Children's advocate blasts B.C. government over slow progress

B.C.'s representative for children and youth has delivered a stinging rebuke to the ministry responsible for child protection.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond said Mondayshe's concerned by the lack of action by the ministry to implement the recommendations of a sweeping reportissued inApril 2006 on the province'schild welfare system.

Turpel-Lafond told a legislative committee the Ministry for Children and Family Development has fully implemented only 15 of the 62 recommendations in former judge Ted Hughes's sweeping report last year and has made little or no progress implementing some of the key recommendations.

Speaking to reporters later, Turpel-Lafond blasted the ministry's upper management for what she called a lack of leadership.

"I requested that there be clarification about the role of this transformation plan vis-a-vis Hughes, and I received the same plan back with some numbers in columns, which appear to me to be an insincere effort to place attention on the implementation of the Hughes review," said Turpel-Lafond in Victoria.

Minister for Children and Family Development Tom Christensen said Monday he was surprised by the tone and theme of Turpel-Lafond's remarks, because the children's representative has never complained to him about a lack of co-operation.

The government remains committed to the Hughes report, he said.

In April 2006, then children and family development minister Stan Hagen said the government planned to implement all 62 recommendations made by Hughes in his report on the province's child protection system.

In the 172-page report, Hughes said the system's ability to function properly has been "buffeted by an unmanageable degree of change," noting there have been nine ministers, eight deputy ministers and seven directors of child protection in the past decade.

Hughes also took issue with four years of deep departmental budget cuts, which"took the knife too far."