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Recommendation 4:
MCFD should evaluate the current emergency measures in place due to COVID-19 that allow young people to continue to stay in their foster home or staffed residential placements past their 19th birthday. Our Office anticipates that such an evaluation would reveal benefits and feasibility on an ongoing basis. If that is the case, the ministry should implement changes that would allow for continuing foster home or staffed residential care on a voluntary basis, with the length of extension based on the young person’s readiness to transition out of care. Priority consideration should be given to youth and young adults who have disabilities and other physical and mental health needs who are not ready for independence at 19, and not eligible for Community Living BC services.
MCFD is to complete the evaluation by December 31, 2021 and develop and implement an approved plan of next steps by April 1, 2022.
MCFD is to complete the evaluation by December 31, 2021 and develop and implement an approved plan of next steps by April 1, 2022.
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Recommendation 15:
MCFD should develop a policy for supporting each family with whom it comes into contact to secure all the available provincial and federal benets. This may require training social workers to understand social assistance frameworks or creating a position within MCFD for a social assistance support worker that can help families secure all the benefits to which they are entitled.
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Recommendation 16:
MCFD should develop a plain-language fact sheet for kinship caregivers that sets out the pathways available to them under the CFCSA and FLA. Social workers must be required to provide this information sheet to all caregivers that could qualify for the EFP.
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Recommendation 5:
MCFD should amend the guiding principles of the CFCSA to ensure that children’s rights are not viewed as hierarchical but interdependent. The guiding principles should reflect the holistic nature of children’s rights including the right of the child to maintain relationships with their family and community, the child’s right to support services, and the importance of maintaining the child’s relationship to their culture.
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Recommendation 7:
MCFD should amend the CFCSA to reflect the right of the child to not be separated from their family by reason only of their parent or guardian:
- lacking the same or similar economic and social advantages as others in BC society;
- engaging is substance use or coping with addiction when a parent is actively pursuing or participating in addiction services; or
- having a disability.
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Recommendation 6:
MCFD should amend the best interests of the child principle set out in the CFCSA to ensure that decision-makers turn their mind to the entirety of children’s right. The best interests of the child principle should at minimum direct decision-makers to:
- consider the trauma caused by apprehension;
- weigh the risks to the child’s well-being if the child remains or is returned with the family against the risks to the child’s well-being that is caused by the removal and placement of the child in care;
- assessment of the risks to the child if the child remains or is returned to the family must be done with due consideration of all the supports and services that can be provided to the family; and,
- consider the impact of family violence on the child and provide all the necessary services to the family in a manner that supports family members and prevents the need to remove the child from the custody of an abused family member.
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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.
To be implemented by Sept. 1, 2024.
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Recommendation 17:
MCFD must advocate with the provincial government for the creation of a universal kinship caregiver benefit that is provided to all families in kinship care. This should apply to all children living in kinship care including families in which kinship caregivers have been granted guardianship orders under the FLA.
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Recommendation 5:
MCFD may need more resources (perhaps hire more intake and assessment staff) in to address backlogs and inaccessibility. Additionally, MCFD needs to review its systems of approval to improve efficiency. Concern was also expressed that when school resumes, there is a need for greater efficiency and responsiveness to youth requesting permission for field trips.
COVID-19 & Youth Homelessness Special Report
Group/author:
BC Coalition to End Youth Homelessness
BC Coalition to End Youth Homelessness
Year:
2020
2020
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Recommendation 169:
Many people continue to look for information and the final resting place of their lost loved one. The federal government, in partnership with Inuit, has established the Nanilavut project. We recognize the significance of the project as an important step in healing and Inuit self-determination in the healing and reconciliation process. We call upon the federal government to support the work of the Nanilavut project on a long-term basis, with sustained funding so that it can continue to serve Inuit families as they look for answers to the questions of what happened to their loved ones. We further insist that it must provide for the option of repatriation of the remains of lost loved ones once they are located.
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