Seven months after it announced an education and training grant for B.C. children, the Liberal government still has no clear idea how to make the money available to children in care.
B.C. families can now receive $1,200 for every child born on or after Jan. 1, 2007. All they have to do is open a Registered Education Savings Plan before the child turns seven years old.
“The sooner you create an RESP, the sooner your savings can start to grow and earn interest for your child,” the government says on its website.
But children in care still have no way to access that money, said Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the B.C. representative for children and youth.
“In my view, government has not landed on that yet,” she said.
And while her office continues to work closely with the government on the issue, Turpel-Lafond said “the legislation has not been prepared, the trusts have not been developed and they may need to accomplish it in a different way to fulfill their commitment.”
“So there’s a distance to be gone on that issue.”
Turpel-Lafond first criticized the government in February for announcing the grant in its pre-election budget without taking any steps to set up plans for 8,000 children in care.
“They’re saying prudent parents have RESPs and if you don’t have one, we’re going to get you to get one,” she said at the time.
“Why did they get on their high horse and tell parents to do it when they haven’t done it for 8,000 kids, either?”
The government scrambled to confirm that children in care would, indeed, be eligible for the money.
But Children’s Minister Stephanie Cadieux said this week that it’s still unclear how that will happen.
Cadieux said her office is working with Public Guardian and Trustee Catherine Romanko to figure out the best way to deliver the program. Romanko is the property guardian for children in continuing care and responsible for their legal and financial interests.
“We’re still not quite there yet in determining what that looks like for kids in care,” Cadieux said. “But they definitely will have access to that money; it’s just a question of how.”
Romanko said Thursday in a statement she’s pleased all eligible children will receive the grant. “It is important that children in care do not miss this opportunity because they are not in a parental home,” she said.
But Romanko noted there are complexities associated with designing a program for children who may move in and out of care over time. “The structure of the plan must accommodate their changing situations,” she said.
NDP children’s critic Carole James said the delay shows how little thought government put into the program before it was announced.
“It certainly seemed to me that it was an election commitment that was pulled together,” she said. “It wasn’t a well thought-out commitment [given] the fact that they hadn’t thought about children in care. They hadn’t thought about grandparents raising grandchildren. Those are basics for a program for young people.”
James said her choice would have been to help young people today rather than years in the future. But with the program already in place, the least the government can do is make sure that every child has access, she said.
“In order to make it equitable, children in care need to be included.”
