DO ANOMALIES EXIST / Part 333 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Concurrent with the debated specifics that have involved the Ministry of Children's Child Protection arm in the lives of the Bayne family, the Bayne children and their parents are at the heart of a Ministry in B.C. where the philosophical and ideological positions that affect policy and practice in child welfare are in recurring conflict. For instance, there is dissonance between policy-makers who prefer furnishing assistance to families versus those who assert that protecting children is the priority of child welfare. Advocates for the family support position view our society as one in which social and support services and programs should be a universal provision available to all families and not only families tagged for neglect and abuse of children. Proponents of the protection priority claim that most families generally fare well and are not in need of government funded support services such as daycare, financial aid or parenting skill development so government resources should be directed to those parents, children and families where difficulties are apparent and acknowledged. It is certainly less expensive than the former option, although it can further marginalize the recipients by making them feel helpless, stigmatized, vulnerable.

Presently, our B.C. child welfare program is dominated by the commitment to saving a child from abusive and negligent parents. Besides interventions and removals of children, little big picture attention is being paid it seems to the reality that parents without adequate resources to care for their children are those in which neglect and abuse occur. So a valid question is why will our government not invest millions of dollars to holding families together rather than abandoning that altruistic measure in favour of funding the millions of dollars required to operate a care industry.

Of course the Bayne case does not relate directly to this discussion even though Ministry lawyer Finn Jensen inferred that it did. He made a point of identifying the timing of the baby's injuries with the father's unemployment, and further in the pursuit of this Continuing Care Order, reasoned before the court that the modest income from the Baynes' custodial work would place them at risk if the children were returned.

What is overlooked is the anomaly inherent in the Bayne scenario. A child was injured. The parents say neither of them would or did willfully harm the child. The only explanation they can offer is that it was accidental. Another of their children fell on the infant. Some medical professionals insist the severity of the girl's injuries is consistent only with abuse rather than accident. In their view there are no anomalies, no alternative explanations, no need for second opinions. Other medical professionals defend the viability of the accident account. They resist this paradigm of easy automatic blame attachment based on certain medical findings. They provide an array of medical and scientific expertise that take into account numerous medical and historical factors which in concert with an impact incident are consistent with the medical findings. How difficult is the task of parents like the Baynes to prove their innocence and authenticate that this tragic occurrence was unusual, unique, strange, an incongruity, an inconsistency if you will! My point with the preceding introductory statements is to say that there is little sympathy for the Baynes within the regional division of the MCFD in which the Baynes find themselves because this is an enterprise committed to the child protection paradigm first and foremost and anomalies are unknown.