An 18-year-old Métis youth, who took his own life at an Abbotsford hotel where he had been living while in government care, was failed at almost every turn by B.C.’s child welfare system, a new report says.
Acting Representative for Children and Youth Bernard Richard describes the death of Alex Gervais in 2015 as “an act of obvious desperation” after a lifetime of trauma and neglect.
The troubled youth drifted through 17 placements and 23 social workers and caregivers after being removed from his parents at the age of seven years, the report says.
He was never connected with his Métis culture, never provided with the mental-health services he needed and never given a permanent home, the report says.
“In Alex’s case, the services he actually received fell far short of the care we expect from any parent in British Columbia,” Richard writes in Broken Promises.
Richard, who replaced Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond as the province’s child watchdog, says the Ministry of Children and Family Development missed promising opportunities to place the youth with his stepmother in B.C. or with his aunt and her family in Quebec.
“Both those family members showed a keen desire to raise Alex and he expressed attachment to them as well,” Richard said. But officials balked at paying the stepmother a fraction of what Alex’s previous foster home received, and they instead forked out even more money to place him with paid caregivers.
Alex complained at various times of being sexually assaulted while in care — “once by a female caregiver he said had first given him cocaine.” He also voiced concerns about a shortage of food and clothing.
The ministry eventually severed ties with one problem agency, but not before Alex and others “were subject to highly questionable care and likely, much worse,” the report says.
A delegated aboriginal agency then placed Alex in a hotel with a former respite caregiver for 49 days, Richard writes. The caregiver received more than $8,000 a month, and the delegated agency covered the costs for him to live in a room next to the boy.
“But this caregiver was rarely on site — in fact, witnesses told RCY investigators he hadn’t been there at all in the 10 days before Alex’s death — and Alex complained bitterly that the caregiver was pocketing the money meant for him to purchase food and clothing,” the report says.
By the end, he was alone in his room, heavily using cocaine and worrying about what would happen to him when he aged out of government care at 19.
Richard recommends the province provide supports to extended families — including respite and child care — to help them provide a home for children and youth in care. He also urges the ministry to provide timely and uninterrupted mental health services and improve oversight of contracted residential agencies, which currently care for about 700 children and youth.
Stephanie Cadieux, minister of children and family development, agreed with the findings and promised to enhance the ministry’s computer system in the coming months to automatically alert the provincial director of child welfare if a child changes foster homes more than three times in a year.
“That shouldn’t be happening, except in the rarest of circumstances,” she said.
Cadieux also promised to tighten oversight of contracted agencies and move responsibility for caregivers’ background checks inside the ministry.
“A lack of documentation and follow-up stops now,” she said.
In addition, Cadieux said government will spend $2.7 million to develop specific cultural plans for all indigenous children in care.
Melanie Mark, the NDP’s spokesperson on children’s issues, said the government sounds likes a “broken record” in responding to child-welfare tragedies.
“We’ve been hearing time and time again from the minister that they’re going to improve, they’re going to make the system better. When?” Mark asked.
“I’m extremely impatient. I worry that there will be other children like Alex, and that is my greatest fear.”
