Eileen Munro wrote a 2006 volume called "Effective Child Protection.” One of her most poignant lines quoted from page 141 is, "The single most important factor in minimizing errors is to admit that you may be wrong." This is fundamental to turning MCFD around. I explore that premise today.
Among the hard realities of child protective work is that we do not live in a perfect world and there are no perfect parents. Good parents sometimes make mistakes. All parents may not meet the arbitrary standards that a social worker has developed as a model. These parents can nonetheless function capably as loving caregivers and have a right to do so. They might benefit from services offered with no attached strings and provisos. Another hard reality is that child protection workers do make mistakes, yet if there is a willingness the same workers can learn from those mistakes and improvements can be made to practice. Reluctance to learn informs superiors that these workers may not be made of the right stuff for this work. Did you catch that? Emotional intelligence is not to be shunned but valued. Child protection is not merely an academic exercise whereby one follows the letter of the law. This is human welfare with which we are dealing. These parents are fellow humans of the same stuff as you are social workers, and these parents are not antagonists by nature. Their adversarial buttons have been pushed sometimes by the mistaken actions of social workers who have failed to, or been unable to use emotional intelligence.
“The skills and knowledge Eileen Munro thinks are needed to do the job properly include:
- using comprehensive and rational frameworks to make decisions
- using both current and historical information in relation to making judgements about families
- being prepared to change their beliefs about a family based on new information i.e. not clinging to old beliefs whilst ignoring new information
- workers testing their hypothesis about a particular judgement.
- having a critical approach to the work they are undertaking
- refraining from letting first impressions of the family shape case direction
“Mistakes will continue to be made in the helping professions. Child Protection is not immune from this. The challenge is to be proactive in developing systems that enable practitioner's to make the best decisions possible. Where mistakes are made, it is important that processes are put in place to salvage whatever lessons are possible.”
Yesterday I wrote that I trust no one in authority because of the abuse of trust granted by reason of that authority. I would like to further clarify.
ReplyDeleteSocial Workers, as they are called, are trained in a mindset of values which Joe Public has not necessarily agreed to accept. Many university textbooks are advocating re-engineering of society so that society reflects some utopian dream of the writer. In power, advocates attempt to impose values in their various arenas. Very often these attempts are destructive and may later be reversed. (Meantime, people suffer. ie Dukobours, Jews, natives in Canada, POWs, legalized slavery) This world is full of people who differ from each other. These engineers want everyone to become as they have decided we should be become.
This is not to say that changes aren't needed for some situations but truly having concerns addressed is not the same as having a bully under the protection of the power of public office barge into a home and brutally snatch children. These are SWAT team tactics used against non-criminals.
Next, as in MCFD policy, the parents have to prove they are not guilty of whatever they may be accused of doing, thinking, being or saying. They are not charged. A bully now has opportunity to bring his utopian society dream into reality in his little corner of the world. He has access to the public purse, a system which insulates him legally, and public trust.
In China, if someone is accused of a misdemeanor-- believing or thinking something different than the engineers want-- he is shamed publicly, must "confess" his "crime" and be "reeducated." Of course, he could languish in jail, be assigned to a work factory or even executed. Are we really so different in Canada?
Free societies require that people be vigilant in keeping good tension between trust and social and political activism.
Thank you for underscoring our free society on this Remembrance Day.
ReplyDeleteToday I continue with a case history from my book. All names are fictititious and care taken to disguise case. Stories are true.
ReplyDeleteBlanco
. Sometimes it is necessary to fix some legal nuts and bolts before the placement can happen and the social worker should give every help towards this end, when the best interests of the children are so served. Should Mr. Blanco get the custody order changed, we would have no evidence that the children were still in need of protection and it would be hard to find a reason why the complaint should not be stayed. The Xville social worker should have requested a report on Mr. Blanco's circumstances right away and should have decided on a course of action, only after she understood his position and circumstances. By this time I was afraid that she might feel the need to dig in and to get into an unnecessarily adversarial position, so I tried to find ways of defusing the situation.
One of the legal snags with divorced parents was that the divorce custody orders were made in a higher court than that in which child protection matters were normally handled. One might think that the matter could be simply handled by the protection judge ordering custody to the competent parent. However, the lower court judges were reluctant to do this, because it might seem as if they were reversing an order, which had been made in a higher court. It is possible that they worried about it more than the higher court judges did, especially if the best interests of the children were clearly served.
Mr. Blanco already had a lawyer, who had handled his divorce and the same person was to represent him in applying for a change in custody. I suggested that he have his lawyer call me in order to expedite matters. When his lawyer did so, he told me that he felt he would have no difficulty in getting an immediate ex parte change in the custody order, because the court report that I had provided for him would be of great influence. I suggested to him that he deal directly with the counsel for protection matters in Xville, as lawyer to lawyer communications were preferable in these matters. What I wanted to do was to make sure that we did not get into difficulty by dealing with a piqued social worker, who might be obstructive. At the same time I did not wish to offer any overt criticism of my colleague.
The outcome of the case was that Mr. Blanco got his custody order reversed and I was able to persuade him and his wife to agree to the children being placed with them subject to six months of supervision, for which I would be responsible. He was a bit reluctant, but his lawyer agreed with me that this arrangement would have the benefit of ensuring guidance and counselling for the couple during the difficult adjustment period. The other thing that I was concerned about was that it would save face somewhat for the Xville worker, if some sort of order were made in the protection court. She had already had to swallow some of her wrong assumptions, because the first Mrs. Blanco was being charged with welfare fraud for not having declared all the maintenance that she had received from her ex-husband.
Blanco continued
ReplyDeleteThe supervision period
Before the supervisory order took effect, I had made a home visit and I had talked with Mr. and Mrs. Blanco about some of the adjustment problems that they might anticipate. Mrs. Blanco struck me as a very honest and warm person, who had a very overt affection for her husband. She had met both the girls before and she and her husband had taken them on day outings a number of times, but they had never stayed over. The anticipated problems arrived in full strength and I met with the parents every two weeks at first, because they needed all the help that they could get. The girls both lied extensively and had great difficulty in adjusting to a regular routine in life. One of them wet the bed persistently and the other one did so occasionally. They were unaccustomed to doing homework, or to doing anything that required any degree of self-discipline. There were complaints at school about their behaviour and both girls were well behind the normal level at school.
Mrs. Blanco was very anxious to do the right thing and of course both parents were prone to looking for quick fixes for everything. Fortunately, I had warned them to expect many of the problems and among other things they had taken the precaution of putting plastic sheets over the mattresses. I tried to get them to understand that the girls had to learn a totally new lifestyle, which was based on a different system of values and this would not be learned overnight. I wanted the parents only to confront really important behaviour issues, but to concentrate on making the girls feel secure and helping them to develop positive self-images. Positive reinforcement counselling was given. The parents were very easy to work with, because they generally understood right away what I was getting at and they worked hard at trying to follow my advice.
I got permission from Mr. Blanco to work with the school on the school problems. He was a devout Roman Catholic and had placed the girls in a parochial school. The sisters in charge of the girls seemed very pleased to see me, because they were concerned about them and they were relieved to have someone to consult with. The girls seemed to have great difficulty in concentrating in class and were fidgety and distractive, but they were not getting into serious conflicts with other children or staff. Mr.Blanco had not told them that he had only just obtained custody of his daughters and the sisters of course assumed that the girls' lack of development was a product of their current environment. When they learned that the girls would need a lot of remedial work, because they had suffered a lot of past neglect, the sisters were enthusiastic about their ability to do this, because they had quite small classes and some well qualified remedial teachers. As a precaution, we arranged to have the girls psychometrically tested, just to make sure that there were no learning deficits.
continued tomorrow
Ray, not only do I wish that some social workers I know could take a page out of your book, I wish they could digest the entire volume demonstrated by the care about which you have spoken autobiographically. Fortunately there are still some SWs who aspire to high standards today.
ReplyDeleteGovernment cannot be entrusted with such power - the most awesome power of all - even more awesome (some would say) than the right to decide if someone lives or dies (i.e., capital punishment). If government is entrusted with such power, then we must have serious checks and balances. What we have now is nothing of the sort. The balance of probabilities almost always works in the child protection industry's favour. Judges are either in the dark, or they uphold the abuse of power. Everyone involved needs to be held accountable. The press is not doing its job.
ReplyDeleteCitizens all over the world are working, often quite remarkably, to expose this corruption, and it appears that any changes will only come as a result of a massive grassroots movement. All we can do is keep on trying to expose the truth. Sooner or later things will move to the next level, as they did when (for example) the Innocence Project was formed and people all over the world were made aware of the abuses of the justice system, wrongful convictions, and executions of innocent people.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/
We need an Innocence Project for Parents.
I watched a B-Grade horror movie last week called "Case 39". It stars Rene Zellweger as an overworked social worker who has 38 case files, then along comes "case 39."
ReplyDeleteOn the surface it appears the parents are demonically posessed as they try to cook their 10-year old daughter (Nanaimo actor Jodelle Ferland) in a gas oven. The social worker and police friend horically break down the door and save the girl, and the parents are put in a mental institution.
The hero of our story, the social worker, takes in the little girl, acting as a foster mom. The twist kicks in when it is revealed the little girl is evil and posessed by a male demon that manipulates caregivers.
As the social worker snaps, we see her and the police officer friend take matters into their own hands and they conspire on their own to figure out how to kill the little girl.
The social worker is painted as the true victim throughout the film, beset on by overwork and unfortunate personal life sacrifices as she doggedly pursues her job as a social worker, who's worst fault is that she is just caring too much.
What a strange and interesting storyline
ReplyDeleteI believe that in the midst of litigation, the reality is social workers do not get to 'change their minds' with 'new information.' This is to avoid any accountability for not obtaining the correct information in the first place. This is really the entire case for the Baynes.
ReplyDeleteRemoving children is such a huge infraction of rights that there has to be huge consequences for errors. This is why social workers, with their network of third party agents work so hard for their dollar to generate new facts that support social worker's original decision. This is reality, and more in keeping with the failings of human nature. Greed and power overcomes truth and virtue. The book, the Whores of the Court is a case in point.
Even traffic tickets and drunk driving is moving in the direction that child protection exists now; take away the car and driving privileges FIRST, on only the judgement of a police officer, instead of waiting for court for judges to consider the entire context of evidence THEN assign appropriate punishment. This occurs because of convenience, and ostensibly, safety of others on the road. The punishment is enacted first, making it pointless to go to court to avoid said punishment.
The whole case of the Baynes is about social workers refusing to even look at new information that would result in any 'new judgments.'
Reading about what SHOULD be happening really is pointless and of little value to parents that are currently dealing with MCFD and are recipients of ethically challenged decisions.
Social workers routinely make judgments and decide to refuse home visits, restrict visit times, make restrictive visitation rules and deciding that a CCO would be the best solution for children.
These decisions are said to be made in the best interests of the children and their safety. That is all that needs to be said by social workers as justification. It is their mantra.
When a judge enters the picture and decides in favour of the parent to allow more visitation time, this means the judgment of the social worker is wrong. If the judgment is made without even looking at visitation notes, or requesting to look at same, something fishy is going on. (ie. the judge knows the removal is a sham and throws the parents a bone to appease them. The social workers fake disappointment, but secretly give themselves a high five for getting to keep kids in care for more months).
Again, in the case of the Baynes, the judge has deemed that the foundation of SBS is 'wrong;' the doctor (as in Doctor Colbourne) does not get the final say in determining if an injury is accidental or not. MCFD wants doctors to have the final say because this then relieves them completely of having to find cooberating evidence to support a doctor that might hint that injuries are not accidental.
Since MCFD did not do their homework to obtain additional admissible information, examples include witnesses that saw shaking or other inappropriate parenting activity, their "judgments" based on incomplete information are of little use to the court.
The RCMP made a judgment in favour of the Baynes that social workers do not agree with. Ten doctors do not agree with the one pro-MCFD doctor who happens to be one of the handful in B.C. authorized to make an SBS diagnostic. We have three years of wrong judgments by social workers.
In a protection hearing, the only useful function of a social worker is to bring forward evidence from point A (such as medical reports, psychological testing experts, supervised visit notes), to point B, the courtroom before the judge. Social workers, in theory anyways, do not get to suggest motive to judges.
Today's Social workers do not witness anything because they have such high case loads and rarely witness visits or interactions between children and parents; they leave this to third parties who hire poorly paid workers that produce low quality information.
November 12, 2010 8:04 AM
ReplyDeleteRE SOCIAL WORKER MOVIE / RENE ZELLWEGER MOVIE
That sounds like an attempt to revise the true story of the social worker who adopted and murdered little Logan Marr. I guess this is a way of re-writing history and making Scofield into a saint, when in reality she was a brutal murderer. Not long after adopting Logan Marr, she tied Logan to a chair in the basement and wrapped duct tape around her body and her mouth.
Logan died of asphyxiation, apparently (and no doubt) a terrifying and painful way to go. Her real mom would never have done that, no matter what her shortcomings. Scofield described Logan in a manner which suggested that Logan was demonic, and therefore deserved what she got. Scofield never admitted to the fact she was a brutal murderer.
The true story of a supposedly saintly but in reality brutal social worker can be found on Frontline, though it doesn't go anywhere near far enough in condemning those who deserve to be condemned.
I enjoyed the story of the movie immensely. I think it indicates that the CPS tries to write up the parents as abusive and crazy. Then they apprehend the kids and find that they have special needs or are otherwise difficult to care for. If they were not lacking in respect for the parents, they should then say sorry and let them out of the mental institution. But, they are worried about being sued and try to make the problem go away by killing the child instead. I loved reading this and it made me laugh, especially as many moms are written up by MCFD as being mentally ill, then MCFD tries to get the doctors to agree. In my case, two doctors and one psychiatrist disagreed, so they turned to a psychologist who I am supposed to start seeing next week. HA!!!! I easily got my teenager back as he is hard to take care of. I told the story of 'case 39' to my family and we loved it.
ReplyDelete