Self advocates attention this report is from BC Ombudsperson finding on complaints issues that found.
In MCFD and Ministry of Income Assistance, CLBC and others released on August 1st,2019 you can rad full report below.
The BC Ombudsman’s Annual Report offers important insights on fair practice, with case summaries & outcomes from CLBC, MCFD, PWD benefits & school complaints.
Learn more about how they help vulnerable citizens who feel unfairly treated by government.
British Columbians complained about the two government departments that provide services to some of BC’s most marginalized citizens more often than any other public body last year, according to the BC Ombudsperson’s 40th Annual Report released today.
“It is concerning to me that even though we have oversight over more than 1,000 public sector organizations, we see so many of the complaints we receive are about two ministries, the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction,” said Ombudsperson Jay Chalke, adding his office received more than 1,200 complaints and enquiries about the two ministries last year. “It would be my hope, given the acute situations many of these complainants are in, that we would see their needs being taken care of fairly and reasonably. Unfortunately, when we look at our work over the past year, and frankly over the four decades we’ve been in existence, we continue to see too many occasions in which that simply isn’t the case.”
Cases and issues highlighted in the report include:
- Translation services for immigrants and refugees – an Ombudsperson investigation resulted in the Legal Services Society improving its translation services after a complaint from an individual highlighted phone prompts were not in multiple languages.
- Errors in ICBC’s administrative practices – ICBC was the subject of over 300 complaints and enquiries to the Ombudsperson last year.
- There were a number of complaints about how ICBC enforces identity standards on licences and the BC Services Card.
- Complaints continue to be received from individuals who used to have a driver’s licence in their commonly used name only to find on renewal that ICBC had changed its policy by narrowing what names were acceptable. Complaints about ICBC liability determination are also common.
- The report highlights one case where ICBC failed to review all available evidence and a liability determination was changed as a result of the Ombudsperson’s investigation.
- Unfair administrative practices by BC school districts – a case highlights that a school district unfairly made a decision that a new immigrant family with three children would have to pay $12,000 per child because they did not meet residency criteria. However, an Ombudsperson investigation found the district had misapplied the criteria and the family’s children were in fact entitled to free public education in BC.
This report is on BC Ombudspersons website go to the link here
