February 17, 2003

20% Fewer Child Protection Investigations

Information released by the Ministry of Children and Family Development, following a freedom of information request, reveals a 20% drop in the number of investigations for potential abuse or neglect of children. A drop in the number of children taken into care can be understood in the context of a policy to provide other, possibly better, alternatives. It is difficult to understand, however, why the number of investigations of potential child abuse or neglect would decline. Government would have people believe that fewer children are being taken into care because of alternatives that it is providing. It looks like fewer children are being taken into care because fewer investigations of abuse are being done. It should not take a tragedy to force government to put the protection of children ahead of its plan to cut the Ministry's budget by 23%.

Child welfare goes through cycles. Some believe that the Gove Report, combined with attacks from the BC Liberals when they were in opposition, contributed to a change in attitude that led to more children being taken into the care of the Ministry through court orders. It might be a good thing if the pendulum is swinging towards more support in order to keep families together, but no one should confuse apprehensions with investigations. That is why I submitted a freedom of information request to obtain more information on the Ministry's activities.

The Ministry has released detailed monthly data on child protection intake activity from April, 1997, through January, 2003. Unfortunately, when the data are aggregated they do not balance with the number of investigations reported in the 1999-2000 Annual Report. That report showed 23,425 protection investigations in 1997-98 while the data released by the Ministry showed 22,403 - a thousand less. Similarly, the Annual Report showed 24,136 investigations in 1998-99 compared to 22,424 according to Ministry data; 24,321 investigations were shown in the Annual Report for 1999-2000 while the data shows 23,006. There could be a variety of reasons to explain those differences, such as records being purged from the database between the recent release and the time the Annual Report was prepared. Whatever the explanation, there is clearly a need for the Ministry to have accurate data on all aspects of its operations in order to manage and properly evaluate policies.

The following graph shows the total number of child protection investigations by month from April, 1997, through January, 2003. A trend line shows the recent decline in the number of investigations. (Note: The trend line is a third order polynomial fitted by MS Excel XP, i.e. it is not a freehand sketch. Right click here to download the full 111K Excel file with the ministry's data and my analysis.)

Alberta's Children's Services reports a steady increase in the number of investigations. The last published BC data showed the same trend. If the data released by the Ministry of Children and Family Development are correct, the reduced number of children in care could be due to a reduced number of investigations. That raises serious questions as to what is happening. Are fewer children being abused or neglected? Is the Ministry ignoring reports of suspected abuse? Will it take a tragedy to get an objective review of what the Ministry is doing to protect children at risk? A Ministry and a Minister who was on top of more than budget cutting would know that there has been a 20% drop in the number of investigations and would have answers to these questions.