This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
“My daughter was supposed to be in a safe place and, in the end, it’s what took her precious life,” Kassy’s distraught mother, Chantal Finbow, told the Star. “Kassy was a beautiful young lady with so much potential.”
A 17-year-old resident of the rural foster home for girls has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of arson causing bodily harm in the Feb. 24 fire on Quaker Rd. in Oakwood.
The deaths have triggered multiple investigations about lax or non-existent provincial standards governing group homes and foster homes run by private companies. The OPP, Queen’s Park, children’s aid and Ontario’s child and youth advocate are finding plenty of blame to go around.
The Ministry of Children and Youth Services, responsible for licensing and inspecting these homes, is under fire for failing to adequately monitor and for being slow to improve the quality of care.
Both group homes and foster homes serve children and youth taken for their protection from parents by children’s aid societies, or sent there by parents for treatment due to mental health or behavioural issues.
The similarities end there. Foster homes are capped at four children, while group homes typically serve eight or more. Foster homes also face far less stringent licensing requirements and fire code regulations.
Confusion around the bolted windows commonly used in these homes is especially striking.
A week after the tragedy, a second Connor foster home for boys on the same Quaker Rd. property was shut down by the Kawartha Lakes fire department for more than a dozen violations of the Ontario Fire Code. It demands changes “required to reduce the threat to life for the children to re-occupy the building.”
“Windows throughout the building have been altered such that they cannot be operated as intended from the inside without the use of tools,” the order says, describing a deficiency. “The windows have been altered with the placement of plexi-glass.”
“Windows are to be repaired to operate as originally designed or are to be replaced,” it adds.
But Connor, head of Connor Homes and president of the Ontario Association of Residences Treating Youth, appealed the shutdown order — and won. The fire department withdrew the order March 30 because it had wrongly inspected the building as a group home when in fact it was a foster home, says Kawartha Lakes fire prevention inspector Karl Gleason.
And so, bolted windows considered too dangerous for children in a group home are fine for children in a foster home.[?What?]
More inexplicable is that during an inspection a year ago, the same fire department gave the same building with the same bolted windows the all-clear when it was operating as a group home. Kawartha fire officials cited the criminal investigation as the reason it could not explain to the Star why they did so.
The bottom line is the fire code is silent about bolted windows in group and foster homes, says Ontario’s child advocate, Irwin Elman.
He considers them a dangerous symbol of the “power and control model” of residential care. “It’s about managing kids’ behaviour,” he says. Elman adds he has repeatedly warned the ministry and fire marshal about them, with no result.
“It wasn’t safe,” an exasperated Elman says of the foster home that burned down. “For young people, it just all adds up to, ‘Nobody cares, unless we die.’”
Today, the Quaker Rd. property is deserted.
Every trace of the wooden building that burned is gone, removed after the insurance company concluded there was nothing to salvage. The two-storey brick home used to foster boys is vacant. A former school portable, its windows bolted shut with Plexiglas, sits at the back of the property. A swimming pool is empty but for dirt. A fridge someone dragged outside has scribbled on its door: “Sorry for the mess. I did my best.”
At the property entrance is a memorial, a bouquet of artificial flowers on a fencepost and a piece of fuchsia fabric with words for Andrea Reid: “Forever our hero.”
“She had a nurturing way with the most challenging kids,” says Mark Williams, who owns the property and for years ran group homes there called Hawk Residential Care and Treatment Homes, before leasing them to Connor Homes last fall. Reid, a mother of three, had worked six years for Hawk.
Kassy, the teen who died, was a Crown ward. In a statement to the Star, her mother, Chantal Finbow, describes her as “a bubbly, social little girl who loved to dance and do gymnastics.” But by the time she was 12, “she became more and more violent” and unmanageable at home.
Finbow turned to the Durham children’s aid for help. Kassy “bounced” through different placements until she landed at the foster home last October. The rural setting was a good fit, her mother says.
“We had seen great improvement, and for the first time in a long time, I had hope that she would return home at some point,” says Finbow.
She questions whether the foster home was the right setting for the girl accused of setting the fire.
The 17-year-old, an indigenous girl from northern Ontario, had been sent to Quaker Rd. last spring by her father who used provincial funding for kids with “complex special needs.” Staff “loved her,” says Williams.
At a court appearance in Lindsay, she sat in the prisoner’s box wearing a baggy sweatshirt, blinking heavily. No relatives were present but a youth worker with an aboriginal family services agency monitored proceedings.
On Feb. 24, the day of the fire, she was one of three girls in the care of the foster home, including Kassy and another girl, who was placed there by Kawartha CAS but away that day with a caregiver.
According to police reports and sources with knowledge of the events, the fire broke out after a disturbance involving the 17-year-old. The two caregivers took Kassy to her second-floor bedroom and waited for the 17-year-old to calm down, part of a pre-arranged plan to keep everyone safe and avoid having to restrain the older teen.
“We were following the protocol, which is laid out by a psychiatrist,” says Connor, 68.
Jennifer Wilson, executive director of the Kawartha Haliburton CAS, questions the plan’s wisdom. “I would be concerned about a safety plan where a child or young person is left alone when in crisis,” Wilson says. “How does that child recover from the episode without coaching or staff support?”
Connor refused to say how the tragedy unfolded. But a source suggested that when smoke alarms connected throughout the house rang, the caregivers in the upstairs room assumed the 17-year-old had pulled the fire alarm as a prank.
The bedroom had been retrofitted with thick drywall and a fire door which would have kept the caregivers and Kassy safe from fire for 20 minutes, the source says.
Firefighters arrived six minutes after they were called, but by then it was too late, the source adds.
Kassy died that day. Reid died in hospital that weekend.
“Smoke is what killed them,” says Connor, adding the fire plan for the home included evacuating the premises at the first sign of fire.
The sliding glass door in Kassy’s bedroom was bolted, he says, because there was no balcony. Connor says bolted Plexiglas windows are common in group homes. They prevent self-harming kids from smashing them or jumping to their deaths.
“There’s no rule in the fire code that says you can’t have the windows bolted shut,” he says. “Common sense would say it’s not a good idea, but the law says it’s fine. Do I think it’s fine? No.”
Williams says that during the years he ran the group home, ministry inspectors never questioned his bolted windows or use of Plexiglas.
Williams, Hawk’s longtime director of residential services, took over the operating licences for Quaker Rd. in 2011. He bought the homes from Hawk’s previous owners in May 2016 for $485,000 and took out two mortgages, at high interest rates, according to property records.
Over the last two years,the homes became known for a high number of serious incidents reported to the ministry, with many resulting in kids being physically restrained.
A former worker at the boys’ home, who did not want to be named, says he witnessed “a violent outburst every day.” He recalls being choked unconscious by one boy. Staff were paid $13 to $15 an hour, and rarely stayed long. He now works at a jail.
“I feel I’m in a safer job now.”
In July 2016, children’s aid societies removed all their children from the boys’ home after Kawartha CAS investigated a sex assault allegation.
The ministry says it began reviewing Hawk’s group home licences in June. By September, Hawk had “surrendered” its licences, ministry spokesperson Rob McMahon said. Williams told the Star he closed the business due to financing problems.
That month, Williams leased the Quaker Rd. properties to Connor, whose OARTY group represents companies that run group homes and foster homes. Williams is past president of the association.
Connor turned the group homes into foster homes. He made no changes to the buildings and kept some staff, including Reid.
The children’s ministry has launched a licensing review of Connor Homes.
“I complied with everything,” Connor says, “with every rule there is, and I have higher standards than any of them.”
But even provincial children’s minister, Michael Coteau, says existing standards are not good enough.
“Ontario’s residential services system is in need of substantial reform,” he said in a statement to the Star, adding “this level of change will not occur overnight. The issues are complex and structural and cannot be solved with a quick fix.”
Coteau promises to reveal in the next few weeks a “blueprint for reform,” expected to take years to implement. In the meantime, he says he will step up unannounced inspections of group and foster homes flagged by high numbers of serious incidents reported to the ministry.
An average of 15,625 Ontario children were in foster and group homes in 2014-15. More than half are in what is traditionally considered foster care — a family that takes in one or two foster children.
Between 3,000 and 4,000 are in foster homes run for profit by about 100 companies. And another 3,000 are in for-profit group homes.
Foster homes face less stringent fire codes and licensing requirements, largely because the law has the traditional family-based model in mind. With group home operators increasingly setting up foster homes — with paid staff doing shift work and acting as parents — the distinction has largely disappeared. Yet regulations haven’t changed.
For instance, Connor needs a ministry licence for each of the six group homes he operates across Ontario. Each must be inspected by the ministry and the local fire department as part of their annual licence review.
As of April, Connor also operated 28 foster homes, with 79 beds, the ministry says. They do not need individual licences or yearly fire and ministry inspections. As a licensed foster home operator, Connor can open as many foster homes as he likes. The ministry inspects only a selection every year while reviewing his operating licence.
Considered single-family dwellings, foster homes only need smoke detectors on each floor and carbon monoxide detectors in sleeping areas. More rigorous requirements for group homes include annual fire inspections, fire safety plans, interconnected smoke alarms, fire doors and fire exits from every floor.
The Quaker Rd. foster homes were not inspected by the ministry during the six months Connor ran them, but were inspected annually when Williams ran them as group homes.
Coteau is exploring toughening fire code requirements, and Connor agrees. He favours a common fire code for all homes serving children in care, and annual inspections.
Officials with children’s aid societies insist the problems run deeper than lax fire codes.
Mary Ballantyne, head of the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OACAS), questions whether staff were qualified to deal with the special needs of some Quaker Rd. foster kids. There are no minimum education or training requirements for caregivers in group homes or company foster homes.
Williams says the problem is a lack of provincial funding, forcing chronically low pay that creates a revolving door of inexperienced staff. However, he notes both staff involved in the fire had been long-time employees.
“The lowest paid people in the system are expected to care for the highest needs kids with virtually no specialized supports,” he says. “Too often the only time we hear about them is when tragedies happen.”
Wilson of the Kawartha Haliburton CAS adds that the ministry does not include quality-of-care standards when licensing company-run foster homes or group homes. The ministry also doesn’t consult societies when reviewing licences of operators in their area, she says.
Another problem, she says, is that societies are not notified of serious occurrences in homes unless a child in their particular care is involved, making it difficult to get the full picture of a residence.
As a result, the OACAS is collecting information about foster and group homes from societies, including serious occurrence reports and other quality measures, to create a “TripAdvisor” type database for workers to use when placing children.
Over the last three years, an ongoing Star investigation, a child’s advocate probe and a government-appointed panel of experts have detailed massive use of physical restraints in group homes, police arrests, shoddy ministry oversight and a sense of abandonment young people feel in care.
Remarkably, proposed legislation, aimed at transforming the system by putting children at the centre of every decision is still silent on most of the reforms recommended by Elman and the expert panel.
“There is a longstanding culture of complacency that accepts things that we wouldn’t accept for our own children,” says Kiaras Gharabaghi, head of Ryerson University’s School of Child and Youth Care and a member of the expert panel. “The kids are just there, a product being moved.”
Ballantyne condemns “the lack of protocol, consistency and real ability in the system to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children.
“I fear there are other potential tragedies out there.””
Foster home fire that killed teen, caregiver blamed on bolted door, loose rules
[The Star 5/15/17 by Sandro Contenta and Laurie Monsebraaten and Jim Rankin]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update: “The case of an Indigenous teenager charged with murder in a foster home fire that took two lives and left another person injured is headed toward a downgraded charge of manslaughter — and a possible resolution.
The lesser charge was added Monday in an afternoon hearing in which court was told the woman, now 18, would not be subject to an adult sentence.
It means if she were found guilty of manslaughter in the Feb. 24 fire in rural Oakwood, west of here, the maximum sentence would be three years.
The woman, who cannot be named under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is to undergo a psychological and psychiatric evaluation in which her Indigenous background will be taken into consideration, the court heard.
She will appear in court Oct. 16 when the case is expected to be resolved with a plea and an agreed statement of facts.
“I think the healing process for everybody begins that day,” the teen’s lawyer David Hodson told the court.
There was no explanation during the court hearing why a manslaughter charge is now being pursued. But outside court, Hodson said he never felt it was a murder case.
“I (predicted) that this would not be proceeding with a murder charge. And if we were dealing with a murder charge, I and my client would ultimately be successful,” he said.
“It’s a tragic situation no matter how you look at it,” he added. “Two people have died. Another person was injured. Families are grieving. You’ve got a young person of Aboriginal descent incarcerated, whose life will no longer be the same.”
Foster home worker Andrea Reid, 43, and resident Kassy Finbow, 14, died and a second worker was injured after an afternoon fire tore through one of two residential care facilities on the property, both operated by Connor Homes.
The Star has revealed there was no escape from the second-storey room where they were trapped when fire engulfed the home. A sliding glass door was bolted shut and a gabled window was too small to squeeze through.
Firefighters had to smash the window frame to save the surviving worker who was stuck while trying to flee.
The Kawartha Lakes Fire and Rescue Service report on the blaze that gutted the home at 725 Quaker Rd. did not identify the cause of the fire.
Hodson, who said he only recently received the provincial Fire Marshal’s report on the tragedy, said it didn’t list a cause either.
With a guilty plea would come an agreed statement of fact that would shed more light on what happened that day.
The parents of the accused teen, who is from northwestern Ontario, are both dead. The mother died in 2012 and the father died in June.
The teen was placed in residential care by her father and was receiving special needs funding from the province. She is in youth custody and is currently being supported by a local Indigenous child and youth services worker.
The accused teen was initially charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of arson causing bodily harm.
Wearing a black sweater and black-rimmed glasses in court Monday, the woman listened intently and asked her lawyer several questions.
The case has prompted numerous investigations, including probes by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, the local children’s aid society and Ontario’s Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth.
Hodson, who said he was not involved in the decision to downgrade the charge, praised Crown Attorney Jennifer Broderick for her work on the case.
“The matter is on a resolution track,” said Hodson. “It usually means it will go forward with a plea of some sort.”
The psychological and psychiatric assessment, and the consideration of the teen’s Indigenous heritage, will help the judge in sentencing should there be a finding of guilt, he said.
“Clearly it is acknowledged there are more Indigenous people incarcerated percentage-wise than others,” he added.”
Resolution in sight for teen accused of murder in foster home fire
[The Star 7/11/17 by Laurie Monsebraaten]
Update 2:“A developmentally delayed teenager suffering from schizophrenia and fetal alcohol syndrome has pleaded guilty to setting a fire that killed two people in her Lindsay-area foster home.
The girl, who was 17 when she set the Feb. 24 fire, stood in court and uttered a faint “yeah” when her defence lawyer, David Hodson, asked if she was guilty of manslaughter and arson causing bodily harm.
In an agreed statement of facts, Cobourg provincial court heard the tragic story of the teen’s attempt to rescue two caregivers and a foster child trapped in a second-floor bedroom.
“You tried to save them, right?” Hodson asked the teen, who stood in the prisoner’s box before Justice J.A. Payne.
“Yeah, I tried to,” the heavy-set girl replied in a whisper.
Chantal Finbow sobbed quietly as Crown attorney Sarah Repka told court how Finbow’s daughter, Kassy, 14, succumbed to smoke inhalation in the rural foster home on Quaker Rd. in Oakwood, Ont.
Caregiver Andrea Reid, 43, was declared brain-dead at a Lindsay hospital Feb. 25. She was kept on life support for another day as a candidate for organ donation.
Caregiver Sheila Triggs survived, but suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, was intubated and spent four days in intensive care.
The girl, who can’t be identified because she is being tried as a youth, is now 18. She faces a maximum three years in youth custody and will be sentenced in February. An assessment will determine if she qualifies for a court-ordered intensive rehabilitation program.
The court heard a description of events that mirrored an exclusive Star story this month that quoted Triggs and other caregivers who survived or witnessed the blaze.
The girl, who is Indigenous, had recently changed medication, which made her more alert and prone to “outbursts and temper tantrums,” the court heard. She smoked and conducted smudging ceremonies with sage grass, so caregivers sometimes let her keep a lighter.
On Feb. 24, she was upset to learn she wouldn’t be going back home, to a reserve almost 2,000 kilometres away, when she turned 18.
She flew into a rage and pushed Triggs to the floor. Caregivers then withdrew with Kassy to an upstairs bedroom to let the girl cool off.
Downstairs, the girl used her lighter to set fire to books on a shelf, cardboard on a wall, and a couch, court heard. As the flames spread, she pulled the fire alarm to alert those upstairs.
Reid had called police. When they heard the alarm, they initially thought it was a hoax.
The upstairs bedroom quickly filled with smoke and the caregivers and Kassy ran to a window that was too small to squeeze out of. The court did not hear about a bolted sliding-glass door in the room, which Triggs told the Star they couldn’t break. The bolted door has raised questions about fire code standards for group homes and foster homes in Ontario.
After pulling the alarm, the girl ran outside, and fell to her hands and knees crying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” court heard.
By the time paramedics arrived, Kassy and Reid had collapsed in the bedroom. Triggs was left screaming for help at the small window. Firefighters rescued Triggs and used thermal imaging cameras to find Reid and Kassy unconscious on the floor.
“It’s the start of the healing process,” Hodson said after the hearing. “This is a tragic situation for everyone, including the young person,” he added, referring to his client.
The fire triggered investigations by police, government officials, children’s aid societies and the Star. They reveal a child protection system that doesn’t know if minimal standards of care are being met, has no qualifications for caregivers and is governed by a children’s ministry scrambling to perform its oversight role.
The province does not know how many children are being cared for in its 389 licenced group homes. At the end of September 2017, the group homes had 2,914 beds, almost one-third operated by private, for-profit companies. Another 2,005 beds were in foster homes run by companies, where the limit is four kids to a home.
Children taken from abusive or neglectful parents are usually placed in group homes as a last resort, when foster parents can’t deal with them. Most are treated with psychotropic drugs and are left largely in the care of workers who typically start at barely above the minimum wage, with no benefits.
In a 2016 report, a government-appointed panel of experts lambasted a system where the lowest paid, least qualified staff work with kids with the highest needs. The kids suffer from the trauma of abuse and abandonment, compounded by psychiatric and developmental disabilities.
At the site of the Quaker Rd. fire were two houses that operated as group homes for years. They were converted to foster homes run by a company called Connor Homes in September 2016.
A Star investigation found both homes were the site of almost daily violence in 2015-16. An analysis by the Ontario Child Advocate, released Tuesday, found young people in residential care homes were physically restrained 2,230 times by caregivers in a three-month period in 2014. The advocate, Irwin Elman, called that number “troubling.”
The province has been criticized for unveiling a blueprint that won’t see reforms fully implemented until 2025. They include tougher group-home inspections, minimum standards of care, better oversight, and reducing the overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous children in care.
Theresa Stevens, executive director of the Association of Native Child and Family Services of Ontario, accused the government of dragging its heels. She notes that scores of Indigenous children from northern communities are sent thousands of kilometres away because of a lack of resources in the North.
“We can’t afford to wait another eight years before those resources are developed,” Stevens said in a recent interview.
In a statement to the Star last week, Children’s Minister Michael Coteau called the Quaker Rd. fire “an unimaginable tragedy.” He made clear the timetable for reforms would not be accelerated, but said much of the work is underway.
“We aren’t simply improving an old system, we are building a system that has taken a patchwork approach to care for years.””
Teen pleads guilty in two fire deaths at Lindsay foster home
[The Star 12/12/17 by Laurie Monsebraaten and Sandro Contenta]
Update 2:“An Indigenous youth with severe mental health challenges has received the maximum three-year sentence for setting a fire that killed two people in a Lindsay-area foster home.
The sentence was handed down Thursday after the court heard heart-rending statements from friends and family members of the victims — 14-year-old Kassy Finbow, a resident of the home, and her caregiver, Andrea Reid.
“These crimes have caused devastating, life-altering and immeasurable impacts to the surviving victims and to the family and others connected with the victims,” Justice J.A. Payne said during the sentencing.
The girl, who can’t be named because she was a minor when she set the fire, will remain in youth custody for almost another 26 months because of time already served. Most of the sentence will be served at the Syl Apps treatment centre in Oakville, where she will receive intensive rehabilitation.
She had pled guilty last December to manslaughter and arson causing bodily harm.
The sentencing came at the end of an emotionally charged day. At one point, the court was cleared after Reid’s 17-year-old son stood, swore loudly, and shouted, “I’m leaving. I’ve heard enough.” He then punched the door and stormed out.
The outburst came as the girl’s defence lawyer, David Hodson, explained the historical and systemic issues — including 50 years of mercury poisoning by a nearby industry — that have plagued Indigenous people in Grassy Narrows, her northern Ontario reserve.
The victim impact statements left many in the court wiping away tears.
Victoria Fowler, Reid’s mother, described how she felt on Feb. 24, 2017, the day of the fire that took her daughter’s life.
“Our lives were shattered. It was as if we had been kicked in the gut and all the life sucked out of us,” she said, speaking from a wheelchair as family members sobbed. “I never got to hold her to kiss her or say goodbye.
“Our family is split into pieces, our hearts are ripped open,” she added, referring to the impact on Reid’s husband, Rob, and their three children. “Our beautiful, friendly daughter is never coming back.”
Fowler said her 43-yer-old daughter was “ecstatic” when she landed the group home job. She brought the foster kids to her rural lakeside home for fishing, swimming and toasting marshmallows over the campfire.
“If there was ever a person who thought of others it was Andrea,” her mother said, adding that Reid was also a Scout leader, helped with the local school breakfast program and sat on the school’s parent council.
Kassy’s mother, Chantal Finbow, said her daughter “should not have died this way.
“Kassy was supposed to be in a safe place,” said Finbow, whose statement was read in court by an uncle, Andre Richer.
During the fire, Kassy was trapped with Reid and another caregiver in her second floor bedroom at an Oakwood foster home run by a company called Connor Homes.
The girl, who set the fire when she was 17, was also a resident of the home. She lashed out after learning that she would not be going home to Grassy Narrows when she turned 18. She used a lighter to set alight books, cardboard and a couch.
“It was a senseless and impulsive act on the part of a young person that resulted in the death of two beautiful people,” Crown attorney Ron Davidson told the court.
The upstairs bedroom quickly filled with smoke. The only window was too small to squeeze out of. A sliding-glass door in the room was bolted shut. The deaths have sparked multiple investigations by police, government officials, the coroner office, children’s aid societies and the Star.
They reveal a child protection system that doesn’t know if minimal standards of care are being met, has no qualifications for caregivers, and is governed by a children’s ministry scrambling to perform its oversight role.
Kassy died at the scene. Reid was declared brain-dead in hospital the next day, and was kept on life-support as a candidate for organ donation.
A third resident of the home at the time of fire described returning from meeting her children’s aid society worker to see smoke billowing from the Quaker Rd. foster home.
In her victim statement, she told the court she can’t forgive herself for not being in the home to help Kassy, her best friend, and Andrea, “who was like a second mother.” She said she struggles with anxiety and depression, has been hospitalized, and has tried to kill herself several times.
“I feel so lost without her,” she said of Kassy. Her only comfort is a tattoo she got in Kassy’s memory, which reads, “You’ll be with me wherever I go.”
The court heard the girl, now 18, who set the fire suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, schizophrenia, alcohol and drug abuse and a severe developmental delay.
Payne noted the girl stopped going to school regularly after Grade 2. She can’t read or count and has an “overall intellectual functioning lower than the 0.1 percentile.”
She was raised by adoptive parents and once tried to kill her adoptive father, who died of cancer last June. Her adoptive mother died when she was 13.
Payne described her challenging history as a mitigating factor.
“She has expressed sorrow and regret for her actions and for the victims of the fire,” he added.
However, the court heard the girl has six previous convictions for violent outburst, including twice assaulting police officers.
“She continues to pose a serious risk to the community,” Davidson told the court.
The last six months of her sentence will be served under supervision at the home of her biological grandfather in Grassy Narrows.”
Teen gets three-year sentence in ‘devastating’ foster home fire that killed two people
[The Star 3/22/18 by Sandro Contenta and Laurie Monsebraaten]
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