To Help Families Truly Thrive, We Need a Stronger Safety Net

British Columbia’s Ministry of Children and Family Development is developing a new Child and Youth Well-Being Action Plan with big ambitions: to improve the conditions in which children and young people grow, develop and thrive.

These ambitions are worth supporting, and the MCFD is now inviting people to participate in a public engagement process, which includes an option to share written submissions, to help shape the work.

As co-directors of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition, we are invested in the success of this plan. And we know success means more than policy statements and new programs alone.

Families need the material conditions in place that make well-being possible. They need safe and stable housing, enough food, access to health care and child care, freedom from violence, strong communities and adequate income to meet their needs.

A successful Child and Youth Well-Being Plan must include a strengthened social safety net.

There is already a clear roadmap for what that could look like. The BC Poverty Reduction Coalition’s submission to the Ministry of Children and Family Development identifies concrete measures that would help turn the province’s commitment to child and family well-being into reality.

Our submission calls on the province to address inadequate social assistance rates and implement targeted income supports for former youth in care and people fleeing domestic violence.

In our view, measures such as these are essential to making the plan work, and they should not be treated as separate from the Child and Youth Well-Being Plan.

In order to be successful, poverty reduction and elimination must be built into cross-ministerial mandates.

Food insecurity is connected to income insecurity

Consider food insecurity. A recent report from a multi-member provincial organization seeking to improve outcomes for youth aging out of the child services system found that 94 per cent of surveyed youth who had interacted with the system experienced moderate to severe food insecurity.

The organization, called Transition in Resources, Relationships and Understanding Support Together, or TRRUST, engaged with more than 140 youth with government care experience in Metro Vancouver for their report.

They found that 66 per cent of those who identified as moderately or severely food insecure said insufficient income was the primary reason they could not reliably access food.

Young people described skipping meals, reducing portion sizes and going entire days without eating.

We know that food security is deeply related to income security. Yet income supports for youth aging out of government care do not meet the realities of the rising costs of food and other essentials.

These are not problems that can be solved simply by adding another food program, either. Food programs and community organizations provide essential support, but they cannot compensate for income levels that are too low to cover the cost of living.

Young people interviewed for the TRRUST report made this clear: food insecurity is deeply connected to inadequate income, housing insecurity and a dearth of stable support.

This is particularly important for youth leaving government care. The transition out of care is a critical period during which young people are expected to establish housing, education, employment and community connections while often having far fewer family resources to fall back on than their peers.

B.C. has made important progress through the Strengthening Abilities and Journeys of Empowerment program, or SAJE, including the introduction of unconditional income support.

However, these supports still do not adequately reflect the cost of living. A young person leaving government care should not have to choose between paying rent and buying groceries.

Nor should they be expected to navigate a new, complicated system of conditional and often short-term benefits like SAJE at precisely the moment when they need stability.

People fleeing violence need targeted income supports

The same is true when it comes to gender-based violence. For people experiencing intimate partner violence, economic insecurity can make leaving an abusive relationship dangerous or impossible.

A person may know that they and their children are not safe but lack the income, housing and support resources necessary to establish a new home.

According to Battered Women’s Support Services Association, half of women leaving abusive relationships face poverty or economic instability, meaning they must make the impossible choice between staying or returning to abusive environments or risk homelessness.

The BC Poverty Reduction Coalition has recommended creating targeted income supports for people fleeing violence, building on recommendations from B.C.’s 2020 basic income expert panel.

Our recent consultations with anti-violence organizations found that survivors need more than a one-time emergency payment. They need immediate financial assistance alongside ongoing income support as they establish safe, independent lives that account for privacy concerns, housing needs and safety.

This should be understood as a child and family well-being measure as much as a gender-based violence measure.

Children cannot thrive in homes where a parent is trapped by financial dependence on an abusive partner.

Supporting survivors to leave violence safely with economic supports is also an investment in children’s safety and well-being.

And supporting people before they reach crisis is not only better for families — it is also a smarter public investment.

This principle should guide the entire Child and Youth Well-Being Action Plan.

Income and disability assistance need to go up

Many organizations, including ours, have recommended bringing income and disability assistance rates up to at least the Market Basket Measure for many years, and ensuring they are indexed annually so that benefits don’t continually lose spending power to inflation.

These are relatively straightforward policy changes.

But they would make a profound difference to families living on the edge.

Again, prevention is much more affordable than responding to crises that have already happened.

An intersectional analysis is vital

West Coast LEAF’s Gender Equality Report Card has documented the ways economic insecurity intersects with gender, disability, race, Indigeneity, family status and other forms of inequality.

Its analysis highlights the gap between wages and the cost of living, demonstrating how many people can be working and still unable to afford the basics.

A child and youth well-being strategy that does not address these economic realities and power structures risks asking families to achieve well-being without giving them the resources to do so.

The solution is not to make families navigate more programs. It is to make the foundational supports stronger. That means adequate income, affordable housing, accessible child care, food security, health and mental health services.

Adding targeted assistance for people facing particular circumstances, including young people transitioning from government care and people fleeing violence, means a stronger safety net for all of us when we inevitably need help at some point in our lives.

The BC Poverty Reduction Coalition’s submission offers a concrete suite of recommendations that can help the province achieve this. The MCFD should incorporate those recommendations into the implementation of the Child and Youth Well-Being Action Plan and establish clear measures for whether they are being achieved.

It should also ensure that people with lived experience of poverty, government care, disability, gender-based violence and other forms of marginalization have a meaningful role in shaping implementation. The people who navigate these systems know where the gaps are and what needs to change, and lived expertise is often missing from these processes, or not meaningfully reflected in final reports and recommendations.

The provincial government has an opportunity to build a child and youth well-being strategy that recognizes a basic truth: children’s well-being is inseparable from the well-being of their families and communities.

A vision for well-being is important. But without adequate income, safe housing, food security and meaningful support, it remains only a vision. The Child and Youth Well-Being Action Plan must be backed by the investments families need to turn that vision into reality.

That is how we build a province where children can thrive. Not by asking families to do more with less, but by making sure they have enough to begin with.