Children and youth representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond makes a good case for a budget increase of nearly 21 per cent 鈥� her department needs more funding to cope with an ever-increasing workload.
Beyond the money, there must be renewed commitment from the government to reduce the workload by implementing more of her recommendations. The government needs to ensure child-welfare workers have the support and resources they require to do their jobs.
Turpel-Lafond said her office needs an extra $656,000 to handle the increasing number of investigations into child injuries and deaths. She said her office does two to three full investigations a year, but should be doing five to seven investigations.
鈥淚鈥檓 asking for an increase to the budget, particularly because I鈥檓 anticipating I will have four unique investigations that will require high-level dedication and skills,鈥� she told the legislature鈥檚 standing committee on finance Wednesday.
The cases include 18-year-old Alex Gervais, who fell from a fourth-floor window at an Abbotsford hotel where he lived alone while in government care; 15-year-old Nick Lang, who died within days of entering a short-term drug treatment program in Campbell River; and 17-year-old Alex Malamalatabua, who died on the grounds of B.C. Children鈥檚 Hospital, where he had been living for five months.
The extra money would allow her to hire two investigators, two researchers and one records-management clerk.
In addition, she鈥檚 asking for $958,000 a year to boost advocacy on behalf of children and youth seeking a permanent home.
Many of Turpel-Lafond鈥檚 recommendations go unimplemented, and that鈥檚 understandable. Legislators have to balance the books, so not every ideal can be achieved.
Civil servants surely must tear out their hair when Turpel-Lafond hands them another job-jar full of recommendations. It鈥檚 easy to design a house when you don鈥檛 have to build it.
But the representative wasn鈥檛 appointed to make government鈥檚 job easier. She speaks for those who have been unheard for too long. She ensures that children do not become footnotes in forgotten reports.
She鈥檚 a thorn in the side of government, but she must be. There are too many horror stories, too many cracks for young people to fall through, with tragic results.
Child welfare is a huge problem everywhere. It always has been and it always will be. It is so often difficult to balance the needs and safety of a child with the desire to keep families together. It is no easy thing to put young people on a good path when they have had difficult lives, where role models are lacking or where abuse has scarred minds and bodies.
With a few notable exceptions, social workers are doing their best, but they are hampered by heavy caseloads while standing in the shifting sand of politics. Budgets, changing ministry policies and other factors beyond their control make their job harder.
If child-welfare workers are better equipped to do their jobs, that will reduce the burden of the representative for children and youth.
Perhaps, without jeopardizing Turpel-Lafond鈥檚 independence, her office and the province could work with a stronger spirit of co-operation, rather than as opponents. An adversarial atmosphere is not conducive to constructive solutions.
The lives and well-being of children are at stake. We should all be on the same side.
