'In jail': Teenagers spent 10 days in windowless rooms in Quebec group homes over COVID-19 exposure
CTV
Vulnerable teenage girls in a Laval group home were confined to windowless rooms for 10 straight days this month – though they didn’t have COVID-19 – under a provincial directive, CTV has learned. Similar lockdowns happened at other homes, including one for much younger children.
The rule, in place for two weeks, was written specifically for youth group homes and was also applied to much younger children, social workers said.
“It's like if she’s been in jail,” said one mother about her 15-year-old daughter, who lives in a group home because she was self-mutilating and running away.
At her daughter's facility, the girls are exceptionally vulnerable and many have serious mental health problems. They only had a potential exposure to the virus, but nevertheless were kept in confinement around the clock, similar to boys in another windowless unit and another home for kids as young as six.
The idea that this kind of measure was used in Quebec youth group homes in the name of children’s health makes her furious, said the mother, Nathalie.
