Horrific death of 'miracle baby' renews calls for foster care changes in B.C.

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Caution: This story contains disturbing details about abuse and death inflicted upon a child

Colby was lovingly nicknamed “the miracle baby” when he was born in 2009, as his twin did not survive their emergency birth.

“He was like taking care of a doll. He was so small, (it was) hard to feed him. You would have to take your finger and massage down the front of his throat to help him get it down,” a relative recalled.

Colby endured years of surgeries and medical appointments — complex health needs that were challenging for his parents due to poverty, intergenerational trauma, and a lack of support in their small Indigenous community.

The small, skinny boy with tousled dark hair and brown eyes loved kicking a soccer ball, the power of monster trucks, reading Archie comics, and playing the video game Minecraft.

Those who knew him recall his gentle spirit and a wide smile, which stand in stark contrast to the “horrific abuse and torture” that he suffered in the home of a caregiver, who had been approved by social workers to look after him.

His death in 2021, following a horrendous nine-minute beating by the caregiver, is the subject of a new report released Tuesday by B.C.’s representative for children and youth.

And that scathing report prompted the minister responsible for child welfare to promise wholesale change in how vulnerable youth are cared for.

“What happened to (Colby) is unimaginable. There are no words,” said Grace Lore, minister of children and family services.

“I want to apologize because it is clear Colby and his family were failed.”

She vowed to follow the report’s key recommendation for all ministries that interact with children — including health, education, social services and justice — to work with social workers to collectively protect kids. Lore said a cross-ministry group of senior public officials would be immediately established.

The report, by Children’s Representative Jennifer Charlesworth, noted staff from Colby’s school and doctors’ offices raised alarm bells that he hadn’t been seen in months, but child welfare workers didn’t follow up on those concerns.

“I’m determined to break down those barriers,” Lore said.

“When there are professionals in the community, like teachers, like health care workers, who know something about a family, who are worried about a child, that they are able to reach us and that we are responding.”

Multiple Indigenous leaders welcomed Lore’s commitment to embrace the report, titled Don’t Look Away — How one boy’s story has the power to shift a system of care for children and youth. But they also noted there have been many other failings that led to children’s deaths, resulting in multiple reports filled with hundreds of recommendations — a number of which have not been acted upon.

Cheryl Casimer, with the First Nations Summit, vowed to hold the government’s “feet to the fire” to ensure this report does not join the others collecting dust on a shelf.

“Government, departments, agencies, anybody who has anything to do with the life of a child has to be in the same room,” Casimer said.

“We can no longer be working in silos. What is this little child’s legacy going to be?”

A small cedar box with Indigenous artwork and a white teddy bear sat at the front of the Vancouver conference room where the report was unveiled Tuesday, a constant reminder of Colby’s tragic role in these new promised changes.

In 2019, at the age of 10, Colby and his younger sister were removed from the custody of their mother, who loved her children but didn’t receive the support she needed to properly care for them, the report said.

They were placed with the mother’s cousin Staci on a neighbouring reserve. Child services workers from Colby’s First Nation knew there were documented concerns about Staci and her partner’s previous treatment of children, but they never once visited the children in a home in which they lived for more than a year.

Government social workers, who were legally responsible for the kids but deferred to the Indigenous team, never did a background check or criminal record check on the caregivers. And they didn’t visit Colby and his sister during the seven months leading up to his death, a violation of policies.

The children were isolated and not allowed to go to school, see other family members or attend Colby’s crucial medical appointments.

After a severe beating by Staci in February 2021, which was captured on home video, Colby was declared brain-dead and removed from life support a few days before his 12th birthday.

Charlesworth’s report, said to be the biggest investigation by the representative’s office since the government created it in 2006, concluded his death was preventable and was not an outlier.

“The ways in which the systems of care let his family down have been experienced by many other children and families in B.C. and across Canada,” the document says.

On Tuesday, Charlesworth gathered together workers from education, health, justice, community services and other sectors to tell them they were the people who could reshape B.C.’s outdated child welfare system.

“How can we make it different this time? What’s it going to take to move a system that has been stuck in old colonial and silo ways for too long? “ Charlesworth challenged the audience, which included Lore.

“How can we prevent such a tragedy from happening again?”

Among the future commitments that Lore made Tuesday was to better support for families as they try to navigate the maze of government services; to make it easier for families to access key services ranging from housing to substance use support; and to address the causes and impacts of family- and gender-based violence. 

Colby’s real name and his First Nation were not named in the document to protect his family’s identity.

She also committed to creating an Indigenous-led group that would support First Nations taking full jurisdiction of the welfare of Indigenous children, who are grossly overrepresented in the protection system.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said he supported the province’s intention to implement Charlesworth’s recommendations, and said First Nations must control their own child welfare.

Charlesworth, noted though, that’s a complicated process that must come with proper funding and support from government so another child like Colby doesn’t fall through the cracks.

Lore said government is working with First Nations on a funding model and an outline of “clear roles and responsibilities” for the transition.

Colby was the second oldest of five children.

His mother Violet, who died of toxic drug poisoning 20 months after Colby’s death, was a high school graduate who liked to braid the hair of young girls for cultural dances. She was also a street fighter, earning money from matches.

Violet, who was raised in a chaotic home, had been determined to raise her five children in a stable environment, but was unable due to poverty, violence, housing insecurity, substance use and interactions with police and social workers, the report said.

Violet needed extensive wraparound supports to properly care for her children, but the help she received from the ministry and her nation were not sufficient.

Her kids were eventually put into care at a time when First Nations were taking over responsibilities for child welfare. There was “confusion” and a “lack of clarity,” though, between Indigenous and government workers around decision making and accountability for the families, the report says.

When Nation workers suggested Violet’s cousin Staci and her partner could look after the children, ministry workers agreed without doing their regular checks — mainly because they were told that First Nations knew best what Indigenous children need.

The decision to put Colby and his sister in Staci’s home, however, was made without consulting his mother, the children’s fathers, or the maternal and paternal grandmothers, some of whom were willing to care for the kids. The maternal grandmother said she, Violet and the children didn’t know Staci well at all.

Colby’s caregivers, Staci and her partner Graham, both pseudonyms, were sentenced in 2023 to 10 years in prison for manslaughter and six years for aggravated assault.

It’s too simple and inaccurate to blame decisions by child support workers for this tragedy, the report said. “In Colby’s story, there was no one thing or one person who could be held wholly responsible. Instead, we see a web of actions and inactions and dozens of missed opportunities across an entire system.”

Charlesworth sought guidance from cultural advisers and her staff spoke with nearly 2,000 people, including Indigenous leaders, government and health authority staff, community sector agencies, and family and kinship carers. They reviewed 6,437 injuries and deaths of children in government care or receiving services in 2023 and 2024.

The report makes a number of recommendations, which Charlesworth wrote cannot be ignored, as recommendations in other reports have been in the past. They include:

• The province must collaborate with Indigenous leaders to create a Child and Youth Well-being Action Plan to ensure a sustained approach to caring for kids, one that addresses the ongoing harms of colonization and racism. It should include funding for community healing, and to support First Nations’ transition toward full jurisdiction over child welfare.
• The Ministry of Children and Family Development must address the factors causing unhealthy working conditions for its staff, in particular those in child protection and family service.
• All government ministries that work with children must dismantle the “pervasive colonial systems” that sustain biases in public services.
• Ministries, health authorities and public agencies that work with children must share data about how youth are faring in health, education, and social-emotional well-being. They must also identify key measures of child well-being that can be used by multiple public organizations so they all know what is working and what isn’t.

Charlesworth included short-term actions that ministry workers could address right away, including system changes that would prompt more questions about violence risks in families; education to better understand the impact of family violence on children; improving the assessment of and support for temporary kinship arrangements — including respite and training; enabling families to address smaller issues, such as money to pay outstanding utility bills or for specialized equipment for a child — before they become major issues.

Stories of 14 other children in eight families are included in the report because none of them received appropriate support either. Nearly all endured violence, poverty, and poor housing, as well as being impacted by mental health and substance use in their families.

Three of these children died.

“There was minimal oversight and ‘eyes on’ for many of the children, especially those in (Indigenous) kinship care arrangements,” the report says.

The report applies to all children in care, but was written through an Indigenous lens because two thirds of kids in care are Indigenous despite representing less than 10 per cent of B.C.’s total child population.

The small B.C. community where Colby came from continues to suffer harms from the legacy of settler colonialism and generations of racism, but is on a “healing journey” that is attempting to mend fractures among its troubled people, the report said.

The story of Colby’s abuse did not come to light until his caregivers’ trial in 2023.

B.C. Provincial Court Judge Peter La Prairie said in his ruling that the children were starved and forced to eat feces, vomit and dog food. They were also slapped, punched, kicked and whipped, with much of the abuse captured by video cameras inside the home.

Colby’s sister survived but had multiple abrasions and bruises all over her body, and injuries to her wrists and ankles from zip ties.

Social workers who failed to check on the children are no longer employed by the ministry. Former Children’s Minister Mitzi Dean was demoted from the ministry in January, and observers believe this case was one of the main reasons.

lculbert@postmedia.com

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