November 7, 2005

Hagen's Child Protection Statistics

Minister of Children and Family Development, Stan Hagen, and the rest of the Campbell government continue to take a beating in the news media over their handling of the deaths of children. The pressure produced a six member panel that will report by January 31, 2006 on recommended changes to the system for the review of deaths of children. That is the system that was put in place on the recommendation of Jane Morley, now BC's Child and Youth Officer, and which is administered by Terry Smith, BC's chief coroner. Morley and Smith are two of the six panelists, which raises the interesting dynamic of having four panel members review the work of the other two. The panel is chaired by Ted Hughes, BC's former conflict of interest commissioner. Joyce Preston, who served as BC's child, youth and family advocate until the position was eliminated as the result of the implementation of Morley's recommendations, is also a member of the panel. Despite an earlier promise from the Premier, Thomas Gove is not on the panel, although he will offer advice. Cynthia Morton, BC's former Children's Commissioner, is also not on the panel; reliable sources report that she wasn't asked - an interesting oversight since Morton joined Preston and former ombudsman Dulcie McCallum earlier this year in publicly criticizing the government for not having transparent mechanisms for reporting on the health and safety of children. The panel has a second deadline of February 28, 2006 to submit an interim report on advocacy for children.

While the public waits for the panel's reports as well as those of numerous investigations regarding Sherry Charlie's death, the Campbell government continues to run from its record of cuts to child protection services. On November 3rd it issued a defensive "for the record" document which set out what it claims are the "facts" about social workers and children in care in British Columbia. The first assertion was that the child protection workload is dropping. The evidence offered to support that assertion was: 1) a drop in the ratio of child protection social workers to children-in-care, and 2) a drop in staff turnover. Staff turnover was no doubt mentioned because of a scathing letter of resignation from a social worker with 30 years experience. The ministry does not report on the number of complaints regarding possible abuse or neglect; it does not report on the number of investigations into reports of abuse or neglect or on how many of the investigations indicate a need for protection, whether a child is taken into care or not. The government that claims to have the most open and transparent child welfare system in the world takes months, not withstanding time limits in legislation, to respond to freedom of information requests regarding statistics on child protection. Data obtained from the Ministry in July 2003 showed that between February 1st and June 30th, 2003, the ministry conducted 7,590 investigations for an average of 1,518 investigations per month. During the same period in 2000, the ministry conducted 10,262 investigations (2052 per month). It is hard to believe that at a time when families were put under more stress because of cuts to welfare the need for investigations into alleged abuse or neglect declined; it is possible to believe that the number of investigations declined because of budget cuts. One of the many reviews of BC's child welfare system needs to look beyond the number of children-in-care and examine what is being done to protect children-at- risk.

The 2004-05 annual report for Alberta Children's Services reports that the "Percentage of children who experience at least one incident of child maltreatment within 12 months of a previously confirmed incident of child maltreatment" declined from 19.0 in 2003-04 to 18.6 in 2004-05. The website for BC's Ministry of Children and Family Development has a section devoted to statistics; it reports on the "Rate of recidivism among families in the child welfare system", calculated as repeat investigations rather than as repeated confirmed incidents, showing a rate of 26.20% in 2005, 35.90% for aboriginal families. BC needs to add a measure of repeat abuse, and it needs to report on the number of investigations so the public knows that changes aren't simply due to fewer investigations being performed. That kind of change requires a commitment to child protection and accountability rather than a focus on budget cuts and empty rhetoric.