Abysmal Social Welfare

"There was no attempt to hide [the numbers]. The numbers that weren't published were those children who died tragically of natural causes.
"It's not another enquiry we need. We've actually had the enquiries, and now we're implementing the results of those enquiries."
Dave Hancock, Alberta Minister of Human Services

"Having a death reported to you is not the same as doing an investigation about how that death happened and how it can be stopped.
"The fact of the matter is the Children's Advocate has done two reports so far. It's just not good enough."
Rachel Notley, NDP critic

The provincial government of Alberta had created a Child and Youth Advocate in 2012 to look into the deaths of foster children. "We did that because I worked in the family justice system and I worked in child welfare, and I am a concerned Albertan just as every other Albertan is", responded Alberta's Premier Alison Redford when it was revealed by a journalistic investigation that 145 children have died during their time in government care, since 1999.

The disparity between the government figures of 56 deaths occurring over that time frame and the actual number of children who had died by hanging, malnutrition, hypothermia, head trauma, drowning, disease, fire and stabbing, has astonished Albertans, and left them asking questions through their political representatives.

They want to know how it is possible that vulnerable children taken into institutional care have overdosed, been asphyxiated, died in car crashes, or through the result of sudden infant death syndrome. Of those children with brief, sad lives, a third left life as infants, another third were teenagers, and most of the children were of aboriginal origin.

Amazingly, the investigation uncovered a fairly uncomfortable fact, that the government is absent a mechanism to track recommendations resulting from autopsies or investigations into the deaths, whose purpose obviously is to improve the dismal record on foster child safety.  The public would like to know why all deaths were not reported.

More critically, assurances are wanted that children now in care are receiving the treatment that they need to allow them to grow into functioning, capable, well-adjusted adults.

The journalistic investigation had been instigated by a four-year legal fight between the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald newspapers with the government, to release relevant information, which the government refused to do until ordered by the province's privacy commissioner.

The Alberta legislature was informed during Monday's Question Period that the refusal to release the requested information had a direct and distinct purpose; to ensure privacy for the individuals and families involved. And to prevent harm coming to people generally connected both with those in foster care and those attempting to foster them.

And lest those in other provinces succumb to an attitude of disbelief and disgust at the treatment meted out to children in need, and largely from aboriginal communities in Alberta, it should be pointed out, and it has been, that children in need in other provinces, including Ontario, have been failed by the system just as spectacularly.

Though the entire subject of inadequate care of aboriginal children is also fraught with the reality that it is, all too often, their immediate families that have initially failed in providing adequate care for their young, that the governments which take it upon themselves to rescue these children from dysfunction and give them other opportunities have themselves too often failed.