Nunavik youth centre gets failing grade

Young offenders enrolled at Nunavik’s Sapummivik Rehabilitation Centre in Salluit would receive better supervision at a daycare, according to staff who work there.

”Daycares are stricter than we are. At least, they provide an education,” one staff member told investigators from Quebec’s Commission on Human Rights and the Rights of Children, which recently published a scathing report on the state of youth protection services in communities along Nunavik’s Ungava Bay.

As for the kids in Sapummivik, they told investigators they believe they are being “punished for being the victims of abuse.”

They don’t trust the workers, who they say have the same problems that the kids suffer from. The report says the kids don’t even understand the roles of the various staff members.

When Sapummivik opened in 1999, plans included four high-security beds for youth requiring 24-7 supervision and isolation. But the centre’s 14 beds are now devoted to less troubled youth in open custody, because of lack of staff training “and the fact that the staff members were afraid of the youngsters.”

Investigators also evaluated the 10-bed group youth home in Kuujjuaq. Between the youth home and the rehab centre, investigators found:

* Victims and abusers live together under the same roof;
* Staff members have been fired for having sex with young female clients;
* Drugs and alcohol are readily available. “I like drugs,” says one client. “When I’m high, it’s the only time of my life that I’m happy, drugs are easy to find. They’re all over the village and I can buy them with my pocket money;”
* Few rehabilitation activities relate to Inuit culture. At Sapummivik, skidoos and four-wheelers sit in disrepair, tents are stolen, and there are no sewing machines: “for now, kids don’t go out hunting, but they take alcohol, drug, they sniff. It is dangerous,” says an Inuk staff member;
* Isolation and discipline are used as the core elements of rehabilitation, instead of therapy;
* Some clients have problems “far too serious for the existing facilities and the level of training of the staff.”
* Other problems include: disorganization, poor staff recruitment, lack of space, turnover, absenteeism, and vandalism.

The report also found many problems in foster care homes, which are supposed to be carefully selected and supervised by youth protection services. Foster families are used widely for children because there is no group home for children 6 to 12.

“Several foster families decided of their own accord to give the child to other people, often when he had only just come to stay with them. One foster family had not recovered from the death of their own child, another had just completed detox and was dealing with spousal abuse. Some families only kept the child for financial reasons and freely admitted it. Two others clearly said they did not like the child,” the report said.

One mother wanted to place an adopted child who continually dirtied himself with bowel movements, a condition often linked to repeated sexual abuse, because she was tired of cleaning him up.

Without an evaluation, steps were made to find a foster family. But the biological mother didn’t want him back.

Youth protection services finally decided that “the security of and development of the child are not in danger, without carrying out an evaluation, because no foster family is available.”

Qualified foster parents are hard to find, investigators found. When there was a placement, youth protection services didn’t prepare an intervention plan. There was no evaluation, no contracts, training or support: “we found foster children who did not have enough clothes or food, and others who had no mattress or blanket.”

When the placement was over, the kids simply returned home to the same environment they had left.

Often there were multiple placements. A child of five lived with 27 families, while another lived with 13 families in a 10-month period.

The reports notes that emergency measures – the immediate removal of a child in danger from a home into foster care or a group home – was not always applied, even in the case of a young child who had suffered a ruptured anus from something being inserted inside him.