There are these little boxes which camouflage big prejudices and lead to their share of injustices. Like tearing a baby from the arms of loving parents, wrongly suspected of neglect, when it is the system that has neglected to offer them the support to which they are entitled. Why then? For nothing. Because the parents are disabled and the narrow boxes of the CLSC form are not adapted to their reality.
This type of injustice should now be better prevented. In a move that must be welcomed, the five integrated university health and social services centers (CIUSSS) of Montreal coordinated to expand the small boxes that ensured that home support offered to a disabled parent could not be given only to the person themselves, and not to support them in their role as a parent. An advance which is the result of a collaboration with the organization Ex aequo, which has campaigned for several years for the right to parenthood for people with disabilities.
“This is excellent news, which was greatly awaited by parents,” Evelina Pituch, occupational therapist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, told me.
It is high time to make the daily lives of these families who are too often forgotten by our system easier.
Evelina Pituch, occupational therapist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto Scarborough
Lévis-Simon Carpentier, collective defense agent at Ex aequo who is leading this case, is delighted with this exceptional collaborative work which will help all Montreal parents with disabilities suffering from a lack of resources. “It’s a great victory! »
The idea of implementing this parental support program was born in the fall of 2022 when the Ex aequo organization knocked on the door of Nicolas Rioux, deputy director of home support teams and intermediate resources for elderly people in the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal. The Ex aequo team wanted to make him aware of the glaring lack of support at home for the parents whose rights he defends. The testimony of a father suffering from cerebral palsy, who had to fight with the Department of Youth Protection (DPJ) to avoid having his child taken from him, particularly upset Nicolas Rioux.
He was in front of a father who, visibly, needed support at home and who had instead been offered follow-up from the DYP.
This story touched me. I said to myself, “OK, we can do something. We have room to maneuver. We have to look at how to improve things.”
Nicolas Rioux, deputy director of home support teams and intermediate resources for the elderly at the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal
How can we prevent this type of situation in a context where the DPJ already has a lot on its shoulders?
Mr. Rioux proposed to the management of Ex aequo to take steps not only to offer parental support to people with disabilities in the territory of his CIUSSS, but also to extend the reflection everywhere else in Montreal. He made a formal proposal to the table of directors of Montreal home support, which was accepted.
Was it complicated to coordinate? Not really, the director replied.
“We discuss all kinds of challenges regarding the health network. But there are a lot of people who have a heart,” he recalls. The story of this father that touched him so much also touched his colleagues, who were very enthusiastic about contributing to this project. “Honestly, it united hearts. »
The father in question welcomes this great victory of Ex aequo after he himself was refused help from the CLSC and had to fight to obtain an order from the Youth Court so that he was finally granted the necessary support. But for him as for his ex-partner, this does not erase the injustice suffered nor the anguish of living with the threat of having his child taken away.
The parents were followed by the DYP who suspected a risk of neglect, due to the mother’s mental health and the father’s functional limitations.
“The first worker from the DPJ was reluctant to deal with my request, judging that it was a form of disempowerment on my part, which was entirely false,” the father explained to me, emphasizing that the second worker from the DPJ was of unwavering support so that he could obtain shared custody of his son after his separation.
I was purely and simply asking for the means to play my parental role fully and completely.
A father suffering from cerebral palsy who was followed by the DPJ
His ex-spouse considers that the DPJ is mainly responsible for this separation. “His relentlessness, his prejudices towards disability, whether psychological or physical, his lack of openness and understanding of our issues – because we had never dealt with a case like ours and we tried everything cost of making us fit into boxes – his lack of empathy killed our family and led us to divorce. »
This is without taking into account the fact that to be able to fight so fiercely to have their rights respected, the couple had to swallow up a colossal sum in legal fees.
“I am not sure that all parents facing a report would have the energy, the resources, the abilities to fight all the way to court,” underlines researcher Evelina Pituch, who sees this story as an aberration and welcomes the tenacity of parents who have invested a lot of time and significant resources in this battle.
It remains to be hoped that the new parental support program will ensure that no other parent will have to fight like this to get what should have been offered to them in the first place.
To protect the identity of the child, the parents cannot be named.