The mother of a young woman who committed suicide hours after she aged out of the child-protection system last year still doesn’t have much information from public officials on how her case was handled.
Lisa Fraser, mother of Carly, appeared before the legislature committee that is reviewing B.C.’s freedom-of-information law this week to recount how opaque the Children’s Ministry and hospitals were and are about her daughter’s case.
Carly Fraser is one of three young people — along with Alex Gervais and a young woman known as Paige — whose deaths have prompted concern about how troubled teenagers are treated.
She jumped from Lion’s Gate Bridge 11 months ago, the day after her 19th birthday. It was the culmination of several deeply troubled years as a runaway street kid.
Lisa Fraser told MLAs that she put her daughter in the care of the Children’s Ministry after she ran away, to make her less vulnerable. It worked for a year.
But at 16, she was moved into a basement suite alone.
Fraser said she still doesn’t know about the key decisions made about her daughter. “I have not been able to get any information on who made the decision to move her to a new apartment and why that decision was made,” she said.
Although she said she was at meetings with the ministry, no minutes were kept, for privacy reasons.
The girl was raped while living alone in the suite, which contributed to her downward spiral. She was later moved to a group home, but ran away.
Fraser said that every time Carly was in a psychiatric ward, “they said that they could not tell me anything, even though I was her parent and guardian. I should have been privy to all her medical and other files. I should have been consulted about her care.
“I received my own file from the ministry heavily redacted. My request for Carly’s MCFD file was rejected because she was recently deceased. The documents I received from my MCFD file have brought other questions about the ministry’s involvement in Carly’s life.”
She cited some emails about efforts to get Carly assessed that showed difficulty about who was dealing with the referral, and about significant backlog of youth awaiting assessments.
Fraser said Carly did not get the assessment, but she doesn’t know why, because she can’t get the records.
“Knowing why Carly didn’t receive the assessment, which the ministry workers indicated was imperative, is clearly something that is deserving of public scrutiny, but the information is not available.”
The mother has previously blamed the ministry for failing her daughter, but Monday’s appearance was specifically about failures to disclose important information before and after Carly’s death.
One section of FOI law lists one consideration in disclosing personal third-party information as whether the release is desirable for subjecting government to public scrutiny.
Fraser said the ministry’s failure to care for Carly make the disclosure of her file desirable. “However, when I made my FOI request for Carly’s records, that argument was rejected.”
The public-interest argument was rejected. Fraser is also interested in the decisions of the hospitals that released her daughter five times when she was having suicidal thoughts.
“If the ministry and the hospitals stand behind privacy issues, the truth cannot come out. How do we make them accountable? Anyone over the age of 12 controls who gets access to their records. This is too young, and it makes it very difficult for parents like me to access their kids’ records when they are in crisis during the teenage years.”
Asking why is the obvious reaction after any case like Carly’s. Often there’s no clear answer to that agonizing question, no matter how many times it’s asked. But the government’s interpretations of FOI law isn’t making it any easier for Fraser.
Just So You Know: The only reason the mother knows some details about her daughter’s case is because of the ministry’s comprehensive care plan for the young woman. It detailed her treatments and her various problems and a scenario for caring for her in the future.
It was turned over to the mother after being found in Carly’s backpack, which was left in Stanley Park a short distance from where she jumped.
