So here comes the critical determination after four days of online medical reports.
- This child was in very serious medical crisis in September 2007.
- By reviewing the initial test results and medical reports these past four days, my purpose was to underscore Baby B's condition which resulted in the MCFD intervention in her life.
- What the original and vital diagnosis of shaken baby did not consider were the alternate explanations that were provided yesterday by the reports from ten other experts who reject the shaken baby diagnosis for this specific child.
- It was not the Children's Hospital or the Ministry of Children (MCFD) that sought any alternate opinions to insure that SBS was the accurate diagnosis. MCFD was content that the SBS verdict was the right one. It was content even in the face of conflicting expert opinions.
- An SBS conclusion is conjoined with a 'non accidental injury' designation and therefore responsibility for an inflicted injury must be assessed to the person(s) most likely implicated. In the Bayne case, probability pointed to Zabeth and/or Paul, the biological parents. This would need to be substantiated of course, but how and with what?
- While this was investigated, the children were removed from their parental home.
- The RCMP ruled that there was insufficient evidence to charge Paul and Zabeth.
- When the MCFD regional Director persisted in its custody and care of the children, his decisions were motivated by a child's injuries but they were not associated with evidence and proof of parental responsibility for the injury to the injured child and absolutely no evidence existed to support the continued custody of the two sibling brothers.
- Nevertheless on the strength of suspicion, MCFD continued to withhold the rights of three children to live with their birth parents. Maintaining suspicion, MCFD pressed the Baynes to admit to harming their child until it became evident that the Baynes would assert their innocence unconditionally. Without an admission of responsibility, the Director and his crew would not consider returning the children and further have in documents alleged that the Baynes are uncooperative.In fact that is untrue. They have instead been bravely assertive and understandably concerned that all of their personal and family rights and freedoms are not ignored.
- The shaken baby diagnosis is the substantive basis for MCFD action and now the Continuing Care Order application. A most recent MCFD affidavit states “The Director is seeking a Continuing Care Order, relying upon the diagnosis of the Children's Hospital that B.B. sustained a non-accidental trauma resulting in brain hemorrhaging, a unilateral retinal hemorrhage and a fractured femoral bone.” The hemorrhaging is understood. The reference to fractured femur is intended to infer an intentional injury. Even that was an inaccurate statement as Dr. Culman's report indicated that “The lateral view of the right elbow shows what appears as subperiostal new bone but is in fact cortical tunnelling because there is no new bone on the frontal view. “
Amen to that.
ReplyDelete^Indeed, JF, indeed.
ReplyDeletePerhaps check the spelling of the term EXDOSTEAL SCLEROSIS used in Dr. Culmen's report. It does not appear to be a searchable term. I note also one doctor's report referred to this and declared he did not know what this meant.
ReplyDeleteClearly the intent of the Ministry is to show that not only shaking occurred, but additional damage elsewhere on the baby that would show multiple actions of abuse. This reference to a broken bone fits the bill.
Noted Anon 8:13 AM
ReplyDeleteCerebellar hypoplasia -- endosteal sclerosis: A rare disorder character where a part of the brain (cerebellum) is underdeveloped and abnormally increased bone density (endosteal sclerosis).
Thanks
Today I continue with the topic of assessment and evaluation. I started by stressing that integrity in the staff is necessary for good assessments. I went on to outline the importance of assessors having a good knowledge of proper evidence. Yesterday I started to describe the most common ways that children come into care. One needs to understand that assessment can have many different kinds of challenge.
ReplyDeleteIn many cases alcohol and/or drug abuse add to the problems. This has its own assessment challenges, which I will explain later. I found that alcohol abuse was present in most cases and often this had not been detected by previous workers.
Contrary to popular belief, my experience was that most children came into care by request or demand of the parent,or by desertion or abandonment. Parents would get tired of dealing with a special needs child, especially if it made life difficult for other children in the home. Often children with behaviour problems ran away,or got thrown out. Children left in neglectful homes often developed delinquency problems and the juvenile courts urged that they be admitted to care.
As I mentioned in families of severe neglect, the parents usually lacked many of the basic lifeskills and for them life was a long series of crises. During my working days I always worked in a combined service. For instance as a district supervisor, I had all the authority and tools to use financial services and child welfare services. Chronic multi-problem families and chronic neglect families were always on ones doorstep for one reason or another. Lacking skills in money management, household management and so on, crisis became their normal lifestyle and we often had to bail them out of various scrapes. Complaints would come in from schools about poor attendance, no lunches, dirty, ragged or suffering from headlice. They would fail to get medical care until a child was dangerously ill and so on and so on. One did not have to run out and do an assessment on these cases. All one had to do was record the facts of each crisis. With alcoholics a common problem was that the husband had drunk the welfare cheque again. If we did not pay the rent directly, the family would get evicted over and over again.
Another common catchment is where families are temporarily unable to cope with parenting. This may be due to a personal crisis, such as marital breakdown, bankruptcy, temporary illness, or a stress breakdown because of unusual circumstances. These cases may look a great deal worse than they really are at time of presentation. This is why it is important to go beyond surface appearances and to do a careful assessment. Usually these types of cases do quite well when the right type of help gets them back on their feet. Some of these cases can be quickly helped with financial help and I was always glad that I did not have to do battle with some other service to get it. In my early days with the Victoria Childrens Aid Society, the municipalities ran the financial assistance programmes. Our protection staff would have to do battle with City welfare to get the electricity turned back on in the middle of the winter. One of the discouraging things about working with chronic severe or borderline negelect is that it is very hard to find any strengths with which to work.
I have just sketched a sampling of these cases so that readers can appreciate the numerous challenges to the assessment skills of the worker, which I will cover in later blogs. One must never forget that we all have our strengths and weaknesses and we all have warts on us somewhere. We solve problems by using people's strengths and not their weaknesses. If people have strengths that we fail to see we are doing their children little good. To be continued
Ron; I want to take a little space to talk about something other than assessment.
ReplyDeleteFirst I would like to congratulate you on your coverage of the medical aspects of the Bayne case. You have done such an excellent job of answering the queries of readers as well. I am sure that you are doing an educational service to many of the ministry readers who log in and I hope that some of them will express their appreciation. You are demonstrating how important it is in making an assessment to come to no conclusions until all the facts are in. Of course the director at first had no choice but to remove the baby on the best information available. When the first opinion was contradicted by many experts, a re-assessment was obvioulsy imperative. The director failed to do this.
I want to mention that I prepared the medical "book" for Doug Christie's cross-examination. I read every line of every medical report. I read every line of every expert opinion. I summarised each of the ten expert reports and I did an abstract of the common elements in their expert opinions. This took me a week of hard work, thus severely taxing my octogenarian brain.
My point is to say that I know how much hard and careful work went into providing the coverage that you have done in the last few days. I know this was a labour of love. Perhaps also of faith and hope, but mostly of charity.
This is just more proof that MCFD couldn't give a hoot about children. The trauma and heartache they have caused - just in this one case (and there are many, many more like this, or worse) is outrageous.
ReplyDeleteGive the children back. There is no excuse for keeping them.
This is for Anonymous 6:50 PM and your questions and comments. Instead of publishing your piece I am framing them differently and answering your questions which is what I expect you were really wanting.
ReplyDelete1.MCFD could not provide a plausible motive for either one of the Bayne's harming their children and specifically Bethany.
2.MCFD still has no evidence of harm to the two boys. That is the reason their own lawyer advised the Fraser Region Director to return the boys because this could not be won in court. MCFD ignored the counsel and here we are in court for all three children.
3.No motive was offered for harming Bethany although MCFD assessment tried to infer that one or both parents was under stress sufficient to act violently. There was and is no corroboration or proof.
4.Yes MCFD tried to use the Hoffman theory that Zabeth was suffering from Munchausen by Proxy (harming the child to gain attention), and yes CBC did mention that both the Hoffmans and Zabeth had music instruction businesses and the rivalry might prove a motivation for the Hoffman call-in, but I would suggest that CBC would think twice about telling that theory again. It gets tricky implying motive.
5.The Child, Youth and Community Services Act requires people to report to MCFD if any concern for a child(ren) exists. My belief is that MCFD SW's were asking specific individuals whether they had any concern whatsoever about how the children looked, ate, behaved etc. No one has to identify themselves. You could call it hearsay but it is acceptable to MCFD and the Court. Judge Thomas has not ruled whether he accepted any such testimony.
6.Hundreds of letters and email correspondence and phone calls came to MCFD in support of the Baynes as parents and responsible adults. The primary social worker and the one writing the risk assessment said in court he had not bothered to read them. He also did not write one positive quality about either Paul or Zabeth in the section of the assessment template that permits this. Remarkably he was willing to go into court with that testimony that there is not one good thing to say for them. And when cross-examined he stammered he didn't really know the Baynes, whom he called 'those people.' Of course, but he wrote a multi-page assessment condemning them.
7.The avalanche pro-Bayne support network is to be heard from during the last week of the court case.
This is for Anonymous 6:50 PM and your questions and comments. Instead of publishing your piece I am framing them differently and answering your questions which is what I expect you were really wanting.
ReplyDeletePart 1 of 2
1.MCFD could not provide a plausible motive for either one of the Bayne's harming their children and specifically Bethany.
2.MCFD still has no evidence of harm to the two boys. That is the reason their own lawyer advised the Fraser Region Director to return the boys because this could not be won in court. MCFD ignored the counsel and here we are in court for all three children.
3.No motive was offered for harming Bethany although MCFD assessment tried to infer that one or both parents was under stress sufficient to act violently. There was and is no corroboration or proof.
4.Yes MCFD tried to use the Hoffman theory that Zabeth was suffering from Munchausen by Proxy (harming the child to gain attention), and yes CBC did mention that both the Hoffmans and Zabeth had music instruction businesses and the rivalry might prove a motivation for the Hoffman call-in, but I would suggest that CBC would think twice about telling that theory again. It gets tricky implying motive.
Part 2 of 2
ReplyDelete1.The Child, Youth and Community Services Act requires people to report to MCFD if any concern for a child(ren) exists. My belief is that MCFD SW's were asking specific individuals whether they had any concern whatsoever about how the children looked, ate, behaved etc. No one has to identify themselves. You could call it hearsay but it is acceptable to MCFD and the Court. Judge Thomas has not ruled whether he accepted any such testimony.
2.Hundreds of letters and email correspondence and phone calls came to MCFD in support of the Baynes as parents and responsible adults. The primary social worker and the one writing the risk assessment said in court he had not bothered to read them. He also did not write one positive quality about either Paul or Zabeth in the section of the assessment template that permits this. Remarkably he was willing to go into court with that testimony that there is not one good thing to say for them. And when cross-examined he stammered he didn't really know the Baynes, whom he called 'those people.' Of course, but he wrote a multi-page assessment condemning them.
3.The avalanche pro-Bayne support network is to be heard from during the last week of the court case.
Ron,
ReplyDeletePlease keep us posted as to when the court case resumes, as I am sure new supporters of the Baynes would like to attend.
Will keep you posted for sure! mark August 9-13th and as it approaches I will give you place and time.
ReplyDeleteOutstanding comments, Ron. I am sure the Judge Crabtree is wise enough to oversee this complex case - although, based on info on this site alone it appears need not be so complex.
ReplyDelete