B. C. Federation of Families Society
January 16, 2006
BC Children & Youth Review
Attn: Ted Hughes, QC
Dear Mr. Hughes,
BC FamilyNet is an independent provincial network of families and self-advocates formed 10 years ago to protect and enhance Community Living supports and services. We promote the well being of children and youths with special needs, adults with developmental disabilities and their families, and recognition of their contributions as valuable members of Society. We have engaged extensively with the Minister for Children and Families, the Deputy, the new Community Living B.C. Crown agency, families and others to address challenges posed by devolution and budget cuts in Community Living.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment as part of your review. Our comments relate to the part of your mandate that coincides with ours—i.e. services for children and youth with special needs and/or developmental disabilities—though of course we would advocate equivalent attention and support for all children who need it.
Restructuring
In June 2005, we wrote to Premier Campbell expressing concerns about the proposed July 1 devolution of governance for over 16,000 adults and children to Community Living BC. Despite an ambitious, costly and troubled restructuring process launched in 2001, the substantive framework for devolution does not reflect the key benefits that were promised, while formalizing critical flaws in the MCFD bureaucracy and adding new ones. Instead of delivering sustainability as promised, it lowers the bar and leaves families, local communities and charities holding the bag. BC FamilyNet repeatedly urged resolution of key issues before devolution, but those calls went unheeded. We continue to fear that this at best poses significant obstacles to CLBC’s success, thus further dragging out restructuring and heightening risks to the families and individuals whom CLBC was created to serve.
Outcomes
For CLBC to have the confidence of families, individuals and the people of British Columbia, its formal mandate and budget must, as a minimum, assure adequate supports to keep children and youth safe while allowing them to attain their full potential. “Innovations” like community governance, independent planning and individualized funding count for naught if they don’t assure improved outcomes (or at least guard against deterioration) in terms of capacity to meet diverse individual needs.
Further, if we are to justify the significant public investment in creating CLBC, its formal mandate must reflect the promised benefits of restructuring. This includes protecting current individual services, eliminating waitlists, monitoring and assuring service quality, respecting family/individual choice and control and ensuring more accessible and responsive services for children with special needs. Alarmingly, the mandate set out in the legislative and regulatory framework fails to provide any such assurances. Indeed, it lacks a single commitment to outcomes or to meeting even the most basic health and safety needs. Further, CLBC has been (at least temporarily) tasked with serving children and youth who by definition fall outside of its stated mandate.
Budget
Devolution has followed unprecedented budget cuts, despite costs and demands that grow annually and a Ministry that everyone agreed was under-funded to start with. Alarmingly, CLBC has made it clear that waitlists will be enshrined as a tool to ration inadequate resources, with increased reliance on families and communities to provide needed supports.
Families and communities already bear most or all of the extraordinary burden of raising children and youth with special needs/developmental disabilities. There is no evidence of community capacity to do more and CLBC has not demonstrated how such capacity would be created.
Readiness
On July 1, 2005 CLBC was established to take over a budget of more than $500 million annually and responsibility for some of our most vulnerable adults, youth and children. Despite four years of planning and the investment of tens of millions in public funds, the Ministry conceded that it would take years before CLBC was ready to live up to its responsibilities. Readiness criteria remain unmet, key systems remain in development and last-minute arrangements to temporarily transfer some children’s files to CLBC have only added to the ongoing turmoil. This clearly poses risks to the individuals and families whose safety and wellbeing are at stake.
Fragmentation
From the outset of restructuring, the division of services for children with special needs under devolution has been fraught with controversy. The exclusion of stakeholders from key decisions has aggravated this. Ministry-contracted experts urged that no services for children be transferred to CLBC until key issues were resolved, and until the new authority was clearly ready and had proven itself, given the added risks. Alarmingly, the Ministry’s makeshift plan was to do the opposite—handing over many children’s services temporarily to CLBC on July 1, with the intent of shuffling some back to MCFD a year later. It remains unclear whether the latest plans are even feasible, given assumptions that children will be divided at age six based on whether or not they will require lifelong supports.
The lack of an integrated vision for children and youth with special needs remains a grave concern, along with fragmentation and waitlists. Over 7,000 such children and youth are on waitlists and many no longer even make it onto waitlists because parents see it as futile. A particular concern is undiagnosed and unmet special needs of many children in protective care, an issue with enormous long-term human, social and cost implications. Often, children who most need our support are those who have no one to speak for them, although children, youth and families in crisis are to be found in all walks of life.
Education
While MCFD restructuring and cuts have consumed our attention as an advocacy group, this doesn’t mean all is well in other areas that serve children and youth with special needs. Continued erosion of special education supports and broader stresses in our public schools have had very severe consequences for children and youth with special needs, as this is the primary avenue for supports from ages six to 19.
Advocacy/complaints
In adult community living, the Office of the Advocate for Service Quality provides an important safeguard, hearing individual complaints regarding service denial or service quality. It is a grave concern that no such equivalent office exists for children and youth with special needs, whether they are served via MCFD, CLBC, the public school system or other government bodies. A more independent office with more resources would also be more effective. Apart from not handling individual complaints, the Child & Youth Officer has been unable to provide effective advocacy to address the very serious concerns raised herein related to the effects of budget cuts, restructuring, waitlists and erosion of supports for children and youth with special needs.
Please feel free to contact us if we can assist you further in any way. We thank you for the opportunity to comment and wish you success in your task.
Yours truly,
Anita Dadson, President
BC FamilyNet Board of Directors
