Turpel-Lafond wraps up 10 years of child advocacy
FRUSTRATED: More work is needed, says outgoing official
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond came in like a lion as B.C.’s first representative for children and youth a decade ago, immediately challenging the government to expand her budget and investigative powers. She did not go out like a lamb.
In an interview during her last week on the job, the former Saskatchewan provincial court judge expressed frustration that the Liberals have not named her replacement, fearing a gap in advocacy for B.C.’s most vulnerable youth.
During her 10 years in the B.C. office, Turpel-Lafond opened 17,000 advocacy files, issued 93 reports about failures in the system and made 194 recommendations for change. While she believes her work has led to improvements for children and families, she argues there is still much more change necessary to improve child welfare.
“The bigger issues around child poverty, domestic violence, supports for aboriginal children, young people aging out of care, the bigger things that involve the expenditure of money, fully staffing the ministry in hard-to-recruit places, these are matters that remain open,” Turpel-Lafond said.
When asked about her achievements, she lists helping to boost adoptions to a 10-year high in B.C., persuading 12 post-secondary schools to waive tuition for foster youth, and encouraging the reduction of the number of children in foster care, now 7,000 compared with 10,000 a decade ago.
However, she wanted that number to be even lower, and believes that could have happened if the province had not refused to pay aboriginal families the same fees as foster parents to take in vulnerable nieces, nephews and grandchildren. The percentage of foster kids who are aboriginal is 60 per cent, up from 50 per cent in 2006.
“The aboriginal issues are ones that I’ve pushed on pretty hard … and we need to do a lot of work there,” Turpel-Lafond said.
“I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been able to preserve, expose, advocate, but with a decade of austerity budgets, mostly with stand-pat or cuts to the child-serving sector, it’s pretty hard sometimes to find things to serve children and families. And what was there even a decade ago has eroded.”
One of her biggest disappointments is not persuading the government to raise the age of foster care to 24. The ministry has made several improvements for youth who age out at 19, but it is still a piecemeal support system for these youth who often struggle with housing, work and stability.