Caregiver in B.C. woman's starvation death says she received little support from management
Inquest into the 2018 death of Florence Girard began Monday
The caregiver convicted for her part in the starvation death of Florence Girard says she wouldn't have gone into home care had she known how little support would be given to her.
Astrid Dahl also criticized the home-care organization she worked for when Girard, who had Down syndrome, starved to death in her care in 2018, telling a coroner's inquest that Kinsight Community Society put "paperwork before people" and provided little support for things such as prescribed pain medication or health expertise.
"The whole program has to change from top to bottom," Dahl testified when asked about Kinsight's handling of the home-sharing service in cases such as Girard's. "It needs to go back to the way that it was, which is individualized programming.
"Everyone's different. Everyone needs to be treated differently. Everyone's behaviours are different. Everything's different. You can't loop everybody in as one system and expect it to run properly. It doesn't work like that."
Girard weighed about 50 pounds when she died, and Dahl was convicted in 2022 for failing to provide the necessaries of life for the woman she said she had known for 30 years.
Kinsight oversaw the home-sharing service under a contract with provincial Crown corporation Community Living B.C. Dahl said she could not contact Community Living B.C. directly about the lack of support because of fear of termination from Kinsight.
Pain medication reduced
Taryn Urquhart, one of the lawyers for Kinsight at the inquest, questioned Dahl's opposition to updated care plans in the home-sharing program with increased requirements, which the caretaker had criticized as doing little to improve care for individuals such as Girard.
Dahl had told the inquest that she thought Kinsight was "being quite invasive" when the organization said it wanted to visit the caretaker's home once a month during Girard's stay, and Dahl had complained.
"Wouldn't you agree with me, Ms. Dahl, that if you had put more detail into your reports, if there had been more monitoring visits, maybe this death would have been prevented?" Urquhart asked.
"I don't know," Dahl said. "I can't answer that."
Dahl testified that she had to reduce the frequency of pain medication and switch to a cheaper, less potent painkiller, partially because Kinsight didn't pay for the prescribed medicine.
Urquhart also asked Dahl why she had filed a written report saying the "medication will continue to be given as prescribed" despite the switch to a less potent painkiller at a lower frequency.
Dahl said she didn't take the written reports for Kinsight very seriously since "no one's reading them," while also saying throughout her testimony that she did not remember a number of files brought up by the lawyer about Girard's condition and care plan.
When asked by a lawyer for Girard's family what she would do differently, given the outcome, Dahl said she would "not do home share."
"Advise anyone not to do home share," she said.
Dahl said the stronger drugs she had been giving to Girard weren't as effective and contributed to her decision to switch the medication, despite Girard experiencing constant pain as she got older.
"With Flo, I was so zoomed in on Flo that I didn't zoom out and take a look at the big picture," she testified. "So, that's on me. But because I wasn't getting any sort of support from who I was expecting support from … I just took all the decisions on myself."
Dahl also told the inquest that Kinsight gave no nutritionist support when Girard began losing weight, so she instead consulted her mother, a former nurse.
Girard was living with Dahl as part of a program for people with developmental disabilities.
When asked by the lawyer representing Girard's family if she was sorry about what happened, Dahl responded by saying she was "beyond" sorry and she viewed Girard as a member of her own family.
In a coroner's inquest, the jury acts in a fact-finding role but does not assign fault or blame. The inquest has been scheduled through to Jan. 22.