Listen to thisCANADA
Foster kids' deaths demand tough
questions
...
Jailing foster parents won't bring
justice, or solve problems within system
Lily Choy probably didn't set out to be a killer.
Of that, at least, I'm pretty sure. In late 2006, when she first became a foster parent, she was a single mom of 32, raising two young children. She was also a registered nurse.
Back then, the province was experiencing a particularly dire shortage of foster homes.
Between 2005 and 2007, at the height of the boom, the Edmonton region experienced a nine-per-cent increase in children in care – and a 15-per-cent drop in the number of regional foster homes. The problem was so severe that children in care were routinely being housed in cheap motels in industrial areas on the edge of the city, or placed in foster homes that were already well over their regulated capacity.
And so, at a time when the region was desperate to recruit new foster parents, Choy signed up.
As a rookie, Choy was only supposed to be caring for two foster children at a time. Instead, within weeks of becoming a foster parent, Choy found her home "overloaded" – to use the official provincial term. At one point, she had four high-needs foster children, who ranged in ages from toddlers to young teens, in addition to her own kids, who were then eight and three.
One of the youngsters placed in her care was a three-year-old aboriginal boy, who, according the medical evidence, suffered from serious neurological problems likely caused by fetal alcohol syndrome. He wasn't yet toilet trained, and reportedly resisted efforts to make him use the toilet. According to some witnesses, he had behavioural problems, including frequent tantrums.
In other words, he might have been an extremely challenging and emotionally exhausting child to look after, even for an experienced foster parent working one-on-one. For a brand new foster parent, who was caring, at the time, for five children? The placement was disastrous.
At two in the morning, on Jan. 27, 2007, the boy, who cannot be named under the terms of the province's Orwellian Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act, suffered a fatal blow to the head.
In 2009, an Edmonton jury found Choy guilty of manslaughter. She was sentenced to three years in jail. Both the Crown and the defence appealed, and Choy was granted a new trial, this time, before a judge alone. This week, Justice Donna Read found her guilty of manslaughter.
Although the defence argued, at both trials, that the boy's injuries were self-inflicted, Read found the severity of the child's brain damage, and the serious bruising all over his body, were more consistent with abuse. Although Read said she had "grave suspicions" about Choy's conduct, she found there was not enough evidence of intent to kill find her guilty of second-degree murder.
Choy is to be sentenced Oct. 15. Barring another appeal, her long journey to justice is nearly over.
But while I don't want to minimize or excuse Lily Choy's terrible actions, she is not the only one to blame for the death of this child.
Our child care system determined, first, that Choy was a fit, responsible person to foster high-needs children, at least one of whom was developmentally disabled.
Next, it overloaded and overwhelmed her, with more hard-tohandle kids than almost anyone could manage.
Now, a little boy is dead. And Choy's life, and her own family, have been shattered.
Because the court process has taken so long, there has not yet been a public fatality inquiry. The province has conducted an internal special case review, but the results have never been made public, and likely never will be. The department of Children and Youth Services has never been held accountable for breaking its own rules and putting in motion the chain of circumstances that led to this tragedy.
If this were an isolated case, it might be different. But between 2005 and 2010, four foster children from the Edmonton region, all of them aboriginal, were allegedly killed by their government-approved and appointed foster parents. Four foster child homicides in five years? You'd think there might be public outrage – but because the media can't ever name the children, or print their pictures, it's hard to make those deaths resonate.
In 2008, in response to the Choy affair, the province did bring in new tougher rules about approving new foster homes, and about when homes are allowed to exceed their usual number of residents. And just last month, Children's Services Minister Yvonne Fritz committed to setting up an independent Council for Quality Assurance, parallel to the Health Quality Assurance Council, to investigate deaths or serious injuries of children within the child welfare system.
But we're still not asking tough questions about whether our venerable system of voluntary foster parents, paid only a simple honorarium, still works in 2011. We're not asking whether our decentralized child welfare system, which contracts out care to not-for-profit agencies, works well. We're not addressing the hardest questions of all – about why 65 per cent of the children in care in the Edmonton region are aboriginal, and why so many of them end up dead. Jailing foster parents who kill after the fact might give us an illusion of justice. But until we're ready to have a serious conversation about making our child welfare system work, there will be no justice for the most vulnerable kids in our province's care.
Paula Simons
17 September 2011
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Foster+kids+deaths+demand+tough+questions/5417999/story.html
