Mother sues B.C. after daughter died in foster care
When Sara-Jane Wiens learned her
21-month-old daughter had died in foster care, she ran out of her back
door and “screamed bloody murder.”
“I
couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” she recalled, her voice breaking.
“My heart sank. My whole world came crashing down before my eyes that
day.”
Two years later, Wiens said she’s
still searching for answers. The 25-year-old has filed a lawsuit
against the British Columbia government and the province’s director of
child, family and community services alleging recklessness and bad
faith.
The civil lawsuit states her two-month-old
daughter, Isabella, was taken from her in August 2011 after she was
deemed unfit to care for her. Wiens suffers from a learning disability
that causes anxiety and depression.
In March 2013, the toddler was found dead in the crib at her foster home.
The
lawsuit alleges that the government didn’t properly supervise Isabella
while she was in foster care and failed to adequately consider returning
the child to her mother.
“The system
failed me, and I trusted the system with my flesh and blood,” Wiens said
in an emotional phone interview from Ontario, where she now lives.
“If
one thing can get changed to prevent this from happening to another
person, then I know I was able to make that small change.”
Wiens said she noticed bruises on her daughter during supervised visits and told her social worker but nothing was done.
A
coroner’s report could not determine the cause of death, but said there
were several bruises on the body and indications of healing fractures
on the girl’s left arm that couldn’t be explained.
Children
and Family Development Minister Stephanie Cadieux said the ministry
launches a review any time a child dies in care, but would not comment
on the specific case.
“The oversight
for our Ministry — and the children in our care — is extensive but
entirely appropriate given the often vulnerable population we serve,”
she said in a statement.
Mary Ellen
Turpel-Lafond, B.C.’s representative for children and youth, said the
foster home has been shut down after a ministry investigation.
Turpel-Lafond
said she would like to see the ministry and coroner’s service sit down
with families and debrief after the death of a child.
“They’ve
lost a precious child, their family is very devastated, they don’t feel
like they’ve had answers. I’d like to see the answers that they’d like
to see,” she said.
Wiens’s lawyer, Jack Hittrich, said his client had to fight for nearly eight months to see a copy of the coroner’s report.
The
circumstances surrounding Isabella being taken into ministry custody
are not yet clear. Hittrich said the B.C. ministry falsely alleged Wiens
was fleeing a child protection order in Ontario, but in fact she left
the province to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend.
“She
is told that she cannot parent because she poses a risk to this young
child,” he said. “The child is scooped from her. There’s no attempt made
to work with her to reunite her with her child. They then completely
abdicate their responsibility to monitor the foster home and attend to
these injuries.”
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