Panellist Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, BC's Representative for Children and Youth, used the opportunity to release some preliminary results from her upcoming report, which examines the relationship between youth in care and the justice system. Turpel-Lafond told the audience that her research shows, "children in care in British Columbia have had a higher probability of ending up in the corrections system — 36 percent of them — than they did of graduating from high school, which is 24 percent. I think that's probably the most staggering finding, because it's exactly not the outcome that we want for them."
The Representative emphasized that she has found that children in care who stay out of the justice system did so because they had better support. She called for stable funding for a variety of services that could help families at an early stage of children's lives and provide what Turpel-Lafond called "protective factors" to keep the children out of the justice system.