The province has to do much better for the children in its care
Vancouver Sun
May 30, 2007
Editorial

Parenting, it has been said, is the last job left to amateurs. Nevertheless, most parents do a pretty good job of raising their kids. Some parents experience difficulties, however, and that can have an enormously negative impact on their children's lives.

While the state offers support to such parents, a joint report by British Columbia's Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, and the Office of the Provincial Health Officer, Perry Kendall, reveals that the state seems to have serious parenting problems of its own.

The report, the second of four investigating the health and well-being of children in the care of the state, assessed 32,000 such children between April 1997 and November 2005 and found that they fared exceptionally poorly compared with children who live with their parents.

Perhaps most troubling, the report notes that "a child who is taken into care at any point in his or her life will probably not graduate from high school." Indeed, only 21 per cent of children in care graduate, compared to 78 per cent of the general population, a state of affairs that the report refers to as a "tragedy" calling "out for immediate and systemic action."

Further, children in care were two to three times more vulnerable than children in the general population with respect to their physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development and communications and general knowledge. So it should come as no surprise that more than twice as many children in care are not "school-ready."

In effect then, children in care start out behind their peers and then fall ever further back. Clearly, the state is failing in its role as parent to these children.

Now that said, children in care present special challenges: 51 per cent have special needs compared to just 8.4 per cent of children who have never been in care. That figure rises to 74 per cent of boys and 47 per cent of girls by the time they reach 16. Further, one in seven aboriginal children had been in care at some point, compared to fewer than one in 50 non-aboriginal kids.

In an effort to improve this situation and to assist these high-needs kids, the report makes several recommendations. First, the report suggests that the Ministry of Children and Family Development track the educational progress of all children in care. Remarkably, this has never been done before.

The report also recommends that the government develop individual education plans for each child in care, and that it assess the adequacy of resources for special needs and aboriginal children.

Finally, the report suggests that the Ministry of Education pilot innovative programs to support better educational outcomes for children in care and other vulnerable children.

These are all worthy initiatives. But in order to succeed, the ministries must ensure that specific people are charged with the responsibility for seeing them through. All too often, well-meaning ministerial initiatives falter and fail because everyone thinks the initiatives are someone else's problem.

Further, the government must improve the lines of communication between the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Education, since the success of these initiatives depends on the departments working closely together.

As importantly, Premier Gordon Campbell has to give this project his blessings and let his ministers know that this is a priority for the government.

If the province sets its mind to this task, and to implementing the recommendations, it could soon join the ranks of good parents. And the children in its care will be the beneficiaries.