RCYBC: Annual Report 2018/19 and Service Plan 2019/20 to 2021/22

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

This report provides an overview of the work of the Office on behalf of the children and youth of B.C. over the past year and a plan outlining goals and objectives for the 2019/20 to 2021/22 fiscal years. Complete financial statements are also included.

A Message from the Representative for Children and Youth

If I had to choose just three words to describe my first year as British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth, they might well be: “Listening,” “Learning” and “Launching.”

Listening is the most important of the three, and that’s what my staff and I have been doing ever since I arrived in September 2018 to take on my dream job and the privilege of working every day toward improving the lives of B.C.’s children, youth and young adults.

In order to listen to as many voices as possible, we knew that we had to constantly be in community, engaging with young people, families, caregivers, service providers, First Nations and Métis organizations and leadership, and many, many others. We have heard a wide range of ideas about how we can be more effective as an independent office of the B.C. Legislature; how we can better push for improvements to the child-, youth- and young adult-serving systems in this province.

The pages of this Annual Report and Service Plan document where we have been and with whom we have met. These visits and meetings are extremely important to create more awareness of our Office amongst young people in B.C., their families and those who serve and support them. But such outreach is also crucial because it allows us to hear first-hand about the issues that are most concerning to the people we are trying to help.

On page 66, you’ll find an interesting graphic that details the most common concerns expressed during our community outreach in the first year of my term. Without going into full detail in this space, we were advised by many that the following areas should be among the cornerstones of our work going forward:
• Family supports and preventative measures – Parents and family members told us they need more help to address the issues that are preventing them from safely raising their children so that, with safety still prioritized, fewer young people are ultimately raised in government care. Those who work with families echoed that call for a change in emphasis in the B.C. child welfare system from removal to support and prevention.
• Self-determination – We have heard from First Nations, Métis and urban Indigenous leaders that RCY can be a strong ally in the resumption of Indigenous jurisdiction over their own child, youth and family services. Self-determination promises to help address the harms that many First Nations, Métis, Inuit and urban Indigenous children and youth currently experience within the child, youth and family care system.
• Youth voice – The importance of including meaningful youth participation and input in any project that we are undertaking can never be over-estimated. RCY, like any organization whose goal is to help youth, has heard from young people that we must live up to the principle of “nothing about us, without us.”
• Transitions – We have an important role to play in advocating for better supports for youth as they transition from care into healthy adulthood. But we also need to pay attention to other key transition points, such as transitions from MCFD into Community Living BC services, transitions between different placements and various forms of care, and transitions between youth custody, mental health or substance use treatment and the community. We have heard loud and clear that when these transitions aren’t done well, children and youth are harmed.
• Early interventions – We’ve also heard, and I firmly believe this to be true, that a key to improving the lives of vulnerable children and youth is to act early. I am interested in “backing up the bus” to refocus some of our work on early intervention, in areas such as early years support, Children and Youth with Special Needs (CYSN), alternative care models and wraparound supports for children and families.

The above points are a sampling of some of the learning we have done during the past year, which leads us to the third of our “Three Ls” – Launching. Truthfully, the term “re-launching” might be more appropriate as we have listened, learned and begun to re-launch our work at RCY in some key ways.

We have maintained the core functions of our Office, which I believe have served B.C. well since RCY’s inception. Our three mandated areas – Advocacy, Critical Injury and Death Reviews and Investigations, and Monitoring – have been busier than ever this past year. And we have solidified our fourth major team – the Indigenous Strategies and Partnerships unit that serves to establish and nurture relationships with Indigenous partners and communities in B.C. and to advocate for culturally grounded and effective supports for Indigenous children, youth and families receiving government services.

As you will read in this report, our Advocates opened nearly 1,600 new cases in 2018/19. Our CID team reviewed more than 2,700 reports of critical injuries or deaths of children and youth in care or receiving services. And our Monitoring team conducted research, audit, evaluation and oversight of public entities providing important services to children and youth in the province.

However, while some key functions have remained intact, the focus of our work has shifted in many ways as a result of the things we’ve heard and learned. For example, we have recommitted to featuring the participation and voices of youth in our work and to finding new ways to foster that participation. We have also shifted toward a greater focus on aggregate reporting – highlighting trends and patterns detected through the study of multiple cases. This is in line with what the Hon. Ted Hughes foresaw in his seminal 2006 report that gave birth to our Office. We are also moving toward incorporating more systemic analyses into our investigations to ensure that our recommendations aren’t solely based on single stories but are reflective of systemic problems.

During the past year, we have continued to navigate the tension that exists between an independent oversight body such as ours and the entities it oversees – in RCY’s case, primarily the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD). But we know that independence doesn’t mean isolation and that we need to better understand the workings and challenges of a number of government ministries in order to be able to give proper context to our work and recommendations. To that end, we have engaged in extensive meeting and briefing sessions with MCFD and others, including Health, Education and Mental Health and Addictions. And there are various ways for us to push for change – whether it be through report recommendations or through “quieter” means, working behind the scenes to help inform and improve policy and practice.

Relationships are extremely important, not only with government bodies but with service providers and, perhaps more now than ever, with First Nations, Métis and urban Indigenous people and communities. With the currently shifting landscape of Indigenous child welfare, we are exploring ways we can be most helpful to these communities as many plan to reclaim jurisdiction over child welfare services. This includes moving to a practice of ethical data gathering and sharing and true engagement and partnership in our relevant reports and projects so that our work is done in a good way and so that communities benefit from the data and research that is gathered.

Helping us to build those relationships is our ISP team, which is also responsible for researching the many key developments related to Indigenous child welfare. The ISP team also works collaboratively with all RCY program areas to help ensure that our own Office is culturally safer, respectful and responsive to the people we interact with as well as to our own employees.

The systems that serve our young people have inherent challenges and flaws. Part of our job is to bring attention to those things and advocate for change. But another part of our new direction is to “bright spot” or highlight instances where exceptional work is being done in B.C. You’ll consistently see examples of these bright spots in our work, including this report.

Our Office continues to report to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, an all-party committee of the Legislature, and that relationship is evolving as well. We are working with the Committee to be able to present our reports to Members in a much timelier way than has occurred in the past – a change that will keep the Committee better informed and engaged in our work.

The RCY released two major reports this fiscal year and they, too, reflect some of our changing practices. Time to Listen: Youth Voices on Substance Use offered the first-hand perspectives of 100 young people in B.C. with lived experience. It also drew on lessons learned from an aggregate review of substance use-related injury and death reports received by RCY in 2017. This report made five recommendations to government ministries, all of which were directly driven by youth input.

The other significant RCY report released in 2018/19 was Alone and Afraid: Lessons learned from the ordeal of a child with special needs and his family. And although this report focused on the story of one boy and his family, its recommendations were aimed at helping thousands of children and youth with special needs and those who care for them. The chief recommendation from that report called for an overhaul of the system of services to support children with complex needs in B.C. I’m pleased to say that MCFD has begun that work and that RCY has been kept up to date and will continue to monitor its progress.

We have a number of exciting projects underway that we will share in the coming months, including a report on fetal alcohol spectrum disorder which will include the participation of five families with lived experience, and a report on youth homelessness in B.C. offering potential solutions, which is being written by a young woman with lived experience and informed by input gathered from many youth who have experienced homelessness. Both projects will highlight voices not typically captured in such reports, something that we are committed to do more of going forward.

In July of 2019, a change to the Regulation for the Representative for Children and Youth Act expanded our Advocacy mandate to enable us to advocate for young adults up to their 24th birthdays who are on, or eligible for, an Agreement with Young Adults or a provincial tuition waiver. We anticipate further expansion of our mandate in future changes to the Act itself that will allow us to help more youth from care through what often is a difficult transition phase.

RCY is an evolving institution, which is a healthy thing. I am sure our work will progress and change further during the next few years, but one thing is certain: We will continue to listen and learn from British Columbians about how we can help improve the well-being of our most precious resource – our young people – and we will continue to launch ourselves with energy and commitment into this important work.

The document that follows outlines the approach to meeting my accountability to the public and the Legislature to report on the activities of the Office and plans for future years. It describes the activities of the Office during 2018/19 and outlines RCY’s planned strategic initiatives for 2019/20 through 2021/22. It provides a full and comprehensive picture of the Office’s accomplishments over the past reporting period, plans for future years and how RCY’s work to achieve its mandate, vision and goals will be measured.

Sincerely,
Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth
Representative for Children and Youth