Shame! Shame! Shame! MCFD and the Government of BC

Alex Gervais is dead.

Another Aboriginal kid in care is dead not more than four months after the Paige report written by BC’s Representative for Children and Youth.  If you remember, among Turpel-Lafond’s many recommendations in the Paige report was that children in care should be absolutely nowhere near SROs (Single Resident Occupancy) or hotels as a place of permanent or temporary housing. And, in May when the report came out, Stephanie Cadieux told Turpel-Lafond that there were no kids in care living hotels.  

Hotels are no place for kids to live.  Two teenagers in Winnipeg died in provincial care while living in hotels.  Several teen aged girls report being sexually assaulted and/or introduced to drugs and alcohol while living in downtown hotels.  In Manitoba, kids in care who live in hotels are supervised by contract workers – people who are hired to merely “babysit” teenagers.  They have little or no mental health training or any social work training.  In fact, these contract workers have little or no training whatsoever regarding the needs of teens at risk.

What do governments think is going to happen when teenagers live in hotels without significant adult connections or significant adult to watch over, check in, or otherwise care for them?  Kids at risk are just going to take care of themselves, I guess.

In Alex’s case, let’s place the blame at the feet of those who really deserve it:  the provincial government.  The government cut funding and shut down the group home in which Alex lived. 

This government’s consistent marriage to their policies of austerity and their obsession with the “balanced budget” is consistently being borne on the backs of those who are the most vulnerable in our province.  Worse than that, this policy is being borne on the backs of the most vulnerable children in this province.

I desperately try, on a daily basis to help kids like Alex and Paige put their lives back together.  I try to work with them and to work with the eroding systems which consistently work against us.  The harder we try to put it all back together, the more difficult MCFD makes it for us. 

It’s like trying to build a sandcastle in a monsoon.

How is this continuing to be ok? 

Why is it acceptable to this government that some children are treated in ways that would be unacceptable if their own children were treated in the same way?  Why are we, as a society, allowing the most vulnerable children to be treated in the most horrific ways?

How is this continuing to be acceptable and permitted in this province?  Why are we doing nothing about it?

None of these children asked to be placed in these situations.  None of them asked to be born into these hurting families.  None of them asked to be born into lives in which they are neither loved nor wanted.

The Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, has suggested that there are strong indications that Alex took his own life.  If this is indeed the case, all this shows us is that, once again, cracks in the Child and Youth Mental Health system in this province have precipitated a desperate youth to take his own life.  I have ranted many a time and oft about the complete lack of supports for youth with mental health needs - particularly for kids in care and particularly for Indigenous children in care.

Child and Youth services of any kind in this province are a fucking joke…no…a nightmare.  There is absolutely nothing funny about MCFD, especially the Aboriginal department.  Social workers reneging on signed agreements – worse – bold faced lying about signing papers or claiming that the meeting during which the papers were signed never happened.   All of the lies and game playing to get out of paying a student’s fees. 

How do you sleep at night, Stephanie Cadieux?  Your ministry’s ineptitude is killing the children with whom you are charged with protecting.

How do you sleep at night, Suzanne Anton?  Where is your response to the recommendations from the many reports out of Turpel-Lafond’s office?

How do you sleep at night, Christy Clark?  Child after child dies under your watch and the only time you acknowledge the loss is when it serves as a photo op for you!

All three of you should be ashamed!  How do you allow these children to live in conditions in which you would never allow your own children to live?

  

How many more children have to die before we get angry enough to actually do something or demand that something be done?  The recommendations have been given and have not been followed. 

When do we hold our governments accountable to those who cannot speak for themselves? 

When do we admit that “austerity” economics is just a covert (or not so covert) attempt to destroy the poor, the sick, the old, and the vulnerable? 

When will we realise that, in the words of the great Welsh band, The Manic Street Preachers, “if you tolerate this then your children will be next”?