CODE OF PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE
Recognizing the importance that BC citizens place on MCFD, our Code of Professional Excellence sets clear principles to guide our practice and to inspire professional excellence among the entire MCFD team. We want to exceed citizen expectations.KNOWLEDGE: We are always learning about children, youth and families as well as our practices and service opportunities and always teaching one another. We manage what we know in order to share it across the regions.CODE OF SERVICE EXCELLENCE
HIGHEST STANDARDS: We observe the highest standards of integrity, competence and professionalism. We want to be the best and do our best and we take pride in our purpose and work.
INNOVATION: We continually examine and improve our operations and services and discover better problem solving options as well as use education and technology to improve our efficiency.
COLLABORATION: We are a team of teams working together in British Columbia to make the best possible use of our collective resources for the benefit of all our case clients.
CONTRIBUTION: We want our children, youth and families in our cities, towns, villages, communities and among our First Nations communities to be better because we have been involved to assist them.
The companion code to the Code of Professional Excellence is our Code of Service Excellence.
RESPONSIVENESS: We demonstrate our availability by a prompt service response to calls from institutions and private citizens and seek to accomplish our work in a timely manner in keeping with our mandate.
UNDERSTANDING: We develop solutions to achieve the best interests of children, youth and families by our understanding of their life situations, sensitivity to their needs and desires and by direct personal attention by our professionals who have the appropriate experience and compassion.
VALUE: We manage our work efficiently, delivering sensitive yet pragmatic solutions to achieve best case results that serve the best interests of families as well as children.
THINKING AHEAD: We anticipate the needs of our case clients by briefing them about their rights, about courses of action, about mediation and legal options and all things related to their life situations.
CLARITY: We listen to our case clients and maintain open and active communication to ensure clear understanding of the issues, responsibilities and tasks at hand and in the future.
I am told the Ministry of Health social workers do a better job in representing this ideal. They are more likely to be registered with the college. Also, many of them deplore the actions of Ministry social workers.
ReplyDeleteIt is strongly recommended parents get a Health Ministry social worker by having their family doctor make a referal or first have a referal to a psychiatrist to first have it declared on record you are normal but under stress because of Ministry actions, then they will refer you to Health Canada social workers.
There is little point discussing the redemption of Ministry operations when at the expense of not mentioning services available to parents that do work.
Parents must instead first be concerned with protecting their children and themselves from the real bogeyman and teach them of their rights.
Instruct schools, daycare and other public facilities in writing (or better, have a court order) that says your children are not to be alone with a Ministry operative under any circumstances, and that another individual trusted by the child who is not a concern of the ministry be present.
I did this when a social worker insisted on talking with my children "alone" and I said sure, you don't mind if a friend the children trust are present, and this was agreed upon. Note the children were in my care.
When the day came to meet with my children,the social worker immediately focused on the adult to get a last name and birthdate in order to see what was in the ministry database.
It would be an understatement to say none of the above ideals of excellence were represented by the social worker as observed by my friend. Instead, creepy crawleys was a better description of the 90 minute meeting. My children were protected, which was the important point.
A recent meeting with a design and manufacturing client revealed that if test procedures could not be devised for a design, those components were not included.
Similarly, each of the above ideals, in order for them to fly, they must be testable and measured, and not subject to arbitrary measurement. "The best interests of the child" is a perfect example of a subjective and hard to measure quality, so it essentially becomes meaningless.
One other criteria I would suggest when creating these missives, is how can parents take immediate action to use these ideas?
I think that MCFD already believes it does a good job. They feel that they are there for the children against the parents. It is highly subjective and the children are not even given a say in how they feel. Or else their words are misinterpreted. Why does a SW feel they are so close to a child they just met rather than their own family? It is a system meant for extreme abuse as the norm such as the Vaudreil case. But they have lost the powers of discernment to see things as they are.
ReplyDeleteMCFD does everything but what are required by the codes and standards discussed herein. No code or standard is relevant when MCFD has the power to remove children at will with a huge budget to defend its infamous activities.
ReplyDelete"Pearls before swine" (Mathew 7:6) is a phrase that comes to mind when such lofty ideals are proposed, assuming someone within the Ministry is reading this blog. I do not know where social workers congregate, but I suspect it it is not here.
ReplyDeleteWith my kids, for example, getting them to wipe their feet before coming into the house comes before educating them on how to replace the toilet paper once emptied. Choosing between Harvard and UBC would come sometime after.
Several lower level concerns needs to be monitored and corrected before thinking of higher ideals. In the meantime, we the unwashed public need to figure out how to protect ourselves from these unconcsionable bullies.
Wikipedia's entry on social worker has some interesting information that is not skewed by child protection issues:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_the_professional_social_worker
This section is interesting:
"The strategic direction of statutory social work in Britain is broadly divided into children's and adults' services. Social work activity within England and Wales for children and young people is under the remit of the Department for Children, Schools and Families while the same for adults remains the responsibility for the Department of Health."
"Within local authorities, this division is usually reflected in the organization of social services departments. The structure of service delivery in Scotland is different."
Unless I miss my guess, this means children have a social worker assigned to them from child protection, and adults have one from the Health department.
It may be useful to simply locate an area on the globe where these codes are in place, actively used and respected, and there is a measurable effect. I'm all ears on this one.
If social workers in the Health Ministry are that much different then those in child protection, this evidence needs to be put forward to politicians to obligate them to enact a law to get MCFD SW registered and abide by college standards.
Suing foster parents (off topic)
ReplyDeleteI came across this link of a PDF posted on the Canada Court Watch website. There are a number of items that warn foster parents that they are liable for by children who later sue them. Examples include listening in on phone conversations, withholding allowance, restricting or interfering with access to family.
More related to registering social workers, a comment is related to recommend to foster parents they insist the Ministry social worker should be registered.
This could be potential avenue for convincing foster care associations to put pressure on MCFD to register social workers. It is clear in a lot of cases social workers ask foster parents to do illegal things they may not even be aware are illegal. Social workers would face no repercussions.
http://www.canadacourtwatch.com/Brochures/UnderstandingTheRisksOfFosterParenting.pdf
I read the letter Craig Meredith wrote to the TImes COlonist when he resigned in 2006. He was fed up with the way there are no services and parents are written up so badly now.
ReplyDeleteCould the Craig Meredith Times Colonist 2006 article be this link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.publiceyeonline.com/archives/001927.html#more
Yes
ReplyDelete