The only specialized medical team for assessing child abuse and neglect cases on Vancouver Island has shut down, forcing some young victims to travel to Vancouver for help.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority disbanded the unit after its pediatrician resigned at the end of May, said Cheryl Damstetter, VIHA's director of child, youth and family health.
"Without the pediatrician, we can't provide the assessments because they're highly specialized," she said. "Either through resignations or displacements, no one is left currently on the team."
The Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) unit, which operated out of the Queen Alexandra Centre for Children's Health, included a part-time psychologist, registered nurse, social worker and receptionist, Damstetter said. The unit received about 200 referrals a year.
The Ministry for Children and Family Development, which spent about $300,000 on the team annually, met with VIHA on Thursday to discuss the issue.
"They're trying to recruit somebody as soon as possible," ministry spokeswoman Christine Ash said.
Meanwhile, local physicians and emergency rooms will have to pick up the slack. Any young victims requiring more specialized assessments will be referred to the SCAN team at sa国际传媒 Children's Hospital in Vancouver. A social worker will accompany the child, and the ministry will cover travel costs, Ash said.
Child Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond urged officials to get the program up and running again as soon as possible. It's not good enough, she said, to rely on emergency-room physicians who may lack the training, expertise and backup team needed to handle complex child-abuse cases.
Turpel-Lafond worries that injuries or previous child-protection reports will get overlooked, and that a child will suffer further trauma. She said some of the best child-abuse investigations she has seen were done by SCAN teams acting quickly to assess injuries and gather background information.
"[The children] are dealt with in such a caring, appropriate and yet professional way," she said. "Sitting in an emergency room, waiting to get in, just isn't the same."
Turpel-Lafond also questioned why VIHA allowed the Island's only SCAN team to disband because one or two people departed. "You can't place the whole team on an individual," she said. "It's a team. Individuals will come and go ... You need to be prepared for transitions.
"So that management has to be there to have a consistently available, skilled clinic working, because so many other systems are dependent upon it."
Mitzi Dean, executive director of Pacific Centre Family Services, which works with sexually abused children in Greater Victoria, echoed Turpel-Lafond's concerns.
"What we know from experience and research is that, in these kinds of cases, specialized and sensitive services are usually most effective," she said.
The sa国际传媒 Medical Journal highlighted the importance of SCAN teams in a 2004 report. The article noted that physicians in emergency rooms or walk-in clinics often do not have the time to do thorough examinations, let alone delve into a child's case history.
"Working without the support of a team, the physician can feel burdened with all interagency communication duties, crisis counselling, and service referrals," the report said.
