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The most disturbing thing we learned at the first session of the province’s new all-party child intervention review panel wasn’t the number of children who’ve died in provincial care.

What was far more shocking was the number who’ve died while the province was figuring out whether to apprehend them — or after they’d been returned to their families.

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Let me break out the numbers for you, as explained to the panel Wednesday by acting director of children’s services Robert Hopkins.

Between April 1, 2014, and Dec. 31, 2016, 73 children and youth died while receiving some kind of protective services. These were kids with open child welfare files — even if they weren’t in the foster system.

Of those 73, only 22 were actually “in care” — living with a foster family, in kinship care or in a group home. They accounted for just 30 per cent of all deaths.

By contrast, 32 were in the midst of an initial assessment. A case worker had received information that there was a problem and opened a file. But these kids hadn’t been apprehended. We’ll never know how many might have been saved if someone had acted sooner.