IT'S A ROUGH LIFE ON OR OFF THE STREET

The number of Canadian youngsters living on the streets - many of them
sleeping under highway overpasses or in parks, exchanging sex for food,
begging or stealing for drug money - is estimated to run as high as 60,000.
It will come as no surprise that their health is compromised by this
hardscrabble life.

But it's one thing not to find it surprising; another to learn just how
lethal life on the street can be. For seven years, a Montreal health team
followed 1,013 street people, age 14 to 25. Their findings are an
indictment of any pretensions Quebec in particular, and Canada in general,
might have of providing adequate services to abused, abandoned or runaway
youngsters: The street kids' mortality rate was 11 times higher than for
others their age.

Twenty-six of the group died during the course of the research. Thirteen
killed themselves, eight died of drug overdoses, two died as the result of
an accident. In one case, the cause of death was not known.

A large proportion of the young people in the group were also found to
suffer from mental illness, in addition to drug addiction. That is a
difficult combination, notes the lead researcher, pediatrician Nancy Haley.

But difficult does not mean impossible. Researchers found many youngsters
were willing to accept help when it was offered. Doctors arranged, for
example, for a massive vaccination campaign against hepatitis B. Eighty per
cent of the 1,400 youngsters who participated in the first round showed up
for the second shot and 50 per cent for the third.

The ideal, of course, would be to get youngsters off the street and into
homes or residences where they could pick up the thread of ordinary life,
going to school, preparing for adulthood. Sadly, here too, the news is
mainly bad.

This week, the Conseil permanent de la jeunesse, a government advisory
body, made public, with much less fanfare than was given to the study
mentioned above, a report on life in government youth institutions.

It's life in prison, the young people who live it say. Youngsters who have
been taken away from abusive homes for their own protection are thrown in
with juvenile delinquents. Children who are mentally ill are housed with
other children traumatized at being removed from their homes.

The residential-care network in Quebec is underfunded. The staff is poorly
paid and there is a high staff turnover. The young people interviewed said
it is impossible to form any kind of relationship with staff. Yet these are
the children most in need of stability in their lives.

A youngster called Emy is featured in the report. She spent three years in
state care, going to school in a polyvalent. She did not have a coat,
gloves, boots, books, notebooks or even a pen. The staff at the home said
there was no money. If she had been living at home and going to school with
no coat, boots or books, she would have likely been taken away from her
parents and put into care.

In care, out of care, what's the difference? There should be a difference,
a huge one. The Charest government must provide a stable, safe place for
Quebec's children in need.