B.C. youth representative says official inaction led to boy's torturous death in foster care

British Columbia's representative for children and youth is calling for a complete overhaul of the province's foster care model following the torture and death of an 11-year-old boy in 2021.

In a report published Tuesday, representative Jennifer Charlesworth called the Fraser Valley boy's death at the hands of caregivers who were approved by the provincial government "completely preventable," saying official missteps contributed to the child's death.

Last year, a provincial court judge in Chilliwack, B.C., described the foster home where the boy and his sister were abused as a "house of horrors."

The children's caregivers, who cannot be named due to a publication ban, were sentenced to 10 years in prison for manslaughter and aggravated assault following the boy's death.

The ministry failed to complete background checks on the siblings' caregivers or visit the home before the children were placed there, Charlesworth found.

The placement was approved by both the ministry and the children's First Nation. Charlesworth called the lack of due diligence "a massive error" as the children's female caregiver had prior involvement with the ministry about the physical abuse of her own child, while there were also documented concerns about her partner's "conduct with children."

In a statement Tuesday, the child and youth representative called on the province to "stop tinkering at the edges of an outdated system that does not work for too many children and families," saying transformative changes are necessary to keep children safe.

"We need to recognize that young people are currently 20 per cent of the population, but they are 100 per cent of the future of this province," Charlesworth said. "Given this, we must commit together to move their needs up the priority list significantly."

The report documents missteps by the B.C. Ministry of Children and Family Development and other agencies, and calls on the province to work with Indigenous governments to establish an action plan for child and youth welfare.

Charlesworth's report found there was no single person or thing wholly responsible for the boy's death, blaming instead a "web of actions and inactions and dozens of missed opportunities across an entire system."

"Over more than three decades, dozens of reports about child and family services in British Columbia have been written and released by various organizations, including by this office. Hundreds of recommendations have been made and millions of dollars have been invested by the government in an attempt to address those recommendations," says a summary of the report, which refers to the boy using the pseudonym Colby.

"And yet here we are again – reviewing the death of an innocent young child and asking the same questions that have been asked for years: How did the systems that are intended to help children and families in this province let this boy and his family down so badly? What will it take for us not to return to this very place in another few years?" 

In response to the report, the Ministry of Children and Family Development announced a process to "reimagine" how child welfare services are delivered in the province.

The government will begin by establishing a cross-ministry group of senior officials to "guide the development of the new direction throughout the fall and map out new strategies focused on outcomes and prevention," the ministry said in a news release.

"As the minister, as a mom, there are not words for what Colby and the other children whose stories are shared in this report experienced," said Children's Minister Grace Lore, in a statement.

"Every child in our province deserves safety, belonging and love … We must do things differently and are committing today to a new vision for child well-being that focuses on prevention, care and a new way of thinking."