Strategic Context
The Ministry of Children and Family Development serves a wide range of clients in all of our communities, including some of the most vulnerable people in British Columbia. Our mandate is to advance the safety and well-being of children and youth; to advance early childhood development; and to support a sustainable, flexible, community-based system of family services that promotes innovation, equity and accountability.
The following section highlights key opportunities and challenges that will affect the ministry over the next three years. Specific goals, objectives and targets are discussed in the Performance Plan section of this service plan.
Key Opportunities
New Relationship with First Nations
The B.C. government has made a commitment to build a new relationship with First Nations people and is leading change that has the potential to reshape our social and economic landscape and create a more inclusive and prosperous future. Work is underway — at both the provincial and federal levels — to strengthen and revitalize First Nations communities and to address longstanding issues in areas such as housing, health and early childhood development.
This renewed commitment will create opportunities to strengthen partnerships between the ministry and Aboriginal organizations, including delegated Aboriginal child welfare agencies and the development of new Aboriginal child and youth mental health services. It also has potential to reduce, over time, the numbers of Aboriginal children, youth and families who need ministry supports and services, as Aboriginal communities gain capacity and resiliency, and are provided an opportunity — through regional Aboriginal child and family development authorities — to take greater responsibility for MCFD services and improve overall outcomes. Work is proceeding on the creation of five regional Aboriginal child and family development authorities for delivery of services and the ministry is committed to realizing this new service delivery structure.
The ministry works in partnership with a number of Aboriginal organizations to develop and deliver culturally appropriate services to Aboriginal children and families, including Aboriginal child care organizations, and the delegated Aboriginal child welfare agencies whose services include responsibility for approximately one third of Aboriginal children-in-care. The development of delegated Aboriginal agencies is on track and work is underway to strengthen many Aboriginal organizations in the province.
Community Governance
The ministry is also intending to proceed with the creation of regional non-Aboriginal child and family development community authorities to enhance its connection to community, and to promote community-based accountability and decision making.
Early Learning and Child Care Bilateral Agreement-in-Principle
In September 2005, British Columbia signed the Early Learning and Child Care Bilateral Agreement-in-Principle with the federal government, providing the framework for an integrated early learning and child care system where children and families benefit from increased quality, more developmental programs, and greater early learning and child care opportunities. The federal government agreed to honour the first two years (2005/06 and 2006/07) of the five-year agreement. Until further details are made available, the initial committment to B.C. made by the previous federal government will continue to be included as part of funding for children’s services.
The ministry will work to improve school readiness, helping children be “ready to learn” so that they may experience optimum school performance. Leading research from the Human Early Learning Partnership,4 through the B.C. Atlas of Child Development,5 combines data that identifies more than 1,000 socio-economic variables that relate to neighbourhood vulnerability patterns among kindergarten children that will inform government and community planning. MCFD will collaborate with community partners and other provincial child-serving ministries, particularly the Ministry of Education. Consultations began in the fall of 2005 to identify priorities and leverage the agreement in principle to support a comprehensive, integrated, government-wide early years strategy.
This work is expected to have a far-reaching impact on British Columbia’s children, families and communities because it supports children’s optimal development from birth up to the age of six. Experiences in these early years have a profound and life-long impact on health, well-being, brain development, learning and future achievement. Therefore, investments in programs and services supporting healthy early development have the potential to deliver benefits for generations to come.
| 4 | http://www.earlylearning.ubc.ca/. |
| 5 | http://ecdportal.help.ubc.ca/bc-atlas-child-development.htm. |
Greater Flexibility in Keeping Children Safe
In recent years, the ministry has developed a range of options to protect and care for at-risk children in their families and communities, rather than in foster care. Families and communities are also increasingly involved in decisions about children’s care, through such approaches as family group conferencing, mediation, kinship agreements and independent living arrangements for youth.
These more flexible approaches have supported a decline in the number of children-in-care from 10,755 in June 2001 to 9,041 in September 2005. In coming years, these approaches will increase family engagement in planning and decision-making for their children, which will ensure the most appropriate care is provided, while reducing the number of children unnecessarily entering and/or remaining in care.
At the time of publication the ministry was beginning to receive feedback from a number of external reviews concerning child welfare practices. These reviews will provide guidance to the ministry to strengthen current strategies, develop and implement new strategies and improve quality assurance processes related to child welfare practices in B.C. Current improvements include: implementing a common audit tool — a tool for the review of specific practices — for delegated Aboriginal agencies; continuing systems development on tools that will improve the tracking of fatalities and critical incidents, as well as recommendation-tracking and online case audit tools.
Child and Youth Mental Health Plan
Mental illnesses constitute the most significant group of health problems for children and youth, surpassing all others in terms of the numbers affected and degrees of impairment caused. Mental illnesses affect about 15 per cent of children and youth, compromising their functioning at home, at school, with peers and in the community.
The ministry is leading the implementation of the B.C. Child and Youth Mental Health Plan in partnership with families and communities, and other ministries. The Plan will provide new opportunities to coordinate services, enhance treatment and support, reduce risk and build family and community capacity to care for children and youth with mental illnesses.
A Strong Provincial Economy
Since 2004, British Columbia has emerged as a national leader in economic growth. B.C. also has the strongest job growth in Canada, with over 250,000 new jobs — most of them full time positions — created between December 2001 and October 2005. The Economic Forecast Council expects strong growth and job creation to continue for at least the next two years.
Key Challenges
Demographic Changes
In British Columbia, there are approximately 901,000 children and youth under age 19, representing 20 per cent of the province’s total population. An estimated 577,320 are children under age 13, including 245,556 children under age six. After almost a decade of year-over-year declines, British Columbia’s child population (under age six) is forecast to grow again beginning in 2006/07. This may increase the need for ministry services. With a strong economy and lower unemployment, the number of parents entering the workforce is also rising, increasing the need for access to quality child care throughout B.C.
The proportion of the child population which is Aboriginal is expected to continue to grow. Consequently, the needs for programs and services to serve these children and families will increase. Although work is underway to address the key systemic issues undermining the health of Aboriginal communities, Aboriginal children continue to be over represented among those served by the ministry. Aboriginal children account for approximately nine per cent of the child population, but make up 49 per cent of children-in-care (Chart 1) and 42 per cent of youth in custody.
Chart 1: B.C. Children-in-Care Trends (1990–2005)
Child Welfare
The challenges related to the provision of child welfare services are not always within the control of the ministry. Societal factors can affect the conditions under which children are raised and the ministry endeavours to anticipate and respond to upcoming trends, as well as current realities that impact the children of British Columbia.
With an increased reliance on out-of-care options for children with less complex needs, there is a growing trend toward the placement of children and youth with increasingly more complex needs in foster homes. This puts pressure on the foster care system and may create challenges in areas such as foster family recruitment and retention.
A Growing Population of Children and Youth with Special Needs
A growing proportion of British Columbia’s children and youth have some kind of identified special need. It is estimated that there are approximately 52,000 children and youth with special needs in British Columbia and the ministry currently serves approximately 16,000 of these children and youth. Over the last 25 years, there has been a 70-fold increase in the survival rate of low birth weight infants. As many as 80 per cent of low birth weight infants have some form of disability. Recent improvements in screening, diagnosis and assessment have helped to identify more children with special needs, including children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
These trends, coupled with increased public awareness of special needs, will likely contribute to increased demand for ministry services in this area, including specialized supports to enhance or improve children’s health, development or participation in daily activities at home, in school and in their communities.
Workforce Challenges
The ministry is well served by a very committed and professional workforce. An aging workforce and increasing competition for talent creates challenges for ministries and government in retaining and recruiting the workforce needed to deliver on government’s goals and objectives. It is particularly challenging to recruit professional staff in rural areas of B.C. The ministry is addressing these challenges through activities such as succession planning initiatives and strategies targeted at key professional positions, as well as endeavouring to create a workforce that is ethically and culturally reflective of the community they serve.
Internal Capacity
The ministry is working to enhance its own internal management practices. This includes improving accountability of contracted services through performance-based contracts and accreditation for service providers; implementing a client and contract management system to better support informed decision-making and accountability; and continuing to emphasize project management and research-based approaches in service planning and delivery. Specific strategies for achieving ministry goals and objectives are discussed in the Performance Plan section of this service plan.
