Health Minister Josie Osborne is backtracking on cuts to a program that pays for families of sick children to travel and stay in hotels during Vancouver hospital visits.
Osborne said in a statement provided to simplymastery on Monday (June 9) that she instructed officials at the health ministry and the charity that operates the program to look at "options" to reverse the cuts.
"I have told them to move as quickly as possible, so as not to add further stress and uncertainty to families with sick kids across the province,” she said.
The B.C. Family Residence Program was introduced in 2010 to provide funds for families who need to travel for their children's care. The program, operated by Variety, a children's charity, previously covered up to 30 days' accommodation per hospital visit. As of June 1, it is limited to 15 days per year with an added $85,000 family income limit.
Osborne blamed Variety for the decision. She said the base funding remains the same, but Variety's costs increased, "which required them to make changes to their eligibility criteria and benefit levels."
Variety CEO Andrea Tang said the decision was made in response to increasing demand and a reduction in "available funding."
"With increasing demand and reduced government funding, we’ve had to make difficult decisions to keep the B.C. Family Residence Program sustainable and focused on those with the greatest financial need," Tang said. "These changes are not easy, and we understand the impact they have on families who count on this support."
Premier David Eby said he was "incredibly concerned" about the cuts, suggesting he was not in the loop on the decision.
"When you have a family with a seriously ill child, parents are often taking time off of work, which means they have less disposable income to travel with," he said in a Monday Zoom call from South Korea, where he is on a trade trip. "Their sole focus is on making sure their kid gets better, and they shouldn't be full of anxiety about how to access housing or accommodation."
Kamloops family say they are left out unless changes are reversed
Marielena Flohr lives in Kamloops with her six children. Two have a genetic blood disorder requiring regular yearly or semi-yearly treatment in Vancouver.
With no pediatric hematologist on staff at Kamloops' Royal Inland Hospital, they can't be treated close to home. This means a trip to B.C. Children's Hospital in Vancouver. In one episode last year, her son Emmett had a respiratory virus and needed to be flown to Vancouver, where he was put on life-support.
Fortunately for the Flohr's family, their hotels were covered under the B.C. Family Residence Program. The family uses the program about one to three times per year.
"It really assisted us financially," Flohr told simplymastery.
With the new income eligibility requirements, Flohr said her family no longer qualifies.
"There are so many ways to cut this budget, but going after families that have sick children is just unacceptable, in my opinion," she said.
Osborne had blamed the "fiscal environment" for the cuts in an unrelated news conference on Friday, June 6.
"The health ministry, like all ministries, has been given a mandate to review programs," she said. "And so, we were not able to expand the funding that we provide, and that has put some of the providers in a challenging position."
Flohr works in health care at the local hospital. Still, she did not find out about the changes until BC Conservative MLA Peter Milobar, representing Kamloops Centre, posted about them on social media on June 7.
The cuts had already gone into effect on June 1. Flohr and other families were not officially notified, but the news began to spread.
"People who have children who are chronically ill, or have conditions, we kind of all support each other," Flohr said. "And so this got out very quickly that this is happening."
Critic wants to know why these cuts were not already revealed
As the BC Conservative Finance critic, Milobar said he wants to know why these cuts were not revealed during budget debates by Finance Minister Brenda Bailey.
"There is no way the government did not know, while we were still in budget estimates, that this cut was made and coming," he said. "And they refuse to give any notice to families."
He said the high pay of health administrators is the first place to cut costs, not a program that disproportionately affects children from rural B.C.
"We cannot believe that with the ever-expanding size of administrative payrolls, especially in health care, that the starting point to make any efficiencies and cuts within health care was to penalize families with sick children from the rest of British Columbia," he said.
