Any time that a death of a child occurs while in care of the Ministry of Children, there is a need for close scrutiny of the custodial care and the circumstances in which it happened. The death of a child in care is alarming. It is assumed that a child is in care because that life was vulnerable or endangered by risk of some kind in the existing home care. It is therefore a shock when in the supposed foster place of safety, a child dies. It is assumed that a death should not occur while in foster care unless there were mitigating medical issues. When a child dies while in the system, we can be assured that front line child protection workers are not heartless but that they rather feel the emotional impact. That empathy becomes questionable to us if the system does not openly and publicly probe into the death and learn from it so that there will be improvements to policy and practice for the sake of other future children receiving services.
Loved ones of the deceased child do not want the child's death to be invisible. Chris Martell in Saskatchewan is an example of a father insistent upon the government learning from the tragic death of his two year old son while in a foster care home. He is presently completing a five day walk to Regina today where he will present a petition to the government to take necessary steps to prevent such tragedy. In his son's case, a foster mother has already been charged with a criminal act. The Ministry demonstrates real compassion only when it honestly investigates and assesses cause and takes steps to insure that if there was fault, it is not only punished but corrected, made preventable. In such situations, the government has responsibility to account to the public how things went wrong and what is being done to correct it.
A child does not need to die to warrant a review of process in handling the care of a child. I believe that this type of accountability ought similarly to apply to care situations, notwithstanding the confidentiality concerns written into the child protection protocol. So, when a child is returned to its parents by a court ruling, that must be an occasion for disclosure of Ministry decisions which shaped the entire experience of parents and children during the time they were involved with the Ministry. Don't regard that as sensational but educational. Good social work aims to excel. Clearly, when the court ruling declares that the Ministry has not proven its case that the child should be in or remain in care, yet the child has been removed from the family home for an extended time, then important lessons should be learned and policy and procedure shaped in response. When timelines for custody and care orders that are carefully prescribed in the Act are ignored or stretched, then the attending judge and MCF supervisors and the Ministry in Victoria should disregard excuses and act to correct the practice. As 2010 closes out on the Bayne case and when Judge Crabtree returns all three children into the care of their own parents, a public accounting will be very informative and hopefully will assist Victoria to fine tune its expectations for outcomes and accountability within its decentralized structure.
Amen my good friend, observer and sharer of the story that needs to be shared. Bless you Ron. and May our Great Big Awesome Lord continue to bless the Baynes in their reunion, and for always. Extra blessings, uncountable Father in the name of Jesus.
ReplyDeleteHallelujah to the Lord on High.
Ron I also praise God for your diligence throughout this entire journey. He is so good, you are obedient. A servant to be honoured, a model for us all. We need to use our voices, and hold each other up at all times. But especially when we may see our brothers and sisters becoming weary in their trials.
Happy Tuesday!
sincerely,
Rebecca
Yes, after I got my file and it mistakenly contained a great deal of extra information, I learned about ministry dealings and how they try to create a case against a family. In the end, they are bound by what has been written by their colleagues who came before otherwise it discredits their other workmates. Even if the original hypothesis turns out to be very untrue, they try hard to prove it by asking leading questions and putting down untrue information or distorting what has been written previously. It is a bad system and it is pork barrelling in the extreme and they are nervous of being found out. I mentioned that I have worked extensively with children and I have a good reputation and it made them very nervous at MCFD. They do not want to be discovered since they usually deal with people who are so marginalized that anything goes as they deal with people who do not have credibility in regular society. They make a big mistake with the families they are dealing with in some cases though.
ReplyDeleteIt should not take a death of any child to trigger a review. A case similar the Baynes must surely be sufficient to demand a review to prevent a recurrence.
ReplyDeleteIt is quite likely the Ministry would have an unspoken view that several of those children who died in care would have died anyways and were worse off with their parents. This problem is, how do you measure this indifference?
There are plenty of other lesser examples of abuse that go unnoticed as there is no hotline to report MCFD neglect of children in care.
The case with Chris Martell's son would seem to indicate there were ongoing issues that should have been detected before the little boy died, had there been regular prescribed visits from the social workers, or check in submissions from the foster family, or even interviews of the other children in the home.
From the point of view of grass roots accountability, I note Canada Court Watch is an excellent site generally. It has a social worker registry (primarily for CAS in Ontario) where people who encounter problems may enter a name note and dates. I can't seem to have lost the link and the ability to search for it.
Chris Martell should be commended for his pursuit of answers in his son's death. There can be few things as motivating as a personal tragedy where change is required. It is refreshng to see his ongoing efforts on his facebook page, which is: http://www.facebook.com/cmartell2.
Aside from mentioning the Canada Court Watch site http://www.canadacourtwatch.com/, in B.C., the pa-http://pa.ca page site seems like a pretty good one to go to for unvarnished stories and some very strong evidence based opinions. It always seems to come up high on my searches.
Canlii.org and the various Provincial Supreme Court websites also have good search engines for judgments where names of social workers, doctors, lawyers and others may be located to see if they have been involved in some accountability action. (Although names of social workers seems rare to find multiple hits.)
Affected parents would be well advised to report their scenarios and identify similarities from others and publish the observations on a blog, facebook, a wiki page, or even bite-sized twitter messages.
Then, when letters of complaint are written through the "official" complaint channels, the actual text of your letter can be posted with your personal information removed, and identify these links in your communication. This tells public servants their words will published and may then take more effort to resolve complaints.
Children filing a lawsuit would likely have more success at holding MCFD accountable than would parents. Depriving parents of their children and vice versa does not seem easy, or possible to action. I see same judgments to that effect where children who have suffered harm while in care due to negligance of foster parents or social workers, can sue their captors.
Parents and other interested parties accuraely publicizing the actions of public servants while protecting thier own and third party identities would help other track similar issues that happen to them. This is a tool in a parent's arsenal that child protection cannot match, except by personal retaliation.
Anon at September 7, 2010 10:55 AM, it does seem to be the case that MCFD and all child protection agencies tend to target those who are marginalized, but because they are like a business (or industry), they are continually expanding their market. Hence, in the wider net they may capture people such as the Baynes who do in fact have resources that other marginalized members of society do not. This will be their downfall; that is, their continual need to acquire new victims, which must necessarily include those who do have the resources to fight back, even against such a Goliath as government and MCFD.
ReplyDeleteThese resources include everyone from brilliant, honourable men such as Doug Christie, to all the passionate posters on this blog, the incredible supporters of the Baynes, and last but not least, to the amazing work of a man who truly is doing God's work, Ron Unruh. Thank goodness for these people; it should give us all great hope.