GN approves, then blocks, FASD referral for child

“If I blocked this child’s referral… Social Services could apprehend the child”

By NUNATSIAQ NEWS

I am the foster parent of a child who presents with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder (FASD) symptoms.

More than a year ago this child was referred by a doctor for a full FASD assessment.

We waited more than a year for a space to become available at a specialized centre in the South, and finally the good news arrived. Social Services booked the flights and the hotel. I received a confirmation of all medical appointments.

One day and a half before we were to leave, the social worker who had been making the arrangements sent me an e-mail that began: “I have some tragic news, the trip for FASD is cancelled by higher authority.”

I wrote a senior official at HSS, asking if things might have been handled differently if the child’s condition was related to physical injury rather than mental health.

Refusing to follow through with appointments that were set up by a doctor is a denial of medical care. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is a medicalissue.

I also noted that the child is the legal responsibility of Social Services. My reading of the Child and Family Services Act is that if this were my own child, and if I blocked this child’s referral as requested by a doctor, Social Services could apprehend the child and ensure that the child got the assessment that the doctor had ordered.

But because the child is already in the care of Social Services, the child is not accorded this level of care by the Government of Nunavut.

Health and Social Services Minister Keith Peterson has a track record of expressing concern about FASD. Back in 2005, he said in the Legislative Assembly:

“The diagnostic assessment of FASD… only becomes more difficult as the person gets older. The longer the person goes undiagnosed, then the longer they continue to develop difficulties without the necessary support and resources… Can the minister clarify for this House what initiatives and resources are currently in place to research the extent of this disorder within our population and to address it?”

The minister at that time responded:

“I think it’s awfully important to also talk about what we’re doing on a national level around FASD… We’re working in collaboration with jurisdictions to research what’s happening in other provinces and other territories around FASD and collaborating on that. To answer the member’s question, we are, again, part of that research network at a national level.”

Peterson responded:

“Mr. Speaker, just over a year ago the Yukon Government set up a program to assess children for FASD in the Yukon instead of sending them out of territory for assessment. Can the minister tell us whether her officials have collaborated with her counterparts in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories on the issue of FASD assessment and diagnostic measurement tools in the North?”

The minister responded that “the goals of the FASD program in Nunavut is to develop and promote territorial approaches to prevention, intervention, care, and support to individual families and institutions like education, again, to create partnerships, community-based training, again, as well, to increase awareness of the impact of FASD, and to increase awareness to young women of the impacts of drinking while pregnant.”

In 2007, Peterson asked how many Nunavummiut suffer from FASD. The minister responded:

“At this point in time we don’t have an exact number, but it does exist in our territories and the same with other jurisdictions as well. The research network that we are involved in is looking at collaborative ways of the best ways to treat individuals with the disorder in our society.”

Peterson followed up with a supplementary question, and the minister replied:

“By working with organizations that have studied this disorder in Canada, as well as international, we’re looking at ways of utilizing that in our communities… So we are working on those tools to better diagnose individuals with the disorder early on in order to come up with ways of developing support systems, or whatnot, with each of the individuals that may have the disorder.”

The HSS official I wrote to last week replied that “the sequential administrative process for referral has been identified as being in need of review,” and that it will be “[brought] forward to our planning tables.”

The bottom line is, I have no idea when the child in my care is going to get the FASD assessment that a doctor requested more than a year ago.

Minister Peterson, how many other children in Nunavut are waiting for an FASD assessment? And when will they get them?

(Name and community withheld by request to protect the child in question)
Nunavut

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