Child and youth advocate says more resources needed to help 'vulnerable adults'

The Office of New Brunswick's Child, Youth and Seniors Advocate serves another population that isn't in its title — vulnerable adults.

Vulnerable adults are neither children nor seniors but are in particularly difficult situations, said advocate Kelly Lamrock, who appeared Thursday before a legislature committee to answer questions about his office's annual report.

These adults could include homeless individuals, people with disabilities who require high-level care, and people with mental health challenges or addiction problems.

And while Lamrock said he wants to address the challenges faced by vulnerable adults, a lack of funding makes it difficult.

Lamrock was appearing before the standing committee on procedure, privileges and legislative offices.

"We are the second lowest funded per capita child and youth office in Canada and none of those have seniors as a responsibility," Lamrock said in response to a question from Liberal MLA Marco LeBlanc about resources.

"We also have responsibility for vulnerable adults under the act," he said. "But I don't know if we've even been able to think about meeting that mandate, because the new mandate came with no new resources."

Lamrock said his office has about eight employees who take advocate calls and six who work on compiling data, policy recommendations and research. One new position was added last year. 

From April 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023, the advocate's office received 768 advocacy requests related to children and youth and 372 requests related to seniors.

That represents an increase in calls for advocacy of approximately 20 to 25 per cent for the 2022-23 year. 

Lamrock said no call is turned away unless it is outside the office's jurisdiction, such as a family court request.

He said there are areas he wants to explore, but without more resources, he can't. For example, he would like to look at whether there is a pattern of homeless people who don't get the care they require at hospitals because they are wrongly labelled as drug-seeking.

"Those are the issues I'd like to plow into and see?" said Lamrock. "Are we serving vulnerable adults well in the system? So I think with more resources, we could do a better job of looking at those issues."

Lamrock also called for more office staff trained in intake and communication to help resolve individual cases as well as more people who can work in a research capacity for looking at issues in greater depth.

Research demands not possible

Green Leader and Fredericton South MLA David Coon questioned Lamrock on why more recent data hasn't been compiled on children and youth.

He said such data reveals whether government policies are working, but the most recent round of indicators released by the advocate came in 2021, and many of the latest numbers in that report were from earlier years. 

"It's important for all MLAs, as advocates for children and youth in our ridings, to have a good picture of the well-being of those children and youth," said Coon.

"Those indicators, whether it be … how much screen time they are engaged in or how they feel about their mental health or the rate of sexual abuse of children — all of those things are important information to know."

Coon wouldn't say whether the child and youth advocate needs more resources since budget proposals for the coming year are currently before another committee. 

Lamrock agreed with Coon and said that with more data, better decisions would be made. But he said his office has to make tough decisions about what is a priority.

"There are times I literally have to say, 'Look, if I've got to do a 100-page report on Policy 713 or if I'm going to do a 180-page report on long-term care, my researcher is not going to be doing the data collection," he said.

"I think the research demands, even from this committee, we can see, are much higher than the ability of 14 people to produce them."