Foster care: First Nations teens are dying
The last time Jeffrey Owen spoke with his daughter, Amy, she was crying and asking to come home.
“She was unhappy. She hated it there.”
Weeks later, the 13 year old was found dead in her room at the Prescott group home where she was in care, thousands of kilometres from her family at Poplar Hill First Nation. Owen was told that Amy, who was under constant supervision, took her own life. He is waiting for the official report into her death.
She did not have thoughts of suicide until she was removed from her community to become a ward of the child welfare system, he said. “Her spirit was broken.” Amy Owen died on April 17. Four days later, on April 21, Courtney Scott from Fort Albany First Nation died in a fire at her foster home in Orléans. The 16 year old was the only resident of the home who didn’t escape the fire.
The deaths of the two First Nations girls far from home in recent weeks is raising alarm bells and fuelling calls for an inquest and legislative change.
Poplar Hill band council officials have told Tikinagan Child and Family Services, the First Nations child welfare agency, not to take children into care until the community gets some answers about how they are being cared for and why they are being sent so far away.
“They shouldn’t have to move these children so far away from home,” said Jeffrey Owen. “They are disconnected from their families.”
Deputy Grand Chief Anna Betty Achneepineskum of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), which includes the home communities of the two girls, said an inquest should be held as quickly as possible “to fully address the issues behind these tragedies.”
A second teenager from Poplar Hill First Nation, near the Manitoba border, died last year while in a group home in Sioux Lookout. Kanina Sue Turtle, 15, had received care in the Prescott group home where Owen died, her family said, before ending up in Sioux Lookout. Her parents were told she committed suicide. Her mother, Violet, said she finds that hard to believe. “She wasn’t like that at home. When she was in care … I don’t know.”
Family and friends called Turtle “loving” and “wonderful”.
Irwin Elman, the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, who called earlier for the province to make group homes safer for kids in care, said on Tuesday that he is alarmed by the recent deaths.
“This spike is very alarming. I feel like there is something at play here.”
First Nations children make up a high proportion of children in child welfare systems across the country, but it is not clear exactly how many are in care in Ontario. Elman said it is telling that the Ontario government does not even keep track of that number, or track how many young people are in care thousands of kilometres away from their homes.
“When you think about how difficult it is to be in the situation these indigenous children are in, you would think the ministry would be very concerned with the extent of that problem. If you don’t know, how can you begin to attack that situation seriously?”
In a statement Tuesday, the Ministry of Child and Youth Services said it will begin keeping data on how many indigenous children are in the child welfare system.
Achneepineskum said there are 800 Nishnawbe Aski First Nation children in care in Ontario. It is not clear how many of them, like Owen and Scott, are in care or treatment far from home.
The problem, she said, is that First Nations don’t have the resources to provide the services at home, something First Nations child advocate Cindy Blackstock has successfully fought the federal government over. Last year, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found the federal government is discriminating against 165,000 children by underfunding First Nations services on reserves. Since that ruling, the tribunal has issued two non-compliance orders against the federal government.
In an interview, Blackstock said children who are at risk of suicide are eligible to receive mental health services, but that is not being provided on reserves.
“If you are a First Nations kid, you get less funding for education, less funding for health care, less funding for child welfare to stay in your family … as a result, many of these kids are shipped off to urban centres where there’s no connection to their family and community and culture, and it deepens the hardship for these children.”
Achneepineskum said some families voluntarily choose to put their children in the child welfare system because they know they will have a better chance of getting services for the special needs than they would on the reserve.
“Lots of children end up in care because they don’t have the resources in the community to accommodate the needs of that child.”
Elman said many of the First Nations children in the child welfare system are living the generational legacy of the residential schools system. “If we want to commit ourselves to reconciliation, we need to do everything we can to prevent them from coming into care.”
Blackstock said the residential school system demonstrated tragically what the effects of dislocating children from their families look like. That is especially difficult for teenagers, she said.
The ministry said the first choice for children who can no longer remain in their homes is to place them with a member of their indigenous community through customary care.
As a last resort, the statement added, there are times when a young person is placed outside of the home community to receive care. Those children are tracked and monitored, the ministry said.
“We know, however, that there is more work to be done.”
The province is working with indigenous communities to develop a plan for residential care that “addresses the specific needs of indigenous children and youth, and their families and communities.”