'COVID times are not good times for children,' said New Brunswick's Child and Youth Advocate Norm Bossé.

Social Development Minister Dorothy Shephard says the government is also looking to improve the child protection system.

Alberta's Child and Youth Advocate released a report after six young people who were transitioning away from Children's Services' care died over a nine-month period in 2018.

The child and youth advocate is an independent position within the New Brunswick government intended to represent the best interests of children in the province.

The report, from Newfoundland and Labrador's child and youth advocate, also found that child protection authorities intervened too slowly - and workers abused the siblings anew when they did.

Two recent reports have highlighted a case in Saint John where five young children were left in a situation of filth and squalor where they were malnourished and suffered serious dental decay.

The two adults, who cannot be named to protect the children's identities, pleaded guilty to five counts of failing to provide the children with the necessaries of life earlier this year.

The children lived in filth, missed weeks of school and suffered from a lack of food and serious tooth decay before being removed from the Saint John, N.B., home in 2016.

Starting Jan. 1, the child death reports will include brief anonymized summaries of the circumstances of a child's death, including their age and the cause and circumstances surrounding their death.

The 2014 death of a child named Serenity has put child welfare in the spotlight in Alberta and on Tuesday, with Serenity's mother at the legislature, the United Conservatives reintroduced a private member's bill that would make it mandatory for any adult to report to police when they believe a child is in need of intervention.