A federal fund designed to give financial support to parents of murdered and missing children needs a major overhaul, according to a victims’ advocate whose daughter was killed in 1984.

Wilma Derksen's daughter Candace was murdered after going missing on her way home from school. A suspect is currently on trial on a charge of second-degree murder.

Derksen, who founded Child Fund Manitoba, says the federal government's fund hasn't achieved its goals since its creation in 2013 by the previous Conservative government.

Internal government documents obtained by The Canadian Press show that the fund has doled out $170,000 in grants as of March 2015, while at the same time spending more than $2.4 million on costs, not including employee benefits.

"I wonder if tampering with the basic policy is going to do what it needs to do," she told CTV’s Power Play. "I think we need to go back and ask the crime victims what they really want."

Derksen says the fund makes an assumption that the victims of crimes, and their families, don't want to work and look to benefit from the possible financial windfall.

Instead, there needs to be a great emphasis on emotional support.

"I know for ourselves, we had no funding [for emotional support]," she said. "We were meeting in basements of churches, we were meeting in houses and libraries and constantly being kicked out."

Derksen says parents who are going through the trauma of a missing or murdered child aren't able to make their way through a series of federal forms to document the loss of their child.

Instead, she says the federal government needs to step in and help parents through the process.

However, she admits that she was appreciative of the gesture of the fund for crime victims but says it didn't come across as serious help.

The Ministry of Families, Children and Social Development admits the program has its faults.

"We have to admit the federal income support for parents of murdered or missing children, created in 2013, was badly designed, poorly presented and poorly sold," said Minister Jean-Yves Duclos in a statement.

Duclos said that only 52 requests were made in the program's four years, and only 32 requests qualified.

The government says a change to the program will be announced by the end of the year.

With files from the Canadian Press