Mom fights for state care for violent teen
Ministers sued to help parents of such children as ‘Jenna’
● When Durban teenager Jenna* was nine she started having violent outbursts at school. She would get onto a desk in her Grade 3 classroom and become aggressive. At home she attacked her younger brothers.
“We sought help everywhere,” her mom said. Jenna was eventually diagnosed as having a mood and psychotic disorder, symptoms of autism, and childhood-onset schizophrenia.
For three years she was in and out of schools and institutions as her behaviour spiralled out of control.
Her mother finally took a desperate step — launching an application in the High Court in Durban in 2016 against the relevant government departments in an attempt to force them to find her then 11-year-old daughter a final, suitable placement.
But the mom was demonised by officials. In an affidavit, Marcia Janelle Peters, a clinical psychologist at a mental health facility, Town Hill Hospital, said: “This is the first time I have experienced such an extraordinary desire for a parent to seek a child’s permanent placement in a mental healthcare establishment when the child has been assessed as having autism spectrum disorder.”
She said the institutions available dealt with “profound mental retardation” and could not assist Jenna in the long term.
“The mother must comply with her parental obligations. There are children with more serious conditions who reside in rural areas with limited resources. They benefit from strong family support.”
The mom, however, said the decision to go to court to force the department to have her daughter admitted to a facility was one of the most painful in her life.
“No mother wants this to happen to their child, but I had to do this for my daughter’s sake and for the safety of my boys. I tried my best to help her myself, but she needs professional help and her own space.”
Centre for Child Law director Ann Skelton intervened and was appointed the child’s curator. “The mom loves her . . . but cannot cope any more,” Skelton said in a report to the court.
Jenna had a short stay at a children’s home in Durban where she settled well. But the centre had to pick up the tab for extra carers. And when the department refused to pay for them, Jenna was moved to another facility where she lives alone in a cottage under the supervision of carers.
Her mom told the Sunday Times that she had visited once at night. “She was naked [she refuses to wear clothes] and was lying on a bare mattress in a locked room.” She bundled her in a blanket and took her home for the night.
Ministers failing
Jenna is not alone. In a legal challenge — to be argued in the High Court in Pretoria this week — Skelton says the ministers of social development, health and basic education are failing in their constitutional duties towards such children.
She details their “unfortunate and harrowing stories” told in innumerable court applications in which government officials concede fault, but oppose them anyway.
The application — for a declaratory order — was sparked by the story of a 10-year-old girl who suffers from multiple “disruptive behaviour disorders” and who was “utterly failed by the system”, and moved to 14 different care environments. After legal action she was placed in a centre but, Skelton says, she is “simply being warehoused there”.
Skelton said the national stakeholders, in claiming to have policies, had provided the Centre for Child Law with more than 500 pages of documents and simply said “This is our policy”, without demonstrating what part of the “policy” was relevant.
In joint heads of argument, the ministers urge that the application be dismissed. “In the light of all the information . . . filed, it is respectfully submitted that a declaratory order that we have failed to comply with [our] constitutional duties in respect of children with severe or profound behavioural disorders is unsubstantiated and does not constitute appropriate relief.
“Despite the concession that some children with severe or profound behavioural disorders were failed, these failures do not justify a general declaratory order of failed constitutional duties by the respondents.” * Not her real name