SUB-HEADING: "Review of hair tests finds they did not play key role in custody cases, but watchdog criticizes findings."

 PHOTO CAPTION: "Bernard Richard, B.C.'s Representative for Children and Youth, says the province's ongoing review of Motherisk cases is flawed. 

GIST: "The child advocate in B.C. is raising concerns about the objectivity and limited scope of the province’s ongoing review of Motherisk cases, dismissing the initial findings as “self-serving.” A review by the B.C. government of child protection cases involving Motherisk’s flawed drug and alcohol hair tests concluded last month that the results “were not the key determinant in the decision to keep children in care.” The first phase of the review, launched in 2016, looked at open child protection cases involving 71 children who were in the sole custody of the province. Fifty-six per cent of those children were indigenous. B.C. is among four provinces — including Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia — that have launched reviews in the wake of the scandal involving discredited hair-strand testing at the Hospital for Sick Children’s now-shuttered Motherisk lab, which has cast doubt over a handful of criminal cases and thousands of child protection cases across the country. The B.C. review pinpointed only one instance in which a hair test result “appears to be one of the determining factors to remove a child” but the hair test did not affect subsequent decisions in that case, according to the report, which noted all the cases reviewed involved other factors and “multiple, substantiated child protection reports.” However, B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth, Bernard Richard, said the report is the product of “a flawed process . . . on a number of fronts.” Among Richard’s criticisms:
  • The review was conducted internally instead of by an independent outsider.
  • It was based solely on the information contained in child welfare files and did not include court records or interviews with child protection workers.
  • It examined only a fraction of the total number of Motherisk cases in B.C.
The cases targeted for review were pulled from a list that included 843 children in care that were linked to a positive Motherisk hair test conducted between 2005 and 2015. Child welfare agencies nationwide have relied on Motherisk testing primarily as proof of parental substance abuse. “It is difficult for us not to reach the conclusion that this is a very convenient finding for the ministry, because it justifies them not taking further steps,” Richard said. “There are no perfect solutions, but clearly there are better processes than the one in B.C.” All of the provincial reviews are internal, except in Ontario, where the $10-million Motherisk Commission, established under the Public Inquiries Act, is probing individual cases as well as offering counselling and legal assistance to affected families. The commission has drawn criticism for not looking at all affected cases, but lead counsel Lorne Glass has said he believes all cases where children have been permanently removed from their families will be reviewed. So far, of the 1,275 cases reviewed in Ontario, the probe has identified 57 cases where the Motherisk testing had a substantial impact — roughly four per cent.
B.C.’s deputy director of child welfare, Alex Scheiber, who led that province’s review, said his ministry was the first in Canada to proactively establish a process to examine affected cases. The scope of the first phase was intentionally limited to quickly pinpoint high-priority cases, so placement decisions could be reversed if necessary, he said. “We are aware of the limitations of doing an internal review like this. That’s why we’re doing a second phase of this (review), because we recognize that there are other areas we need to explore to do a (complete) review,” he said. Scheiber said the province is waiting for a report from Ontario’s Motherisk Commission, whose mandate was recently extended until the end of February, to define the scope for the second phase of the review. He declined to comment on whether B.C. should establish an independent commission, similar to Ontario’s, to review Motherisk cases. The Star first exposed questions about the reliability of Motherisk’s hair testing in late 2014, after the results came under scrutiny in a criminal appeal, which led the province to appoint a retired judge to review the lab. The review concluded in December 2015 that Motherisk’s tests were “inadequate and unreliable” for use in criminal and child protection proceedings from 2005 to 2015. The Vancouver Sun has previously reported that 8,000 newborns and adults underwent Motherisk testing in B.C. between 1997 and 2015. For the B.C. review, Sick Kids provided the province with the records for 5,727 Motherisk hair tests conducted from 2005 to 2015 related to child welfare agencies. From those, the province isolated 843 cases of kids in care connected to an individual with a positive Motherisk hair test. As a result of B.C.’s ongoing review, the province has made permanent the moratorium on the use of hair-strand testing in child-protection cases, which it imposed in May 2015. “Although there are other laboratories available to B.C. that could provide this test, the methodologies they use are unknown and there are major risks involved in utilizing hair strand tests to make child welfare decisions,” the report states."

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