Report calls for changes in child welfare
The B.C. Coroners Service has investigated the deaths of 200 youth who died over a six-year period, just before or after aging out of the government’s foster care system into an uncertain future with little emotional or financial support.
“These young people leaving government care died at five times the rate of the general population of young people in British Columbia,” said the report, released Monday by Michael Egilson, chair of the coroner’s child death review unit.
The document called for extending services for these vulnerable youth, who “age out” of the system at 19, and therefore lose the social workers, foster parents, monetary support and other assistance upon which they had come to rely.
The NDP government will accept all the report’s recommendations, said Children and Families Minister Katrine Conroy, who agreed a death rate of five times the average must be reversed. “It’s an awful number and we have to do more to make sure we have supports in place, and that is what the ministry is working on.”
The report stopped short of suggesting child welfare should be extended beyond age 19, a measure many B.C. advocates have lobbied for.
Instead, it recommended the Ministry for Children and Family Development loosen the rules on a restrictive post-age-19 program, called Agreements for Youth Adults, that provides support for some up to age 26. “Youth transitioning to adulthood need both informal and formal support, including social, emotional, financial and practical support,” said the death-review report.