All children and youth need a sense of belonging, stability, continuity, and attachment in order to meet the challenges of their lives with a sense of hope for the future. When a young person is removed from home and placed in an alternative care arrangement quality residential care is essential. This quality care requires stable and nurturing relationships, collaboration with other professionals, caregiver training, and a true understanding and ability to respond to a young person’s special needs.
This investigation involved a youth with disabilities who had been in the care of the Department of Children, Seniors and Social Development (CSSD) for most of her life. Her first out of home placement at two months of age was the beginning of 11 different placement settings. Some placements included siblings, while others did not. These different living arrangements included a family placement, a long-term foster placement, trial adoptive placements, an emergency placement home, and staffed individualized living arrangements. In one placement, 75 different staff provided care for this youth within a six-month period.
The investigation identified significant gaps in residential staff training, lack of continuity and consistency of care, poor implementation of resident programs, and deficiencies in collaborating with the various professionals involved in this young person’s care when problems arose.
The Child and Youth Advocate said, “This investigation reflects an individual young person’s experience at a specific point in time. However, the identified issues are broader and systemic in nature than this one case. They have arisen in other complaints and concerns which have been brought to my Office. They have also arisen in other Canadian jurisdictions where quality of care in residential care settings for young people has come under scrutiny.”
This report is on the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate website: https://www.childandyouthadvocate.nl.ca/files/ASpecialKindOfCareDecember2021.pdf
The Office of the Child and Youth Advocate can be reached by calling 1-877-753-3888, emailing office@ocya.nl.ca, and on Twitter @OCYANL.
Website: www.childandyouthadvocate.nl.ca
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Media contact
Wilma MacInnis
Office of the Child and Youth Advocate
709-753-3888