October 19, 2010 - A new report in British Columbia highlights ways to better understand and monitor the health and well-being of children and youth, while also noting unique challenges in addressing the health of the province's Aboriginal children - who face greater health risks, more suicide attempts, poorer performance at school, and twice the risk of exposure to alcohol or drugs while in the womb.
"Growing Up In B.C.," is a joint effort of the B.C. Representative for Children and Youth and the Provincial Health Officer, and is the the first report in Canada seeking to establish a baseline of data to support policy change in child and youth health. It identifies 30 indicators of well-being to determine answers to such questions as:
- Are babies born healthy?
- What is happening with children and youth in the care of the government?
- What is unique about the well-being of Aboriginal children and youth?
- What do young people think are important indicators of their own well-being?
Launched at the 2010 Champions for Children and Youth Summit in Vancouver, "Growing Up in B.C." provides a first step to improving the circumstances and outcomes for B.C.'s children and youth. The questions address both positive and negative issues, from youth suicide, abuse and alcohol or drug use, to volunteerism, high school graduation rates, and positive connections in communities and with caring adults.
"The goal from all of this is to identify a detailed set of indicators that can influence child and youth health and well-being, and that can be tracked by government over time," said Dr. Perry Kendall, BC Provincial Health Officer.
Critical Need to Develop Tools that Support Aboriginal Child Health
Generally, the report finds that children living in remote regions are more likely to be living in poverty, while 22 per cent of children in government care reported going to bed hungry. However, the gulf in health and well-being is particularly wide between BC First Nations and the rest of the province.
Margo Greenwood, Academic Leader of the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health, served as an expert consultant for the report. She said Aboriginal children as a whole do not fare as well as other children on indicators of well-being, and that a disproportionate number of Aboriginal children are in government care. Aboriginal children are six times more likely to be admitted to care than non-Aboriginal children; they also show the lowest scores of any group in education achievement tests.
Greenwood said these conditions speak to underlying issues rooted in a colonial past, and that indicators must be developed to "measure those realities."
"How do we assess the impact of cultural differences?" she asked.
Greenwood noted in the report that when it comes to data about Aboriginal children, measures of health tend to be too broad to capture nuances betweeen places in the province, or among groups of children and youth.
Further, research questions do not tend to reflect Indigenous perspectives, making it "impossible to determine results" that are meaningful or relevant for Aboriginal children. A key challenge is to understand the specific cultural or identity contexts of Aboriginal children in developing research data.
"Tools cannot be used from one paradigm to measure another paradigm. What is needed is the development of tools and processes for assessing the diversity in which Aboriginal children and youth exist," Greenwood said in the report.
Building a New Path Requires Policy Change and Resources
Greenwood said 'Growing Up in B.C.' has "huge policy implications."
"These kinds of statistics can drive and support meaningful decisions around policy and programs. This report has national implications in that best and promising practices are highlighted. It also adddresses common trends across the country for Aboriginal peoples who feel the burden of disparities, as these are not uniquely a B.C. experience. At the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health, we are asking: what are the policy interventions and strategies that can be applied nationally, while also grappling with diversity among First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples."
Report authors Kendall and Turpel-Lafond said changes in government policies and the way resources are allocated will be necessary to chart a new path for B.C. children and youth.