Queen’s Park – Monique Taylor, the NDP’s Children and Youth Services critic, released the following statement regarding the Serious Occurrences Report released this morning by the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth.
“I’d like to thank the Children’s Advocate for compiling and organizing information about serious incidents involving vulnerable children in care, as detailed in their Serious Occurrences Preliminary Report. I first raised concerns that this information wasn’t being compiled by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services last July.
Now we have a better picture – and it’s an ugly one – of the frequency and type of serious occurrences that take place in residential settings such as group homes, involving children in care, including the frequency of restraints, assaults, self-harm, and tragically, even death.
The Advocate found that over a three month period there were 5,011 serious occurrences filed with MCYS. Of these, over 300 resulted in serious injury.
While I’m glad that the Advocate has compiled and analyzed this data, this should have been done by the Ministry. We need this information not to just look at and point fingers, but so that we can understand what’s happening and maybe prevent these incidents from occurring in the future.
As my party’s critic for Children and Youth Issues, on behalf of New Democrats, I encourage the government appointed Residential Services Panel to absorb these findings, and for the government to act on the report’s recommendations, including making a serious occurrence database available to service providers and the Advocate’s office.”
