Child intervention review panel details set to be released
Details of the panel looking into Alberta’s problemplagued child intervention system will be released Thursday.
Human Services Minister Irfan Sabir told Postmedia Tuesday that all experts and MLAs are lined up and the date of the first meeting will be ironed out in the next day or so.
Progressive Conservative interim leader Ric McIver first proposed a child review committee late last year.
The NDP government agreed to the idea in December but instead proposed a ministerial panel, irking the opposition parties, which banded together to demand changes to the panel’s terms of reference.
They reached a compromise on Dec. 22, at which point Sabir’s ministry began looking for experts.
Sabir said it wasn’t tough to find people willing to review the system.
“It’s an issue that everybody cares about — it’s about the vulnerable children, the vulnerable citizens — so whoever we reached out to, everybody was very positive,” he said.
“Everybody wants to work on this file.”
The panel has six to eight weeks to get its first review done. It will concentrate on the child death review process.
Its second report will examine the root causes of involvement in the child intervention system, programs, funding and existing family supports, and make recommendations for improvements.
The ministerial panel, the most recent attempt in a string of reviews to improve Alberta’s child welfare system, was formed following the case of Serenity — a four-year-old girl who died of a traumatic head injury after being in government care.
When she arrived in hospital, she was suffering from serious hypothermia, catastrophic malnutrition, anal and genital bruising, and weighed just 18 pounds, the typical weight of a nine-month-old baby.
The case took two years to get to police, who are still investigating.
No charges have been laid in relation to her death.