A QUESTION OF INEQUITY
Paul and Zabeth have been informed in the past that when they visit their three children on the two afternoons each week, they are not to speak to their children about the past. That’s correct. They are not permitted to talk about what it was like to be a family two years ago. They are not to remind them of home as it was before the Ministry of Children stepped into their lives in October 2007 and removed the children from all that was familiar. These two little boys have been in four foster homes in two years, yet Paul and Zabeth are not permitted to speak hope to them about the possibility of coming home to be a family again. A supervisor sits in all these family gatherings and listens, even making notes of what is observed and heard. Paul and Zabeth must be in compliance or visiting rights may be removed completely, because these children now belong to the province of British Columbia under an interim court order. Interim lasts a long time - over two years apparently!
But then, please note this inequity! The other afternoon while Zabeth and Paul visited their boys, one of them told mommy and daddy that the caregiver has told him that if the Judge rules that she can keep the children, then she promises to put them in swimming lessons. Would you consider that to be talking about the future and seeking to engender hope for a certain future outcome? I would. So apparently the same conversational restrictions are not applicable to the temporary care giver. It’s challenging for me to envision a foster caregiver wanting to kindle in a child an expectation for a result that terminates an existing family completely. This child has been told that he will be with the caregiver for a long time. How much more constructive would it be for a foster parent working for the province’s child protection and family development agency to be on assignment to encourage that child to believe that his family will come together again because that is what ‘we all want.’ ‘We’ should pertain to every member of this MCFD enterprise. ‘Restoration’ seems not to belong in the vocabulary of the MCFD officials who have managed the Bayne portfolio. On this same afternoon Paul and Zabeth were reminded that they are not allowed to speak to their children alone or out of the hearing range of a supervisor. No private conversations are permitted.
The regional MCFD should be all over this to insure the integrity of the Ministry’s mandate is not compromised. The regional MCFD office that manages the Bayne case is the Fraser Region. It will be interesting to learn whether this is acceptable MCFD practice or whether the Victoria MCFD front office conscience alarm goes off when they learn of this.
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ReplyDeleteThe Victoria office has its fair share of these types of cases. Most of people are too afraid of retaliation (like in this case) to come forward. It's horrible to think of how many families they will destroy in order to try and save face.
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