Written By: Bob McIntyre
*UPDATE*: Isabella is headed to North Bay via ambulance at 10:00am Friday, May 24
The parents of a ten-year-old Iroquois Falls girl who’s in bad need of mental health care are at their wits’ end, trying to get it.
Isabella Castonguay has been at Anson General Hospital since Tuesday, and her parents – Tiffany and Rene – are being told she will be, until a pediatric mental health bed opens up in Timmins, Sudbury or elsewhere. At least one of the parents has to be with Isabella at all times.
Despite being unable to help much Tiffany Castonguay says the staff at Anson General is amazing.
“The issue is the protocols that they have to go through, the fact that the north does not have enough beds for pediatric care in mental health,” the upset mother says.
Timmins and District Hospital has four such beds, but they’re full right now.
“The fact that it’s well known that kids in this day and age are prone to mental health and it’s more and more common because we’re actually acknowledging it now,” Tiffany Castonguay says, “we need more than four frickin’ beds in Northern Ontario.
“If this was any other kid, I would be like ‘Oh my god, this is not fair, either.’ It’s not because it’s my kid. All children should have care, no matter what. I don’t give a *bleep* if there’s protocol. It’s a child.”
