GN workers struggle to find help for youth, Nunavut youth watchdog says

Sherry McNeil-Mulak is Nunavut’s representative for children and youth. (FILE PHOTO)

This graphic shows which territorial departments are involved with cases reviewed by Nunavut’s child and youth advocacy office. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE REPRESENTATIVE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH OFFICE)

This graph shows which departments in which Nunavut’s Representative for Children and Youth Office is finding systemic issues. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE REPRESENTATIVE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH OFFICE)

The bulk of cases reported to Nunavut’s youth advocacy office are coming from government service providers—such as nurses, teachers or social workers—who are struggling to get help for youth from the territorial government, sometimes even from their own departments.

That’s according to a 2016-2017 annual report of Nunavut’s Representative for Children and Youth Office, tabled in the legislature March 6.

This is the third annual report produced by the office, which opened in 2015 following the passing of Nunavut’s Representative for Children and Youth Act in 2013.

The report says that over half—64 per cent—of cases reported to the youth advocacy office come from frontline staff who work for the GN.

“These front-line government employees, while responsible for supporting the needs of young Nunavummiut, have shared with our office frustration with Nunavut’s child and youth serving systems,” the report states.

“This frustration often stems from barriers within their own department. It also happens because barriers between departments exist. The poor coordination that results from these barriers continues to cause delays, gaps and sometimes the denial of services to young Nunavummiut.”

The report called the situation a “grave concern” that is in contravention of the Inuit societal value of piliriqatigiinniq/ikajuqtigiinniq (working together for a common cause), and of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child.

“It is clearly not in the best interests of children to have poor government service coordination,” the report said.

Family members were the next group most likely to report a case, at just 19 per cent. Children and youth themselves are unlikely to report their need for advocacy to get government services.

The report says the office opened 82 advocacy cases throughout Nunavut between April 2016 and the end of March 2017. The office also continued to work on 19 cases opened in 2015-16. It closed 44 cases by the end of the 2017 fiscal year.

Of the 82 cases, 32 were in Iqaluit, 22 were in the rest of the Qikiqtani, eight were in the Kitikmeot, 11 were in the Kivalliq region and nine were out-of-territory cases.

These numbers show an increase in cases coming from outside of Iqaluit, after the office did a series of community visits in 2016-17.

Most cases come via the Department of Family Services and the Department of Health. Cases connected with Family Services are primarily to do with child protection, while some are related to lack of parental support and a few to adoption.

One example in the report describes how a child was removed from a foster care arrangement with grandparents that had been in place for over a year and placed in another foster home.

“The grandparents did not know if the department would return the child to their home. The department also did not provide information to the child,” the report states. “This left the grandparents and the child uncertain of future living arrangements.”

The grandparents were then unable to schedule a meeting with their community social worker. When the advocacy office stepped in, it found that department staff decided to move the child because they thought the grandparents needed a break from foster care.

“However, the grandparents had not requested this,” the report states.

The department then provided the family with more information about respite care, and shortly after returned the child to the grandparents.

The report noted that the Auditor General of Canada, in a pair of reports released on Nunavut programs and services for children and youth in 2011 and 2014, has already highlighted the same barriers found in every one of the child and youth representative’s cases related to the Department of Family Services.

The Representative for Children and Youth Office is currently keeping tabs on GN efforts to implement the auditor general’s recommendations on youth services.

Cases connected with the Department of Health are mostly related to mental health and a need for youth-specific support, the report found.

The Representative for Children and Youth Office is currently doing a formal review of mental health services available to youth in Nunavut.

Under education, the report said “an overwhelming majority” of cases were related to a lack of services at Nunavut schools needed to help an individual child succeed in the classroom.

Cases related to the Department of Justice dealt with community corrections, sentencing of younger persons and probation orders.

In 2016-17 the office created a database of systemic problems it continues to come across in cases throughout the territory.

At the same time, the office also ran a pilot review of one of those systemic issues: delays often faced by children who are custom adopted. The office said these delays come from “uncertainty surrounding their adoptive parents’ legal authority to provide medical consent.”

This year the Representative for Children and Youth Office will do its first formal review of systemic issues in Nunavut youth cases. Once the review is finished the office will provide a report recommending ways to lessen widespread problems found in the GN’s service programs for youth.

Annual Report of the Representative of Children and Youth, 2016-17 by NunatsiaqNews on Scribd