By Thia James

Questions remain in Sturgeon Lake after report on toddler’s death in foster care

Sep 19, 2014 | 6:45 AM

At the age of two, a toddler known only as “Jake” in a Saskatchewan Child and Youth Advocate’s report died in foster care.

He and his brother had been removed from his home on Sturgeon Lake First Nation after his father became violent with his mother while they had been drinking. In Bob Pringle’s report, he noted that she was abused at the hands of the child’s father and had been abusing drugs and alcohol.

“Jake” was only five months old at the time. By the time he died in 2009, he had been moved from foster home to foster home 11 times. He was found dead in his playpen, and the cause of his death was not uncovered by an autopsy and is still unknown.

It is the kind of unknowns that loom over the Sturgeon Lake First Nation community.

Eleanor Brazeau, executive director of Sturgeon Lake Child and Family Services, sees that there are outstanding questions that never will be answered. She has been with the agency since the year it opened – in 2008.

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“We will sit down. We did go over this report. There are still outstanding questions. We will reference those questions to the advocate and cc the minister of social services as well, and we will call a meeting with the ministry of social services,” Brazeau said.

For her, one of those questions surrounds who will be held accountable for the non-compliance to policy that Pringle’s report identifies.

“For us, since this happened, we have developed a better working relationship with the ministry of social services… Jake was the first death, we also had another death within six months later,” she said. The other child she referenced was Evander Daniels, who drowned in a bathtub at the age of 22 months in 2010. He was in foster care at the time.

“We were really alarmed and … devastated by all of that, you know, we had two deaths back-to-back, and since then, our working relationship with the ministry has been better.”

Brazeau said Sturgeon Lake and the ministry signed a communication protocol in 2013. It ensures the band continues to have involvement in cases of children who are removed from the reserve and placed in foster care. As soon as the ministry removes a child registered to Sturgeon Lake, the agency – Sturgeon Lake Child and Family Services – becomes involved.

Chief Craig Bighead supports the report issued by child and youth advocate Pringle, but he recognizes that it doesn’t identify how “Jake” died in foster care.

“There’s no really … concrete answers to that and that’s what we’re still, you know, the community still wondering what’s happening, what really happened,” he said. 

Bighead said Pringle’s report does identify the deficiencies in the ministry of social services. “The report will shed some light on what happened to our little band member, I guess … and [we] have to work with the province so, you know, our children are cared for the way they should be cared for. And it’s not only our children. It’s other children within the province under the ministry.”

Bighead hopes that the ministry does carry out the recommendations Pringle made in his report.

He attended the press conference the child and youth advocate held on Tuesday in Regina, alongside former Chief Wesley Daniels.

Daniels, who was Sturgeon Lake First Nation’s chief at the time “Jake” was taken into foster care, declined to comment.

And the toddler’s mother will never have a chance to see the recommendations of the report on her son’s death.

Within the last couple of years, his mother died, according to Brazeau. The mother had been the band’s point of contact because she was registered to Sturgeon Lake. The band had not been dealing with the father and have had no contact with him.

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames