The suicide of a youth in government care in 2015 seemed tragic at the time. In fact, the full story is much worse, and it is spelled out in a new report by the province’s child watchdog.
Alex Gervais died at 18 when he threw himself from the window of a hotel room, in despair over a future that promised only more of the misery he had endured throughout his short life. He was about to turn 19, when he would “age out” of care, with no hope of making his way in the world.
“This is a heartbreaking story,” said Bernard Richard, acting representative for children and youth. “Alex was looking for what every child needs and has a right to — the security and permanence of a home and a lasting connection to family.”
He didn’t get it — or anything close to it.
He was removed from his family at age seven. In 11 years he had 17 care placements and 23 social workers and caregivers. He didn’t get mental-health care, despite four referrals. Plans to unite him with relatives who would look after him were discarded.
He was never connected to his Métis culture. His pleas for help led nowhere.
“In many ways, Alex was abandoned by the system,” Richard said. “Early on, it was determined he would simply be left to ‘age out’ of care and not enough effort was made to pave the way for a better future for him.”
How can a government department charged with saving children decide to let one child sit on the shelf until he is old enough to become someone else’s problem?
“Difficult” doesn’t begin to describe the job society asks social workers to do. We hand them children who are suffering and ask them to work something close to a miracle. We give them insufficient resources and often-conflicting instructions, and vilify them when something goes wrong.
Difficult though it is, it is a job that has to be done.
Children who have endured parental, societal, racial and historical abuse have wounds that are not easily healed. At a time in their lives when they most need a nurturing and stable environment to give them a chance at a happy life, they are starved of love and hope.
We take them into government care to try to give them the stability that their parents cannot or will not provide.
But for Alex, the care he received was the furthest thing from nurturing and stable.
The report speaks of his “challenging behaviour,” but if he was having so many difficulties, why was mental-health treatment not provided? Why did the ministry officials not place him with his stepmother in B.C. or his aunt in Quebec, both of whom were eager to take him?
In the case of the stepmother, officials didn’t want to pay for his care, even though they paid more to foster parents and much more to paid caregivers. The last of those caregivers, witnesses said, didn’t even show up in the last 10 days of his life, despite being paid more than $8,000 a month.
The agencies that were contracted to provide services to Alex proved, in some cases, to be unable to deliver. Clearly, better oversight of such agencies has to be on the ministry’s to-do list.
As has happened after many similar reports, the government promises to learn from the mistakes. As with all those reports, we hope that some of the lessons will make a difference.
Cases such as Alex’s might have seemed insoluble to those on the front lines, but Alex was not just a case. He was a child.
