Vulnerable B.C. kids need more attention, report finds
VANCOUVER SUN
BY JONATHAN FOWLIE
FEBRUARY 23, 2009 

VICTORIA - The B.C. government needs to offer more support for vulnerable children, says a comprehensive report by the Representative for Children and Youth and B.C.'s provincial health officer.

"We need to get involved in these children's lives earlier, and more often," Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.'s Representative for Children and Youth, said in a news release this morning.

"We owe it to them to help guide them away from paths of unmet potential and troubling futures, and towards lives of achievement and contribution."

The report finds that of kids in care in the study, 36 per cent had appeared before youth court; fewer than one-third graduated from high school.

It further found that of youth in care involved in the justice system, almost 72 per cent have been reported with intensive behavioural problems or serious mental illness.

The report offered seven recommendations….