Deaths of kids in care draw ire
Advocate says province has been too slow to fix problems
A lack of urgency by the province to address problems in the child intervention system has become disheartening for those who have to continually investigate the deaths of children in care, Alberta’s child and youth advocate said Tuesday.
Del Graff said he has already met with the province at least twice to express concerns about the rate at which the government deals with recommendations his office has made from past death investigations.
“In many ways I am not feeling like the government is hearing the recommendations and acting on them in the way I’d hoped that they would,” he said Tuesday, while delivering a new report about the deaths of three young children who had been returned to the care of their biological mothers.
Graff has typically tried to avoid pointed criticism — in part due to the limitations of his authority — but admitted he is now adopting a “harsher” approach due to growing frustration.
He specifically noted the Voices for Change report he put out a year ago examining the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the province’s child welfare system. The report contained several recommendations that were accepted by the government, but Graff said he is still waiting for an update on what has been accomplished.
“We feel quite confident that the recommendations we are making are doable and achievable. . . . We are just asking for a plan. That’s not too difficult or complicated to produce, in my view.”
In a written statement, the government said it has so far met 29 per cent of the advocate’s 87 recommendations, while work is underway to implement the rest.
“While of course we want to ensure change happens as quickly as possible, we want to ensure that it’s the right change. These are complex systems and they don’t change overnight,” the statement said.
Graff latest report focused on the deaths of three small children, all of whom died under similar circumstances. In each case, the children spent much of their short lives living in foster care, as their biological parents faced challenges with substance abuse, neglect and domestic violence.
Though those parents made efforts at self-improvement to regain custody, they fell into distress again after the children and their siblings were eventually returned.
Graff said the cases show children being reunited with their families are extremely vulnerable. The reunification often causes stress for their parents, who are struggling with their own issues and may not fully understand their child’s unique needs.
As such, he called for the children’s services ministry to implement “intensive, sustained” plans to help young children being returned to family, and to develop a framework to help caseworkers through the reunification process.
As well, he said children being returned to their families should have access to the same supports they had while in foster care.
In each of the three cases highlighted in the report, the mothers showed indications they were struggling to cope.
“There is not the same level of attention paid to children when they are returning to their families as there is when they are brought into care,” Graff said. He said he believes children belong with family whenever possible, but caseworkers need the time and resources to “work in a more relational manner” with the families.
Children’s Services Minister Danielle Larivee was unavailable for comment Tuesday, but a government statement said a number of initiatives had been launched to address the issues, including extra funding to reduce the burden on caseworkers. The statement noted two of the cases involved children being served by on-reserve Delegated First Nation Agencies, which do not receive the same funding as caseworkers funded by the province.
Graff’s latest report looked at the deaths of three young First Nations children.
They spent most of their lives in foster care and died a short time after being returned to their biological mothers.