To: Premier Gordon Campbell/Letter from C. Graves, RN

October 27, 2009

3514 West 14th Ave.
Vancouver, B.C.
V6R 2W4


Premier Gordon Campbell
gordon.campbell.mla@leg.bc.ca

Dear Premier Campbell:

I am writing to you, as a constituent in the riding of Point Grey, to express my opposition to the proposed closure of the Office of the Provincial Advisor, Infant Development Program of B.C. (ID). I am also writing to you as a recently retired Clinical Nurse Specialist who has worked in the field of early identification and intervention for children with hearing loss (Sunny Hill Health Centre and BC Children’s Hospital) for a number of years. Further, I am currently a part-time instructor at UBC in the field of early identification and intervention, and am the Chair of the ID Steering Committee.

The Office of the Provincial Advisor has been an exemplary model of direct service provision to children with disabilities, and their families, for approximately 35 years. It has been fiscally responsible and cost effective in providing these services, and supportive to the regional advisors and consultants by setting “best practice” standards through training and professional opportunities. This work has all been accomplished
collaboratively, and under the direction of the ID Steering Committee. Over the years, members of this Committee have included parents, professionals (Neonatal Follow-up Program, BC Children’s Hospital; UBC Department of Pediatrics; UBC Human Early Learning Partnerships) and government (Public Health; Ministry of Children and Family Development). In short, the activities of the Provincial Office and Steering Committee have been involved with leadership, training, education, guidance, and advocacy, with the intention of ensuring that children with significant developmental issues and their families are well served by the ID Provincial Office, the ID Regional Advisors, approximately 194 ID consultants, and the Aboriginal ID consultants, as our ID partners.

From the little information that I have been able to glean to date, I believe that those responsible for the decision to close the Office of the Provincial Advisor do not understand its structure and functioning, nor have they instituted an “impact analysis” before making this major decision. While our ID Steering Committee is looking forward to having more dialogue with Minister Mary Polak (meeting has yet to be set), I feel compelled to briefly outline my greatest concern to you, as my MLA.

As you know, all professionals on health care teams across B.C. and Canada have regulatory professional bodies that stand behind them to ensure that standardization of best practice and accountability are protected through policies, procedures and guidelines, written and maintained by these professional bodies with input from those in the profession and other related professionals. For example, registered nurses have the College of Registered Nurses of B.C., and speech and language pathologists & audiologists have the Canadian Association of Speech & Language Pathologists and Audiologists and so on.

In this situation, the ID Consultants and Regional Advisors are not yet large enough in numbers to warrant having a college or association. For their training and professional development, they rely heavily on the ID Office of the Provincial Advisor, ID Steering Committee, the Professional Development Advisory Committee (a sub committee including representation from the ID, AIDP and Supported Child Development), Manual for Policies and Procedures (regularly revised), and Professional Development Guidelines. The ID Office of the Provincial Advisor and Steering Committee have been involved in all of these professional development endeavours, with the goal of ensuring standardization of best practice across the province. Therefore, if a family moves from one region to another, they and their child with special needs will seamlessly receive the same quality of service. I have been part of this process of supporting the ID consultants and Regional Advisors to achieve these high standards of practice, and have watched them regularly collaborate as a unified body in order to optimally meet the needs of their families across the province. It works!

With respect, please hear me say that this professional development mandate cannot be undertaken by a trio of individuals in MCFD, who may not have strong backgrounds in typical/atypical development in infants and children nor early identification/intervention practices. The collaborative model as described in the previous paragraph, has been developed over many years with excellent outcomes, and should not be dismantled. Actually, it is the glue that binds the ID program together in order to maintain high standards of service. If you dismantle the Office of the Provincial Advisor, you run the risk of collapsing the core components of a service that families have come to respect and expect.

In the interests of children with developmental concerns, and their families across B.C., will you, Minister Polak, and Deputy Minister Du-Toit re-consider your decision to close the ID Office of the Provincial Advisor?

Yours sincerely,


Carolyn Graves RN, MSN


Cc: Minister Mary Polack, MCFD (Minister.MCF@gov.bc.ca)
Deputy Minister Lesley Du Toit, MCFD (MCF.DeputyMinisterOffice@gov.bc.ca)
Dana Brynelsen, Office of the ID Provincial Advisor (infantdv@interchange.ubc.ca)