Not only the system failed B.C.’s Paige
Report criticizes child welfare, but absolves parents
“If a parent in B.C. had treated their child the way the system treated Paige, we may be having a debate over criminal responsibility.”
This is the most startling — and perverse — conclusion from Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth (RCY), in her 74-page report on the life and death of an aboriginal woman identified only as Paige.
Paige died two years ago from a drug overdose in Vancouver’s poverty-stricken Downtown Eastside (DTES). She was 19. Because she had been involved her entire life with B.C.’s Ministry of Child and Family Development, her death and prior injuries she’d suffered were reported in some detail up the chain of departmental command, and the RCY conducted a postmortem review.
Paige’s Story: Abuse, Indifference and a Young Life Discarded, released last week, is deeply distressing. Paige led a miserable existence since her birth in Kamloops to young parents who fought. For 19 years, she careened from one bad situation to another, homeless or in flophouses and shelters with her crack-addicted mother, or moving between foster homes and recovery places.
At 16, Paige landed with her mother in the DTES, where she didn’t stand a chance. Her substance of choice was alcohol; she drank copiously and was treated for extreme intoxication. A few months before her death, she began injecting heroin. Soon, she was dealing drugs to pay a debt. On April 24, 2013, Paige was found dead inside a “supportive housing complex” washroom, next to a notorious park.
Her demise was not unexpected; Paige was wellknown to Vancouver social workers, and they were aware of her and her mother’s histories of substance abuse. According to the Turpel-Lafond report, the state had to save her life, and it did not.
“Her suffering is detailed in this report, and it will sicken every reader to know that this happened in Vancouver, under the watchful lens of a social services system that should have done better,” writes Turpel-Lafond.
Of course it could have done better. But here’s another concern: That society could accept Turpel-Lafond’s determination to assign blame for Paige’s death to one source: The state.
The “system” failed Paige, she declares, again and again. “Health care professionals, hospitals, police, outreach workers and staff at shelters and SROs (DTES hotels) repeatedly failed in their duty to report child protection concerns to the ministry,” she writes. “It is time to own the dysfunction and disarray that resulted in a failure to save Paige.”
Missing from this assessment and Turpel-Lafond’s call for ownership are the two people responsible for Paige.
Her father is described in the report as abusive and was, by the time Paige was 10, completely absent from her life. He leaves and that’s that, he’s off the hook.
Meanwhile, Paige’s circumstances, her development, the odds of her finding happiness and good health were constantly upset by her destructive, drug-addicted mother, who insisted on keeping her daughter with her until she tired of the girl, or when felt she could no longer cope. Mother and daughter should have been forced apart, permanently, Turpel-Lafond suggests. Social workers should have made sure of that, and they did not.
The report documents occasions when social workers made what seem like glaring mistakes. Paige and her mother were reunited after mandated removals and separations, even after the mother was known to have “chronic abuse issues” and was “unable to commit to treatment.”
On one occasion, Turpel-Lafond writes, “the stability of (an) emergency foster placement was immediately jeopardized when the mother located the home and began to keep a constant watch on the property. She sat on a park bench facing the foster home and spent hours each day watching the foster home, displaying erratic behaviour and yelling threats to the foster family and her daughter.
“She would lie down on the lawn outside Paige’s window at night and be found sleeping there in the morning. She appeared oblivious to the terrifying effect that her behaviour was having on the other children and family members in the foster home.”
But how does the state force a mother — including one who is drug-addicted, irrational and incapable — to stop mothering or wanting a daughter’s company? Turpel-Lafond recommends stricter adherence to procedures, but she ignores the human instinct.
In 2010, when Paige was 17, her mother was “certified” under B.C.’s mental health act, and confined to hospital. A psychiatrist described her as a “33-year-old female with history of poly-substance abuse who presents with personality changes and organic brain injury syndrome post arrest. Patient is inappropriate and disinhibited. Would be a safety risk if she were to leave the hospital.”
The mother soon “left the hospital against medical advice,” according to Turpel-Lafond’s report. It appears she and Paige then lived apart. Paige drifted from more foster homes until she turned 19, when she was discharged from care. She died almost a year later. Her mother died from an overdose 18 months after that.
“If the system in B.C. had treated a child the way Paige’s parents treated her, we may be having a debate over criminal responsibility,” Turpel-Lafond could have noted in her report. She took the opposite tack. Parents are absolved. The system is fundamental, and so the system is at fault.