Child advocate urges improved safeguards
The traumatic death of a malnourished four-year-old girl has prompted Alberta’s child and youth advocate to demand the provincial government bolster safeguards for children removed from their parents and placed in the home of relatives.
In a report Tuesday, Del Graff said such “kinship” placements deserve more specialized attention, considering the complex stress endured by both the children and their extended families.
Specifically, he called for more thorough home assessments, mandatory orientation training for caregivers and better appraisals of risks to the child’s emotional and physical well-being prior to placement.
“Ensuring safety begins with careful attention to the assessment of caregivers,” Graff wrote.
The recommendations stem from an examination of the life of four-year-old “Marie” — a pseudonym used by Graff to protect the identity of the girl — whose death remains under police investigation two years after it happened.
The shy, active child with dark hair and big brown eyes suffered an extensive brain injury on an undisclosed date in 2014 and died a week later.
Though her guardians said she fell while playing on a swing, the medical examiner has never released an official cause of death.
Doctors at the time found bruises at various stages of healing on the girl’s body and noted she weighed 20 pounds — a weight considered normal for a one-year-old child.
The girl’s older siblings told provincial caseworkers their sister was often hit for misbehaving, failing to listen and stealing food.
Graff’s report indicated child intervention services had minimal contact with the guardians in the year before Marie’s death, despite past worries expressed by her biological mother and warning signs of neglect and abuse.
Human Services Minister Irfan Sabir said his department accepts Graff’s recommendations and will work quickly to make necessary improvements.
He said the province has already taken action on some issues, including the assessment tools specific to kinship caregivers.
When children are removed from their biological parents, the province prefers to use kinship placements over foster care, where possible, because it allows children to grow up in their home community with family members.
Still, the preference for a kinship placement “cannot be the only factor in decision-making,” Graff said in his report. “No single factor determines safety.”
In Marie’s case, Graff’s investigation found criminal record checks and child intervention checks were done for her two main guardians, but not for their adult children residing in the home.
The caseworker also failed to conduct separate interviews with any of the children or grandchildren living in the home.
As well, Graff called on the province to revise policies that allowed Marie’s guardians to refuse any kinship care orientation training.
Avoidance of the sessions may have made it more difficult for the guardians to handle the complex needs of the girl and her two siblings, who had experienced significant trauma, grief and instability in their young lives.
For his final recommendation relating to the case, Graff said caseworkers need to complete a thorough assessment of each child’s needs and appraisal of risks when ending government care in favour of a kinship placement.
“Policy requires numerous checks and balances prior to a child being brought into care,” he wrote.
“This heightened scrutiny must be extended to those vulnerable children leaving the care and guardianship of child-intervention services.”