Teenage girl with Down Syndrome left alone with dead mother for a week (or more)
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/06/27/down-syndrome-girl-left-alone-dead-mother_n_885389.html
This happened a year ago, but it came to my attention again because the Representative for Children and Youth recently released a report about it and they were discussing it at a meeting of the Children and Youth Committee that I listened to.
(The Representative for Children and Youth is an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, whose job it is to investigate deaths and serious injuries of children as well as make reports and recommendations in general to improve the lives of children and youth, especially those in foster care or who are considered especially vulnerable due to disability or poverty.)
The girl's father was either deceased or just plain out of the picture. She had two much older
brothers. Her mother was already in poor health when a car accident left her completely unable to work and severely disabled. She was on welfare for a while, but stopped sending in her report cards, so the ministry closed the file and didn't do any kind of followup even though they knew that there was a vulnerable child in the home. (I say "child" because mentally she was a child.)
The problem seems to a combination of "the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" -- there were just too many different agencies supposed to be dealing with the girl and her mother -- and the mother just plain refusing any help. For example, school staff witnessed a physical altercation between the girl and her mother when the mother came to pick her up one day, and they called a behavioural therapist to go pay them a visit. The mother refused to answer the door. The therapist left his card, but the mother never called him.
The girl was hard of hearing, and she had a hearing aid, but the mother never bothered to maintain it or get new batteries for it when the batteries died, leaving the girl effectively deaf. It is possible that someone may have come to check on her after her mother died, but she wouldn't have been able to hear anyone knocking on the door.
The girl's brothers tried several times to alert child-protection workers that there were problems, and one of them even went so far as to take her away from her mother and take her to live with him. But the mother threatened to charge him with child abduction, and the Ministry of Children and Family Development said that they would check up on their living situation. They apparently did so several times and found nothing wrong.
The girl would go to school every day for special education classes, but apparently all she ever did in class was sleep. Yet somehow none of her teachers seemed to think this was a sign of a problem.
The mother stopped going to the doctor and stopped taking her daughter to the doctor, probably because she could barely walk due to her worsening physical condition, as well as not having any transportation after her car was wrecked.
None of the agencies that worked with the girl had any kind of care plan for her. The Ministry of Children and Family Development at one point transferred all the files for developmentally disabled children & youth to Community Living BC and then a year later transferred them all back again (CLBC now deals only with adults 19 and over.) There were child protection workers, special-needs social workers, school-based workers and a respite worker, and none of them communicated with each other.
The Minister of Children and Family Development has promised to follow up on the recommendations that the representative made in her report. However, the representative also made recommendations that involve the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Social Development (the ones who deal with welfare and disability support) and none of them have said anything about it.
The link above is a news story about the case, but some of the information I have came from the representative's report, which can be found here: Isolated and Invisible: When Children with Special Needs are Seen But Not Seen.
This happened a year ago, but it came to my attention again because the Representative for Children and Youth recently released a report about it and they were discussing it at a meeting of the Children and Youth Committee that I listened to.
(The Representative for Children and Youth is an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, whose job it is to investigate deaths and serious injuries of children as well as make reports and recommendations in general to improve the lives of children and youth, especially those in foster care or who are considered especially vulnerable due to disability or poverty.)
The girl's father was either deceased or just plain out of the picture. She had two much older
brothers. Her mother was already in poor health when a car accident left her completely unable to work and severely disabled. She was on welfare for a while, but stopped sending in her report cards, so the ministry closed the file and didn't do any kind of followup even though they knew that there was a vulnerable child in the home. (I say "child" because mentally she was a child.)
The problem seems to a combination of "the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" -- there were just too many different agencies supposed to be dealing with the girl and her mother -- and the mother just plain refusing any help. For example, school staff witnessed a physical altercation between the girl and her mother when the mother came to pick her up one day, and they called a behavioural therapist to go pay them a visit. The mother refused to answer the door. The therapist left his card, but the mother never called him.
The girl was hard of hearing, and she had a hearing aid, but the mother never bothered to maintain it or get new batteries for it when the batteries died, leaving the girl effectively deaf. It is possible that someone may have come to check on her after her mother died, but she wouldn't have been able to hear anyone knocking on the door.
The girl's brothers tried several times to alert child-protection workers that there were problems, and one of them even went so far as to take her away from her mother and take her to live with him. But the mother threatened to charge him with child abduction, and the Ministry of Children and Family Development said that they would check up on their living situation. They apparently did so several times and found nothing wrong.
The girl would go to school every day for special education classes, but apparently all she ever did in class was sleep. Yet somehow none of her teachers seemed to think this was a sign of a problem.
The mother stopped going to the doctor and stopped taking her daughter to the doctor, probably because she could barely walk due to her worsening physical condition, as well as not having any transportation after her car was wrecked.
None of the agencies that worked with the girl had any kind of care plan for her. The Ministry of Children and Family Development at one point transferred all the files for developmentally disabled children & youth to Community Living BC and then a year later transferred them all back again (CLBC now deals only with adults 19 and over.) There were child protection workers, special-needs social workers, school-based workers and a respite worker, and none of them communicated with each other.
The Minister of Children and Family Development has promised to follow up on the recommendations that the representative made in her report. However, the representative also made recommendations that involve the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Social Development (the ones who deal with welfare and disability support) and none of them have said anything about it.
The link above is a news story about the case, but some of the information I have came from the representative's report, which can be found here: Isolated and Invisible: When Children with Special Needs are Seen But Not Seen.