New Brunswick's Office of the Child and Youth Advocate has released its annual “state of the child report” which offers five recommendations and looks at some challenges faced by children with disabilities.
“According to the data, children with disabilities in our province fare worse across several of the child rights indicators than their neurotypical/non-disabled counterparts,” said child and youth advocate Kelly Lamrock in a news release from the province.
The report was presented at the 11th International Summer Course on the Rights of the Child, being held this week at the Université de Moncton.
“A child who struggles to read and is losing hope in school; the child who is bewildered, navigating a courtroom; the child in care, aching for a family; and the child with disabilities who needs support to have the friends and activities and hopes of their peers,” said Lamrock.
“These children all rely upon us taking their interests as ‘musts.’”
According to the report, data shows children are reporting higher rates of feeling unsafe at school, a lower sense of belonging at school, and lower rates of participation in extracurricular activities.
It also states 72.6 per cent of children reported not knowing where to go in their community to get help.
“Our province is lacking adequate training for suicide intervention, specialized services, standardized risk assessment tools and practices to triage mental health cases, community based care and services, and more,” the report stated.
The five recommendations offered are:
- The Department of Social Development develop a robust data monitoring system with appropriate data collection to support data disaggregation to effectively measure the impact of its programs on the progressive realization of the rights of children with disabilities.
- The Department of Social Development initiate the process for the review of the Child and Youth Well-Being Act in June 2025 and that it include a dedicated focus on improving child rights implementation throughout the statutory framework and particularly in order to advance, affirm and promote the rights of children with disabilities and to provide effective and accessible recourse when those rights are not met.
- The Province of New Brunswick through the joint efforts of Integrated Service Delivery ministries support and implement the five year Provincial Strategy of the FASD Centre of Excellence and in particular that it advance awareness and prevention efforts through the development of an effective and responsible Alcohol Policy.
- The Attorney General instruct the Director of Public Prosecutions to carry out a review of General Comment 24 of the Committee on the rights of the child and determine what measures can be taken to better and fully protect children’s rights through Prosecutions practice in the Province, having particular regard to the need to stop prosecuting children with neurodevelopmental delays.
- The Province take all legislative and administrative measures necessary to create a level playing field and Equal Opportunities for children with disabilities through increased supports to families with disabilities, including supports to innovative community based interventions for wrap-around models of care such as ACCESS Open Minds, Social Pediatrics, Child Advocacy Centres, Autism Centres and local FASD intervention centres.
The reports says government should look at how it handles intervention and prevention of the involvement of children in the criminal justice system.
“This should be done with an aim to develop measures to support children’s rights through court processes, especially in terms of taking all other avenues to avoid prosecuting children with neurodevelopmental delays,” said Lamrock.
He says the lack of data around children’s involvement with the justice system is also concerning.
“There is no information available for the number of special needs children who are in open or closed detention. In fact, there is no data at all to indicate how often neurodiverse/disabled children are coming into contact with the youth criminal justice system.”
According to Lamrock there is also very little data to show how children and youth with disabilities and their families are being supported by the Department of Social Development, and how effective that support may be.
The International Summer Course on the Rights of the Child is an annual event where professionals who work with children or promote children’s rights offer seminars in collaboration with Continuing Education of the Université de Moncton.
