If the Ministry of Children and Family Development doesn't know how many "children-in-care" died in 2003, then B.C.'s children are at greater risk than anyone thought.

The former Minister admitted that many of the children taken into care come from families on welfare. With welfare being cut, there is reason to expect that there might be more cases of neglect. Serious effort needs to go into monitoring what is happening to children at risk.

Contrary to assertions by the Premier and his Ministers, a lot more than administrative overhead has been cut in the Ministry of Children and Family Development. One of the goals of the Ministry is to reduce the number of children-in-care. That is admirable only if it is done by providing better support to keep families together. It is not so admirable if it is done by conducting fewer necessary investigations of abuse and neglect. Investigations are down by 20% with no satisfactory explanation as to why.

You wouldn't know it from the Ministry's website (click for Excel spreadsheet), but the information on deaths of children-in-care posted for 2003 is only for the first 9 months of the year. It was posted in November following my Freedom of Information request. On February 11th, following my request to provide the number of children-in-care who died for the full calendar year, the Communications Director wrote "We have not yet received final information for the 2003 calendar year on this subject. We will post the information as soon as we can." It is beyond belief that by February the Ministry would not know how many children in its care died as of the end of December. If that is true, the Ministry needs to audit much more than its financial practices. Last week I again submitted a Freedom of Information request for the number of children-in-care who died in calendar year 2003. What are they hiding?

The death of children-in-care is a very crude measure for showing what is happening to children at risk, but like infant mortality, it is an important starting point. There were 7 deaths in both 2001 and 2002 but 9 deaths in the first 9 months of 2003. If no further deaths occurred in the last 3 months of 2003, one might expect the Ministry to announce that fact quickly. Their refusal to say how many children died raises suspicions.

When the Campbell government came to power, an independent officer of the legislature, the Children's Commissioner, checked on every death of a child. In 2002 the government introduced legislation to abolish both the Children's Commissioner and the Advocate for Children and Youth. In introducing the legislation Attorney General Geoff Plant said "Under this model, the office of the ombudsman will continue to investigate complaints about administrative practices and services provided by public bodies. The office of the coroner will continue to review child fatalities, and the public guardian and trustee will investigate injuries to children in care to determine whether legal action is warranted." The Campbell government then proceeded with cuts to child protection and cuts to the ombudsman. Services are reduced and the watchdogs have been fired or muzzled.

Monitoring of child welfare can include over 100 outcome measures including the rate of domestic child abuse/neglect per 1,000 ages 0-18 population and the hospitalization rate for various causes including unintentional injury. Vital Statistics collects many of the statistics for all children. While Vital Statistics will not likely report on calendar year 2003 until the summer of 2004, the Ministry of Children and Family Development should know how many of its charges died during 2003, and they should know how many of those deaths were preventable. A transparent government, with nothing to hide, would promptly release that information.