By The Canadian Press

B.C. children’s watchdog calls for help in preventing overdoses

Nov 15, 2018 | 4:55 PM

VICTORIA — British Columbia’s children’s watchdog has released a report calling for comprehensive change after it says two dozen children between the ages of 10 and 18 died of drug overdoses last year.

Jennifer Charlesworth’s report, Time to Listen; Youth Voices on Substance Use, also says substance use by children was prevalent in 154 critical injury reports last year, nearly double what it was in 2016.

The Representative for Children and Youth’s office gathered information from 100 young people in focus groups and reviewed the critical injury reports to come up with its final recommendations.

The report says in almost every focus group, the first reason youth gave for using substances was “to numb” their emotional pain caused by events and trauma in their lives.

It makes five recommendations calling for systemic change to promote better services and greater safety for B.C.’s children, including the development and implementation of harm reduction services that would have youth-specific spaces for supervised consumption.

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The report says the issue of substance use can be polarizing and some may not agree with the idea of young people using drugs at a safe consumption site funded by taxpayers.

The Canadian Press