Child welfare system overhaul long overdue

Minister of Children and Families Stephanie Cadieux expressed sadness at the suicide of teenager Carly Fraser, struggling with mental illness and addiction, who killed herself when the provincial government cast her upon her own resources four days before Christmas last year.

Then the minister declined a review, washing her hands of the matter, presumably because the dead teen ceased to be a provincial ward only hours before she jumped from Lions Gate Bridge. In bureaucratic terms, everything was reassuringly in accordance with policy by which provincial interest in its wards ends the minute they turn 19. Except that once again a young life full of promise and possibilities has ended prematurely.

In fairness, these are complex cases and following The Vancouver Sun’s investigative series on “aging-out” last year, which earned a Michener Award nomination, the government did make some modest contributions to support teens transitioning from foster care. CBC reports Cadieux saying she is now less concerned about extending foster care and more concerned about changing outcomes for children.

Let us be blunt. Outcomes cannot be changed for Carly Fraser, Paige Gauchier, killed by a drug overdose at 19 after a brutal foster care journey, or Alex Gervais, who jumped or fell to his death from the window of a hotel where he was not supposed to be housed as he approached his 19th birthday and thus faced imminent ejection from foster care.

So this is not all about the minister. It’s not about her feelings. It’s not even about the politics, despite predictable attempts by political foes to make it so. It is about higher moral imperatives, institutional conscience and the social contract that touch upon everyone in this rich and productive province.

If our government fails on its child and social welfare file — and it is by now undeniable that it fails consistently — we all fail. And the responsibility must be shared by all of us, since it is on our collective authority that government has permitted the degrading of resources, support and supervision by those to whom we delegate the duty to protect vulnerable children and youths.

However, let us set aside partisan ideology and examine all options. We might start with government and opposition forgetting their political differences for the moment; government might listen to its children’s representative instead of reacting with adversarial defensiveness; government might try dialogue with the union that represents social workers; perhaps, while it remains government’s duty to ensure adequate resources, individuals could volunteer time and expertise in mentoring, literacy and skills training. We don’t need a study here, we need swift, decisive action.

This is also about our collective failure in permitting the province to pursue a pitiless abdication of its responsibilities to vulnerable children and young people. This process has been advanced by Social Credit, NDP and Liberal governments. So citizens must ask why they have accepted this as the status quo for so long.

How did we all come to tolerate a callousness regarding their plight that emanates from the high ranks of government, all long on platitudinous sound bites but short on solutions; a callousness which permits young people to, in effect, be evicted from care at the strike of midnight without recourse to an effective transition strategy or adequate personal resources?

No responsible parent does this to a child. There’s no excuse, not even a shred of an excuse, for this province, which serves in place of parents, to do it. And there’s no excuse for the public, which the provincial government serves, to tolerate heartless mismanagement.

Cadieux is reported as claiming her staff are beginning to feel like they can accomplish their jobs. Scathing reports from Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the provincially appointed representative for children and youth, and from the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, which represents the front-line social workers, suggest otherwise.

Turpel-Lafond’s report lists scores of shortcomings in the delivery of care, support and protection for children at risk. Social work agencies are understaffed and underfunded, yet the opposition says Cadieux’s ministry routinely underspends its child-protection budget by millions annually.

Turpel-Lafond’s report and a recent university study have clearly laid out the problems. We know what’s not working, what does work and why. This needs to be fixed, now, before one more young person in care or transitioning out of care becomes the next tragic headline — and government statistic.