Sixty-five per cent of the young people reported as lost or missing were Indigenous; Indigenous females (40 per cent) were found to be over-represented among the young people reported as lost or missing

NationTalk: Stories of children and youth who are lost or missing from the child welfare system continue to emerge as an area of concern across Canada, in some cases resulting in tragic and preventable injuries and deaths. “Missing” presents findings by RCY (Representative for Children and Youth) on children and youth who are missing, “running from,” or “hiding from,” the care system. It also examines how the child welfare system and other child-serving systems have created conditions that lead to children being lost in care.

Click here to read report.

From : Call to Action and Recommendations:

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?

It is recommended that the Provincial Director of Child Welfare (PDCW):

Monitoring

1. 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.
2. 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.

Policy

3. 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.

Practice

4. 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.

Child and Youth Voice

5. 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.
6. 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)

Language

7. 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.
8. 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.

Belonging

9. 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.