The system is in desperate need of a tune up.
That’s what one local woman says about the health care her son has received at a variety of levels. Because the 13-year-old is now preparing to go to court over some of his actions, he will be called Dennis and his mother will be called Mary in order to protect their identities for the purposes of this article.
She said that she feels like a ping-pong ball.
“To get from where we were to where he is now could have been more …” she trailed off, indicating that their path has been frustrating, slow and unpredictable. “It’s just not right.”
Dennis has always had some issues related to his mental health and his behaviours that resulted from them. He has always had problems sleeping and was diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Conduct Disorder, which she says means that he doesn’t think ahead to consequences, opposes authority, and doesn’t have an appropriate remorse or empathy response for his actions that cause harm to others. He’s smart, defiant, and can be violent. He has run away from schools and when younger had to always have his hand held lest he bolt into traffic.
She said that they’ve received help from agencies including Transitions, various mental health practitioners and agencies, and now the province’s Family Support for Children with Disabilities (FSCD) division of the Human Services department.
She complained that throughout her entire experience of trying to find help for him, there were professionals in health care and even his schools who should have known and informed them about special facilities and treatment institutions such as Bright Banks Academy and the Elk Island Child and Youth Ranch.
One recent facility that he stayed at resulted in his current legal trouble. He walked away from his treatment in a rural area, trespassed across farmland and set fire to some structures, causing a lot of damage.
Mary suggested that the communication between levels of government and these various health care treatment centres is broken in many respects. She said that coincidences resulted in her learning about the facilities where he could go for help. It was only by talking with the right doctor or psychologist who knew who to talk to that we could get Dennis into different programs.
“No one told us anything about these types of places that they had. He could have been in these little ranches or whatever to get the on site care and treatment a long time ago. Maybe these things wouldn’t have escalated.”
His behaviours do not seem to have improved either. One of his key workers recently warned Mary that Dennis would continue to push boundaries and try to get kicked out and that she was expecting more critical incident reports. Right after that warning, he assaulted a staff member, who needed medical treatment in a hospital afterward and also resulted in him receiving another charge.
A sense of exasperation is audible in how she talks about the system. All of her pleas for help have now turned to screams but she still gets the runaround, she says. She has called MLAs and the health minister, calling the situation an emergency. The health minister has yet to call back, however.
If there had been more accessible information or more co-ordination between members of the public health system, then she believes that Dennis would have received treatment earlier on in his life, and his current problems wouldn’t have even started.
“There should be more in place for these kids. The way that I look at it, I’ve been dealing with this and I’ve always had problems with (Dennis) ever since he was born. If he would have gotten the treatment at a younger age then we would have been well on the way to recovery by now instead of still having to deal with this. That’s a long struggle. It’s very frustrating.”
“We don’t know what to do for him. You just don’t get mental illnesses when you’re an adult; you get them when you’re a child. You’re born with it. It just needs to be recognized. I think there should be more help out there for other families. This is a struggle that we’ve had to go through for all of his school age. It’s just ridiculous.”
