Pubdate: Wed, 24 Aug 2016
Source: Vancouver 24hours (CN BC)
Copyright: 2016 Vancouver 24 hrs.
Contact: http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/letters
Website: http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3837
Author: Eric MacKenzie
Page: 3

ADVOCATE CONTINUES CALL FOR SECURE CARE

B.C. Civil Liberties Association remains concerned with ethics of the
concept

With some recent support by way of B.C.'s Representative for Children
and Youth, Diane Sowden is hopeful to see secure care implemented
after years of advocacy.

Currently, at-risk minors in the province can't be placed into detox,
rehab or treatment programs against their will, even if doing so is
deemed to be in their best interest. Secure care, which exists in some
form in several provinces, would allow youth to be forced into
treatment involuntarily.

Sowden, executive director of the Children of the Street Society, has
been fighting for secure care since the 1990s, when her own daughter
became addicted to drugs, involved in prostitution and pregnant by age
14. But there was nothing Sowden could legally do to help her daughter
escape the situation.

But after two decades fighting for secure care legislation, Sowden
knows it's a controversial topic for some.

"Holding a child or youth against their will is not comfortable for
anybody," she said. "But, I think we have to realize there are youth
being abused through alcohol, street drugs and sexual exploitation
that we can't say that's OK either.

"Because it's controversial, because it's not feel-good, I think is
one of the reasons it's not happening. You're going to have as many
people against it as you have for it."

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the Representative for Children and Youth,
has been a supporter of the idea. She recommended last year that the
Ministry of Children and Family Development investigate creating "a
form of secure care, with all appropriate legal safeguards, that would
allow for the apprehension of vulnerable children and youth whose
situation places them at an unacceptable level of risk and the
subsequent safe placement of these children in a service that will
respond to their trauma and high risk of self-harm."

The Ministry told 24 hours that the province is in the midst of
developing a mental health and substance abuse strategy to be revealed
later this year. Whether that will include a form of secure care is
still unclear.

"It is widely agreed that voluntary services ... are the most
effective means of addressing addiction issues," said a Ministry
statement, which didn't rule out the possibility of legislation
allowing youth to be detained involuntarily.

"Government is committed to providing the most appropriate services
for people suffering from addictions in British Columbia, and we
welcome any ideas on how we may be able to improve these."

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, however, has been expressing
concerns about secure care since it was being discussed in the 1990s.
Secure care legislation received three readings under an NDP
government, but it was abandoned after the BC Liberals swept into
power in 2001.

"The Representative is rightly cautious in her recommendation to note
that appropriate legal safeguards need to be in place if the province
uses a power to detain young people in secure care," BCCLA executive
director Josh Paterson said in a letter addressed to Minister of
Children and Family Development Stephanie Cadieux.

"We have longstanding concerns about the way in which secure care is
designed and used, and about the kinds of limits and protection that
need to accompany such a system."

In the past, the BCCLA argued that secure care shouldn't apply to
youth 16 and older, should be used only as a last resort and in
emergency situations, among other positions.

"Depending on what is proposed by the ministry in the future, if
anything, we may raise these or other concerns," wrote Paterson.

Sowden said she agrees that the necessary safeguards need to be in
place, but said it's important to acknowledge that the youths who
would be considered for secure care are in circumstances that can't be
made much worse.

"We've got to remember that we're talking about the very highest risk
youth in our population," she said. "We're not talking about confining
a child because they don't attend school, or mom and dad don't like
the boyfriend, or because they're smoking dope."

Rather, secure care would be appropriate for someone like her own
daughter more than 20 years ago, she said.

"At 14 years old, standing on the Kiddie stroll in Vancouver, turning
tricks, pregnant, injecting heroin," she said. "How could it be more
traumatizing to take her out of that position and wrap services around
her?"
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MAP posted-by: Matt