The BC Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) kept thousands of dollars in funding for grandparents who needed the money to help care for their grandson, according to a new report.
The BC ombudsman said the ministry did not transfer $ 7,000 in federal financial aid to grandparents, identified in the report Tuesday as the Taylor. The couple was eligible for funding because their granddaughter lives with disabilities.
Through an “unfair” funding model, the money intended to help the Taylories ended up in the province’s bank account.
“This case is disturbing on a couple of levels,” People’s Advocate Jay Chalke wrote in a statement Tuesday.
“Not only did the Taylor not receive money that they could have used for their granddaughter’s essential care needs, the ministry knew there was a problem and it took too long to fix it.”
In a written response to the report, Minister Mitzi Dean said that the MCFD has already implemented all the ombudsman’s recommendations.
“Ensuring that children living with disabilities have access to fair and effective funding is a priority,” Dean said.
Grandparents have changed for years: report
The Taylor family began caring for their two-year-old granddaughter, identified as Jesse, in 2013. Jesse is indigenous and lives with a physical and mental disability.
According to the report, the MCFD began giving the Taylor a little over $ 1,000 a month in provincial funding to help support Jesse’s care.
The couple later learned that they were eligible for additional federal funding due to Jesse’s disabilities. They successfully applied for the Child Disability Benefit, which offers approximately $ 242 a month to caregivers of children and adolescents with severe disabilities.
The Taylor’s request was approved, but they did not receive any of the money.
BC People’s Advocate Jay Chalke at a press conference in Victoria on April 6, 2017. (Chad Hipolito / The Canadian Press)
Under federal law, the MCFD was still considered “maintaining” Jesse’s care at the time because it still gave provincial funding to Taylors. Therefore, the federal child disability benefit was paid to support the province, not the grandparents.
The ministry kept the cash as general revenue and did not send it to the Taylor.
“By not passing on these benefits to Taylor, the ministry benefits from Jesse’s disability designation,” the report says.
The ministry already knew about the problem
The Taylorers complained to the ministry in 2019. A ministry staff member responded and agreed that the situation was “problematic” but did not resolve it. Another follow-up response said the ministry could not make any changes until the “proper consultations, reviews and approvals” were made.
The ombudsman began investigating in 2020. The report said it is rare for the ombudsman to start an investigation and find out that the subject of the complaint already knows the problem, but has simply not resolved it. .
“The injustice of this case is exacerbated by the fact that when the Taylor complained to us, the ministry had already acknowledged that this was a problem,” Chalke wrote.
Altogether, the Taylor’s were eligible for more than $ 7,000 in regular benefits and one-time payments from 2019.
It was not until this February, more than two years after the Taylor complaint, that the ministry informed eligible caregivers that the province would begin offering them an additional benefit, equivalent to the child disability benefit, to solve the problem. .
Payments will be retroactive to 2019, as recommended by the Office of the Catalan Ombudsman.
“I am glad that the ministry is now paying an amount equivalent to the child disability benefit to these carers, but given the impact on children with disabilities and their carers, I would have hoped that when this problem was identified, the ministry would have he fixed it immediately, “Chalke said.
“For families caring for children with disabilities, every dollar matters, and it is not acceptable that Taylor and families like them have been changed at that time, and only this year are they promised funds that they should to have received years ago “.