'Very slow process': Minister says child protection system improving, despite decades of criticism
Volumes of reviews and recommendations not implemented over decades
A 20-year-old man who's suing the Newfoundland and Labrador government for leaving him in the care of an abusive mother was born in 1996, the same year as a detailed report outlined ways to fix the system to better protect the province's children.
The minister currently responsible for child protection, Sherry Gambin-Walsh, says her government has accepted recommendations to improve the system.
That may be true, but theory still hasn't turned into practice if you ask social workers, families, or even the Child and Youth Advocate who retired in December 2016.
Let's go back to 1996.
2 families, 2 tales of abuse
"He was beaten by his mother. Unlawfully confined by her, forced to watch as his siblings were unlawfully confined and also forced to tape up his siblings as part of their unlawful confinement," said the 20-year-old's lawyer, Lynn Moore.
"This happened from the time he was born until he was apprehended at age seven."
Government officials had taken his older siblings away from their abusive mother, but when he was born, he was left with her and abused, his lawsuit claims.
The irony — according to court documents — is that his mother was used as an example of a success story at a national child protection symposium in 2000. Five years later, she was convicted of abuse.
During roughly the same time period, children in another Avalon Peninsula family known to the province's department of Child, Youth and Family Services were also being abused by their parents.
Records show the department had 50 "referrals" on that family from 1999 until 2012, when the children were finally removed. The judge hearing the eventual trial called it a "house of horrors."
The pressure to keep families together is still a driving force.
"The way forward is to return as many children as possible to their families and to their own individual support systems," said Gambin-Walsh in an interview on Wednesday.
"Our goal and objective, once we remove a child, is always, always, to try to get the child back with their families, with their caregivers, with their relatives as soon as possible."
Gambin-Walsh admitted there may be "voids" in legislation and the system that have led to children living with abusive family members or caregivers, but that's something government is working to prevent.
Reviews 'shelved' over decades
Critics argue that reform has taken too long.
More than 20 years ago, people were expressing frustration that reports calling for substantiative change to child protection services had fallen on deaf ears.
"The people of the province expressed their concern about the current approach of government and society toward children and youth issues," reads the summary of LISTENing and ACTing: A Plan for Child, Youth and Community Empowerment, submitted to the House of Assembly in June 1996.
"Time and again individuals and groups who came forward to present their ideas and concerns to the Committee, complained that these reports had been "shelved." They asked what was the point of our work since this Committee's report, like all others before it, would only be shelved," it said.
That 1996 review recommended setting up the office of a child advocate. It also talked in detail about the need to identify and intervene with families at risk early on. Families like the two described above. Families like Zachary Turner's.
The Turner Report
Zachary Turner was 13 months old in 2003 when he was drowned by his mother, Dr. Shirley Turner, in a murder-suicide.
He was being monitored by social workers, but was allowed to live with his mother, even though she was facing trial on charges of murdering Zachary's father, Andrew Bagby.
A comprehensive review with dozens of recommendations was submitted to the government in September 2006. It actually went to the Child and Youth Advocate, an office that opened in 2002, six years after it was suggested.
The detailed review found that Zachary Turner's death should never have happened, and could have been prevented by "more focused and co-ordinated, proactive" government services with better communication throughout.
It also recommended a number of policy and legislative changes, changes that by December 2016, when then-Child and Youth Advocate Carol Chafe retired, had still not been implemented.
Little change
Chafe said one of the things she found frustrating was repeatedly making many of the same recommendations in all 10 of her published reports.
"Unfortunately, I can't tell you we're seeing the change enough on the front line," Chafe told CBC News.
She was also frustrated by the unchanging culture of child protection, 10 years after the 1996 report cited the need for a new approach.
Which brings us to today, and yet another review.
Changes coming to legislation
As the current minister, Gambin-Walsh is overseeing consultations to revamp the Children and Youth Care and Protection Act.
One recommendation from the former child advocate has been to have mandatory reporting of child deaths to that office.
Gambin-Walsh disagrees with critics who suggest that not much has been done to improve the front lines of child protection.
"I beg to differ. It has been happening, it's a very slow process," she said.
"The protection of children is very complicated. Every single case has intrinsic details that are complicated and complex and every case has to be treated individually."
Social workers CBC spoke with said they're optimistic that the latest review will lead to improvements, but their workload is still high and they are understaffed.
"We are attempting and trying really hard to maintain the ratio of one staff to 20 cases," Gambin-Walsh told CBC News, but some social workers said they have 30 or more cases and that jobs were left vacant for years.
Whatever the outcome of this latest review, it will be too late for "John Doe" — the 20-year-old who filed a lawsuit against the government on March 9.
His home situation "presented countless indicators of an abusive and neglectful environment," he said in a court document that alleges "negligent, reckless and/or willfully blind" government officials failed to protect him for the first seven years of his life.
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With files from Mark Quinn