Consensus Plan for Children by July

March 19, 2007

Consensus Plan for Children by July

On March 6th Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, BC's new Representative for Children and Youth, met with the Legislature's Committee on Children and Youth. The Committee, like the position of the new Representative, was established as a result of the Hughes' Report. Turpel-Lafond asked the Committee to work with her to develop a consensus-based performance plan by July with five to seven key objectives, and various performance measures for each objective.

Throughout her meeting with the Committee, Turpel-Lafond stressed examining performance measures that indicate how the province is doing with respect to vulnerable children, in particular with respect to the approximately 9,500 children-in-care. She said:

"I've been working with the Information and Privacy Commissioner making sure that there are proper policies and procedures in place for privacy and also providing appropriate data, linking data sets that are available inside ministries and making sure there is an appropriate database so that we will have a good baseline of information as to how children and youth are doing in British Columbia and how vulnerable children and youth are doing in comparison to those youth. That is a very significant component of a successful fulfillment of the mandate of the representative."

Of course it is important that those responsible for child welfare know about health, education and other measurable outcomes for children-in-care, but it would be a mistake to stop at an examination of how children-in-care progress with respect to some baseline or with respect to all children. The pendulum in child protection services often swings between attempts to minimize the number of children removed from their families and attempts to minimize damage that might be done to children if they are left in the homes of parents who abuse or neglect them. Much of the debate in recent years centered on whether government's focus on keeping children in their families was motivated by budget cuts or by the best interests of the children. Some argue that keeping children in their families, and safe, requires as many or more resources as taking children into care. The group of "vulnerable children" should not be defined as just those who are taken into care. It is also important to measure outcomes for children who are "at-risk" but who are either supported in their homes or merely monitored in their homes without apprehension. Comparisons of performance measures between at-risk children and children-in-care may be as important as comparisons to the general population of children.

When discussing her review of Ministry Service Plans, Turpel-Lafond told the Committee that: "Ministry by ministry, program by program, the performance measures are not clear. It's not to fault anyone on any side. It's just that there hasn't been clarity around what the key objectives are, how they will be measured, how we are doing, and how we are doing with respect to accepted measurements and performance criteria with respect to children and youth."

Turpel-Lafond was being kind and diplomatic. Look at the four goals in the 2007-08 Service Plan for the Ministry of Children and Family Development:

1. The identification and strengthening of effective services for children, youth, families and communities in B.C. within a strengths-based, developmental approach.
2. The Ministry supports Aboriginal people to design regional models and implement services for Aboriginal children, youth, families and communities.
3. A fully regionalized model of governance and delivery of services.
4. Transform the Ministry of Children and Family Development as an organization to support Goals 1, 2, and 3.

Of 10 performance measures the Ministry chose for its 4 goals, only 4 directly measure anything related to the well being of children (and youth in custody is arguable):

Per cent of children who enter kindergarten "ready to learn".
Per cent of socio-economically disadvantaged children whose grade level is as prescribed for their age.
Rate of recurrence of child neglect and/or abuse by family.
Rate of youth in custody based on a proportion of all 12-17 year olds (per 10,000).

Article 27 of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child requires signatory states to "recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development." Whatever lofty goals are set in the upcoming consensus-based performance plan, the performance measures should include indicators of physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development and those indicators should be measured for children at risk, children-in-care and all children.