British Columbia Minister of Children and Family Development Mary McNeil listens to a question from a reporter as she responds to a report on children with special needs in Vancouver, B.C., on Monday June 27, 2011.DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS
The B.C. government is reversing course on a policy that allows caregivers of vulnerable children to avoid background security checks.
Adults in more than 1,300 B.C. homes will soon face screening such as criminal-record checks to determine if they should continue to care for a relative's children.
The turnaround comes at the order of Mary McNeil, new Minister for Children and Families.
Last year, the province rejected calls from its children and youth watchdog to review all the homes receiving financial aid from the Child in the Home of a Relative program.
The program offers assistance to families who care for a niece, nephew or grandchild when the parents cannot do so. But an audit by the watchdog found thousands of fragile children are exposed to risk because of inadequate background checks.
The program is now being phased out – replaced with a new program that includes full screening – and caregivers who enrolled after December, 2007, have been screened. Still, there are 1,800 children and youth placed in a relative's care where the adults have not gone through background checks.
"For me, it wasn't a change of heart," Ms. McNeil told reporters Tuesday. She started reviewing the decision shortly after she was appointed to the portfolio in the spring, at the urging of Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the Representative for Children and Youth.
In her audit of the caregiver program released last year, Ms. Turpel-Lafond found disturbing gaps in criminal-record checks, and a failure to effectively track many of the children in the program. In some cases, relatives were approved as caregivers even when there was an adult in the home with a troubling criminal record or previous child-protection issues.
"I know full well that harm has come to children in these situations in the past. I fear it will come to these children in the future unless we do the right thing," Ms. Turpel-Lafond said when she released her report 14 months ago.
But then-minister for children and families Mary Polak rejected Ms. Turpel-Lafond's central recommendation for background checks, vowing there would be no retroactive investigations.
Ms. McNeil said that decision created an inconsistent approach to child protection. "It's about the safety of those kids," she said. "Those children deserve the same safety checks."
The screening will begin with families caring for the youngest and most vulnerable children, with the entire process expected to be completed by March, 2012. Anyone who refuses to participate will see their benefits under the program cut off.
Carol Ross, executive director of the Parent Support Services Society, represents grandparents and others who rely on the program. She said she understands the need for screening but predicted some families will feel threatened by the process.
"We connect with many grandparents, my guess is they will be upset," she said in an interview. "I totally applaud the changes that Mary McNeil and the representative are trying to make, but people are still frightened and mistrustful of the ministry."
She said the government also needs to address the inconsistencies in funding – the Child in the Home of a Relative program offers less support than other support programs for caregivers, making it difficult for some grandparents to find needed respite care for children who often have complex needs.
Claire Trevena, the New Democratic Party critic for children and families, welcomed the new policy but agreed with Ms. Ross that more support is needed for those families in the program.
"The fact that they are getting more scrutiny is great," she said, "but we can't be doing this as a cheap way of looking after our children."