Just Another Torn Paige

https://www.rcybc.ca/paige

(Link to the report)

The name Paige was in the forefront of people’s minds for a couple of days.  For a couple of days, before the provincial government diverted attention away from their gross neglect and onto LNG agreements, her name blasted from our radios and televisions for no other reason than she is dead. 

Another dead Aboriginal woman.

Another dead Aboriginal woman whose life could have been saved.  The opportunities were there for others to step in and protect her.  Those opportunities presented themselves several times through several years of her life.  Over and over government agencies had the opportunity to step in.  They did not.  They failed.

We failed.

We failed and yet another indigenous child died in care.

In last Friday’s report from the Representative for Children and Youth (an independent body acting as an advocate for children and youth in care in British Columbia), Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond pointed out every hole torn in the safety net that was supposed to catch Paige and many other children like her.  In her report, Turpel-Lafond:  exposed the “systemic indifference” of MCFD social workers and other members of the child and youth services teams; casts light into the shadow of the child and youth welfare system in this province; calls out the blatant institutional gaps which can only be described as racist;  and exposes the complete lack of imagination of MCFD, the Ministry of Education, specifically,  and the provincial government in general, when it comes to creating systems and practices that work to serve those who need it the most.  She exposes practices which seem to utterly lack compassion, curiousity, and competence when to not possess such traits costs lives.  
Through her interviews with a number of members of MCFD and different school personnel, all along the continuum of care, we see the need for increased resources for youth in terms of mental health and addiction supports, as well as supports for those people living in intergenerational trauma.  We see how schools let her slip away and how medical and police professionals had ample opportunities to support her but never did.   We see how each member of the “team,” the community let her down and, in effect, let her die.

MCFD

MCFD has been identified by Turpel-Lafond as the biggest hole in the net.  She says that specific policies and practices, as well as a blatant failure to act in situations where Paige needed to be protected from abuse and neglect (starting as early as when she was five months old), resulted in Paige’s death.  Turpel-Lafond feels that there is strong legislation and policy in place to prevent the deaths of aboriginal children (especially girls) but that “…there is too often a distinct lack of follow-through by professionals.” (p. 8)

The Representative lists the numerous times that members of the community (school, workers in hotels in the DTES [Downtown East Side]) made reports to MCFD that Paige was neglected and even had markings or indicators of abuse.  In several cases social workers did nothing.  In other cases, child protection reports were misfiled, filled out incorrectly, or not recorded at all.  Time after time social workers did not follow through on meetings with Paige, put the onus on Paige to contact them, and even left a false paper trail stating that Paige was receiving service she was not receiving.  On paper, Paige was seeing counsellors.  In reality, she saw no one.

Three factors leading to Paige’s death, as identified by Turpel-Lafond, really disturb me are:

1.        Outreach work for youth at risk and living on the DTES has been out sourced to third party service providers.  These providers are not bound to the provincial legislation regarding child protection as found in the Child, Family, and Community Services Act.  These service providers work outside of the provincial laws regarding child protection and, as such, are not obligated to report any situations which would break child protection laws.  In addition, these service providers were also not obligated to report to MCFD in any formal reporting out.

WHAT?!!!! 

MCFD contracts out to people who are “above the law” when it comes to reporting on child protection cases.  That’s right.  They are not obligated to act and they are not obligated to report.  Nice use of resources.

2.        The process of “aging out” for foster children has changed over the years but the expectation that a young person, at the age of 19, will be stable enough to care for themselves, and, thus be ceremoniously “booted out” of foster care is absolutely ludicrous.  Particularly if the child in question has a history laden with trauma, as Paige did.

I have had the honour of being asked to participate in Youth Transition Conferences with a number of youth in my career and see the extremely valuable place these conferences play in the lives of youth – particularly aboriginal youth.  During these conferences, the youth chooses people who have had an important role in their lives to sit and share how they are going to continue to support the youth into adulthood.   It’s like being invited to spend the rest of your life with this youth as a part of it.  You are, in effect, being chosen to be a permanent member of the kid’s family…for life.  This was an amazingly powerful experience for all of us:  the youth was reassured that he was not going to be left high and dry in his life when things got bad or, conversely that there would be people around to celebrate the good times; the adults felt greater levels of efficacy in their work with the youth; and the whole lot of us felt connected to a greater purpose than we had as individuals.  The conference was a testament to the attachments the young man had made in his first 19 years.  The conference assured the young man that he had people to watch out for him and places he could go in emergency situations. 

The Youth Transition conference is great if and only if the youth has significant attachments established in his/her life. 

From my observations, it seemed to me that Paige did not have many, if any, healthy, positive, significant attachments to anyone in her life that would have made a “proper” Youth Transition Conference possible.  Paige did not have the stability or connections to place or people that the young man in my above example had.  In fact, when Paige turned 19, in the face of objections and concerns by her foster parents at the time of her “aging out,” she was forced out of her foster placement.  Paige’s foster mother repeatedly stated her concerns to Paige’s social worker who, by the way, had no knowledge or understanding of Paige’s story, her history of neglect, and her trauma.  The only thing her social worker knew was that Paige was struggling with alcohol and drug use.  So, the day after Paige’s 19^th birthday, Paige’s foster parents were instructed to pack all of her belongings into garbage bags and to deliver them to the school Paige was attending because she was officially on her own.  In fact, after Paige found a place and moved into her new living situation, her social worker did not check in with her to see if the placement was safe or appropriate because “…the move happened the day after her 19^th birthday, when he was no longer responsible for her file.” (p.64)

So, check this out:  Paige’s foster parents, the first people she actually felt an attachment to according to Paige herself, begged the ministry to let Paige stay with them so she could get the mental health and addiction supports in place and were told that the MCFD mandate was to get Paige on her own and stabilized.  This young woman was, for the first time in many years, in a place where she was (a) with people she trusted a little (b) felt safe (c) open and amenable to addiction supports and she was KICKED OUT OF HER PLACEMENT BY MCFD BECAUSE OF A MANDATE TO AGE KIDS OUT AT 19!!!!!  And, to add insult to injury, Paige's substance use escalated to crack and meth TWO months after "aging out."

3.        Institutionalized Racism as demonstrated in the resistance of MCFD to address problems and mindsets around dealing with indigenous youth and families.

In my life I deal with many youth who are resistant to change and risk.  This does feel counter-intuitive when you witness the lives of risk many youth experience.  What I mean is that many youth, particularly those who have lived in inter-generational poverty or trauma, feel hopeless; that change is not possible and their lives are never going to get any better.  Especially youth who have no escape from abuse, neglect, and addiction in their homes.  Many youth in care have experienced this.  Many aboriginal children have experienced this.  Our mindset, or perception about those kids, their lives, and their ancestry profoundly impact the chances of their lives becoming any better.  How?  Let me tell you:  1. current service providers come to their practice from a disease based or pathology perspective.  You see the issues in the lives of the person and you try to remediate or remove the issue so that the quality of the person’s life will be improved.  2.  The same service providers work from the place of pathology when working with aboriginal youth and families.  They have the mindset that the trauma, addiction, and abuse issues are culturally ingrained and shackle the individual to their fate:  the cycle of more of the same.  While this is the reality of many indigenous people, it is not the only reality.  This variance in experience must be the place from which professionals seek to work with all people.  To practice from any other place would be to allow stereotypes to inform your work.

While, on the surface the disease model may seem an appropriate way in which to work with people who have complex needs (like homelessness, mental health challenges, addictions, etc.) it is, in fact deadly.  This approach teaches people that they are hopeless and that only outside forces will help them get better.   What is needed for people who have the above complex needs is, in fact the opposite approach.  In fact, many “best practice” recommendations around service planning for people who have needs similar to or mirrored by those on the DTES, is a practice grounded in the “strength based,” client-centered model.  

At the heart of this approach to care is the idea that the person has with in them the power and ability to make any changes they need to make their lives better and they know what they need.  The job of the social worker, teacher, counselor, would then be to play to the person’s strengths, to listen to the person's needs,  and be their biggest cheerleader when things go well, and their strongest supporter, without judgement, when things don’t.  Support people build relationships – authentic relationships built on respect, compassion, and honour for the other person’s story.  The relationships have to be real, not mandated.  In this way, people learn that there are trust worthy individuals in the world who actually care about them because of who they are, not because they are a number on a file folder. 

Compassion breeds hope.  Hope breeds change.  People ready themselves for change when they know someone will be there to cheer them on or to lift them up.

How, exactly were service providers supposed to get Paige to believe that people really had her best interest at heart when the rug was continually pulled out from under her?  How was Paige supposed to believe her life had hope or purpose or meaning when she would just get her footing with people and she was yanked away from them again and again?  This was a reoccurring theme in Paige’s life from her birth.  She had no sense of permanence.  No sense of place.  No sense of community.

What many service providers do not realise is that you cannot engage people in change processes if they feel like there is no hope for change.  People have to believe that change is possible.  They have to have had experiences in their lives which demonstrate to them that they have power and control in their lives and when they “go out on a limb” and take the risk to change something in their lives, they need to feel that the change will actually happen.  The issue for Paige, and her mother, and her grandmother, was not that these women were actually “service-resistant” (p.62) but that their attempts to change resulted in a lack of effect that allowed them to feel hopeful about change.   Nothing ever seemed to get better for them, so why should they believe that things were ever going to change?   Paige’s grandmother died of an overdose, her mother died of an overdose 2 months after Paige herself died of an overdose.  If that was your reality, your whole reality for your whole life, how much would you believe others who told you your life could change?  How hopeful would you feel about change in your life?  Resiliency and efficacy come from loving attachments.  Trauma is only healed through loving relationships – the ability to trust that people are not going to hurt you.  You cannot process trauma if you do not trust people.  Paige had few attachments or loving relationships.  There were opportunities for them but they were ripped away.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS

This is my jam.  This is my area of expertise.  This is where I live:  highly at risk youth. 

Youth with addictions. 

Youth with attendance issues.

Youth in care. 

These kids are my people.

These kids are my people and I can very confidently say that I have, really, only been able to help a handful of kids.  Especially in the last few years with the Liberal government in power.  The cuts to schools and to services for youth have crippled us. 

I am unable to do my job with any confidence or effect because services for youth are A COMPLETE FUCKING JOKE IN THIS PROVINCE.

Child and Youth Mental Health has a ONE YEAR TO 18 MONTH wait list for kids with the most acute issues.  Even kids who are presenting with extreme psychosis are being placed on the back burner and are left hanging because there are so few spots in youth psychiatric wards. When it comes to mental health supports and school.  I would have failed Paige, too.  We have one counselor in an extremely needy population.  We would have lost her, too.

In terms of addiction supports for youth – the situation is more dire than mental health supports.  Youth addiction treatment falls to less than a handful of service providers.  I live with this terrifying fact on a daily basis as I try to navigate kids through their addictions – most recently to oxys or cocaine.  I watch kids spiral further and further down the rabbit hole of substance dependency, virtually helpless to really do anything of great import.  The most severely addicted youth may be lucky enough to attend a whole six to eight weeks of treatment with really no follow up supports.  For many kids who do not have a family to support them, these youth, like Paige, stumble from treatment program to treatment program with little impact on their ability to deal with their addictions.  Furthermore, anyone who understands addictions knows that the addiction is just the symptom of a deeper hurt or trauma and in order for those hurts to be addressed, you need to be involved in some sort of mental health supports which are currently in really short supply.  So grows the spiral of lack for youth who really need to experience some plenty.

So how do I keep going to work and doing what I do day in and day out in the face of so many frustrations? I focus on the kids.  I let them know, every day, that they are loved. I let them know, every day, that I am proud of them. I let them know, every day, that I even care enough to lovingly kick their asses from time to time.  And I have started taking a more active role in my profession.  I am mentoring teachers and support staff to have a more flexible approach to kids and their behaviour, to have a compassionate curioustiy about their lives, and to understand that every kid has a story and sometimes those stories are more akin to horror than fairy tale.  I try to share what I know about how healthy, positive attachments/relationships foster resilience in kids and how it just takes one person to change the life of a child.  I also try to encourage changes in mind set around how people perceive mental health, addiction, and behaviours which appear to be counter intuitive to school successes such as school avoidance, heightened aggression (verbal or physical), or drug/alcohol use.  I try to encourage the adult to see the child in the behaviour.  I try to encourage the youth to see the person in the teacher.  Finally, I, and my colleagues, hold together a chronically underfunded, eroding system with tears, blood, and sheer willpower.  We love our kids.  We have no choice but to keep the system going. 

There does, however, need to be some flexibility built into the system in terms of re-integration of kids who have had long absences from school avoidant behaviours or from transience.  We need to be more flexible around kids who come to school to hang out with peers or adults but do not necessarily have a great track record of attending specific classes on a regular basis.  We need to foster attachments/relationships, especially with youth who have a history similar to Paige’s.  We need to assume ourselves into the lives of those who seem to be the most resistant to us.  The most “prickly” kid is the kid most in need of love.  Often it is the case that the kid with the most push back has a history of rejection and so s/he pushes first so others don’t have to.  These kids need to know that we aren’t going anywhere.  They need to know we are happy to see them – even when we are frustrated that they only come to class/school once in a while. 

That was Paige’s experience.  She attended infrequently.  No one chased her.  No one made a plan to hold onto her, even after learning that she had attended 16 schools before dropping out in grade 10. 

I know it is hard to do.  I make plans like this all of the time for kids I do not have the time to chase.  I feel tremendous guilt about losing kids to expulsion, suspension, truancy when I knew in my heart of hearts that I needed to fight harder and do more.  I assuage that guilt by saying to myself that I am preserving my mental health by spending energy on the ones who show up; even when I know that the ones who don’t show up actually need me more.  It is the continual “rock and hard place” I am trapped in:  I have no time to chase the kids who need to be chased. 

And here is the truth:  if we had the bodies and my caseload was cut in half, I could chase every kid on my caseload that needed to be chased.  Not only that, I could even help the Aboriginal Support Workers chase some of her kids, too.  If we had the bodies, we could catch the kids MCFD can’t catch.  And, honestly, isn’t that what a community is about?  There are always hands out to catch the ones who slip through in other areas.  If we had the bodies, we could provide experiences for success for kids who have known little or no success in their lives outside of school.  We could teach kids about resiliency and build a community that will surround the most damaged, hurting kids and love them back into wholeness.

THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

Here is another piece of truth:  we live in a country and a province which cares little, or not at all, for kids in poverty or in care.  While I agree with the Representative in many of her criticisms and recommendations, I really feel that not enough responsibility fell upon the provincial government for their irresponsible fiscal practices and the underfunding of social services, health services (specifically in the areas of mental health/trauma supports and addictions), school counsellors or other personnel who would be asked to care for children with intense needs, like Paige.  Social workers, and other members of MCFD are being raked over the coals for gaps in service and practice that could be remedied if their caseloads were smaller, if effective youth services actually existed in abundance and variety, and if schools didn’t have to give up counsellors because funding cuts at the provincial level are gutting any programs schools had which were designed to catch, keep, and love kids like Paige.

Where is the action on the supposed legislation put forward to eliminate child poverty?  The Provincial Government failed in their Child Poverty Report Card in November of 2014.  One in five children live in poverty in this province (this will be the focus of my next blog post) and the provincial government couldn’t give a shit.  They are going to hold an emergency summer session of the legislature to pass the “agreement in principal” for an LNG plant that nobody in the area housing it wants, but they refuse to acknowledge or address the fact that children are living and dying in squalor in one of the richest places in the country.  Shame!

 Where is the report from the Attorney General, requested by the Representative over 18 months ago, regarding the review of the reasons for the lack of enforcement of CFCS Act in BC?  Why have the Premier and the Minister in charge of MCFD been silent about this noncompliance?  Why have citizens of this province not called for the Premier to bring the Attorney General into line and have the report completed?  Why has the Attorney General remained silent to the knowledge that MCFD contracts out to outreach service providers who are not obligated to follow the same child protection laws as everyone else in the province?

Where are the provincial government and municipal governments in their provision of affordable housing in the DTES for families which are not SROs (Single Room Occupancy – hotel) or homeless shelters?  These are known areas of drug use and sexual assault for women working in the DTES.  Why has nothing been done to remediate the housing issues for women or families living in this area?  How was it ever ok that children have been permitted to live in SROs?

FINAL THOUGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF MY OWN:

Reading this report from end to end, it really feels like Paige was destined to die an addict in the Downtown Eastside (DTES).  It really feels like this because her mother and her grandmother were addicts, because she was aboriginal, because she was transient, because she didn’t bother to reach out to her social worker.   We just accepted her fate because this always happens to girls like her from her background.  It really feels like the whole fucking lot of us threw our hands up in the air and walked away because the problem is so much bigger than us.  Because we have our own kids to worry about.  Because life was shitty for us and no one gave a fuck.  Because when you make the choice to live like that, you put yourself in situations which are unsafe and are more likely to cause you harm.  Because “you can’t help people who can’t help themselves.” 

We have to do better than this because in the words of Sarah Hunt, reporter for CBC, "...youth like Paige are paying for out inaction with their lives." (http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/paige-s-death-results-in-damning-report-but-who-will-listen-1.3078075)  

The solution is easy and all we have to do is focus on one kid. 

If everyone who reads this post or if everyone who read that report picked one kid to focus on, one kid you know who: has had a shitty life and is struggling now, who struggles with addiction (regardless of your biases about addiction), who has survived trauma and needs someone to trust and love them, who has lived with addicts, who has moved more than, say, five times in a couple of years, who looks unclean, unkempt, undone.  If everyone picks one kid to “take under their wing” and be their angel, we would go miles to fix this problem.

I agree 100% with Hunt, who wrote an article last week in response to the report.  Hunt says the first step in any plan needs to be engaging Aboriginal youth in the discussion about how best to provide services.  The best thing for us to do is to sit down, shut up, and let the kids tell us what they need and how best to serve them.

Oh, and the Christy and her tight-fisted cronies need to focus on people not projects.  She needs to fund services for children and youth, fund schools (like get more counselors in high schools and district psychologists in elementary schools), fund programs designed to get trauma survivors the help they need. 

Putting together a task force or a team for at risk youth on the DTES is too little too late.  Catch them before they get there.  Does that not make more sense?  A DTES task force to prevent the deaths of kids on the DTES is the equivalent of using a band-aide to stop the bleeding after you have been decapitated…too fucking little, too fucking late.