{"id":75209,"date":"2016-05-01T11:58:15","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T15:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=75209"},"modified":"2016-05-01T11:58:15","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T15:58:15","slug":"b-c-childrens-watchdog-offers-damning-review-report-findings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/05\/01\/b-c-childrens-watchdog-offers-damning-review-report-findings\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. children\u2019s watchdog offers damning review of report findings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mary<\/a>
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, British Columbia\u2019s representative for children and youth
(Photo from RCYBC’s Twitter account)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VANCOUVER \u2013 British Columbia\u2019s representative for children and youth has released a scathing report in response to an independent review calling for major changes within the Children\u2019s Ministry.<\/p>\n

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond criticized most of the methodology and conclusions by former B.C. bureaucrat Bob Plecas, saying he was supposed to examine a specific case involving abuse of children who’d been ordered removed from their mother\u2019s care.<\/p>\n

Instead, Turpel-Lafond said in her review released Friday that Plecas\u2019s report calls for sweeping policy, program and legal reforms within the ministry without consultation with her office, aboriginal leaders, communities or any children in care.<\/p>\n

She urged the ministry and the legislature to pause any implementation of the report until consultation can occur and to revise its terms of reference because the findings come before completion of the case he was originally hired to review.<\/p>\n

The government has referred to the report as a \u201croad map for a four-year, multi-faceted strategic plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former bureaucrat was appointed last July to review ministry practices after a B.C. Supreme Court judge found social workers showed \u201creckless disregard\u201d by ignoring a court order and allowing a father unsupervised visits with his children.<\/p>\n

That allegedly led to the abuse of one child, although the father is appealing that court decision.<\/p>\n

Turpel-Lafond, who has been the independent children\u2019s watchdog for nine years, said she\u2019s also concerned about Plecas\u2019s assertion that independent oversight of B.C.\u2019s child welfare system may, in a very short time, no longer be needed.<\/p>\n

She took issue with Plecas\u2019s conclusion that deaths and serious injuries to children in government care \u201coccur rarely.\u201d More than 2,000 children were critically injured between July 2007 and September 2015 and 814 kids have died, Turpel-Lafond said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be useful for the reader of your report to have that data, as a reasonable person may differ with your client\u2019s descriptor of rare,\u201d her report said.<\/p>\n

She said the terms and references of Plecas\u2019s report, issued last December, did not include examining her role as the children\u2019s representative and that the Children\u2019s Ministry denied her access to material that he used.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are significant factual errors and omissions that the representative would like to see corrected as they pertain to the report\u2019s description of her office, before the report is disclosed any further,\u201d her lawyer wrote in a Dec. 11 letter the ministry about Plecas\u2019s interim report.<\/p>\n

It said errors included Plecas\u2019s assertion that communication between Turpel-Lafond\u2019s office and the Children\u2019s Ministry had \u201cbroken down completely at times\u201d and that \u201ctension permeates everything that involves the two organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claudia Wilimovsky, who was a media spokeswoman for Plecas last December, said he was out of the country for up to 10 days and would not be available to comment.<\/p>\n

In a Jan. 27 letter to Children\u2019s Minister Stephanie Cadieux, Turpel-Lafond said the relationship between the two offices has been \u201cmarked by a high degree of professionalism and collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also asked Cadieux to issue a public statement saying she would decline to accept portions of Plecas\u2019s report concerning external oversight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope you can appreciate that targeting my leadership as representative and my office in such a high profile public report is unfair and extends beyond me personally to the staff of the Representative for Children and Youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cadieux said she could not comment on Turpel-Lafond\u2019s report before reviewing it and providing \u201cthe consideration it deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VANCOUVER \u2013 British Columbia\u2019s representative for children and youth has released a scathing report in response to an independent review …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":75210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[10546,10545],"class_list":["post-75209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-childrens-ministry","tag-mary-ellen-turpel-lafond","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}