Child and Youth advocate Norman Bossé is heading an extensive review to look into mental health crisis services for children and youth.

The review, sparked by the suicide of Fredericton teen Lexi Daken, has to be completed before the end of July when Bossé’s position in government is finished.

“This is not just a Fredericton Regional Health Service problem. It is not even a New Brunswick problem. It is a challenge that is national and global in scope,” said Bossé. “We want to hear from those affected and provide them with the opportunity to be heard.”

Bossé is confident that the review will be finished by the July deadline, just over four months away, and all findings will be made public.

“There’s nothing that’s going to be hidden," he said.

According to Bossé, the healthcare system that failed Daken has been failing for a long time.

“We are aware of this problem. We know what the solutions are. Why do children and youth continue to be denied life saving services?”

The scope of the investigation is not limited to the death of Lexi Daken. It will look at all aspects of New Brunswick’s mental health system for youth, including previous reviews and recommendations that were shelved by government.

The top priorities of the review are revisiting older recommendations not yet implemented by government, and immediate action “to make sure that this type of situation doesn’t happen.”

“A youth should not be waiting for eight hours in an emergency room. That’s not acceptable, period,” said Bossé, in reference to Lexi Daken. “The emergency room has to have a way of triaging…[where] if a young person, even an adult, comes in with mental health problems, they are triaged to a specific location in the hospital so that it can be looked at immediately.”

The government stopped short of calling a public inquiry into Daken’s death, which Bossé says might actually be a good thing in terms of faster changes.

“I was involved in two [public inquiries],” said Bossé. One of those inquiries cost $1.7 million, and they both took multiple years to complete. “I’m of the mind that that would be a complete waste of my time and our efforts here… All I’m going to say is that public inquiry, in my respectful opinion, through almost 40 years of practice as a lawyer and experience in public inquiries, is not what we needed to do. We needed to do something right now. Let’s focus on this and get action by way of our recommendations.”

Bossé is confident that the government will not shelve the findings of this particular review, in part due to the public’s interest.

Bossé will also consult Francophone and Indigenous youth throughout the course of the review.

Data collection will also be a priority, which he says the New Brunswick government has failed to do.

“If you don’t have a way of measuring it, you don’t know if your programs are working.”

When asked why Bossé was so confident that this report wouldn’t get “shelved,” Bossé said “when you do a report and governments change, priorities change.” He did admit, however, that getting governments to budge is not an easy task.

“We’ve discussed nationally… how do you how do you follow your recommendations? How do you hold government’s feet to the fire, so to speak, when you do make recommendations? It is a difficult thing.”

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