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Children-in-care bill a start
With the rewrite of the Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act introduced this week, the Progressive Conservatives have acknowledged there are serious problems with how Alberta has handled the deaths of children in government care.
It is a heartbreaking and difficult subject. Thankfully, Alberta’s Human Services Minister Manmeet Bhullar has not shied away from it since taking the job. With Bill 11, he attempts to make good on his promise to quickly address some of the important issues raised last November by a joint Edmonton Journal-Calgary Herald investigation into the deaths of children in the child welfare system.
That special report showed Alberta has a murky and complex review process into child deaths, and that it routinely failed to monitor whether lessons were learned from the reviews that did take place. It also found the province had shockingly under-reported the number of children who died in care.
Initial reports obtained after a four-year battle found nearly 150 children in government care died from January 1999 to June 2013; in early January, the government admitted that a total of 741 children and teens known to child welfare authorities (including those living with their families, but still receiving some form of service) had died in that same time frame.
An outrageous publication ban built into the child welfare law prevented virtually all of these vulnerable young Albertans from being identified.
The amendments introduced Tuesday are, on balance, better than the previous version of the Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act, which was draconian, secretive and seemed primarily concerned with protecting the system, not children. It certainly is a better response than the government’s initial reaction five months ago, when then-Human Services Minister Dave Hancock said the system and laws were fine.
Are these amendments perfect? No.
Crafting legislation can be a tricky business: part art, part science, part legal exercise. These amendments need to be thoroughly analyzed and debated in the legislature. Even then, there will be regulations (requiring only cabinet approval) crafted to fill in details. Beyond even that will be the practical realities of how the amendments are interpreted by the director of children’s services and the courts.
On the positive side, the changes will remove the blanket and automatic publication ban after the death of a child in government care and will let families speak publicly about their children. It expands the role of the child and youth advocate, allowing this independent officer of the legislature latitude to investigate children who died within two years of contact with the system. The advocate’s budget will need to increase along with the new responsibilities, but that is a discussion that can be handled through the legislative offices committee.
The bill also orders annual disclosure of statistical data about the number of children receiving intervention services, along with the number of serious injuries or deaths. This means every child will be counted, an important principle.
What prevents an unabashed endorsement of the bill are the confusing strings still attached to the publication ban issue, which still allows government or families to impose secrecy. It also creates a new avenue for secrecy by allowing the Council for Quality Assurance, which is tasked with investigating child deaths, to appoint internal committees that can keep its reports and recommendations private.
Alberta has, in five short months, come some distance toward tackling the stigma and secrecy connected to the child welfare system. It is a start worth building on.
Editorials are the consensus opinion of the Journal’s editorial board comprising Margo Goodhand, Kathy Kerr, Karen Booth, Sarah O’Donnell and David Evans
24 April 2014
