Overwhelmed by difficult cases, Nunavut youth group home shuts down

Cambridge Bay, seen here in September 2012, lies in the shadow of Mt. Pelly, about 20 kilometres from the town. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

After giving the Government of Nunavut short notice, a group home in Cambridge Bay, the only one in the Kitikmeot region for the past 12 years, closed its doors this past May.

That was seven months before its contract was set to expire.

Kalvik Youth Services, which operates the group home, said the home was overwhelmed by the presence of “higher needs kids,” sent there from the Government of Nunavut’s previous department of health and social services.

“This didn’t come easy,” said Dwayne Emerson, executive director of Kalvik, about the closure.

Emerson used to oversee activity at the home from an office in British Columbia, but a husband and wife couple or “team” managed the six-child home in Cambridge Bay.

The group home, open to kids of all ages, ran under the “family resource model.”

That meant that only the husband and wife or house parents would take care of the kids — even when those kids required up to 12 staff members to be fully supervised, Emerson said.

Maybe a good model, but this model no longer works for Nunavut, he said.

Kids with mental health challenges, severe trauma, suicide ideation, history of self harm, or severe behavioural challenges need to be sent south sooner, or Nunavut needs to develop adequate treatment resources, he said.

The husband and wife teams stayed at the home for periods as short as six months and as long as three years, which Emerson said was “long-term. “

“We’ve definitely had some long-term teams up there [and have] had them say ‘we are pulling our hair out saying what do we do,’” he said.

That’s because those “teams” had to stay up late, providing 24-hour supervision to about six different children, usually all from Cambridge Bay, but sometimes from other Kitikmeot communities.

“Throw someone in who has a solvent addiction…[and] all of a sudden the rules become a little different,” Emerson said, quick to add that he hasn’t had that personal experience at the Cambridge Bay group home.

“[But] I think from the team perspective, they weren’t getting south fast enough — [so] is it a home or is it jail?” Emerson said.

“Regardless of your skill sets, if a child demands 24-hour attention and is a vulnerable child, as in eight years old or nine years old, and all of a sudden you have a 14-year old who has a history of victimizing possibly a young child, you’re walking around with one eye open all the time,” he said.

The level of expertise and resources to deal with these troubled kids is “non-existent” in Nunavut, Emerson said.

If a child in Nunavut needs treatment not offered in the territory, that child would sometimes stay at the Cambridge Bay group home until they were sent South. Sometimes they were waiting for a foster home came because they were experiencing family problems at home.

If there was an emergency referral, “if we have a bed, we say yes, send him over,” Emerson said.

Once at the six-bed group home, equipped with five bedrooms — three with bunks and one with two beds — the kids, usually ranging from 12 to 14, followed a set of rules, dictated by the house parents.

“The home is going to reflect what goes on in a family, for example: I’m going out to play, see you for supper at 5 o’ clock,” Emerson said.

Most kids were school-aged and attended school during the day while staying at the group home.

The average stay at the group home was six months, with some children staying for only a few days for “stabilization” and others staying as long as a year.

The group home had access to the gym on Saturdays, some of the kids were in cadets, soccer, or other clubs, and elders would occasionally come into the home to talk to them.

“It was never very onerous. The group home was a safe, caring environment for children, regardless of what their circumstances were,” Emerson said.

“We’re kind of on our own [because] we’re the only resource [in the Kitikemeot],” he added.

In the past, the company made efforts to recruit local people from Cambridge Bay as house parents, but that never happened.

“We’ve certainly tried to recruit local people…part of it’s the skill level, part of it is living in a home providing care for six children, [and] not everybody wants to do that,” Emerson said.

“We don’t get easy kids anymore, and [some] would be difficult to place in a foster home,” he said.

However, the company’s relationship with the GN’s former health and social services department was generally positive, Emerson said.

He doesn’t think the closing of the group home will have a huge impact on people.

“We could recognize the services weren’t meeting the needs,” he said.

The GN will likely look for another service provider, with the empty building sitting there, Emerson said.

“I think they’ll want to see it operated,” he said.

Emerson declined comment on the cost of operating the group home.