Children's ministry stumbles again

From today's Times Colonist:

"She was 15, with severe developmental disabilities due to Down syndrome. Her mother, with her own issues, died in the home they shared in a Cultus Lake mobile home park.

And for nine days, the girl lived beside her mother's corpse. She had been told not to go out alone.

When rescued, she was emaciated and filthy -- she was unable to use the toilet and had been wearing the same diaper for a week. Her legs and abdomen were raw with diaper rash. Pills and boxes of macaroni were on the floor, apparently left as the girl tried to bring her mother back to life.

The Minister of Children and Family Development had been involved with the family; in fact, the girl's brothers had asked that their sister be taken into care because of their mother's alcoholism and drug abuse and the filth in the house.

The law calls for deaths or such events that cause "serious or long-term impairment" of a child's health to be reported to the Representative for Children and Youth as soon as officials become aware of them.

But the ministry didn't do that. Nine weeks after the girl was discovered, Minister Mary Polak says it's still not clear to her that the girl suffered an injury that required reporting.

That's at once insulting and stupid. . ."

Read the rest here.