VICTORIA — A baby boy who died in the care of a relative was placed in the home by a court despite social workers’ knowledge that the relative was sometimes homeless, abused alcohol and had a criminal record, B.C.’s children’s representative has found.
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond’s report released Tuesday concluded although child protection workers and workers for an unnamed aboriginal child welfare agency knew about the relative’s background and that she planned to apply for custody of the boy, no one from the provincial ministry showed up in court to argue the baby should not be placed there.
Neither the Crown nor the judge had the information, so the boy was placed with the relative, solely on the basis of a consent letter provided by the boy’s mother, a woman with significant substance abuse issues of her own who had already had two children seized by the ministry.
The boy died of sudden infant death syndrome, but Turpel-Lafond’s report found B.C.’s child protection system and the courts let the baby down.
The report said the death of the four-month-old infant in April 2007 once again raises troubling concerns about failures by government agencies, communities and families.
“Although this investigation finds no evidence that links the baby’s death to the care he received, it does report on troubling inadequacies in planning, case management and decision making,” said Turpel-Lafond in her report.
“The focus was not on the needs of this infant and there was no observable logic to what happened.”
The report found only the relative who was seeking custody of the child appeared in family court with a lawyer she hired that day.
“The ministry had knowledge of the pending custody hearing, and yet no one from (the Ministry of Children and Family Development) appeared to communicate the ministry’s concerns or contest the application,” said the report. “Beyond the mother’s consent, there was no information before the court that would enable a meaningful assessment of whether the guardianship transfer was in the child’s best interests.”
Once the court had awarded guardianship to the relative, social workers visited the relative and concluded there were no protection issues with regards to her custody of the infant.
About two weeks later, the boy was found dead in his crib, said the report.
The 47-page report titled So Many Plans, So Little Stability: A Child’s Need for Security does not name the boy or the location of his death.
Turpel-Lafond’s report found there were 11 different plans for the infant’s care and placement in the first four months of his life, but there was no follow-through beyond theories.
The report said the infant’s file was touched by 16 social workers, lawyers and family court officials and his file was transferred five times between the ministry and an aboriginal child care agency.