The representative for children and youth’s office developed a custom over the years of including a tag line in the titles of special reports that sum up the horror story under discussion.
“Broken Promises” is the latest one, released this week. It details the series of official misjudgments that set the stage for Alex Gervais to fling himself out of a fourth-floor motel room and crash to his death at the age of 18.
“Last Resort” was the one before that. It referred to Nick, the meth-addicted teenager, also Métis, who asphyxiated himself in the closet of a Campbell River treatment centre in June 2015, after the child-welfare system came up well short of dealing with his problems.
Then there was “Tragedy in Waiting,” about 16-year-old Chester, who took his own life in 2013. The review concluded the delegated aboriginal agency was utterly hopeless when it came to dealing with his mental-health issues.
It was preceded by “Abuse, Indifference and a Young Life Discarded.” It summed up the “professional indifference” shown Paige, a 19-year-old native woman who died of an overdose in a Downtown Eastside park washroom in 2013.
Before that there was “Lost in the Shadows,” about a 14-year-old First Nations girl. Dangerously mentally ill mother, chaos at home, sexual abuse, cognitive problems — that’s just a scant outline of her nightmare childhood.
“Her desperation was ignored,” the representative concluded, and she hanged herself in her grandparents’ yard in 2011. The report noted readers would find it “unbelievable” that such a story could unfold in modern-day B.C.
The compilation of bleak titles is harrowing. The full stories behind each case are even more chilling. It’s more than the fact that there are vulnerable children who live lives of desperation. That’s a horrible fact of life. What also emerges from all these reports is the incomprehensible difficulty our collective systems have when it comes to kicking into gear to rescue them.
It’s even harder to understand given how regular and repetitive the reports are. They stretch back in one form or another to the Matthew Vaudreuil case of the 1990s, the five-year-old asphyxiated by his own troubled mother after a horrible life that clocked 60 reports to the ministry about his well-being.
Each one of these cases is a searing learning experience, but the lesson doesn’t seem to take hold.
The lessons from the Gervais case, for example, are stark. His abusive, mentally ill parents failed their task, and the ministry took over early on. After 17 different placements handled by 23 different social workers, some of whom made profoundly bad decisions, he turned into a problematic, addicted teenager. He was eventually parked in a motel with a completely indifferent caregiver, and his short life culminated in a final cocaine binge that led to his suicidal leap.
The report notes constant destabilizing changes in his life, ordered by the ministry, and lost opportunities for permanence with his extended Métis family.
There are four lengthy, detailed recommendations.
But what’s the point of listing them? They’ve been around in some form for years. They were officially accepted by the hapless minister, Stephanie Cadieux. Most of the earlier versions were accepted, too. Yet, the stories keep piling up.
Interspersed with the recurring tales of these atrocities are many more reports from the representative’s office. They are less-dramatic system reviews that are chock full of recommendations for changes. They urge more focus, more training, more oversight, more money. Very few of them are explicitly rejected by the government. But these horrors continue.
The watchdog, the ministry and the media do an established minuet. The report lands and a burst of publicity ensues based on the lurid evidence of horrible mistreatment and bureaucratic bungling. The ministry issues a formal response, usually either non-committal or accepting. Then the moment passes.
The 56-page report on Gervais’ death includes this statement: “It is hoped that this report and its recommendations will help prevent other children and youth from experiencing a similar fate.”
That’s the devout hope behind every report, but some young people are still suffering terrible fates.
