The scandal plagued Ministry of Children and Family Development hit the news again this week with financial irregularities involving the Vancouver Coastal Regional Aboriginal Planning Committee and managing company dbappleton. An internal audit completed in February 2002 (pdf) said nothing about financial irregularities, and it did not mention dbappleton. Now auditors will have to sort out how much of a financial mess was created and when, but who will look at what is happening to vulnerable kids?

One of the first acts of the Campbell government was to fire both the independent Children's Commission and the Family and Youth Advocate. In the name of protecting privacy, it then amended child welfare legislation so as to be able to punish any foster parent or other care giver who went to the media to act as an advocate for the children in their charge. The Ministry eliminated internal child protection audits, and replaced them with a yet to be fully implemented accreditation scheme. It laid off line level child protection workers claiming that fewer were needed because fewer children were in care, but it cannot satisfactorily explain why they are doing 20% fewer investigations into alleged child abuse and neglect. In 2003, the number of children-in-care who died increased to 12 from 9 in 2002 and 2001. The Ministry has not released other indicators on the quality of service provided for vulnerable children, but Christy Clark is heavy on the rhetoric. During heated debate on her estimates Clark said "We measure the quality of services, the standards of service that delegated aboriginal agencies deliver against the policies that are set out in the manual that I've talked about with the member, which I'm sending to the member. We monitor practice. We review cases as required against that." If the Ministry is measuring quality of services, it is not apparent from any of the information posted to the Ministry's website. The last child protection audits appear to have been conducted in 2002. Since then audits have been financial. Accreditation is not the same as measuring quality of service, let alone the same as measuring outcomes for vulnerable children. If a government that puts money first can't keep track of the dollars, what's happening to the kids?