After 18-year-old Alex Gervais fell to his death from the window of a hotel where he had been living, against child welfare policies, government officials said he was the only foster child in B.C. being housed in a hotel.

A day later, the children's ministry corrected itself: When Gervais died last Sept. 18, there were two foster kids being housed in hotels, a stop-gap measure that was only to be used in emergencies.

Then, another day later, the ministry said it had polled its staff and counted 23 foster children who had been placed in hotels, instead of foster homes or group homes, in the 10 months leading up to Gervais' death.

Now, a startling new report issued Wednesday shows the ministry was wrong again. In fact, 117 kids — five times its original estimate — stayed in hotels between November 2014 and October 2015.

"I'm really unhappy that (the numbers are) so different. The 23 was based on numbers reported to us by our service delivery areas, by the people doing the work on a daily basis," Children and Family Development Minister Stephanie Cadieux said when asked about the discrepancy.

"In a perfect world, hotels would never be used."

In fact, because some children were placed more than once in a hotel during this time frame, the total number of hotel stays was 131.

These new numbers were tabulated in a report released by Cadieux and children's representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, marking the first time the two women (who are often at odds with each other) have worked together to produce facts and solutions that both sides can support.

Hotel stays for foster children became national news in 2014 when a Manitoba foster girl died after running away from the hotel where she had been staying. It came to light again last September when Gervais fell from the window of an Abbotsford hotel, where he had lived for 49 days without the knowledge of the child welfare director and, therefore, in violation of ministry policies.

According to the new report, the ministry's "expectation" is that care workers would provide constant supervision for a child during these hotel stays as well as provide opportunities to participate in recreational activities.

Both women said they want the use of hotels eliminated, but Turpel-Lafond said that will require "a significant effort" to improve resources in B.C.

"A complete ban on hotel use is unrealistic," she said. "The pressures on the (ministry) staff are such that they are not able to find alternatives to hotels at this time."

Turpel-Lafond vowed to track the government's progress and to release a second report later this year on the negative impact that hotel stays have on foster children, noting Gervais lived in hotel rooms for more than 100 days while in care.

NDP leader John Horgan issued a statement that accused the provincial Liberals of purposely hiding the true number of vulnerable youth they stuck in hotels, until forced to reveal the truth by Turpel-Lafond.

The most frequent use of hotels were by social workers in the South Fraser (32) and North Fraser (27) offices, as well as in Vancouver/Richmond (14) and by the Fraser Valley Aboriginal Children and Family Services Society (12), which had placed Gervais in the Abbotsford hotel. Cadieux said more resources would be directed, in particular, to the North and South Fraser areas.