Recommendation 1: The Representative is calling for a special convening of the child-serving systems and the children, youth, families and communities they serve to respond to the cracks in our care system that are contributing to children and youth being pushed and pulled away from the systems of care and being subjected to increased risks of serious incidents or critical injuries and deaths. To address the root systemic and structural causes of children and youth going missing from the child welfare system we need to collectively explore:

1. What are the conditions of unbelonging that lead to children becoming lost or missing in the child welfare system?
2. How are children’s unmet needs across systems contributing to them going missing?
3. How do we align systems of care and protection to respond more effectively and uphold the rights of children who have disappeared in the system?

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Monitoring

Recommendation 2: Develop and implement an interim plan to improve the collection of reliable information and data to enable the PDCW to more effectively identify, monitor and respond to children and youth who are lost or missing in B.C.’s child welfare system.

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Monitoring

Recommendation 3: Work with RCY to identify opportunities to enhance the quality and consistency of reporting on lost and missing children, inclusive of notifications when lost and missing children have been found.

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Policy

Recommendation 4: Immediately remove the requirement for missing children in the system of care to require additional safety concerns before a child is reported lost or missing and approach as high risk until a risk assessment is completed to ensure an equitable and robust response to the disappearance of all children and youth in B.C. to align MCFD policy with the B.C. Provincial Policing Standards concerning missing children.

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Practice

Recommendation 5: Pending the development and implementation of a congruent whole-of-system response that addresses the push and pull factors contributing to children and youth being lost or missing in the child welfare system, adopt interim practice guidelines that support social workers and care teams to meaningfully engage with and respond to children and youth during and after incidents of them going missing. Interim practice guidelines to be informed by research evidence and effective practices employed in other jurisdictions.

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Child and youth voice

Recommendation 6: Immediately remove the requirement for youth to be ‘habitually’ missing before workers are directed to work with the child or youth to determine why they go missing.

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Child and youth voice

Recommendation 7: Adopt the recommendations from In Harm’s Way? Serious Occurrences Report Vol. 2, 2017, to include information on: why the child left, what happened while they were away, if medical care was required, and what could be done to prevent them from needing to leave again.

(Note: this should be sent as a resubmission and should not delay the initial reportable timeline).

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Language

Recommendation 8: Immediately develop resources and guidelines for staff on the use of child-centred, person-first and identity-first, destigmatizing language when speaking to and documenting the lives of children and youth in the child-serving system.

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Language

Recommendation 9: MCFD should also begin a full learning and development initiative, for all service lines, to train staff on the use of child-centred, person-first and identity-first, destigmatizing language when speaking to, and documenting the lives of, children and youth in the child-serving system.

To be implemented by Sept. 1, 2024.

Recommendations for the Provincial Director of Child Welfare

Belonging

Recommendation 10: This review of lost and missing children highlights cross-jurisdictional research that speaks to the critical importance of a child’s sense of belonging in the child welfare system. These findings are not new for RCY and recommendations to address belonging have been made in the Representative’s report Skye’s Legacy: A focus on belonging, but progress has yet to be made to implement this recommendation. Therefore, the Representative reiterates the recommendation from RCY’s 2021 Skye’s Legacy:

“MCFD to conduct a systemic needs analysis of cultural and family support resources required to ensure that social workers are better supported to promote a sense of belonging and identity for First Nations, Métis, Inuit and Urban Indigenous children and youth in care in relation to their families, culture and cultural community over time and at different stages in their lives and identity development. This review will inform the development of a longer-term resourcing and implementation plan. However, given the urgent need to address the significant over-involvement of the child welfare system in the lives of Indigenous children and families and poor outcomes for Indigenous children in the child welfare system, a substantive investment of new resources should be made immediately that can be considered a down payment on the resources identified for the longer term plan.”

Implementation of new resources was recommended by April 1, 2023, and is now overdue.