human resources side and the issues of staffing — recruitment, retention — these are issues for our office like they are for all offices. We have been able to attract very qualified and, I think, very dynamic staff.

However, the Ministry of Children and Families has also been the beneficiary of our ability to attract highly qualified and engaged staff, and they have continued to hire them back into the ministry to enticing positions, which I certainly very much support. As the representative, I would like people who work in our office to become leaders in various aspects of the child-serving system in the future. I just don't necessarily want them to take four at once.

In any event, I'm a bit of a…. I come from a background of hunting and trapping, so I don't want to use the word "poaching," because that's not really the most appropriate term to use about these delicate matters. But I would say that on the human resources side, in a small organization like ours of 40 people, when you lose some people to come into new and wonderful tasks elsewhere, it can be challenging.

But we continue to attract new people. It's just that the recruitment lag at times caused by that doesn't make the work ideal. As a result, there are times we have to rely on professional services to be able to complete the tasks at hand. I think that's pretty normal, again, with a small organization like ours.

We have operationalized our program areas. We are now looking at fine-tuning and improving them where they need to be improved.

I know that I reported to this committee before that I felt it was very important after the first year of operation to have an external review of the office done. After an RFP process, I hired a very reputable consulting company in Victoria — Sage — to have a look at the operation to see if it can meet the needs and if we are doing well and if there are areas for improvement. They made some recommendations which were very helpful and which I incorporated.

I think it's valuable in an institution like ours to do that regularly. So we will probably look at that again and see if it's working and if it can be improved or if there are areas that we might think we should be maybe allocating more resources to advocacy because the need is very high and so on.

This is a dynamic process, obviously, in running a small organization that has a significant public mandate. But it is certainly very enjoyable and one that we do, and we look forward to any feedback today or in the future from members of the standing committee.

I know that in the past, on our service plan, I've had the chance to have some individual meetings with members of the committee who have said: "Could you please pay attention to this more? Could you allow me to understand this area further?" We're delighted to have any of those discussions at any time.

Our service plan is also discussed with the child-serving sector and with others to ensure that we are fulfilling the mandate that we think we have. Obviously, there are some people who feel that we should have a different mandate or a different statute or what have you. We must work within the context of the mandate that we have. That mandate was expanded a bit last year, but we are on course with respect to it.

R. Cantelon (Chair): Before we take questions, we're at that period in the agenda…. How long, Mary Ellen, do you anticipate the in-camera session? I don't imagine it would take all that long, do you?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it's a 15-minute session.

R. Cantelon (Chair): All right. Fine. Based on that, then, we'll go to the quarter of the hour with some questions.

Just to instruct the committee before we start, we are indeed, as Mary Ellen has indicated, the committee that receives and reviews the annual service plan from the Representative for Children and Youth, and that includes a statement of goals and identifies specific objectives and performance measures that will be
[ Page 270 ]
required to exercise the powers and perform the functions and duties of the representative.

As she correctly pointed out, it does not require approval or endorsement. In fact, that's the case with all reports that we receive. They do not require this committee's endorsement or approval. They are, indeed, tabled directly with the Speaker, as this report has already been done.

[1130]

So having given that introduction, Leonard, the floor is yours.

L. Krog: Thank you, Mary Ellen. I am the eternal optimist, but I've read too much history not to think that we may be facing economic times as serious as the worst any amongst us think they might be. That leads me to believe that the work of your office and the work of the ministry is going to be under considerable pressure.

You mentioned that you're asking for a modest allotment to handle the affairs of your office, but what I'm wondering is: have your senior staff or you had discussions with the ministry about the challenges that they're going to face? More families who have lost a breadwinner are families more likely to witness domestic violence. Health care costs increase because people get sicker. Poverty is the greatest determinant of health.

I'm just wondering: have there been those kinds of high-level discussions about the pressures that are going to be placed on your office and the ministry? What planning, if any, is in place to deal with those problems as they arise?

R. Cantelon (Chair): If I may, before she answers, we are here to review the service plan, and I'd ask the members to…. We'll let this go, Leonard, but please — we have 15 minutes — direct your questions to the service plan.

L. Krog: Chair, I want to assure you that my question is related to the service plan. What sort of services can this office deliver if in fact that set of circumstances turns out to be accurate?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the goals of the office embrace that. I can say, certainly, that I have deep concern about what the unknown circumstances might mean for children and for youth in British Columbia. I do come at it, though, from the perspective of the nearly 22 percent child poverty issue that we have, and of course British Columbia has the most challenging circumstance around child poverty.

These are not entirely new issues. These are issues that have been with us, and we have seen some worsening of conditions. Whether or not the economic circumstances in terms of jobs and funding available in the system will worsen the conditions is something that I think we have to be really careful at. I think in our office we haven't had a lot of high-level discussions on that, but we certainly have internally done that.

I had the great pleasure this last week to meet with Nigel Fisher, the CEO of UNICEF Canada, to talk to him fairly extensively about the economists that advise UNICEF and work with UNICEF, around how we understand Canada's economic context and the impact on children. I certainly would just say that the issues around child poverty are enormous issues, and they're ones where there's a great deal of opportunity for work to be done.

The perspective that the representative has in all of the work that's done, especially around monitoring the child-serving system, is ensuring that some of the other strategic challenges in British Columbia — for instance, that we have a labour force in the future…. We have a shrinking labour force. These circumstances are also impacted by social policy decisions that may or may not better equip vulnerable children to participate in that economy in the future.

Some of the research of my office is looking at trajectories — for instance, if we are to improve the participation of young children in early childhood education opportunities, whether that be strong, licensed and high-quality child care or the full-day kindergarten or other issues — and what type of economic impact that has. Certainly, I think, in looking at advice around dealing with the economic circumstances, a lens has to be put to the issue of how this affects children, particularly vulnerable children, so that they will not be missed in this process.

Could the demand on the system suddenly shift dramatically, such that there were more vulnerable children and there were more context of family instability? Absolutely. I think that's one of the major concerns, and certainly the UNICEF data suggests that when there is an economic downturn, the impact on children is substantial — and the outcomes for children.

We will be engaging in discussions with the private sector and a variety of others about it, but we will be watching it, and I think it's extremely important that the work of our office evaluate that.

[1135]

You know, Mr. Hughes was very clear in his report that a stronger evaluation system is needed. Are the investments we're making working to support the most vulnerable children and youth? If there is a look at changing those investments, I certainly will want to make sure that there is a good analysis done as to whether or not this is going to compromise outcomes for vulnerable children, where they're already struggling and the gaps are already there in British Columbia.

J. Rustad: I actually have three quick comments. The first one is more of a housekeeping issue, just with regards to the service plan of 2009-10 to 2011-12. Your performance measures are dated from 2008-09 through 2010-11.

That's something you may want…. I don't know if that
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was a type error.

M. Turpel-Lafond: We look at targets year to year. So some of the measures we're looking at, trying to see dissemination of information for the first, second and third year throughout the process to try and report back on it, because we needed to get a bit of a baseline.

J. Rustad: Great. The second question is with the office. It's been up and running now for, I guess, over a year. I'm curious, with regards to established baselines.

More importantly, with the discussion that we had earlier, one of the things I'd asked was about the performance measures, particularly on the educational side. I know that is such a critical component to the outcomes.

I'm just wondering if your performance measures…. A lot of these performance measures are around reports and pamphlets and sort of the contact side of things. I recognize that your office primarily has an advocate's role and that whole side of things. That part is important, but I'm just wondering if we can get some other sort of measures in there that can be, I guess, more on the ground in terms of the actual impact on the children and youth.

M. Turpel-Lafond: You'll see a footnote in the service plan that we are really trying to engage with that. The challenge is that…. Let's take education outcomes of children in care. It was a matter that had received some, but very nominal, attention prior to the report of the representative's office and the work of this committee. Now it's receiving greater attention, and I'm pleased.

However, there is still a great deal of work around strategies to see that those children out of the home are progressing well in the school system. There is still a great deal of work to be done by two ministries to get together to work on this and to have a kind of higher level public accountability about whether the children are at grade level and progressing.

If I take that as an example, I can't really take credit for that. I mean, I want to encourage these issues to be more visible and there to be changes. I want the committee to accept recommendations that I make as being reasonable recommendations and to support the work to achieve improvements for the kids in care. But I don't think it's really a performance measure that goes to me.

Really, I want to see better performance measures in this area for these ministries. So the Ministry of Children and Families would have a performance measure that the children in care are at grade level. The Ministry of Education would have a performance measure that maybe they have effective work in their school boards to ensure that the children are visible and supported.

What's really meaningful on the ground is to see these other improvements. Our office is playing a role with the standing committee to have that done, but it's very difficult to measure it. And I certainly don't think that I should be taking credit for that.

J. Rustad: I agree entirely, and that's the challenge. Please don't take this in the wrong way. It just may be a little tough to be able to go and say that we need to see a budget or a budget increase based on a number of reports that are produced or a number of pamphlets that are produced. Just the perception of that is a challenge.

So I just want to leave you with that comment. Like I say, I know in this business it's very, very tough to find those kinds of measures that can be meaningful, that can relate — especially in the office position that you're in. That was one thing.

The second thing I just want to add or ask a question about…. Being on Finance, I'll likely be able to ask this question in Finance as well. But I'm just wondering, in terms of the staffing challenges that you've had, whether or not your budget had been fully utilized from this year, and just some of those changes or challenges that may have come up with that going forward.

If that's outside of the service plan, then okay.

R. Cantelon (Chair): It is outside this committee. To be fair to both sides, we'll leave that to the Finance Committee.

J. Rustad: We'll leave that question for Finance. My apologies.

R. Cantelon (Chair): I think, very good, Mary Ellen. I appreciate the collaboration. I don't know if it was intended to go as far as the staff changes that have happened within your staff, but we're happy to see that cooperation between the two ministries.

[1140]

I want to assure you that it's happened within MCFD and some of the staff here that have moved to MCFD. So it's an ongoing collaboration.

Seeing no further….

C. Richmond: Mr. Chairman, I'm just going to ask: do you wish for a motion to receive?

R. Cantelon (Chair): Yes, a motion to receive would be fine. All right.

Motion approved.

R. Cantelon (Chair): The report is received. Thank you very much.

We'll now take a brief adjournment to empty the room to go in camera after the recess.

The committee recessed from 11:41 a.m. to 11:46 a.m.

[R. Cantelon in the chair.]

R. Cantelon (Chair): We'd hear a motion to go in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 11:46 a.m. to 11:56 a.m.

[R. Cantelon in the chair.]

N. Simons (Deputy Chair): Pursuant to its terms of reference, the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth refer to the representative for investigation the deaths of children in the following cases: K.L., who died in 2003; and M.W., who died in 2007.

Motion approved.

R. Cantelon (Chair): That concludes our business. We'll be discussing, through the Clerk, the possibility of a subsequent meeting for the Hughes report, if that's feasible on everybody's schedule. It's getting increasingly difficult to round the troops up, but we hope to be able to do that.

Other than that, we'll hear a motion to adjourn.

The committee adjourned at 11:57 a.m.

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