Residential Services to Children in Need of Protection

Case Data and Trends

Greater emphasis on safely preserving families has started to reduce the number of children and youth being admitted into Care (CYIC). A key strategic goal of the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) is to safely lower this number still further, particularly for Indigenous children and youth.

¹ "-" Indicates no counts of admissions.

² "*" Indicates Service Deliver Area (SDA) data suppressed where there are fewer than 10 admissions and for the second lowest count.

¹ "-" Indicates no counts of orders.

² "*" Indicates SDA data suppressed where there are fewer than 10 orders and for the second lowest count.

Fatalities

The following tables provide the number of fatalities of Children and Youth in Care, as well as those that have received other ministry services within a year of their death. As of October, 2007, the B.C. Coroner's Service is responsible for the investigation of all child deaths. The Ministry of Children and Family Development verifies child fatality categories of death with the Office of the Chief Coroner of British Columbia. The categorization of a fatality may change as a death is investigated or new information becomes available.

Because many children and youth served by the ministry are medically fragile, almost half of these fatalities are through natural causes.

ⁱ In the “Undetermined” category, “open” indicates a case is still under investigation by the Coroner; “closed” indicates the Coroner’s investigation is complete and, due to insufficient evidence or inability to determine, the death cannot reasonably be classified as natural, accidental, suicide or homicide.

ⁱⁱ Updated classification from the Coroner regarding cause of death.

ⁱⁱⁱ Late report of death outside of six month bi-yearly report.

^iv This total includes 1 fatality where there is no Coroner classification of death because the fatality occurred outside the province or country.

^v 37% of the total number of deaths for January 1 to June 30, 2021 were attributed to Natural causes.

^vi This total includes a child in care under the Adoption Act who received services within 12 months of death.

Classification of Death

NATURAL: Death primarily resulting from a disease of the body and not resulting secondarily from injuries or abnormal environmental factors.

ACCIDENT: Death due to unintentional or unexpected injury. It includes death resulting from complications reasonably attributed to the injury.

HOMICIDE: Death due to injury intentionally inflicted by the action of another person. Homicide is a neutral term that does not imply fault or blame.

UNDETERMINED: Death which, because of insufficient evidence or inability to otherwise determine, cannot be classified as natural, accidental, suicide or homicide.