An extraordinary act of courage

Liberal MLA Randy Hawes urged a full review of CLBC

One of the hardest things for a politician to do (no jokes, please) is to stand up for his/her constituents when that means publicly standing up to the boss. Especially when that calls for putting political partisanship aside to support colleagues on the other side of the political divide because you think it's the right thing to do.

Which is why MOMS wants to applaud the courage of BC Liberal MLA Randy Hawes, who stood up and delivered a moving statement in the BC Legislature today that publicly challenged Premier Christy Clark today over her handling of BC's community living crisis and urged his own government to commission an external review of CLBC

Read the report on this extraordinary act in the Victoria Times Colonist:

UPDATE: Another BC Liberal MLA, Gordon Hogg, joined Hawes in expressing concern and discomfort over his government's management of community living. Hogg was the minister responsible for community living in 2001 when his government agreed to far-reaching reforms that he promised would significantly improve services for people with developmental disabilities. Many of those early commitment have now been abandonned as CLBC struggles to deal with massive budget shortfalls.

Former Minister Gordon Hogg, whose promises of a brighter future for community living have been abandonned

Read Surrey White Rock MLA Gordon Hogg's comments in the Globe and Mail

The comments were made in the BC Legislature today after an NDP motion was introduced by MLA Nicholas Simons, calling on government to stop group home closures. The Opposition NDP has been working tirelessly with families to bring forward the community living concerns and has endorsed community calls for a moratorium on cuts and group home closures and an external review of CLBC. But  the statements by these two government MLAs put their own political careers in jeopardy - the ultimate selfless act for any elected official.

UPDATE #2: Well, something truly extraordinary is unfolding in BC! A third BC Liberal MLA, former Cabinet Minister John van Dongen, has now stepped up and criticized his own government's handling of the community living crisis, as Premier Christy Clark and Minister Stephanie Cadieux continue to try to deny that there is any crisis. And according to this report in the Vancouver Sun, other BC Liberal MLAs have also been privately echoing the concerns that the Opposition NDP members have been raising in the Legislature almost every day.

Abbotsford South MLA John van Dongen

Read the Vancouver Sun report on MLA John Van Dongen's criticism of his government's treatment of people with developmental disabilities.

Please take a moment to email Mr Hawes (randy.hawes.mla@leg.bc.ca), Mr. Hogg (gordon.hogg.mla@leg.bc.ca) and Mr Van Dongen (john.vandongen.mla@leg.bc.ca) to thank them for their courageous acts:  Consider cc-ing their boss, Premier Christy Clark, and urging her to follow their leadership: premier@gov.bc.ca

We sincerely thank Mr. Hawes and Mr. Hogg for putting aside partisanship and doing the right thing for their constituents. We urge Premier Clark and their colleagues to do the same and to join the broader community working to resolve the crisis in community living!

Dawn & Cyndi, MOMS

Voices from the front lines of BC’s community living crisis

Last Friday, MOMS was part of the BC Community Living Action Group delegation that finally got an audience with the minister responsible for community living (after six months of repeated requests!). We had the opportunity to share our concerns about the community living crisis and decided to let the voices of families and caregivers speak for themselves, by reading out a sampling from the hundreds of deeply disturbing emails that MOMS has received in the past 18 months.

• Read our Voices from the front lines:

MOMS urged the Minister to adopt the recommendations of the BC Community Living Action Group, including CLAG’s calls for the BC government to:

1. Immediately inject $70 million to address the unfunded backlog of service needs from the past two years.
2. Order a moratorium on CLBC’s service redesign process, group home closures and service cuts.
3. Order an external review of CLBC to investigate the very serious and systemic concerns.
4. Establish an independent advocate to provide independent monitoring, oversight, advocacy and public reporting on behalf of adults with developmental disabilities in BC.
5. Restore the commitment to supporting choice in service options and the meaningful inclusion of families and self advocates in planning and deciding how they will live their own lives.

To learn more about the community living crisis and the BC CLAG campaign, visit the BC CLAG website.

We ask families, caregivers and concerned citizens to continue to urge Premier Christy Clark to start taking this crisis seriously by immediately agreeing to the BC CLAG recommendations. The new CLBC minister – the fourth minister in the past year!! – was unable to make any commitment.

Dawn & Cyndi, MOMS

Fourth new CLBC minister in a year won’t fix crisis if Premier, MLAs are still in denial

After months of disturbing media reports on the CLBC crisis, Premier Christy Clark finally fired Minister Harry Bloy and replaced him with rookie BC Liberal MLA Stephanie Cadieux this week.

Cadieux becomes the fourth minister in charge of CLBC in less than a year (Rich Coleman was the minister a year ago, when MOMS first started raising concerns about the impact of cuts stemming from community living's ongoing "service redesign," followed briefly by Kevin Krueger, Bloy and now Cadieux!)

A Victoria Times Colonist editorial pretty well sums up our view that this is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

"Shuffling Harry Bloy out of the Social Development Ministry because he's a poor communicator misses the point.

"The ministry's actions, particularly its failure to provide adequate support to those with mental disabilities, are the problem. Slicker messaging can't change the reality of reduced per-client funding, long waits for services and despair and fear among families.

"Bloy was inept and apparently out of touch. He insisted for months, for example, that Community Living B.C. clients weren't being forced from group homes against their will to reduce costs. They were, the government now admits. But senior managers from the ministry and CLBC were sitting beside Bloy as he made those claims in the legislature, and failed to provide accurate information.

"Underfunding that left CLBC unable to meet the "urgent health and safety needs" of vulnerable clients just five months into the year is a matter of incompetent planning or a decision not to provide needed resources, not of poor communication.

"Premier Christy Clark deserves much of the blame....Read more

Times Colonist staff broke the first reports about group home closures and forced relocations in June 2010, and deserve a major award for their tenacious investigative reporting to expose and document the crisis in the face of govt denials and dissembling.

As the editorial notes, simply changing the Minister again won't fix the problems, if the governing BC Liberals aren't prepared to acknowledge the underlying crisis and make new funding and other consensus measures recommended by the BC CLAG network of community leaders a priority, in order to assure the safety and wellbeing of people with developmental disabilities and their families.

It was depressing therefore to hear Mr. Krueger (BC Liberal MLA for Kamloops) in the local media (CHNL Radio) this week dismissing the CLBC crisis as not a problem and nothing more than opposition NDP "fear mongering." He claimed in a Sept 27 radio interview that government was closing group homes simply because more adults were "choosing" to live with their families.

It is inexcusable, if the Premier and her governing BC Liberal party want to establish any credibility on this file, that their caucus members continue to publicly demonstrate such callous denial and disregard, after scores of media reports confirming that people have been forced from the only homes they have ever known, and into often disastrous alternate care arrangements, simply to produce a few dollars in savings.

(Krueger's views aren't unanimous -- some BC Liberal MLAs have made it clear they're as disturbed as the rest of us by the deteriorating situation, but so far, Krueger's view continues to guide prevailing govt policy.)

Krueger's comments are especially disturbing because we have fresh reports this week of more cuts to critical community living services in Kamloops and surrounding communities, along with reports that the crisis is also affecting youth services. Another MCFD-funded group home run by Prima Enterprises for teens with developmental disabilities is being closed in Kelowna this month, although as of 2 days ago, there was no alternate placement yet for these very vulnerable youth. A Times Colonist report last year revealed that MCFD was also trying to find savings by closing group homes, but we heard little further about this from families, possibly because the cuts are focussed on children in government care, who have no families to sound the alarm for them.

Please continnue to bring to our attention any new reports of cuts or closures for adults, youth or children's services around the province, particularly those where the families are not involved to advocate on their behalf, so that we can support efforts to hold government accountable. The BC Legislature resumes sitting next week, which will present plenty of new opportunities to raise concerns and demand a satisfactory government response.

We want to thank all those who have been speaking up by writing letters to government or forwarding information to support advocacy efforts - we will continue to post updates, including announcements on community initiatives and how you can support them. October is Community Living month in BC, so stay tuned!

For more news and information on the community living crisis, visit the BC Community Living Action Group website

BC government offers a cup of tea to douse a raging kitchen fire

$6 million won't stop group home closures, cuts, waitlists or growing safety risks

The BC government today announced $8.9 million in new funding to address the crisis in community living.

The announcement follows a recent statement from the BC Community Living Action Group (CLAG), based on analysis of CLBC's own data, which showed that an immediate injection of $70 million is required just to cover the unfunded needs of some 1,400 new adults who qualified for CLBC services in for 2010 and 2011 -- a period during which CLBC's budget has been frozen.

CLBC projects a similar net increase in demands for 2012 and 2013, although its budget has been frozen by the provincial budget until 2014.

This growing funding gap explains the growing crisis in community living since 2010. Families are facing tremendous pressures and anxiety due to growing waitlists. CLBC's solution has been to "rob Peter to pay Paul" (for example by forcing adults out of group homes or clawing back services) in order to crisis-manage only the most urgent "health and safety" needs.

Back to the government announcement, actually only $6 million of that is new funding, as $2.9 million refers to previously-committed funding (the 2-year old Personalized Supports Initiative) to provide support for young adults in crisis who are not eligible for CLBC services (e.g. youth in foster care with FASD or autism who are released into the community with absolutely no support after age 19).

The province and CLBC claim the $6 million will provide "new and additional supports and services" for 540 people.

The reality is rather more stark.

CLAG revs up campaign as Premier, Bloy refuse to meet/address growing crisis

The BC Community Living Action Group (BC CLAG), the unprecedented partnership of family groups (including MOMS), agencies, employees and self-advocate organizations formed to fight the BC government's devastating cuts and "service redesign," has issued an important update and appeal for support today.

• Read the BC CLAG Update

The changes being implemented by CLCB are drastically eroding many critical provincially-funded community living services that are supposed to support adults with dev. disabilities over age 19 and their families.

Extensive community consultations resulted in a consensus report and recommendations issued by BC CLAG last April. Premier Christy Clark, Minister Harry Bloy and CLBC's leadership have all refused to acknowledge the concerns or the recommendations outlined in that report. Since March 2011, BC CLAG has repeatedly asked Minister Bloy and Premier Clark to meet urgently with us to discuss the systemic concerns and our recommendations to stem the growing crisis. Both have declined so far to meet with BC CLAG.

In light of the Premier's refusal to engage or address the growing concerns, the BC CLAG partners have continued to meet and strategize on next steps. We are committed to stepping up the pressure on the BC Premier and her government, until she acknowledges and responds to the very serious crisis unfolding in our province.

Meanwhile, the news media continue to highlight the plight of adults and families. MOMS applauds the many families and stakeholders who have been stepping forward and sacrificing their families' privacy in order to alert the public to what is happening.

Now we need your help to support the next phase of our province-wide campaign. Please read the BC CLAG Update to see what you can do.

Thanks to all those who are standing up with us to emphasize that adults with developmental disabilities and their families are valued citizens who deserve to live meaningful lives, safely, in dignity and with the respect and support of their own communities.

Dawn & Cyndi, MOMS

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