Family waits for answers after fire at a foster home
Two months after her daughter, Courtney Scott, died in a fire in an Ottawa foster home, Sheila Scott Singer-McKenzie says she still needs to know more.
“I really wanted answers, but no one talked to me,” Singer-McKenzie said in an interview from her home near Timmins.
“I’m still having a hard time believing that she is gone.”
Scott, originally from Fort Albany First Nation in northern Ontario, died when a fire ripped through the foster home on Old Montreal Road where she was living.
Her death on April 21 came four days after the death of another indigenous teenager living in foster care in Ottawa, far from her northern home.
Amy Owen, 13, was found dead as a result of suicide on April 17 in an east-end Ottawa group home. Owen’s father in Poplar Hill First Nation, in northwestern Ontario, said at the time he didn’t know his daughter was living in Ottawa. She had earlier been at a group home in Prescott.
The families of the two girls are not the only ones waiting for answers about the circumstances around the deaths.
Numerous investigations have been launched since, including a fire marshal’s report into Scott’s death and coroner’s investigations into both deaths.
Regional supervising coroner Louise McNaughton-Fillion said this week that the investigations are ongoing and her department is working with fire and police.
A spokesperson for the Ontario Office of the Fire Marshal said its investigation into the fire in which Scott died is complete, but it will wait for the coroner’s investigation. The fire marshal’s report would then be available to the public through access to information.
Trell Heuther, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, said in a statement that “multiple investigations” into the deaths were started by local and provincial authorities, including fire, police and municipal officials, “some of which are ongoing.”
In addition, the province has initiated licensing inspections of the two facilities, which involved interviewing youth and staff and reviewing case files.
The province says it is developing a blueprint for reform of child and youth residential services, something the provincial advocate for children and youth, Irwin Elman, has said offers “some measure of hope.” But more must be done to insure children in residential care are safe, he added.
The province is conducting targeted, unannounced inspections of licensed residential settings, working to strengthen safety in residences and expanding the data on children and youth in residential settings.
In May, the province shut down three Thunder Bay foster homes after unannounced inspections. Seventeen-year-old Tammy Keeash died in May after disappearing from her Thunder Bay foster home.
Many First Nations advocates say a large part of the problem is that there are so few services in the North where children in remote communities live, that they are more frequently sent away to residential care.
In 2015, the latest numbers available, children’s aid societies reported 89 deaths to the provincial office of the chief coroner — 10 involving children who were in care at the time of their death and 79 involving children who were involved with a society within 12 months of their death but were not in care at the time.