Katelynn Sampson inquest recommendations focus on putting child first
TheStar.com – News/GTA – The five-member panel has delivered 173 recommendations, including many on the duty to report child abuse, the training of child protection workers and information sharing between agencies and law enforcement — which were key themes in the inquest.
Apr 29 2016. By: Catherine Porter, Columnist
After months of deliberation, the jury in the Katelynn Sampson inquest has delivered 173 recommendations.
At the heart of them was “Katelynn’s principle,” which holds the child should be at the centre of our child welfare, justice and education systems. In practice, that would mean children would be consulted directly on decisions affecting them, whether regarding legal custody, child protection decisions, or even simply getting to see a social worker at school.
Sampson was just 7 in August 2008, when she was slowly beaten to death by her guardians, Donna Irving and Warren Johnson. Police found blood in every room of their Parkdale apartment, and the coroner documented 70 wounds across her lifeless body. Both Irving and Johnson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and are now in jail.
The tragedy was child protection workers had been called a half-dozen times in recent months about her, but her file was lost between different agencies. Never once did a child protection worker talk directly to her, the inquiry heard.
Neither was she heard from by the family court judge who sanctioned the informal agreement between Irving and Sampson’s mother, who was struggling with a crack cocaine addiction, and legally entrusted Sampson to Irving’s custody.
The Children’s Law Reform Act should be amended, the jury recommended Friday, giving children the right to participate in the process regarding their custody and “have their views considered in a substantive way.” Judges should be trained on this, it said.
The Ministry of Education should develop a new curriculum teaching children from kindergarten to Grade 12 about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the jury recommended. Classes might include their “right to be protected from violence, to have their views considered when decisions are made about them,” to education (including the right to regular attendance at school) and to health care, their written verdict reads.
By the time Katelynn died, she had missed 72 days of school, plus 16 half-days. Her guardians never took her to a doctor to attend to her growing, painful wounds, which included broken ribs, bones, teeth and a lobe of her liver, which was hit so forcefully, the forensic pathologist compared it to a car crash.
All these rights, the jury suggested, should be printed in every student’s school agenda, along with the phone numbers for Kids HelpLine and the Student Safety Line.
Missed or failed communication between the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and the Native Child and Family Services over Katelynn’s increasingly dire situation was a regular theme of the inquest. When her school principal noticed burns on her face and arms in April, three months before she was killed, he called the children’s aid society. Its staff reported to have sent the file to Native Family and Children’s Services, which had already closed its file on Katelynn. Its staff told the inquest they never received the urgent notice.
Katelynn was taken out of school less than two weeks later, under the guise of going up north for an Irving family funeral. She never returned.
The last recommendation the jury made was for the province to consider consolidating the 43 child protection agencies in Ontario into one provincial structure. That was a major recommendation from the inquest into the death of 5-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin two years ago, but the provincial government has rejected it. < http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2015/02/10/ontario-rejects-call-to-merge-childrens-aid-societies.html >
Irwin Elman, the provincial advocate for children and youth, called on Premier Kathleen Wynn to use the 173 recommendations as a template to change the child protection system. “Today I hope Katelynn … becomes a turning point for our province,” he told reporters after the jury’s recommendations were read.
Outside courthouse, Bernice Sampson released a bouquet of pink balloons to her daughter, who would have been 15 today. She had given custody of Katelynn to her friend Donna Irving, because she was dealing with crack addiction. “I miss her every day,” she said, battling tears. “I know I made a bad choice. I thought it was the right thing, but I didn’t take her life, that’s the main thing.”
The jury’s recommendations are non-binding. Among them, is one demanding a report – presumably reflecting changes made — from provincial institutions to the Office of the Chief Coroner with in a year.
Some of the other recommendations:
– A shared intake screening service and phone number for the four child protection agencies in Toronto, “to prevent confusion resulting from different numbers, to minimize lost referrals, to increase accessibility and to provide for pooling of resources.”
– Children’s aid societies change from standard business hours to 12-hour days, seven days a week.
– A new protocol allowing police to release their records to children’s aid societies.
– A pamphlet on children’s rights, to be given to children whose families are receiving services from children’s aid societies.
– A single, standard compulsory training for all child protection workers and supervisors.
– More social workers in public schools who can work with students without parental consent.
< http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/04/29/katelynn-sampson-inquest-recommendations-focus-on-information-sharing.html >
Tags: child care, crime prevention, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living, youth
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 30th, 2016 at 9:45 am and is filed under Child & Family Delivery System. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments