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Healing children’s minds |
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Written by -- Associate news editor Rodney Venis
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Wednesday, 21 May 2008 |
If there's one piece of policy the B.C. Liberals deserve a little slack on, it's their Child and Youth Mental Health Plan.
It was a very modest first crack at a massive and easily ignored problem. According to the province, one in seven B.C. children and youth face mental-health problems ranging from anxiety disorders to Tourette's syndrome to schizophrenia. They are problems that will affect them at home, at school and with their friends. According to The Canadian Press, up to 140,000 young people need help with mental-health issues and, the kicker is, early intervention can do wonders in easing what for many develops into a lifetime of doing daily battle with a mind that's not quite one's own.
It's not without hyperbole the province calls this area the most important health issue facing children today.
So it's unsurprising the Liberals are proud the plan, which they believe is a first in Canada, reached its five-year conclusion. The gains, as said, were modest: according to Children's Minister Tom Christensen, 20,000 young people are getting some form of help today, up from 11,000 in 2004. The program's budget has grown to $87 million since 2003.
As Christensen's NDP counterpart, Nicholas Simon, told The Canadian Press, no boos here. It's a credit to the Liberals they got the ball rolling on a tough issue that's hardly politically sexy; few want to contemplate the things that go bump in other people's heads, let alone the demons children face. But the worry, says Simon, is that while it's wonderful the Liberals want to do something about youth mental health, it's hard to figure out just what they're doing.
To a certain extent, one can sympathize with the government: considering the horror and travesty surrounding the Liberals' failed handling of child protection, anything the province does regarding the Ministry of Children and Family Development should be taken in with generous portions of credulity, if not contempt. But the government's ethereal and wispy progress report plays into those fears and raises more red flags than a pro-China Tibet rally.
Most grievously, the report's conclusion cites a 2007 auditor general's report that broadly supported the plan but fails to address many of the concerns raised by the government watchdog.
Indeed, the report by its composition and timing fall short. Released in June at a scant 12 pages long, it stresses it doesn't provide a complete picture of the plan's results or activities, Yet the government told the AG in 2007 a report would be completed by last October in response to one of the ombudsman's chief criticisms: that the government wasn't doing enough to keep the public informed and it hadn't developed an adequate framework for evaluating how successful the program is.
That feeds into the AG's other concern: that the province begin figuring out what to do after the five-year plan was finished. The government shrugged off the worry then and it shrugged it off Tuesday: it'll begin figuring out "next steps" after consultations in June and July.
Of most concern, though, was the progress report's failure to mention organizational changes the province drew up in the plan's final year. Stakeholders told the AG they feared that staff members key to the plan's success would see their roles reduced and that rules were being altered that insured money earmarked for the plan was actually used for youth mental health -- no small matter when the fledgling initiative would be jostling for funding with the MCFD's higher profile mandate of children in care.
It may just be nitpicking, but the plan was originally developed to address the confusing hodgepodge of agencies and care providers that at the time were poorly co-ordinated and unable to adequately combat the problem. The result was supposed to be a cohesive strategy, but the progress report paints a picture it itself admits is incomplete, consisting of a classroom-based anxiety prevention program here, a series of documentaries there, and 300 new hired professionals somewhere in between.
All told, the report was too vague and too scattered for a program that's supposed to be all about helping kids think clearer.
-- Associate news editor Rodney Venis
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 May 2008 )
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