Florence Girard, who had Down syndrome, died in 2018 in the home of her Port Coquitlam caregiver

The jury in the Florence Girard coroner's inquest has returned a unanimous verdict, classifying the death of the 54-year-old woman with Down syndrome as homicide caused by starvation.
Homicide is a neutral term for human-caused death that does not imply criminality or intent.
The five-person jury also submitted 13 recommendations, including better pay for front-line caregivers, unannounced visits to homes where vulnerable clients are placed and changes to support family members of a vulnerable individual who want to care for that person in their home.
Girard weighed about 50 pounds when she died in 2018 in the Port Coquitlam home of paid caregiver Astrid Dahl.
The jury foreman told coroner Donita Kuzma that home-share providers should get "a living wage commensurate with the complexity of care needed" beyond paying for basic necessities.
The foreman says the jury, which deliberated for almost two days, heard "repeatedly" that funding isn't adequate to attract and retain home-share providers.
The recommendations also include making compensation for home-share co-ordinators in charge of monitoring living arrangements comparable with pay for similar positions with the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
Dahl was a subcontractor for Kinsight Community Society, an agency under contract by Community Living B.C. (CLBC), the provincial Crown corporation that funds services for adults with developmental disabilities.
In 2022, Dahl was convicted of failing to provide Girard the necessaries of life. Her initial 12-month conditional sentence was increased to a 15-month prison sentence by the B.C. Court of Appeal in 2023. Dahl never served any time in jail because of the length of the judicial process. Charges against Kinsight were stayed.
Coroner's inquests are formal court proceedings that publicly review the circumstances of a death to address community concerns or raise awareness of preventable deaths, according to the B.C. Coroners Service website.
Jury members are not charged with finding fault but rather issue recommendations to prevent similar deaths in the future.
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Karin Larsen is a former Olympian and award winning sports broadcaster who covers news and sports for CBC Vancouver.
With files from The Canadian Press
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