British Columbia’s representative for children and youth (RCY) is recommending better monitoring of children in care moving between provinces and territories.
A report released on Tuesday found significant gaps after looking into the factors that led to the overdose death of a 17-year-old boy with complex needs who spent time in the child-serving systems of both B.C. and Alberta and was moved more than 40 times while in government care.
Children’s advocate Jennifer Charlesworth is recommending B.C.’s Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) take a leadership role in bringing about changes to the interprovincial protocol that guides the provision of services and supports to children moving between provinces and territories.
It also recommends that the MCFD strengthen its own oversight of such “interprovincial children” to ensure they receive timely and suitable services.
“This boy and his family deserved much, much better,” Charlesworth said.
“It’s time that the interprovincial protocol was strengthened, and MCFD must improve its own oversight and handling of these cases so that this doesn’t happen to other children and families.”
The report profiles Romain, a pseudonym used to protect confidentiality, who died in May 2017 while placed in an emergency staffed residential resource in B.C.
Charlesworth and her team found a direct link between the inadequate services he and his family received in B.C. and his death, as Romain was essentially caught in the middle of poor communication and co-ordination between the two provinces regarding his care.
Although B.C.’s representative does not have a mandate for Alberta, the report found Alberta Children’s Services failed to provide sufficient notice or follow the interprovincial protocol on the three occasions it placed Romain in B.C.
“The best interests of Romain were not fully considered and acted upon, and the result was as predictable as it was tragic,” Charlesworth said.
The main recommendation from the report is a call for the MCFD to push for improvements to the interprovincial protocol when it is next reviewed by provincial and territorial directors of child welfare in 2021.
As part of that, the RCY is pushing the province to include cultural planning as well as clarification about the delegation of guardianship responsibilities and how disputes can be resolved when children arrive in a province or territory without notice.
The representative’s office is also calling for a fully dedicated interprovincial co-ordinator to work with an adequately resourced network of regional practice consultants to support, track and monitor interprovincial cases.
Minister of Children and Family Development Katrine Conroy said the province accepts all of the recommendations.
Conroy said if a child is in B.C., it is the government’s responsibility to get them the help they need, plan and connect them with the right resources and fund those supports until the jurisdiction of origin steps up.
“Interprovincial cases are admittedly complex. They involve rare practice for our staff who seldom, if ever, deal with this type of scenario. At any given time, there are roughly 100 such children and youth throughout the province,” Conroy said.
“This means that staff on the ground were handling a challenging, multi-dimensional case that required co-ordination between service providers in both jurisdictions.”
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