Children’s Advocate slams on and off-reserve child welfare agencies in wake of coroner’s inquest
- Fraser Needham | April 21, 2015
Saskatchewan’s Advocate for Children and Youth says the province’s child welfare system completely failed both six-year-old Lee Bonneau and the 10-year-old boy who killed him two years ago.
Bob Pringle’s comments come on the heels of a coroner’s inquest into Bonneau’s death which wrapped up on April 17.
The six-year-old boy was bludgeoned to death by a 10-year-old boy – who is referred to as Derek by the Children’s Advocate – while visiting the Kahkewistahaw First Nation with his foster mother on August 22, 2013.
Pringle says both the Ministry of Social Services and Yorkton Tribal Council Child and Family Services failed to support, help and protect both boys and their families.
“It was suggested that Lee was apprehended without properly exploring other family options and Derek was not quick enough apprehended which was also our conclusion,” he says. “We believe this would have made a difference in both cases. The Ministry of Social Services, their supervision and critical insight on assessing the risks was lacking. Yorkton (Tribal Council) Child and Family Services, a coordinated response to help Derek’s family was lacking.”
The Children’s Advocate says many questions still remain unanswered in terms of how social services handled Bonneau’s file.
He says he is perplexed as to why the six-year-old boy’s mother was given no support to deal with her mental health challenges, it is not clear whether she knew what she was signing when she allowed Bonneau to be taken into foster care and why the boy’s father was not considered as an option for care.
Pringle says it also unacceptable the ministry did absolutely no follow up during the time Bonneau was in foster care.
“You essentially take a small boy, you drop him off in a new community away from his family, with people he doesn’t know in a new area and nobody visits for two-and-a-half months? Nobody visits while he is alive?”
Derek suffers from severe fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and has a history of both violent and sexually inappropriate behaviour.
However, he was not taken into care until after Bonneau’s death.
The Children’s Advocate says although he realizes Yorkton Tribal Council Child and Family Services is significantly under funded, this does not absolve the agency from failing to properly respond to repeated warning signs about the ten-year-old boy’s behaviour.
“There were 16 staff members that were involved with Derek and his family. Police, the staff at school, community members all raised repeated concerns about a child at significant risk. Yet, there was a complete lack of integrated care management and no concerted effort to approach and provide interventions to help Derek and his family.”
Pringle says it is also disturbing that a number of child welfare workers who testified at the coroner’s inquest continued to absolve themselves of any responsibility for Bonneau’s death.
These workers would be far better off admitting mistakes were made and then complying with recommendations to improve the system, he says.
Pringle also says various social services agency providers failed to properly share information in both Bonneau and Derek’s cases.
The Children’s Advocate previously released the May 2014 report, Two Tragedies: Holding Systems Accountable, which is a special investigation into the circumstances surrounding Lee Bonneau’s death.
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- Children's Advocate calls on governments to address number of child deaths
- Victim, perpetrator needed better services: Children's Advocate
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