Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Provincial Ministry receives bulk of Robinson Coroner's inquest recommendations

On Monday morning, the Coroner's Office published the full list of recommendations from the inquest into the deaths of Angie and Robert Robinson, with the jury providing 24 recommendations early Saturday morning from their week long review at the Prince Rupert Court House.

Of those 24 recommendations the majority of the information was directed towards a provincial ministry that has been in the spotlight quite frequently over the last few years, with 17 items highlighted for further review for the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

In the review of the death of Robert Robinson, the jury recommendations for the Minister of Children and Family Development included:

1. Ensure ongoing training with regards to Collaborative Practice between Child and Youth with Special Needs and Child Welfare Workers.

2. Provide Child Safety Training to the Child and Youth with Special Needs social workers to identify when to involve Child Protection Services.

3. Provide Children and Youth with Child and Youth Special Needs social workers with adequate training in special needs education policy and practice, and Cultural sensitivity.

4. Ensure the status of peace bonds and no contact orders are known and considered in safety planning for children.

5. Establish more directive guidelines regarding collaborative planning for children with special needs, to identify the types of ministry, medical, school and community programs, Aboriginal agencies and other supports who should be involved.

6. Review discharge planning practices and implement an action plan for Child and Youth with Special Needs clients when respite and/or other support services are cancelled or suspended.

7. Establish a protocol to ensure the First Nations Health Authority is involved in planning for First Nations children and youth with special needs.

8.  Consult with First Nations Bands and appropriate Aboriginal agencies with respect for planning for First Nations and Aboriginal children and youth with special needs.

9.  Ensure autism training in rural and remote communities, including Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) and other researched based therapies at no cost to a child's funding allowance.

10.  Review delegation training (Child Protection (C-6) Guardianship (C-4) and Resources (C-3) by working collaboratively with an Indigenous Delegated Training Agency to provide culturally sensitive practice.

11. Review the autism funding cap of six thousand dollars per year for children six years and over and consider increasing this funding in order to ensure higher need individuals are being accommodated.

From the review of the death of Angie Robinson, six further recommendations were delivered to the Minister as part of the Coroner's Inquest report, they included:

1. Ensure transportation issues are addressed separately from autism and other special needs funding for families in rural and remote communities where travel is required to access services.

2. Ensure transportation costs and availability are part of respite planning for children and youth with special needs when respite services are outside of their home community.

3.  Ensure families of children and youth with special needs are aware of advocacy services such as the Representative for Children and Youth and Inclusion B. C.

4. Ensure Child and Youth Special Needs Social Workers establish client lists to update caregivers with information and training on an ongoing basis.

5. Ensure Child and Youth Special Needs Social Workers provide assistance to caregivers in accessing funding and completing necessary paperwork.

6. Ensure caregivers of special needs children, living with conditions such as mental health issues or domestic violence, are assessed to determine appropriate support needs.

As part of the review of Ms. Robinson's death three recommendations were also noted for the attention of the Prince Rupert RCMP detachment.

1.  Ensure all domestic violence cases are brought to the attention of the integrated Case Assessment Team for review.

2. Ensure peace bonds and/or no contact orders, including variances, are to be reported to Child Protection Services immediately.

3.  Ensure members receive First Nations sensitivity training.

Other recommendations were delivered to Transition House, The BC College of Physicians and Surgeons, Northern Health and Community Living

You can review more on those recommendations from the full reports below.

Robert Robinson
Angie Robinson


All of the agencies which were included in the recommendations phase of the Inquest report have the option of providing a response to each item outlined in the report, should they do so those responses will be posted to the Coroner's Office file on the Robinson inquest found here.

For the recommendations to the Minister of Children and Family Development, the findings from the Inquest were brought up in the Legislature on Monday afternoon, with both MLA's Jennifer Rice and Doug Donaldson asking questions of Minister Stephanie Caideux.

During the course of those exchanges, Ms. Cadieux noted that the Coroner's Inquest report would be reviewed by members of the Ministry, along with an internal Director's report that has recently been completed.

As we outlined on the blog yesterday, the week long inquest attracted a fair amount of attention from some of the North coast media groups, the archive of their work and other notes related to the Robinson Coroner's inquest can be found here.

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