Auditor General Report finds Ministry of Family Services still coming up short on the needs and protection of Aboriginal children

While progress has been made, there is still much work to do, that seems to be the impression left with Auditor General John Doyle who released a report last week into the state of care of Aboriginal Children by the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

The report provides a list of ten recommendations where Doyle felt the government could do a better job in its delivery of services and protection policies for the province’s First Nation’s children.

The Daily News examined the report in Monday’s paper.

‘Needs of aboriginal kids unmet’
Auditor general puts forward suggestions to improve the ministry
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Monday, May 12, 2008

Many of the child protection needs of Aboriginal children and their families remain unmet, concludes the Auditor General of British Columbia.

Auditor General John Doyle’s office released a report last week entitled Management of Aboriginal Children Protection Services, with the goal of determining how well the Ministry of Children and Family Development is managing efforts to provide effective, culturally appropriate and equitably accessible child protection services.

While he noted that government has made progress in improving collaborative efforts among Aboriginal organizations and government ministries, Doyle said”more collaboration and a more strategic approach:” is needed.

Aboriginal children account for just eight per cent of the one million children in B. C., but they make up 51 per cent of children in the legal care of the province, a proportion higher than the national average of 30 to 40 per cent.

In the report, Doyle also stated that the actual cost of implementing the government’s aboriginal child protection approach is still unknown.

“The Ministry has not identified the needs and resources required for aboriginal child protection services,” he said. “And it does not publicly report on how well these services are being delivered.”

The report makes ten recommendations to the Ministry of Children and Family Development, to improve the delivery of child protection services for Aboriginal children, since the ministry’s approach is only partly successful.

The report recommends the ministry examine whether the transfer of all child protection services to Aboriginal agencies is still viable, and that it adopts the protection standards used by Aboriginal agencies as their own. The Auditor General also recommends that the ministry develop and monitor measures that determine whether a child’s needs have been met and if good outcomes are achieved, something currently not done.

Other recommendations included are identifying child protection needs at the community level, determining the resources needed in each community to meet their goals, address funding gaps for services, develop Aboriginal human resources and that the ministry provide information on the costs, successes and challenges of the Aboriginal child welfare program to the Legislative Assembly and the public.