In memory of Jada Carvery: Justice for Youth at Wood Street

Located in Truro, Nova Scotia, Wood Street Centre is an institution that houses youth in care, most between the ages of 12 to 18, who live with emotional and behavioural concerns. With up to 140 young people passing through its doors each year, Wood Street presents a mission of addressing a wide range of complex emotional and behavioural concerns through individualized treatment plans, using an interdisciplinary team consisting of a psychologist, registered nurse, occupational therapist, behavioural interventionist, clinical director, program manager, unit supervisors, teachers, youth workers, and social workers.

With this integrated, robust team, and such a vulnerable community being served, the hope and expectation is that Wood Street would be a safe, compassionate, therapeutic space. However, for many of the young people who have lived at Wood Street, it is not. Those who have been at Wood Street share stories of neglect, mental and emotional abuse, and isolation so severe and ongoing that it has been compared to prison-inflicted solitary confinement.

One of these young people was Jada Carvery, a beloved and integral member of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia community, who tragically passed away on May 24th, 2024, as a passenger in a motor vehicle accident. In many ways, Jada, who first came to the Elizabeth Fry Society for support in 2018, was the heartbeat of the organization and inspiration for the work that they do today.

Throughout her short life, Jada faced many hardships and obstacles, but even when she was struggling the most, she opened her huge heart to her friends, family, and even strangers in need. Beautiful inside and out, Jada was known for always putting others’ needs ahead of her own, showing her love and appreciation through spontaneous gift giving, and making her loved ones laugh as often as she could. She always made sure that her friends and family, especially her son, Kayleo, were loved and knew how much she loved them.

Jada was fiercely intelligent and expressed herself beautifully in writing. Using these attributes, she passionately advocated for reforming Nova Scotia’s child welfare system, including the placement and treatment of youth at Wood Street Centre. During the years that Jada spent at Wood Street, she was confined and neglected. Specifically, this confinement involved being placed in what Jada and other former residents have called “The Quiet Room”, which Jada compared to experiences of solitary confinement in jail: “One of the big things she always said to me, and that deeply concerned me about Wood Street, was that in theory, in legislation, it is supposed to be a treatment facility. It is supposed to be for kids who require therapeutic treatment, and then you see this concept of the therapeutic quiet room, which is really solitary confinement,” says Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia’s Executive Director, Emma Halpern, reflecting on the many conversations that she had with Jada about her experiences. “These very troubled kids that require therapeutic treatment are put in jail, and they have done nothing wrong—no crimes. This isn’t a jail, so why is it operating like one?”

Like others who were at Wood Street, Jada did not receive the support, empathy, community, and care that was expected—all which could have been critical to her healing and success in life beyond the Centre. After Jada’s time at Wood Street, experiences of criminalization and incarceration, and throughout her involvement with Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia, up until her death, she adamantly shared that young people like her at Wood Street very much needed the help that they were promised but denied: “Those kids did need help. They needed support. They needed therapy. They needed psychiatry. They needed medication. They were traumatized children. What they got was isolation, being locked up, and taken away from any security they had,” shared Jada frequently, recounts Emma. For Jada, the most damaging part of being at Wood Street was “the harm of the promise of treatment and support, that was actually met with solitary, isolation, and segregation, and that was what hurt so badly.” Throughout Jada’s short life, she went through many hardships, but “despite all the things she ever went through, the harms she experienced at Wood Street were some of the worst.” Jada expressed that being confined in “the quiet room” was worse than being incarcerated.

What she was subjected to at Wood Street—severe neglect, isolation, and lack of support—possibly even contributed to her involvement with the criminal justice system and eventual introduction to Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia, which occurred within a year of her leaving the Centre. This relationship between experiences of youth in care and criminal justice system involvement, most often referred to as the “care-to-custody” or “foster care-to-prison” pipeline, is demonstrated by the fact that in Canada, youth in care are involved in the youth justice system approximately eight times more often than other youth (Representative for Children and Youth, 2020). There is no way to know for certain if better conditions at Wood Street could have prevented the criminalization and incarceration that Jada faced, but it is possible that receiving love, care, and community at a much younger age would have eased some of her life’s challenges and burdens. “At the end of the day, that is always what she was seeking. Love, care, and community,” says Emma.

Before her death, years after her time at Wood Street, Jada was finally on her pathway to healing, community reintegration, and creating the life that she had always dreamed of. Fueled by the strength she was gathering, Jada was prepared to reveal the truth about the Centre and call for it to be shut down, ensuring that no youth would be harmed by it ever again. Jada’s battle against Wood Street Centre was cut short, but in her memory, the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia and PATH (People’s Advocacy & Transformational Hub) Legal are continuing on this critical work that she was so dedicated to. More than 100 prior residents of Wood Street have come forward, echoing the stories that Jada shared, and our organizations will not stop until safety, support, equity, and justice are achieved for all former and current youth in care.