May 31, 2013 - Phoenix Sinclair Inquiry

B.D. MCKENZIE - DR.EX. (OLSON) MAY 31, 2013
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stream, that children were being apprehended very
frequently or large number of children were being
apprehended?
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A
Well, the factors leading to that increased trend
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that you see, and the trends will vary depending on the
sources of information, but they're driven, driven by
changes in legislation and changes in policy as well as
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sort of children being apprehended.
And, yes, it's
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children being apprehended but, but some of the ways in
which legislation has been changed have, have led to that.
For example, the definition of child protection has
expanded to include things like intimate partner violence
and sort of exposure to intimate partner violence, and so
that opens up a whole new area of potential neglect that
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child welfare agencies are responding to.
That's just one
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example of the kind of expansion of children coming into
care lead -- some of the factors that lead to the expansion
of children coming into care.
The other possible sort of aspect of this is, of
course, you know, and I'm not -- I can't comment in detail
about this, but, you know, we become kind of risk averse in
our approach to child welfare where we refer cases
sometimes that don't need to be referred, and some of those
end up in care, at least for periods of time, when maybe
other types of approaches would, would work better.
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