Hello. Thank you.
Chair, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Society of Yukon I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to present. I would also like to thank our member of Parliament, Ryan Leef, for bringing this very important bill forward.
My name is Wenda Bradley. I am currently the executive director of the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Society of Yukon, also known as FASSY. I am a registered nurse with more than 35 years’ experience, mainly in health centres in rural community settings in the Yukon. During the last 15 years, my career has evolved to focus on the issues related to FASD, through involvement with clients, families, and communities. I have also been a foster parent to children and youth who have or may have had FASD. They have been my teachers about what it means to live with a disability on a daily basis.
FASSY started as a grassroots non-profit society run by a board comprised primarily of parents, plus a few committed community advocates. It began as a subcommittee of the Yukon Association for Community Living in 1986 and became a stand-alone society in 1996. There was no funding and little awareness of FASD in the Yukon at that time.
Over the course of the last 19 years, FASSY has provided direct service to adults with FASD and has evolved to coordinate adult diagnostic services and to provide prevention and education services to the communities in the Yukon. However, our primary focus is on direct support of adults with FASD, which has brought us into extensive involvement with the justice system. Currently we have 37 active clients; 76% have past involvement with the justice system and 36% are actively involved with the justice system now.
There is a high incidence of people with FASD in the justice system throughout Canada, as we are hearing. It is significant that in 2014 the Yukon government launched a prevalence study to investigate the incidence of FASD within the Yukon correctional system, and we look forward to the results of that study. FASSY feels strongly about the need for special consideration for people with FASD who are involved in the justice system as victims, witnesses, and offenders, and sometimes in more than one role at a time. They could be a victim in one case and an offender in another.
Prenatal exposure to alcohol is a major cause of preventable birth defects and developmental delays in North America. It affects individuals in many ways and is unique to each individual, but research conclusively shows that it is the result of permanent, physical brain injury.
The effect on the executive functioning of the brain is the most significant. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for reasoning, planning, impulse control, and understanding cause and effect. This injury manifests in the behaviour of the individual. People who have FASD may have varying abilities for executive functioning. They may talk very well and appear to understand what you are saying but may not comprehend much of what is said. It is hard to understand that within one person there may be the ability to talk as an adult but only understand what a person in grade 4 might comprehend from that conversation. There may be delays in processing the information and also delays in responding to questions.
They often have difficulty functioning appropriately in everyday life and seem to employ poor problem-solving strategies. Some are not likely to learn from their own negative experiences, and most have memory issues. These can be at any level of the memory process. Taking what they know and then being able to apply it in different scenarios, known as adaptive functioning, is also not available for many of the people with FASD.
It is confounding and confusing that a person with FASD may be able to play a challenging game of chess but not be able to understand the consequences of their actions or plan a meal. It is these pockets of ability that distract us as service providers, including workers within the judicial system, from the real issues for people with FASD. We tend to view the individual as resistant rather than as not understanding, saying that they won't instead of that they can't.
Many persons with FASD struggle to understand what is expected of them by society. They experience the world as confusing and contradictory. Many adults with FASD have had interruptions in family, school, or employment and are unable to move forward in their lives without support.
Unfortunately, there are many people within our society who are affected by FASD but who have not been recognized and who keep circling in and out of the justice system as well as many other systems within our society. Right now, the only thing that requires a court to consider FASD as a mitigating factor is that other courts do it. I suggest to you that this is not good enough.
FASD should also not be considered a mitigating factor, but instead an essential factor of consideration for a person before the courts. Respecting persons with FASD, by recognizing the effect this physical disability has on their lives, is critically important. Ensuring that an assessment is available through this amendment for persons before the court would enable an understanding of the functional deficits that underlie real-life problems associated with prenatal alcohol exposure. It is important to recognize that FASD is not a fixable, psychological disorder but is in fact a permanent organic brain disability.