That's my preface to a comment that is sure to raise a few temperatures among my readers.
Here is my comment: THE MINISTRY OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY DEVELOPMENT IS NECESSARY AND IT MEETS MANY SOCIAL NEEDS WITHIN OUR SOCIETY OF CHILDREN, YOUTH, FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES.
I need to say that. Complaints lodged against the Ministry of Children and Family Development run like a river on this blog site. It seems that I am perpetually ragging on MCFD as are commentators to my posts. It could be assumed that I am shortsighted and cannot see the commendable vision and achievements of MCFD work. Yet the accent placed on my daily posts is understandable since the origin for our collective dissatisfaction with MCFD is its child protection policy and practice. So, given my advocacy for Paul and Zabeth Bayne and my study of child protection, what more can be expected? My capitalized comment above strikes a balance that should place in a proper light the strong sentiments expressed by this blog. Let's start with the new Ministry Plan. MCFD has its own marketing specialists so without serving to promote MCFD let me comment on the Ministry Plan for 2010-2013 presented under Honourable Mary Polak's signature.
It is valuable for discussion and negotiation purposes somewhere down the road, to recognize that during the past three years at least some fresh direction has been afforded to the ministry of CFD. That is what we are told. Listen to Ms. Polak's own words on page 3 of the report of the Service Plan 2010/11 – 2012/13. http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2010/sp/pdf/ministry/cfd.pdf
“This service plan represents a mid-way point in the organizational transformation that is driven by significant shifts in our vision and direction.... The Ministry of Children and Family Development 2010/11 – 2012/13 Service Plan was prepared under my direction, in accordance with the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act.... Over the past three years we have been moving away from a service delivery model sometimes viewed as reactionary toward a proactive approach founded upon five core pillars that recognize and build on the strengths inherent in all children and families.”
“This philosophy is embodied in Strong, Safe and Supported: A Commitment to B.C.’s Children and Youth — the Ministry’s action plan that guides our work and our decisions. With an emphasis on prevention and early intervention, the five pillars contained in the action plan are based on a holistic approach to planning and delivering services and the best possible outcomes for children and families. We are focused on helping to build healthy families through early childhood development, quality child care, supports for children and youth with special needs, services for youth and support services for families. We are also focused on supporting an Aboriginal approach that is more inclusive and reflective of Aboriginal cultures and traditions.” Here comes the judge – You!
Ron; I said that I would share with readers some of my advocacy case files. All identities obscured of course. I will have to do this in two parts.
ReplyDeleteA blended family consisted of the husband's 17 year old daughter, his 13 year old son and the 15 year old daughter of the wife. For misbehaviour the younger children were grounded and the boy got angry and phoned the child abuse line with a false report. The social workers came storming in with the police, who arrested both parents and put them in prison. The children were placed in care. The parents were arraigned, charged with child abuse and the case was set for trial nine months later. The mother was tried first and on hearing the crown evidence, the judge ruled that there was no case to answer. There just was no evidence. When the chief prosecutor heard of this, she found there was no evidence against the husband either and dropped the case. In the meantime, the social workers managed to avoid presenting any evidence to the family court. The initial court report was couched in vague terms. They managed to keep the judges bouncing from adjournment to adjournment on the grounds that a serious criminal case was pending against the parents. At the last hearing they withdrew from the case on the grounds that their counselling had rehabilitated the family..
During the time in care the following happened. The parents were forbidden to have unsupervised access and during access they were banned from discussing reconciliation with their children, although the stated plan was to return the children eventually. The reason given was "to protect the evidence." In the group home the two younger children became exposed to drugs and became addictive. They hung around downtown, panhandling for money to buy drugs. The parents saw them there, but were forbidden to talk to them. The boy eventually ran away and turned up at home. He told his parents (and me) that he had got mad and exaggerated. He told this to the social worker a few days after the admission to care, but he was told that he had better stick with his story now, or he would be in serious trouble.
(continuing story.) The only evidence at the trial was given by the oldest girl. She told the court that she had used an obscenity on her stepmother, who gave her light tap on the head which did not hurt. She then attacked her stepmother, who held her wrists to restrain her and she complained that she was left with red marks on her wrists. That was it. The poor girl had become convinced that she was a victim of serious abuse and arrived at court complete with a victims counsellor. She became estranged from her family for several years afterwards. It cost them $10,000 in lawyer fees to defend this case. One wonders why the lawyer would not simply have suggested to the administrative prosecutor that there was insufficient evidence and had the case dropped months before. The Husband fired the lawyer, as he felt it was a waste of money to defend against no evidence. He negotiated with the administrator himself, who revealed that his lawyer had not even requested a statement of evidence until a few days before the trial. After the boy ran away and the evidence no longer needed to be protected, the social worker contracted a psychologist to counsel the two younger children. The psychologist continued to see them, oblivious to the fact that they were coming to sessions completely stoned on drugs. Eventually ( at my insistence) an addiction assessment was done and they entered recovery programs.
ReplyDeleteFollowing the collapse of the case against them, the parents requested an audit. The auditor eventually issued a damning report in which she solidly blamed the parents for everything and absolved the staff. How could she manage such a complete whitewash? To start with, her boss the superintendent had been responsible for much of what happened and was responsible for the ban on discussing reconciliation. She had plenty of motive not to upset her boss. She simply refused to consider anything that happened after the date, so she did not have to deal with the collapse of the Ministry case. Later on, when the family got the file under freedom of information we found the following. Three pages of the original audit report were devoted to how they could get revenge on me for advocating for the family and embarrassing the Ministry.
This case is a fine microcosm of the deep malaise in the ministry. Any reader response?
I can tell you from my case, the above experience has numerable similarities.
ReplyDelete"Protecting the evidence", the child, by enforcing supervised evidence is exactly what goes on. Social workers want to make sure there is no record of children changing their mind.
The "Audit" is interesting. I am unaware of this process. Presumably it is internally conducted.
Would a Judicial Review make sense for a case where the Ministry withdraws and there is no court order to appeal?
'Strong Safe and Supported' only applies with Ministry intervestion, ie. removal, parent agreement or a declaration by a court protection (ie. Ministry services) is needed.
ReplyDeleteIt is not possible to go to the Ministry and ask for a babysitter if you are poor and need to go to work. A "protection" situation must first exist.
The Audit team got set up under the NDP I think. Their job was to do a practice audit, especially when there were complaints about staff. They earned, I think a well deserved, reputation for being unnecessarily aggressive with staff. They would come on like the gestapo on matters large and small. Then they went the other way. It was members of the audit team staff who examined the practice issues around the death of Matthew Vaudreuil. They made a fair but critical report, which was then watered down by the head child protection bureaucrat. She did not want to hurt the feelings of the staff who drew criticism. This was the beginning of the issues that led to the Gove inquiry and report. Some of the audit staff resigned in protest. After that staff were hired who would not rock the boat and they were much kinder to staff. I don't think that they operate any more. of course when they did the audit in my story, if they had examined it all the way, they would have had to deal with the fact that there was no case to answer and that the kids never needed to be in care. That would not have pleased the boss, who had called all the shots. The oldest girl was in grade 12 and headed for university in a few months. Hardly a poor little kid in need of protection. Believe me, it can get even dumber!
ReplyDeleteYes, I have now been told that the child protection concerns against me have 'vanished'. I was supposed to go to court for another extension of the supervision order, now it is FCPC. It is all very strange and I cannot figure it out any better than anyone else. At one point it looked like all my kids would be taken, now I am exonerated. However, I know that the files against me live forever even though there is not a court judgement against me. It is time to get back to raising my family!!! I wish I could.
ReplyDeleteMany technology companies have ISO9000 certification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000), which means basically, the company has procedures that they follow consistently, and this can be measured and tested.
ReplyDeleteIn order to be certified, the aspect of what you say you are doing is tested (ie. closing an intake file within 30 days, or interviewing family and children within 5-8 days of an intake call).
It really is pointless to say procedures and standards exist, then not have a means of measuring the outcome and publishing compliance reports. Instituting an internal complaint process and a faux 'external' complaint system (RCY, OmbudsPeson) just doesn't cut it.
One only needs to look at ANY single case to expose the deeply fundamental flaws and damaged culture that no leadership or policy change will fix. This is not an MCFD-specific problem, it is worldwide in English speaking countries.
The similarities Ray Ferris outlines, issues that have happened years ago still exist today, and the situation continues to deteriorate as MCFD matures and better figures out how to cause more funds to flow with each child removed.
1:10 PM Anon
ReplyDeleteI am thrilled that you are free of this terrible concern.
Ron
Why should we avoid naming these people who can destroy your family life and your career if we have documented proof of their lies.As government employees they are protected from being sued so they can carry out their tasks with careless impunity with our only recourse being to expose them and the ministry publicly. To an outsider this might look like a character attack but it is really just a statement of facts.
ReplyDelete