Project: Supporting BC Health Regulators to Transform Community Care through Cultural Safety
Principal Investigator: Katelyn Moon, Researcher, CRIS, JIBC.
Research Team: Deborah Richards (Program Director, Health Sciences Division, JIBC); Dawn Williams (Ministry of Health); Sue Bedford (Ministry of Health); Louise Oliphant (Community Care Facilities Licensing Officers of British Columbia); regional partner representatives from Fraser Health, Interior Health, Northern Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, and Island Health; JIBC student research assistants.
Project Dates: 2026-2029
Project Funding: $360,000 (NSERC College and Community Social Innovation Fund), with approximately $252,000 in partner in-kind contributions over three years.
Project Summary: Community Care Licensing Officers across British Columbia oversee thousands of childcare, assisted living, and other community care settings, applying complex regulatory judgment in diverse and trauma-impacted contexts. Although provincial legislation calls for dignity-centred, person-focused oversight, no coordinated competency-based framework exists to help licensing officers apply cultural safety, humility, and anti-racism in inspections, investigations, and enforcement. This contributes to inconsistent regulatory practice and limits transparent, defensible decision-making.
This project brings together the JIBC, the BC Ministry of Health, all five regional health authorities, and the Community Care Facilities Licensing Officers of BC to develop and validate a regulatory equity competency framework. Through policy and complaint analysis, interviews, focus groups, and participatory co-design, the project will define culturally safe, anti-racist regulatory competencies and translate them into practical decision-support tools and training. These resources will be piloted across participating health authorities and integrated into provincial licensing competencies and JIBC's Community Care Licensing Officer curriculum. Students will participate throughout the project, gaining applied experience in equity-informed regulatory reform.
Partners: BC Ministry of Health; Fraser Health Authority; Interior Health Authority; Northern Health Authority; Vancouver Coastal Health Authority; Island Health (Vancouver Island Health Authority); Community Care Facilities Licensing Officers of British Columbia.
Outcomes and Benefits: This project is producing a validated regulatory equity competency framework, task-specific decision-support tools for complaint intake, inspection, and enforcement, and scenario-based training materials that regional health authorities and the Ministry of Health can adopt directly within existing supervisory and professional development structures. Anticipated benefits include greater consistency and transparency in regulatory decision-making, stronger protection of dignity for Indigenous Peoples, immigrants, refugees, and other equity-deserving groups interacting with the licensing system, and improved trust between regulators, care operators, and families. Approximately six JIBC students are gaining applied training in qualitative research, co-design facilitation, and regulatory practice, strengthening the workforce pipeline for equity-informed public-sector roles. The resulting competency framework and tools are designed for province-wide adoption and offer a transferable model for other Canadian jurisdictions addressing similar demographic shifts and anti-racism commitments in regulatory oversight.
Funding and Support: This project is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through the College and Community Social Innovation Fund (CCSIF), part of the College and Community Innovation Program.
Project Status: Active
Deliverables: TBA
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