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Eleven months before her death, 12-year-old Amy Owen posted a picture on Facebook of a downcast girl on a swing with the words: “I am just a kid and my life is a nightmare.”
Bounced around from her home on a remote northern reserve to foster care in Eastern Ontario, thousands of kilometres away, the girl would spend much of the remaining months of her short life talking about ending it, according to those who knew her.
She spoke of suicide, cut herself almost daily and was believed to have joined a suicide pact with other children from northern Ontario First Nations communities, some of whom died earlier this year.
Workers at the group home in Prescott where she had lived on and off since 2015 were so worried about her safety — especially given her fascination with a nearby railway track — that they moved her to a group home in Ottawa, closer to the Wabano Centre and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, where she received counselling and treatment. She didn’t want to go.
It was there, on April 17, that Owen was found hanging in her room. She was 13 years old.
“She had so much pain,” said a friend who also lived at the home in Ottawa’s east end.
Four days later, a second First Nations teenager from northern Ontario died in a fire in a group home in Orléans. The body of 16-year-old Courtney Scott, originally from the Fort Albany First Nation, was found in her basement bedroom. She was the only resident who did not escape the fire.
The deaths of two indigenous girls while in the care of the child-welfare system and living far from home in Ottawa have raised calls for urgent improvements in services for kids in care and a rethink of the care for First Nations children who are being removed from their homes.
The deaths have sparked frustration among those who have long fought for more money for First Nations children so they can receive services at or closer to home.
Sixteen-year-old Courtney Scott, originally from the Fort Albany First Nation, died in a group home fire in Orléans in April.
“These are such horrific and needless deaths and they speak to a larger issue of systemic negligence by the federal and provincial governments,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus, whose northern Ontario riding includes many remote First Nations communities.
Child advocate Cindy Blackstock has successfully fought the federal government over its levels of funding for First Nations children. Last year, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found the federal government is discriminating against 165,000 children by underfunding First Nations services on reserves compared with the funding services under provincial jurisdiction are receiving. Since that ruling, the tribunal has issued two non-compliance orders against the federal government.
In 2016, the federal government committed more than $630 million to child welfare services over five years, but most of that money will be spent in 2019 and 2020. Angus and the federal NDP have called for an immediate influx of $155 million and then a plan to meet the “bare minimum” of services in the future. That call for the immediate $155-million infusion has not been answered by the government, and Angus says proper support is needed now.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said this week an agreement just signed with the Ontario government will help to keep children out of the child-welfare system by putting prevention dollars directly into communities. She said she hopes for a complete reform of the system that will provide help and support for children at home.
“We want less kids in care — if possible, having these kids never have an attachment with the child welfare system.”
There is a direct link between that long-term underfunding and the deaths of Owen and Scott, Angus said.
There used to be a group home in Fort Albany, where Scott is from, he said, but it was closed due to funding cuts. Other northern mental health programs have also been cut, he said, including a long-running, successful suicide prevention program in Wapekeka First Nation where two 12 year old girls took their lives earlier this year.
“We are talking about badly underfunded services where children can’t get support in their communities and they end up dying thousands of kilometres away. It is a failed model.”
Owen’s friends say the system failed her in many ways.
Her friends and former caregivers are questioning how a child who was supposed to be under one-on-one supervision because of her risk of self-harm could have been left alone long enough to end her life.
“The foster care system has disappointed us in every way. They let this child die in their system, there (sic) supposed to help us,” wrote friends of Owen on a Facebook page dedicated to her.
Her friends say Owen was under what is known as one-on-one care, meaning someone was supposed to be with her 24/7.
Officials with Tikinagan Child and Family Services, the First Nations child welfare agency responsible for Owen, would not comment. When reached by the Citizen, Mary Homes — the group home Owen was living in when she died — did not comment.
The owner of the Beacon Home in Prescott, where Owen lived before she was moved to Ottawa earlier this year, said the teenager was like a family member to her and staff. “Most of our staff are in some kind of grief counselling. We are very upset,” Esther Aiken said.
“It is just horrible. Children are not supposed to die and children are not supposed to die in care. She was sent out of her community to be safe and she died. That is not OK.”
Aiken said staff at the Beacon Home are particularly devastated because they thought they were keeping her safe by moving her, something Owen didn’t want to do. “We didn’t want her to die. We asked her to leave because we wanted to keep her safe.”
While in Prescott, Aiken said, Owen was under one-to-one care, which meant a staff member was with her at all times. When she slept, Aiken said, her door was open and a staff member sat outside her door watching her.
“I can’t say anything about the other home, I just know she is not here anymore and something went terribly wrong.”
Aiken said staff from Beacon Home kept an eye on Owen through social media after she moved to Ottawa and said she “ran away a lot” from her new home. “She and other girls would take off and hang out. They posted online. She certainly wasn’t supervised all the time.”
On its website, Mary Homes lists five group homes in the Ottawa area. It says they provide “high levels of supervision, structure and support to youth who have difficulty managing in less intrusive environments, and who require continuous limit setting and intervention strategies.”
The Ottawa Children’s Aid Society, which did not have decision-making authority over Owen or Scott while they were in Ottawa, said one-to-one services in group homes are complex and can vary from case to case. “Agreements range from increasing staff within the home to observing the child within close proximity. Agencies develop their expectations with the caregiver at the time of placement and are determined based on the needs of the child at that time.”
Aiken said many of the girls staying in the Beacon Home in Prescott are, like Owen, from northern communities and need mental health services as well as one-on-one care.
She said they often self harm and have safety issues in their home communities. Their local children’s aid societies come down for regular visits to check on them, she said.
Aiken said she would also like to see improvements in the system, but she hopes the response to the deaths is not to stop sending northern children in need of mental health services south — at least not until there are suitable services in their communities.
For now, Aiken said, communication between families in northern communities and group home staff must be better and there must be an increased focus on what the child needs.
“There is far too much judgment about the communities (they come from). It is not our place to tell them. It is our place to listen and to help build relationships, not tear them apart.”
Owen’s family in Poplar Hill First Nation in northwestern Ontario wants to know why they had so little information about her whereabouts before her death. Her father originally believed Owen died in Prescott and only learned last week that she was in Ottawa at the time of her death.
Owen’s friend, another teen whose has been bounced around foster care, said she tried to talk to her about her issues, but Owen would just start crying.
She was a sweet kid who used to love gymnastics, said Owen’s friend, and she loved animals, even talking about becoming a veterinarian one day. But after she returned from an extended visit to her home community, she had changed.
“She was different. When she left she was innocent. When she came back, she was never the same.”
Aiken said she and her staff loved Owen and did everything they could to prevent her from taking her life.
“It was something we were trying to prevent. I really believed she was going to fight as hard as she could to make it happen. I was shocked and angry and devastated,” Aiken said. “But I wasn’t surprised.”
With a file from Maura Forrest
epayne@postmedia.com
查看原文...
Bounced around from her home on a remote northern reserve to foster care in Eastern Ontario, thousands of kilometres away, the girl would spend much of the remaining months of her short life talking about ending it, according to those who knew her.
She spoke of suicide, cut herself almost daily and was believed to have joined a suicide pact with other children from northern Ontario First Nations communities, some of whom died earlier this year.
Workers at the group home in Prescott where she had lived on and off since 2015 were so worried about her safety — especially given her fascination with a nearby railway track — that they moved her to a group home in Ottawa, closer to the Wabano Centre and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, where she received counselling and treatment. She didn’t want to go.
It was there, on April 17, that Owen was found hanging in her room. She was 13 years old.
“She had so much pain,” said a friend who also lived at the home in Ottawa’s east end.
Four days later, a second First Nations teenager from northern Ontario died in a fire in a group home in Orléans. The body of 16-year-old Courtney Scott, originally from the Fort Albany First Nation, was found in her basement bedroom. She was the only resident who did not escape the fire.
The deaths of two indigenous girls while in the care of the child-welfare system and living far from home in Ottawa have raised calls for urgent improvements in services for kids in care and a rethink of the care for First Nations children who are being removed from their homes.
The deaths have sparked frustration among those who have long fought for more money for First Nations children so they can receive services at or closer to home.
Sixteen-year-old Courtney Scott, originally from the Fort Albany First Nation, died in a group home fire in Orléans in April.
“These are such horrific and needless deaths and they speak to a larger issue of systemic negligence by the federal and provincial governments,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus, whose northern Ontario riding includes many remote First Nations communities.
Child advocate Cindy Blackstock has successfully fought the federal government over its levels of funding for First Nations children. Last year, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found the federal government is discriminating against 165,000 children by underfunding First Nations services on reserves compared with the funding services under provincial jurisdiction are receiving. Since that ruling, the tribunal has issued two non-compliance orders against the federal government.
In 2016, the federal government committed more than $630 million to child welfare services over five years, but most of that money will be spent in 2019 and 2020. Angus and the federal NDP have called for an immediate influx of $155 million and then a plan to meet the “bare minimum” of services in the future. That call for the immediate $155-million infusion has not been answered by the government, and Angus says proper support is needed now.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said this week an agreement just signed with the Ontario government will help to keep children out of the child-welfare system by putting prevention dollars directly into communities. She said she hopes for a complete reform of the system that will provide help and support for children at home.
“We want less kids in care — if possible, having these kids never have an attachment with the child welfare system.”
There is a direct link between that long-term underfunding and the deaths of Owen and Scott, Angus said.
There used to be a group home in Fort Albany, where Scott is from, he said, but it was closed due to funding cuts. Other northern mental health programs have also been cut, he said, including a long-running, successful suicide prevention program in Wapekeka First Nation where two 12 year old girls took their lives earlier this year.
“We are talking about badly underfunded services where children can’t get support in their communities and they end up dying thousands of kilometres away. It is a failed model.”
Owen’s friends say the system failed her in many ways.
Her friends and former caregivers are questioning how a child who was supposed to be under one-on-one supervision because of her risk of self-harm could have been left alone long enough to end her life.
“The foster care system has disappointed us in every way. They let this child die in their system, there (sic) supposed to help us,” wrote friends of Owen on a Facebook page dedicated to her.
Her friends say Owen was under what is known as one-on-one care, meaning someone was supposed to be with her 24/7.
Officials with Tikinagan Child and Family Services, the First Nations child welfare agency responsible for Owen, would not comment. When reached by the Citizen, Mary Homes — the group home Owen was living in when she died — did not comment.
The owner of the Beacon Home in Prescott, where Owen lived before she was moved to Ottawa earlier this year, said the teenager was like a family member to her and staff. “Most of our staff are in some kind of grief counselling. We are very upset,” Esther Aiken said.
“It is just horrible. Children are not supposed to die and children are not supposed to die in care. She was sent out of her community to be safe and she died. That is not OK.”
Aiken said staff at the Beacon Home are particularly devastated because they thought they were keeping her safe by moving her, something Owen didn’t want to do. “We didn’t want her to die. We asked her to leave because we wanted to keep her safe.”
While in Prescott, Aiken said, Owen was under one-to-one care, which meant a staff member was with her at all times. When she slept, Aiken said, her door was open and a staff member sat outside her door watching her.
“I can’t say anything about the other home, I just know she is not here anymore and something went terribly wrong.”
Aiken said staff from Beacon Home kept an eye on Owen through social media after she moved to Ottawa and said she “ran away a lot” from her new home. “She and other girls would take off and hang out. They posted online. She certainly wasn’t supervised all the time.”
On its website, Mary Homes lists five group homes in the Ottawa area. It says they provide “high levels of supervision, structure and support to youth who have difficulty managing in less intrusive environments, and who require continuous limit setting and intervention strategies.”
The Ottawa Children’s Aid Society, which did not have decision-making authority over Owen or Scott while they were in Ottawa, said one-to-one services in group homes are complex and can vary from case to case. “Agreements range from increasing staff within the home to observing the child within close proximity. Agencies develop their expectations with the caregiver at the time of placement and are determined based on the needs of the child at that time.”
Aiken said many of the girls staying in the Beacon Home in Prescott are, like Owen, from northern communities and need mental health services as well as one-on-one care.
She said they often self harm and have safety issues in their home communities. Their local children’s aid societies come down for regular visits to check on them, she said.
Aiken said she would also like to see improvements in the system, but she hopes the response to the deaths is not to stop sending northern children in need of mental health services south — at least not until there are suitable services in their communities.
For now, Aiken said, communication between families in northern communities and group home staff must be better and there must be an increased focus on what the child needs.
“There is far too much judgment about the communities (they come from). It is not our place to tell them. It is our place to listen and to help build relationships, not tear them apart.”
Owen’s family in Poplar Hill First Nation in northwestern Ontario wants to know why they had so little information about her whereabouts before her death. Her father originally believed Owen died in Prescott and only learned last week that she was in Ottawa at the time of her death.
Owen’s friend, another teen whose has been bounced around foster care, said she tried to talk to her about her issues, but Owen would just start crying.
She was a sweet kid who used to love gymnastics, said Owen’s friend, and she loved animals, even talking about becoming a veterinarian one day. But after she returned from an extended visit to her home community, she had changed.
“She was different. When she left she was innocent. When she came back, she was never the same.”
Aiken said she and her staff loved Owen and did everything they could to prevent her from taking her life.
“It was something we were trying to prevent. I really believed she was going to fight as hard as she could to make it happen. I was shocked and angry and devastated,” Aiken said. “But I wasn’t surprised.”
With a file from Maura Forrest
epayne@postmedia.com
查看原文...
