From the Ottawa Citizen:

OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada — Eleven-month-old Penelope McKeague was born dead and resuscitated fourteen minutes after birth. She is now severely disabled, with a diagnosis of severe spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy, and needs round-the clock care.

Her parents cannot care for Penelope alone, and are being told that their daughter will not receive residential care unless they relinquish custody. If they do so, they will lose the right to make medical and care decisions on her behalf.

In order to get round-the-clock supervision for her daughter in a specialized group home, [Kristine] Gavrel and her husband, Adrian McKeague, discovered they must pay out of pocket — from $90 a day to as much as $450 for a group home — or else legally abandon her to the Children’s Aid Society and make her a ward of the state.

In a report released in 2005, Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin uncovered 113 cases in which parents had surrendered their severely disabled children to be wards of the state, primarily to secure 24-hour care in group homes. He found 196 other families on waiting lists, many of them on the verge of losing custody.

“It forces mothers and fathers of children with special needs to declare falsely that they have abandoned their children,” he said. “It is a heart rendering and painful process.” He blamed “bureaucracy, technicality and entrenched position.”

See also:

Letter: Why are special needs families torn apart? — Windsor [Ontario] Star. An excerpt:

Why does this inhumane way of treating parents of special needs children still exist? Whoever decided parents of special needs children should have their parental rights taken away in order to receive the overdue and much-needed services our children need?

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 11:51 am and is filed under cerebral palsy, health care, housing, international, parents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.