All of B.C.'s children-in-care facilities will be investigated by B.C.'s Child and Youth Representative, especially the ones in Prince George.
The main topic Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond will examine, in the wake of the April 7 Tasering of an 11-year-old local boy in care, is the use of police to control the behaviour of such kids.
"I have raised the issue of group homes, particularly in Prince George, for at least three years," she said Thursday, adding the results have been less than satisfactory.
Turpel-Lafond said she may yet examine the Tasering case specifically, but can proceed only after the other investigations are complete. That could take a year or longer.
The boy's parents have said he suffers from bipolar disorder and a heart condition. The Children's Ministry has declined to provide specifics, citing privacy laws, but officials have said he was the only child living in the residential facility, under the supervision of two staff members around the clock.
In the meantime, Turpel-Lafond said she will delve into the habits of B.C.'s group homes and care residences where children-in-care live.
"In reviewing this particular incident, I became concerned about a wider issue of police being called by group-home staff to attend and act as a disciplinarian of sorts," she said.
"The incidents are numerous, and aren't related to criminal activity by the child or youth. Instead, police would attend when staff wanted help with behaviour concerns, like children not wanting to come into the house, go to their bedrooms or be put in a 'quiet room' in a group-home."
She said her review would take a province-wide look at staff training, staff numbers, and the way the children were generally treated.
"There was a period time, I believe around 2002, where there were specialized mental health therapeutic resources for children in British Columbia. That mostly got shut down and now there are some individual operators and so forth," she said.
She said that studies clearly showed damage to a child's development if police were the ones who intervened on their behaviour at an early age.
Furthermore, their lives in their care facilities were, by rights, to be parallel to those of everyone else's child living in their own parental homes, she said. The average parent does not call in the police when their child's behaviour is upsetting.
"When dealing with particularly vulnerable children in the care of government, serious issues arise if staff are not properly trained to deal with challenging behaviours and instead are using police to bring kids into line when criminal activity isn't involved," she said.
"I'm aware this may be an issue not only in the Northern Region but possibly in other areas of B.C. as well, and this demands a thorough examination."
As for the incident of Taser use on the Prince George boy, who was a suspect in a stabbing only moments before of a care facility worker, she said she was not blaming or absolving the police member involved, or police procedure in general.
"It is shocking, it is disturbing, it is not what we want to see happening with a child," she said. "We need to dig deeper."
On any given day in B.C., there are about 10,000 children in ministry care, she said. Of those, about 10 or 11 per cent are in a group home setting, and increasingly those facilities are privately operated facilities.
- With files from Canadian Press
