Gaps in care assessment led to deaths, serious injuries: Alberta’s child and youth advocate

A review of 69 deaths and serious injuries, conducted by Alberta’s child and youth advocate, has found there were gaps when child intervention workers assessed families.

In her annual review of children or young adults who died or experienced serious injury, advocate Terri Pelton said that in more than half of the cases, child intervention workers didn’t adequately evaluate either the caregivers’ capacity to help or the impact of disrupted relationships .

“These critical factors influence safety, well-being and long-term outcomes for young people,” Pelton wrote in her Calling for Change report for 2024-25, which was released Thursday.

She recommended mandatory training on the impact of trauma for provincial employees who work with young people, and the adoption of better systems to identify young people with trauma.

Failure to identify and treat trauma early is prompting a cycle of young people in the province’s care exhibiting escalating behavioural challenges and developing addictions, which caregivers feel they can’t handle. This leads to more transitions between caregivers, broken relationships and more trauma, Pelton said.

“We need to get professionals to understand where that behavior is coming from…. Why is this child behaving this way? Take a step back and try and de-escalate and understand it,” Pelton said in an interview with CBC.

The report uses examples to illustrate her concerns. In one, a boy told adults it was not safe for him to live with his parents, who had substance abuse and family violence problems. Despite this, he was repeatedly returned home and died at age 19 from accidental substance poisoning.

The report also mentions a nine-month-old baby girl who was hospitalized after ingesting opioids and methamphetamines and then was sent home with a safety plan for the family. Despite further involvement with child intervention staff, the child died at 19 months of age from drug poisoning.

Pelton’s reviews for the 2024-25 fiscal year included 60 deaths and nine serious injuries. The youngest child was a 10-day-old, medically complex baby. The oldest was a 23-year-old woman.

Of the 60 deaths Pelton examined, 33 of the young people died of unintentional drug or alcohol poisoning.

About two-thirds of the young people were Indigenous.

“The advocate remains deeply concerned about the over-involvement of government systems in the lives of Indigenous People,” the report says.

“There needs to be a lot of trauma-informed care,” Nikk Goodswimmer, a two-spirit child advocate, said in an interview with CBC about what needs to change.

“As well as cultural approaches about Indigenous parenting, Indigenous children who are in care and about what that looks like after the age-out process,” said Goodswimmer who is Stoney Nakota and Cree from Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation.

NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said the report findings are unacceptable.

“Year after year, we have these reports that say that government is incapable of looking after the most vulnerable children in our society, and if we don’t look after the most vulnerable, what kind of a community do we have?”

WATCH | Youth advocates say more trauma informed training is needed for workers:

Alberta’s child and youth advocate finds gaps in youth trauma practices

Alberta’s Office of the Child and Youth Advocate says it has found gaps in care when child intervention workers assessed families in recent years. As CBC’s Nicole Healey explains, this finding comes from a review studying 69 children or young adults who died or experienced serious injury.

The report compiles investigative reviews the office completed between April 2024 and March 2025. The advocate is legally mandated to review the circumstances in which a young person who was receiving child intervention services within the past two years died or was seriously injured.

In an ongoing push for the province to increase its support for young adults who age out of government care, Pelton also recommended the government make its policy manual public for a program aimed at helping those young adults.

Publishing the Transition to Adulthood Program (TAP) manual would give young people clear information about what help they’re entitled to, the advocate’s report says.

In a similar report last year, Pelton said financial help through TAP shouldn’t stop at age 22, but should continue until age 24 or 26.

Goodswimmer says the program should be available until the age of 29.

“When they made the agreement that 22 was a cut-off age, I was already well above past that age, and I ended up houseless because of that,” said Goodswimmer.

“Which is really frustrating, and especially for youth that are still having to struggle with facing, you know, all these different criterias of life.”

The province spent $57 million on TAP in the 2024-25 fiscal year, according to the Ministry of Children and Family Services’ annual report. The ministry says 91 per cent of children in care who turned 18 that year continued on to receive support from TAP.

As of last March, more than 2,100 young adults had agreements to receive help through the program. Eligible young adults aged 23 and 24 don’t receive financial help, but do qualify for mentoring, mental health and addiction, cultural support, employment services and other assistance through TAP, the annual report says.

In a separate annual report from the office of the child and youth advocate, released last week, the office reports that of 23 recommendations advocates have made to government in recent years, five had “significant progress made.” The rest had either some or no progress made.

Minister of Children and Family Services Searle Turton said that the province has “implemented well over 100 of the recommendations that have been put forth.”

When asked whether the province will raise TAP age eligibility, Turton said his focus was on increasing supports for younger children under the age of 18.

“We want them to be more resilient when they become adults, so that they can be better equipped to meet the challenges that adulthood brings,” Turton said.

“That’s why we have the refocusing with many of our Family Resource Networks, the enhanced supports for children at younger ages.”