CANADA
Rights commission probes youth centre's abused kids
The Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission is investigating
the case of about 80 children ages 6 to 12 kept in special residential
units of the Centre Jeunesse de Montréal. Most of the youngsters were
badly victimized and neglected by their parents
It wants to ensure their rights are being respected, since the youth
and family agency has such features as locked units and isolation rooms,
commission spokesperson Ginette L'Heureux explained. But it also wants to know how these children could have fallen
through the cracks for so long. Most of the youngsters were so badly abused and neglected by their
parents, they're too anxious or aggressive to function in regular foster
homes, Centre
Jeunesse officials say. They typically are behind in school or in
language acquisition, they lack social skills and some even mutilate
themselves. Many are on antidepressants or Ritalin. Children there now include a 7-year-old girl, removed from the care
of her drug-addict parents, who arrived at the centre undernourished.
There is a boy, 9, so physically abused he now fears adults and can't
stand to be touched.
There's the heartwrenching case of three children under age 5 who,
when authorities discovered them, had spent almost all their lives in a
darkened room, tied to their bed, never hearing people speak, never
stimulated.
“What happened between (birth) and 6?” L'Heureux asked of the
children who end up in the special units. “How is it that there was a
total absence of services in the lives of these children?”
In about half the cases, the children were getting services. In fact,
many had been in foster homes before being placed in the special units,
said Pierre Charest, the Centre Jeunesse's director of professional
services. A big problem, he said, is that the law has tried to balance the
rights of parents and the rights of children — and many children from
dysfunctional homes end up being bumped from home to foster home and
back again.
An alcoholic parent convinces a judge that she'll clean up her act,
so the judge orders the child to return home. Only, the parent never
really gets it together, and the child is removed again. By now, the child's space in the foster home has been given to
someone else. So it's off to another home. In the end, the child is so psychologically damaged, he no longer
trusts anyone, Charest said.
Charest said his youth centre, like others, is hoping that the
government will move ahead swiftly with recommended changes to the Youth
Protection Act that would make a big difference for many of these
children.
One of the recommended changes — they were submitted to the Health
and Social Services Department by a panel of experts last November —
would make it easier for children to be declared adoptable if the
parents show no signs of significant progress in a set time.
About 10 per cent of the children in the special units are from
families where it was pretty clear early on that the parents would never
succeed in making the necessary changes, he said. “We can't take too long,” he said, referring to the need to get
troubled kids into stable, permanent homes as soon as possible. “Put yourself in the shoes of a child. A child who is 2, and his
parents have hardly ever been there for him, or may not have even seen
him for six months — that's one-quarter of his life,” Charest said. “The
repercussions on his development are enormous.”
Charest said another major factor with many of the children who end
up in the special units is a severe shortage of psychiatric services.
Among the residents there now is a 12-year-old girl who sank deeper
into depression and anxiety after her ill mother died, the Centre
Jeunesse says. She's been on a waiting list for a place in a hospital for two years.
By Debbie Parkes
29 January 2004
http://www.canada.com/montreal/news/story.asp?id=9B04780E-D5C3-4A73-908F-FEBB97B51115
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