Dead boy’s dad says he’ll push for services for kids
Father hopes to make care for youth a ballot-box issue in next election
The father of a 15-yearold drug-addicted boy whose death has sparked calls for governmentfunded services says he will push for change in the run-up to a provincial election so other youth can get the help they desperately need.
Peter Lang spoke out Thursday after British Columbia’s representative for children and youth released a report on his son’s June 2015 death.
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond made the same recommendation for comprehensive government support involving another case five months ago.
She said in the current report that the system should include community-based and residential treatment services, along with selective use of secure care that would allow youth to be involuntarily placed in a facility to keep them safe.
Lang said he and his ex-wife Linda Tenpas tried everything they could to get help for their son Nick Lang, whose behaviour began changing in Grade 4 before spiralling out of control starting with marijuana use that escalated to methamphetamine.
Lang, a deputy warden with the Correctional Service of Canada, said the teen was reluctant to voluntarily receive help and the pair was forced to try the youth justice system as a last resort after the teen assaulted his mother in April 2015.
The Metis teen pleaded guilty to assault and was ordered to attend rehab funded by the Children’s Ministry at a facility in the Vancouver Island community of Campbell River.
On June 9, 2015, six days after starting the program, Nick was found hanging in a bedroom closet in the care home where he was staying. A coroner’s investigation did not determine a cause of death, and Turpel-Lafond’s office said it may never be known.
Turpel-Lafond said in her report that Nick, who was described by a teacher as “a little kid with a big heart,” lived with his wellfunctioning middle-class family near Vancouver, but there were no Metis-specific services available despite his parents’ efforts to get him into such a treatment program.
“Nick’s very capable parents did not manage to find a public treatment program that could help him that didn’t also have a significant wait list and they couldn’t afford the private facilities that would accept him right away.”
Lang said many other parents who are also trying to get treatment for their children have contacted him for support.
“I will continue to raise his case as an example of how the system failed,” Lang said, adding he plans to meet on the weekend with the Opposition NDP critic of the Children’s Ministry.
“I’m not a member of any party and I don’t have any assurances that they would do anything different, but this government has had 10 years to do something and they haven’t done it,” he said of the Liberals, who will vie for a fifth consecutive term in office next May.
Children’s Minister Stephanie Cadieux said she will discuss with other ministries how Turpel-Lafond’s report might lead to service improvements.
She said the government has convened a cross-ministry cabinet working group on mental health and substance-use services in an effort to address gaps in the system.
Lang and Tenpas have also filed a civil lawsuit against the province, alleging their son received inade- quate supervision while he was in care. Deputy children’s representative Dawn Thomas-Wightman said a youth court judge ordered the teen be provided with an intensive support and supervision worker for Metis youth, but that did not happen.
“Some recent research around Metis services across Canada basically found what our report found — that there’s a glaring lack of services that are Metis-specific for Metis children and youth.”
This government has had 10 years to do something and they haven’t done it.