EDITORIAL,

The Alberta government’s new child welfare action plan is full of good intentions. It’s clear, however, well-meaning initiatives are not enough to pave the way to the “stronger, safer tomorrow,” as promised in the report’s hopeful title, for our most vulnerable citizens — children in care or receiving support from Alberta child services — if those changes don’t address key failures in the system that led to the tragic death of Serenity.

Lest we forget: Serenity was a four-year-old Cree girl who died in 2014 after she was taken out of a foster home and placed in kinship care. She was covered in bruises and severely malnourished when she was taken to an Edmonton hospital with a head injury. She died a few days after being taken off life support.

Whatever else is in the report, the plan must be judged a success or failure on the crux of one tough but critical question: Would any of the recommendations have saved Serenity?

After all, it’s only because of her death — and the subsequent reporting of Journal columnist Paula Simons — that the government struck the Ministerial Panel on Child Intervention and developed this action plan.

Tasked in 2016 with identifying systemic problems in child intervention services, the panel met 35 times and reviewed hundreds of submissions. Its final recommendations were released this spring and the government’s response to those proposals forms the basis of the action plan released Thursday.

Acknowledging that roughly six out of every 10 young persons receiving child intervention services are Indigenous, the plan makes some reasonable recommendations such as cultural training for children’s services staff, increasing funding for youth suicide prevention and educational supports such as scholarships and bursaries for teens. Other recommendations, while possibly worthwhile, seem more like high-minded answers to questions no one asked, such as establishing an Indigenous research committee and summer and winter camps for Aboriginal kids.

Incredibly, the report fails to recommend more robust vetting and mandatory training of kinship-care providers — simple and concrete recommendations that might have made a difference in Serenity’s case. There is also no mention at all of group homes and foster homes, let alone how to improve those care options which remain important parts of the system.

The report vows to fully implement Jordan’s Principle, which stipulates no Indigenous child should go without health and welfare services available to other children because of jurisdictional disputes between the province and Ottawa over which level of government should pay. Yet, it fails to earmark any provincial funding to close the gap for services available to Indigenous communities compared to the rest of Alberta. Instead, it passes the buck back to the federal government.

To be clear, the federal government has much to answer for. The over-representation of Indigenous children in protective services points to their long-running failure to adequately underwrite social services for First Nations. They have fumbled the ball and left it to the province to pick up.

For the government of Alberta’s part, all its work and good intentions notwithstanding, we judge its response by asking again the fundamental question: would any recommendation in this long-awaited report have saved Serenity had it been in place while she lived?

Sadly, the answer is a resounding no.

Would any recommendation ... have saved Serenity had it been in place while she lived?