Group homes quick to call police when youths act out
Star analysis of incident reports reveals trend that disturbs experts
At Libby’s Place, an Etobicoke group home for troubled girls, a resident of more than a year was desperate to leave.
So she scratched two of the home’s cars, hoping the vandalism would get her thrown out and placed with foster parents. In a report on the incident to the Ontario government, staff from the home urged her legal guardians, the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, to find the girl a “suitable program” as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, the girl’s cry of distress landed her in police custody with two counts of mischief.
Across town, at a Hanrahan Youth Services group home in Scarborough, a boy with a “developmental disability” smashed his bedroom window during a “disagreement” with another youth. Staff called police, and the boy — also in the care of the Toronto CAS — was taken into custody and charged with mischief.
Another youth at Hanrahan did no more than refuse an order to go to his room, according to the home’s report. He was charged with failing to comply with court conditions imposed for a previous incident.
The incidents are described in reports that must be filed to the Ontario government by group homes, foster parents and children’s aid societies when children or youth in their care are involved in events considered serious. In 2013, 1,199 separate incidents were filed in Toronto — all of them obtained by the Star through a freedom of information request.
The results show a disturbing tendency — particularly in group homes — to turn outbursts from kids usually suffering from trauma and mentalhealth issues into matters for police.
They raise concerns about caregivers being too quick to call police, feeding what studies suggest is a pipeline that funnels youths in care into the justice system.
There are 3,300 young people in Ontario group homes.
The Star aggregated the Toronto data according to the types of serious incidents, a task the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, which receives the reports, has apparently never done.
About 39 per cent of the serious occurrence reports involved police. In a quarter of those incidents, youths ended up under arrest.
Child psychologist Dr. Michele Peterson-Badali, an authority on Canada’s youth justice system, believes caregivers are calling police for behaviours that most biological parents would deal with in more compassionate ways.
“These kids who are in foster or group homes are getting charged because they are living in a particular type of institutional environment where that’s the consequence for your behaviour,” says Peterson-Badali, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
“By virtue of where they are, they are far more likely to penetrate the justice system more deeply than they (otherwise) would,” she adds. “It’s like we’ve set them up. It’s very distressing.”
Ontario’s Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, Irwin Elman, says the high rate of police involvement reflects “the culture of power and control” that reigns in many group homes.
Kim Snow, a professor at Ryerson University’s school of child and youth care, believes it mirrors a lack of staff training in de-escalating situations in which youths act out.
“I can think of nothing worse than having a group home phone the police on their own children,” she says.
The link between youths in care and the criminal justice system has been studied in the U.S. but neglected in Canada. British Columbia is the exception.
A 2009 report backed by the provincial government tracked 50,500 children for a decade. Forty-one per cent of those in care faced charges by police and 35 per cent ended up in court — rates many times higher than those for youths not in care. Of infants taken into care between birth and their first birthday, 46 per cent were involved with the justice system when they were between the ages of 12 and 21.
In the U.S., a landmark study by MIT professor Joseph Doyle controlled for the impact of family trauma on children by studying two cohorts with the same troubled profile. The group taken into care had rates of arrest, conviction and imprisonment two to three times higher than the group that remained at home.
The lack of similar studies in Ontario is indicative of a secretive child protection sector that has almost no information on whether their interventions do more good than harm.
What is known is that children in care often struggle with trauma caused by abuse or chronic neglect from biological parents. They have higher levels of mental-health and behavioural problems, aggravated in many cases by being bounced multiple times among foster placements and group homes.
A lack of mental-health services to treat them is widely acknowledged. There is also evidence of a child-care system using medication in an attempt to keep kids under control. In group homes, 64 per cent of children and youth are on behaviour-altering drugs such as Ritalin and tranquilizers, according to an annual survey for the provincial government.
The one service there seems no shortage of is police.
At Kennedy House Youth Services’ eight-bed group home for “highneed” girls in Scarborough, for example, police were involved in 80 per cent of the 51 incidents; arrests were made in 34 per cent of those. At the eight-bed Hanrahan group home in north Scarborough, police were involved in 66 per cent of the 85 serious incidents reported; arrests were made in 39 per cent of those police incidents. Bob Hanrahan, who owns and operates Hanrahan Youth Services, calls the 22 arrests of youths from his Scarborough home “an incredible amount.
“My direction to my front-line people is, ‘You don’t want to call in the police to do your job.’ I tell them that consistently, but not all agencies are like that.”
Hanrahan, who runs four group homes in Toronto and Brampton, says police are normally called only if a youth is a repeat offender. But his two decades in the field — and evidence from the B.C. study — convince him that for many youths, going into care becomes a pipeline to prison.
Charges against youths in care can quickly snowball. They begin with property damage, “assaulting” group home staff — sometimes with merely a push — or, in one incident, rejecting collective punishment.
At a Kennedy House group home, this one for children with autism or intellectual disabilities, TV privileges were withdrawn because no one would confess to having smoked in the home.
One boy protested by swearing and verbally threatening a staff member as other residents held him back. He did not touch staff but was charged with “threats and assault,” according to the home’s report. His bail conditions included a 5 p.m. curfew.
(The executive director of Kennedy House Youth Services did not return phone messages and an email asking for comment. And a director at the George Hull Centre, which operates Libby’s Place in Etobicoke, said no one could comment until July 6.)
Bail conditions — usually including curfew, keeping the peace and respecting house rules — set the stage for further charges and court appearances and, during the school year, missed classes. There’s no doubt that’s a factor in abysmal high school graduation rates for children in care.
By law, foster parents or group home staff must call police when a youth goes missing. And such calls are common. Kids take off because they’re angry at their treatment, or they have simply stayed out late partying, breaking curfew.
Some group homes call police immediately, others wait hours. Sometimes staff know where the youth is, particularly when he or she has run back to a mother or grandmother. They call police nonetheless. It’s not uncommon for police to show up at the home after the youth has returned, yet charges are laid.
One girl told staff at a group home in Riverdale that “voices” made her break curfew. She then threatened to kill herself when police arrived almost an hour after her return.
“I’m so tired of this, I want to get out of here,” she pleaded. “I can’t do this anymore.” According to the group home’s report, she then jumped on top of her bed and repeatedly hit the wall with her fists, screaming.
She was handcuffed by police and taken to a hospital psychiatric unit.
Police are called — and breaching charges are laid — in an often misguided attempt to teach youths a lesson, says Kingston defence lawyer Dawn Quelch. She has repeatedly seen youths dragged back to court for typical — if aggravating — adolescent and teenage behaviours.
At the Kennedy House for girls, one resident in the care of the Toronto CAS had lost TV privileges for unspecified behaviour the day before. She responded by refusing to budge when ordered out of various rooms. She plucked feathers from a stuffed bird toy. And when told to stop touching clothes and purses in a closet because they belonged to staff, “she shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘So, I don’t care,’ ” according to the group home’s report.
Police were called, and she was “arrogant and rude” when questioned by officers, not to mention “very cheeky.” They charged her with failing to comply with bail conditions, taking her away in handcuffs and detaining her for five days.
She then appeared in court and was thrown out of the group home “due to her assault toward staff,” the report claims, even though no assault is described. “Defiant behaviours” seem to have been enough.
Quelch often represents youths in care during her rotating weekend court duties. She finds it particularly outrageous when no one from the group home or children’s aid society attends the youth’s court appearance, often forcing a judge to keep the youth in custody until he or she can be released into someone’s care. When the breach of conditions results in the youth thrown out of a group home, it could mean several days of custody before an alternative placement is found.
“If the CAS is stepping into the role of parent, it means being there when your kid is in trouble,” Quelch says. “It means somebody’s got to show up at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning and make a bail appearance.
“This is when kids are at their lowest,” Quelch adds. “Isn’t the message we want to send these kids that, ‘You have value and somebody is going to come for you, somebody cares?’ ”
Quelch says each breach places kids under greater scrutiny from group home staff and police, making charges for further breaches more likely. And when a youth turns 18 and the Youth Criminal Justice Act no longer applies, the record of repeated breaches can lead to stiffer sentences as an adult, Quelch notes.
“Some of these kids are not all that pleasant to be around; some have a lot of problems,” Quelch says. “But if we’re ever going to give them a shot at being a productive and healthy and functioning member of society once they hit their 18th birthday, we have got to do better.”
“My direction to my front-line people is, ‘You don’t want to call in the police to do your job.’ I tell them that consistently, but not all agencies are like that.” BOB HANRAHAN OWNER-OPERATOR, HANRAHAN YOUTH SERVICES