Years after promising a better data collection, New Brunswick does not monitor basic information about how young people are progressing under government care.
The Social Development Department says that it is not tracking how many young people in care end the high school or how many former young people in care attend postsecundaria schools.
The department does not follow up on how many are convicted of crimes, imprisoned, fighting with addiction, discouraged or unemployed, or how many have become healthy and prosperous adults.
That is despite the calls of the lawyer of children and young people of the province Kelly Lamrock and the legislative changes introduced in 2022 to demand the monitoring results.
Lamrock said the department remains at a lower standard than parents.
“If a father did not know if his son graduated or was in jail, social development would knock on his door and ask to interview them,” he said during the committee hearings at that time. “But social development does not know.”
In response to Lamrock’s concerns about the monitoring of how young people in care for care, the then Minister of Social Development, Bruce Fitch, proposed that a record maintained by the department also tracks the “results obtained”, an amendment to the bill that finally passed to the law.
The legislation entered into force in January 2024, but the information it addresses is not yet tracking.
Cindy Miles, the current Minister of Social Development, says that the department continues to follow the Child Welfare Law.
“I don’t see us in a contravention of the law,” he said in an interview. “I see us in the implementation process at this time.”
“I hope those data points join as soon as possible.”
In an email, the department said that the graduation data is collected and public facts at the end of spring.
The Child Welfare Law says that the province can support former young people in the care that are accepted in the post -secondary school, but social development does not know how many have accessed that support or how many complete a post -secundary title.
Miles also said that he is working to collect data on employment, crime, housing and income support.
‘Abdication of responsibility’
From the last update of the province in December 2024, there were 735 children and young people in permanent care of the minister, and 489 in temporary legal care.
The Social Development Registry is now used to maintain “notes of precise and updated cases” in any child who receives social services, said spokeswoman Judy Winter.
“These results are related to the child’s disposition (that is, taken to attention, they returned home with support, living with relatives, adopted and more),” Winter said by email.
Without a better follow -upLamrock said, the province cannot know if its services for children and young people are working.
Lamrock believes that if the department was intended to follow the recommendation made in 2022, he would have already done so.
“The fact that the government does not know about their own children is an abdication of responsibility,” he said in an interview.
“I think that for a government to be the father of 1,000 children and say: ‘I do not know if they go to high school or in jail’, at some point, that is acceptable or is not. I think it is unacceptable.”
‘Who is responsible?’
John Sharpe, executive director of Partners for Youth, said that New Brunswick’s child welfare laws are clear that children under care have the right to education, and question if the act is being respected.
“When we talk about responsibility, the system must be responsible for children,” he said.
“We have had decades of children who did not graduate in high school, right? So who is responsible for that? Is it the fault of the child who is not given the necessary resources to graduate from high school?”
Jacqueline Gahagan, research of the associated vice president of the Mount Saint Vincent University, is studying educational achievement for those who were previously in government care.
Gahagan says that data on graduation rates in Canada are a mosaic. While more research is needed, they say that the data available for careful children suggest a much lower graduation rate compared to other children.
“That has consequences of all economic, social, political life and in terms of worse health results,” they said.
Sharpe said children and young people face certain conditions that can hinder education, such as changing placement locations.
“We are aware of some children who grew up in the care system that, by the time they have passed through the kindergarten, often do not complete high school, but in high school, some that we know have passed through 17 to 20 different schools in their career,” Sharpe said.
“In less than 10 years … How can you get some stability? How can you win traction?”
The defender has also previously reported that children in government care are 20 times more likely to be put in a partial day plan – Where a student has reduced class time, and alternative educational resources are not provided.
As the provinces receive OTTAWA funds to improve education, it must be requested to collect data on those who graduate who no, Gahagan said …
“I think that having an aggregate … General description of what is working where and why, that would be very useful for the people of the policy and for the programming of the people, decide that this is a good use of our finite tax dollars to expand some of these successful interventions.”
Ultimately, Lamrock said the data can inform better interventions in childhood, which in turn avoids major costs for the province in the future.
“Broken adults are much more expensive to fix than children with some needs,” Lamrock said.
“If we do not like the lack of housing, unemployment, crime, if we do not like to pay for surveillance, if we do not like to pay social assistance, if we do not like to pay the bad health results, then the time to intervene is when people are younger.”
