Jacquie Malamalatabua desperately needed help for her troubled teenage son, but he died last summer waiting for the provincial government to find him a place to live where he would get the mental health support he required.
She is still waiting for answers about Alex's death from the coroner's office, the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the BC Children's Hospital, where he spent the last 19 weeks of his life in a psychiatric unit designed for much shorter stays.
Those reports should explain how her 17-year-old boy died, but none of them will give her the answers she believes might help other families struggling to find support for children and youth with complex mental-health needs. She wants to know why she could not get him the care he needed in the difficult years before he slipped away from the hospital and his body was found on a construction site.
On Nov. 18, British Columbia's watchdog for children and families, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, will appear before the legislature's finance committee to ask MLAs for enough money to conduct a full investigation into the circumstances of Alex Malamalatabua's death.
Ms. Malamalatabua hopes the finance committee of the legislature will say yes. Over the past months as she has grieved, Ms. Malamalatabua has learned how many other families have shared similar struggles.
She had felt alone as she tried unsuccessfully to get Alex to attend school, and to get him help with his depression.
The family lurched from one crisis to another until Ms. Malamalatabua finally was convinced the only safe recourse was to put Alex in the care of the ministry voluntarily.
In fact, the same kinds of private battles were going on all around her family.
"I realized after the fact the number of kids that are suffering from mental illnesses – we don't talk about it because we want to protect our children from the stigma. I was shocked to learn how many people were going through the same things."
Ms. Turpel-Lafond expects she will want to call 50 witnesses to testify under oath – school staff, social workers, doctors and others who were involved in Alex's case.
She wants to know how Alex could avoid attending school for three years. She is concerned that he was left in the hospital for five months while the ministry tried to find a suitable placement in the community. And she is troubled that the only alternative offered was a four-bed shelter where he would not get the intensive support he required.
"It's apparent to us that there were some issues that did not follow [prescribed] practice, and we really need to dig to those," Ms. Turpel-Lafond said in an interview.
She expects the investigation to be on the scale of her report last spring on Paige, an aboriginal teen facing overwhelming life challenges who died of a drug overdose after she was treated with what Ms. Turpel-Lafond described as "professional indifference."
All the exposure can be tough on the families involved. "In this case in particular, although I appreciate it is a difficult situation, we think the family really wants to see learning," Ms. Turpel-Lafond said. "And we think there are a range of people who work with children and youth who have deep questions about this case."
She also wants to investigate the death of 18-year-old Alex Gervais, who fell from the window of the hotel where he had been housed since the government was forced to shut down the group home where he had been living. A third case involves the death of 15-year-old Nick Lang when he was in a government-contracted drug addiction treatment program.
The Paige report cost about $300,000 to produce, and three major reports could approach $1-million. The watchdog's work will inevitably expose the provincial government to criticism, and the committee – dominated by governing B.C. Liberal MLAs – may not be keen to say yes to her request for more money.
Hopefully, the MLAs will consider that Alex Malamalatabua's mother is brave enough to endure the exposure of her family's struggles in the hope of helping others avoid tragedy.
Justine Hunter