It is time Ontario had an independent advocate for children, says Cathy Vine

Our most vulnerable kids have a right to be heard

My 10-year-old daughter is the children's advocate in our house. When I share with her my work as executive director of Voices for Children — discussing, for example, difficulties immigrant or First Nations children face in their daily lives — she reminds me: "Shouldn't you be asking the kids what they think? After all, it's about us."

My daughter knows that I, and other adults in her life, value her input. These days, young people are often invited to share their views and ideas on issues that affect them.

Today is National Child Day, a day to mark the fact that being heard isn't just a privilege it's a right, as sacred as a child's right to basic health care or protection against exploitation. The right to be heard is embedded in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which introduced National Child Day on Nov. 20, 1989.

Canada's young people, 40 per cent of whom live in Ontario, are perhaps the last major group systematically excluded from decision-making. This leaves them completely dependent on the goodwill of adults for their health, safety, and capacity to develop and thrive.

Unfortunately, not all children are treated with the love and care, respect and attention I want for my daughter and son. In particular, Ontario's most vulnerable children and youth — approximately 25,000 in government care through children's aid societies, in mental health systems, in residential schools for the hearing or visually impaired, in detention, or police custody or other settings — depend on a system that too often fails them utterly.

A child has died each year in care or custody since 1996. We hear about the most shocking cases on the news. Like the story of 5-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin,who died of hunger, abuse and gross neglect in 2002, despite children's aid documentation that his grandparents had abused other children. Or the case of Stephanie Jobin, the autistic 13- year-old who died of suffocation while being physically restrained in a youth facility.

But behind the headlines are thousands more children whose lives are diminished and whose voices go unheard. These are the children who urgently need someone to wake up every day vigilant to protect them, attentive to their words and empowered to act on their behalf. Who is watching over these children? Although Ontario has a children's advocate, the position reports to the minister of children and youth services, rather than directly to the people of Ontario, let alone the young people of Ontario.

It lacks the proper arm's-length independence, the mandate and the resources to be an effective formal voice for children and youth with no one else to speak for them — and no way to have their voices formally recognized in the institutions charged with their care.

In 2004, Voices for Children supported a group of young people to write a report, Just Listen to Me: Youth Voices on Violence. At a news conference held by Dr. Marie Bountrogianni in 2005, then-minister of the newly created ministry of children and youth services, we were thrilled to hear her announce the government's imminent plans to introduce legislation to create an independent child and youth advocate. She said she wanted the youth who'd written the report to know she'd heard them when they told her not only had they grown up with violence in their families, they'd experienced it again in the government system that was supposed to help and protect them.

All three major political parties agree that Ontario needs an independent advocate for children. As far back as 2003, the Liberals — then in opposition — promised to establish a new child advocate office, independent of the government, reporting only to the Legislature. They were on the right track.

The children's advocate needs the independence, authority and resources to consult directly with children and youth, respond to their requests to investigate abuses or problems in the system, inform them of their rights, demand progress reports from the government, review deaths of children in care and seek standing at inquests. The position must be accessible to children, and children must be directly involved in its design — an essential step that has been neglected thus far.

The 2003 promise was followed by the 2005 announcement, and here on National Child Day in 2006 the legislation seems as distant as ever, despite the good intentions of the current minister of children and youth services, Mary Anne Chambers.

Today, Stephanie Ma, author of the Just Listen to Me report and a participant in the discussions, asks: "What good have our voices done?" Because, with just a year left in the current government's mandate, there is a real danger that this crucial legislation will not be introduced before the next election, or even after.

But children don't have time to wait. It's time to move from goodwill to good policy. My in-house children's advocate says it all when she asks, in response to our discussions on issues affecting kids, "Well, what do the children have to say?" Today, on the day our country formally recognizes as National Child Day, we need to know. The children of Ontario deserve their own independent advocate — now.

Cathy Vine, Voices for Children
20 November 2006

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