POISON - INTERVENTION IS NECESSARY / Part 177

It may be that we are nearing a point in the Bayne family case life when an intervention will be required to keep this family alive.

Poison kills.
Poison is not exclusively chemical.
Misrepresentation serves as a poison. Its accumulative affect strikes at the heart.
Misrepresentation doesn’t need to be deliberate dishonesty. It may not be intentional falsehood. It may be unprofessional prejudgement. It may be a bias. It could be a distortion of facts. It could be a parody of truth. Yet it’s as potent a poison as a lie. It effectively destroys the tissue of reputation and trust.

With regard to the Baynes, the Ministry of Children in the Fraser Region has processed toxic reports based upon documents from B.C. Children’s Hospital and countless social workers’ interviews, and notes from and conversations with acquaintances and foster parents and visitation supervisors. Without suitable challenges from someone these reports become damning because they do not tell the entire truth about Paul and Zabeth, about their children, about events, about MCFD communication, interaction, regulation, visitation supervision. These recklessly gathered and feckless reports are like a poison. They are lethal.

If the poison is coupled with unassailable control over parents' children, then an intervention becomes necessary as it is with the Bayne family right now. Perhaps this Spring a Court Judge’s ruling will be the effective antidote to this toxicant in their case.

Poison within the child welfare system harms the reputation of the entire BC Ministry of Children. This Bayne Family case evidences that. Paul and Zabeth Bayne and the many, many others whose lives and families have been unnecessarily fragmented by graceless, stonyhearted social work in B.C. need the assistance of the Minister of Children (Polak) and the Deputy Minister (Dutoit). And if not them, then some others in Victoria. I understand protocol. It would be an extraordinary step for the Ministry’s principle executives to involve themselves in an intervention in an individual case. It could have repercussions. The Ministers would certainly be criticized. But by such compassionate action, lives have been saved in the past. A fact-finding, integrity driven Ministry intervention can remove the poison. It is courageous people who write the history of societal reform, and give birth to true transformation and bequeath enduring, treasured legacies. Someone(s) please step up.

Use of poison in child protection, however it is derived, must be identified and tagged as not merely harmful but unlawful.