43 critical incidents involving children receiving services in last 5 years
Sandy Collins says there's work to be done
CBC News has discovered there have been 43 critical incidents involving children receiving government services who have been harmed or injured in the last five years.
The children involved in the critical incidents, which can range from suicide attempts to sexual abuse, were all receiving services from Child, Youth and Family Services.
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As an officer independent from government, Advocate for Children and Youth Carol Chafe isn't automatically notified of an incident that sees a child receiving services who is harmed or has died.
Are we where we need to be? Not yet. We're certainly moving towards that.- Minister Sandy Collins
But Chafe has been calling for government to automatically notify her of those incidents, and since CBC News reported earlier this year that 35 children under the age of 18 died while under the province's protection, Chafe has renewed her push.
"It doesn't mean that every death or every critical incident that something went wrong, but it can mean that in some cases," said Chafe.
On Thursday, Chafe made her case to cabinet and says that went well, but she doesn't know when or if government will grant her the amendment she's seeking.
No details
Since the department of Child, Youth and Family Services was created in 2009, there have been a total of 43 critical incidents involving children, but what those incidents were isn't identified.
Of the 43, 33 incident reports were completely withheld for privacy reasons.
Eighteen of the incidents were in the St. John's or metro area, nine were in central or eastern Newfoundland, seven in western Newfoundland and nine in Labrador.
However, the information released shows some of the same issues were present in multiple cases.
Changing the culture of child protection
Child, Youth and Family Services Minister Sandy Collins said the system is constantly changing and improving.
"We're certainly moving towards that and we've made tremendous improvements and progress since 2009, but I'm looking forward to making further improvements certainly."
According to Collins, the biggest challenge is changing the overall culture of child protection.
"Any time you try to change the culture of an institution or an organization or a department, it doesn't happen overnight. That's what we continue to deal with," he said.
Chafe said she isn't interested in doing the work of government, but her office was created with the mandate to protect children and to figure out what went wrong in a case so it doesn't happen again.
"Some of these are unavoidable, but some of them are avoidable if there were better processes in place or if policies were being followed," she said.
Chafe said she knew about 18 of the 43 critical incidents since 2009, through reports to her office or media, but said there needs to be a formal system in place.
With files from Chris O'Neill-Yates