The jury within the Florence Girard coroner’s inquest has returned a unanimous verdict, classifying the loss of life of the 54-year-old lady with Down syndrome as murder attributable to hunger.
Murder is a impartial time period for human-caused loss of life that doesn’t indicate criminality or intent.
The five-person jury additionally submitted 13 suggestions, together with higher pay for front-line caregivers, unannounced visits to houses the place susceptible shoppers are positioned and adjustments to assist members of the family of a susceptible particular person who need to take care of that particular person of their dwelling.
Girard weighed about 50 kilos when she died in 2018 within the Port Coquitlam dwelling of paid caregiver Astrid Dahl.
The jury foreman informed coroner Donita Kuzma that home-share suppliers ought to get “a dwelling wage commensurate with the complexity of care wanted” past paying for primary requirements.
The foreman says the jury, which deliberated for nearly two days, heard “repeatedly” that funding is not satisfactory to draw and retain home-share suppliers.
The suggestions additionally embrace making compensation for home-share co-ordinators in control of monitoring dwelling preparations comparable with pay for related positions with the Ministry of Kids and Household Improvement.
Dahl was a subcontractor for Kinsight Group Society, an company below contract by Group Dwelling B.C. (CLBC), the provincial Crown company that funds companies for adults with developmental disabilities.
In 2022, Dahl was convicted of failing to supply Girard the necessaries of life. Her preliminary 12-month conditional sentence was elevated to a 15-month jail sentence by the B.C. Courtroom of Attraction in 2023. Dahl by no means served any time in jail due to the size of the judicial course of. Costs in opposition to Kinsight have been stayed.
Coroner’s inquests are formal court docket proceedings that publicly overview the circumstances of a loss of life to deal with group considerations or increase consciousness of preventable deaths, in keeping with the B.C. Coroners Service web site.
Jury members usually are not charged with discovering fault however slightly difficulty suggestions to forestall related deaths sooner or later.
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