Lack of candour from child intervention staff worries MLAs on panel

MLAs on the ministerial panel on child intervention expressed frustration Wednesday whentwo child intervention staff members were unwilling to express their opinions after making a joint presentation.

Gillian Colquhoun and Russ Pickford deflected questions from MLAs who asked them what they thought about issues related to how families are affected by child death investigations.

"What we're seeing today and and the last couple meetings, frankly, is exactly what we were worried about," said Wildrose MLA Jason Nixon.

"We're asking questions and almost every answer is 'I can't answer that.' Or putting it back on the panel members and saying, 'Well, you're going to have to answer that . That's what the panel is here for.' "

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Pickford, a regional director with Children'sServices in Edmonton, and Colquhoun, an analyst, toldthe panel how families can be traumatized by having to take part in multiple investigations and interviews into a death of a child in care.

In one case, a family was interviewed several times over a four-year period. Staff involved in the case were interviewed five times.

That prompted Calgary-Elbow MLA Greg Clark to ask if a single interview could satisfy the need to find out what happened as well as lessening the burden on families.

"I think you just answered your own question. It's one of those things you are going to bring to the table and that you're going to explore," Colquhoun said.

"What do you think?" Clark asked.

"I'm an Albertan and I have opinions of course, but I'm not here to be a spokesperson in terms of the child intervention system so I want to be a little bit careful," Colquhoun said.

Pickford was similarly reluctant to offer an opinion in response to a question from Nixon.

Clark said people who come before the panel should feel comfortable they can share personal observations that can help improve the child intervention system.

"It seems like there is very clearly a culture of people who are afraid to step out of line," he said. "And I think when you have situations of children continuing to die in care, it's very important that we ask hard questions."

Issue has come up before

Children's Services Minister Danielle Larivee said staff were told to talk about the current state of the system and not where it is going.

She said people are not comfortable sharing information in a public forum andwithout first having protections in place.

"How do we create a space in which they feel safe to share that and it's not going to influence their relationship in a negative way with other people within the department," Larivee said, adding the department is currently working on a plan to make that happen.

But ifpresenters aren't open, Clark said that makes it difficult for the panel to do its work.

Clark's frustrations were shared by interim Progressive Conservative Leader Ric McIver.

McIver told reporters afterwards this issue has come up in previous meetings. He doesn't blame people for worrying about saying something that will cost them their job but he wonders why they feel that way.

"What is stopping people who know how the system can be improved from telling us how the system can be improved?" he asked.

NDP MLA Heather Sweet, a former government social worker, said there has always been a culture of protection within Children's Services due to the sensitivity of the issues involved.

But Sweet said people need to talk to the panel.

Trust needs to be developed

"We want to be able to implement change and the only we are going to implement change is if we understand what kind of changes need to happen and have a willingness to implement them," she said.

Frontline workers have been told for years not to talk publicly about problems in the system, Sweet said.

"And so there's some trust there that needs to be developed, to show that we honestly want to learn and we want to support the frontline but we also need to make changes."

The ministerial panel on child intervention held its first meeting on Feb. 1. The three experts and 10 MLAs will report on improvements to the child death review system within eight to 10 weeks before investigating the larger issues that cause children to go into government care.

The panel was struck in the wake of revelations about delays in the investigation of the death of Serenity, a four-year-old Indigenous girl who died of head trauma.

The emaciated child had bruising over her body and genital trauma when she died in September 2014.