BC’s proposed Child and Youth Well-Being Action Plan promises earlier help, better coordination, family-centred services, and less pressure on families navigating fragmented systems. These are important goals. Families need services that communicate with each other and provide practical help before a crisis.
But greater coordination will accomplish little if disabled children continue to be excluded from school.
BCEdAccess has submitted feedback urging the Province to make school access, disability rights, and public accountability central to the plan.
Thank you to our families and caregivers
We are deeply grateful to the families who made time to read the plan and share their responses. The Child and Youth Well-Being Action Plan seems to focus on coordinating services around exclusion instead of taking aim at the systemic failures that destabilise our families and redirect our energy away from supporting our children and towards responding to preventable crises. Many of us know what it is like to have our children excluded and then be treated as though we are the problem when we name the exclusion, resist it, or ask schools to meet their obligations. We do not want services designed to help us cope after another part of the same system has kicked us in the face. We want meaningful inclusion so we can focus on our families, our careers, and our lives.
School exclusion must be named
The Action Plan introduces Rebecca and her eight-year-old son, Cole. Cole attends school only two days per week because of what the plan describes as “behaviours.” The proposed system responds with navigation, assessments, benefits, behavioural supports, therapy, and school-based coordination.
Some of those services may help. Yet the plan treats Cole’s reduced access to education as the starting condition around which other systems must organise themselves.
A disabled eight-year-old losing three days of school every week is experiencing a serious failure of accessibility and inclusion. His family needs more than help navigating around that failure. The school system must identify and remove the barriers preventing him from attending.
Across BC, disabled students lose instructional time through partial days, shortened timetables, informal removals, “behaviour” days, room clears, unrecorded absences, and home-based work packages. These practices affect children’s learning, relationships, mental health, and sense of belonging. Parents may also lose income, employment, housing stability, and their own health while absorbing the gaps left by public systems.
The Action Plan should explicitly commit to ending disability-related school exclusion and publicly tracking every form of lost instructional time.
Support must follow need
Children should receive support based on their functional needs. Access should never depend on a family securing a diagnosis, designation, assessment, or place on a waitlist.
Long assessment delays already leave children unsupported. The effects are especially severe for children who cannot tolerate conventional assessments, children experiencing burnout, those with complex communication needs, and families without access to private assessments or urban specialists.
When a child is struggling, schools have a responsibility to investigate disability-related needs and identify barriers. Support should begin while assessment and documentation are still underway.
Behaviour must also be understood as information. Schools should examine sensory conditions, communication barriers, curriculum demands, trauma, staffing, relationships, regulation needs, and adult responses. Reducing a child’s school day leaves those barriers in place.
Plans require implementation and accountability
The government has committed to developing new IEP guidelines and resources. Families need those IEPs implemented consistently.
An effective plan should establish clear implementation standards, identify who is responsible for delivering supports, require meaningful parent and student consultation, and examine whether accommodations are reaching children in practice.
Funding is also essential. Inclusive education requires trained adults, specialist services, planning time, accessible spaces, mental health supports, and timely OT, SLP, behavioural, literacy, and counselling services.
District decisions require scrutiny too. Districts decide how to allocate staff and resources, whether to close programs, how much to spend on administration and legal disputes, and whether to accumulate surpluses while students remain excluded. Families need transparent information about those choices and their effects on access to education.
What BCEdAccess is asking for
We are calling on the Province to strengthen the Action Plan through:
- a clear commitment to end and publicly track disability-related school exclusion;
- support based on functional need without waiting for diagnosis or designation;
- accountability for IEP implementation;
- barrier-removal approaches when children are described as having behavioural needs;
- dedicated funding and workforce commitments;
- transparent district-level resource allocation;
- clear timelines, named responsibilities, public reporting, and meaningful remedies; and
- direct involvement of disabled children, families, Indigenous communities, and frontline workers throughout implementation.
Families need coordinated services. They also need accessible schools, enforceable rights, and accountability when public systems fail.
A child well-being plan should ensure that disabled children can attend school, receive support, participate in their communities, and experience belonging from the start.
Read BCEdAccess’s full submission on the Child and Youth Well-Being Action Plan (PDF).
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