Call for better-trained social workers in report on dead Manitoba teenager
An Indigenous teen who struggled with addiction and died in 2016 did not get the help he needed from social workers, school officials and others, Manitoba’s advocate for children and youth said Friday.
The 17-year-old, who is not identified in Daphne Penrose’s 104-page report, was repeatedly let down in efforts to curb his drinking and drug use, and was left in unsafe homes by social workers who should have known better, she said.
“His story is not uncommon. He was a young Indigenous youth who lived in a First Nations community and the service equity wasn’t there,” said Penrose, an independent officer of the Manitoba legislature.
The boy had a happy childhood by all accounts, her report says, but started having trouble when he found out his father was not his biological parent.
He started acting out at his high school, started drinking and doing drugs and pleaded guilty to setting a fire at his school when he was 14.
The boy opened up about his addiction and suicidal thoughts to an addictions counsellor based in the school, the report adds, but his parents were never brought in and appeared to be unaware of the depths of his despair.
Manitoba’s troubled child-welfare system also let the boy down, Penrose said. Social workers failed to properly assess a home where the boy was staying as unsafe.
One agency worker wrote that the boy’s dad was abusive, but there was no followup.
Later, the boy stayed at a home where a woman was on probation for a firearms-related offence, but the local child and family services agency approved of the living arrangement anyway.
Shortly before his 18th birthday, the boy died in a single-vehicle rollover. He had been drinking and was not wearing a seat belt.