On Tuesday, July 16, the Representative for Children and Youth (RCY) released the long-awaited report Don’t Look Away – How one boy’s story has the power to shift a system of care for children and youth. The report addresses five key areas for collective action: ensuring children’s well-being, supporting families (including kingship caregivers), ending and addressing violence, ensuring accountability from all intervenors, and changing policy to address gaps, including jurisdiction.
Many partners working in social services were part of the release, including the Alliance to End Homelessness in the Capital Region. The Alliance has participated in the consultation and updates all along and we are immensely grateful to Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth for centering the voices of children, youth, and their families. The report’s recommendations and calls to action are critical to the preventative work we must do collectively to end trauma, suffering for children, youth and their families and for ensuring that pro-active measures taken early can prevent many devastating challenges, including poverty, precarity and potentially, homelessness.
MCFD Minister Grace Lore received the report on behalf of the Government of British Columbia and in an impassioned address, made commitments to ensure that government leadership, in the form of a cross-ministerial group, finds a way to implement the recommendations contained in the report. Whoever forms the government following the election in October, the Alliance strongly encourages that government to make this work a priority, resource the work at the community level, empower collective action, and address the systemic changes that are needed to make children, youth and families lives better.
The Alliance remains committed to supporting this work and other initiatives that will ensure our collective strategies align and continue to serve the most vulnerable in our community as we forge ahead with our mission where everyone has a safe place, they can call home. Children, youth and families deserve all that and more.
Full report:
https://rcybc.ca/hfaq/dont-look-away/
First Nations Leadership Council:
Government of BC:
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024CFD0009-001124
Media:
Horrific death of B.C. ‘miracle baby’ renews calls for change | Vancouver Sun
B.C. boy’s story of torture, neglect has power to inspire system reform: report (msn.com)
