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| Sample children, ready to achieve their dreams - carefree & happy |
These three children, the three about whom I have been writing for over one year, the three children who were born to Paul and Zabeth Bayne will be engaged in the future of our country. In some way they will find a place. They will be educated. They will love and be loved. They will choose careers. They will perhaps make a significant and positive mark on a community in this country.
Their formative years are far from exhausted quite yet. The truth is that three of those years have been squandered in unnecessary disorder, bewildering confusion as a matter of fact. Even the two boys, the eldest of the three siblings hardly know what normalcy is. Or at least the definition for normality has been written by a government agency that flipped them around for a while into different foster homes. The little boys into whose lives their sister had come only briefly when they were almost too small to understand, and then she left (was taken) when she was only weeks old, didn't see her again until this past year when she joined them in one foster home. There is still time for their lives to be shaped well, influenced effectively, nurtured lovingly.
How can immature minds cope with this invasion of life and of memory development? How do they process living in one place most of the week and visiting mommy and daddy twice per week? Do they differentiate the affections they must surely have for both foster care givers and mommy and daddy? As they go to school, do they experience thoughts and feelings of being different from other children?
A boy who was three years old, is now six. A girl who was weeks old, is now three years of age. And all the while Paul and Zabeth have grown ever more stoic. I watched the emotion pour from them in year one and year two. They wept. They still do cry but what you see most of the time is a determination not to be crippled emotionally by a government agency that has completely lost its way in this case. Sure this is merely one region of the Ministry of Children but similar cases are occurring elsewhere.
These young lives will be shaped well, influenced effectively and nurtured lovingly in their own parental home with their mommy and daddy. That is the way it must be. A prudent MCFD regional staff would see that and advocate that. It would relinquish this commitment to an irresponsible risk assessment, would acknowledge the quality character of these two parents, would surrender the control of these children's lives to these parents and let them get on with the business of living and growing up and being happy. This is not too much to ask. It is simply too much to expect from this outfit that has pressed this matter all the way to a court decision three years after the presenting incident.
What will these children become?
Hello Ron;today I want to tell you another tale from my advocacy files. When I started to look through them, I began to realise how many of them were about abuse of foster parents by the ministry. Kim Dupont, foster parent advocate could tell you many more.
ReplyDelete4 Mr and Mrs H. had taken 13 foster children over a nine-year period. Some of these were very difficult children and they stayed varying lengths of time according to the need. They got on well with several workers and when the workers did bother to getting around to doing appraisals they were most supportive to the home. They had one lad who had been with them for some years. B. had been in a mental health facility and had been placed from there in a special care foster home at special rates. A social worker had asked Mr and Mrs H. to take him for a few days to give the regular home some respite. The home never took him back and he was left with Mr. H. indefinitely, but not at special rates. They also had a sixteen year old boy who had been placed a year before and had a long history of family disruption and disrupted schooling. He was now stable and attending school regularly and working up to his abilities. An R.C.M.P. constable was investigating a crime and suspected B. of having done it. He sent a letter to the area manager stating that B. had done the crime and the Mr. and Mrs. H. were deliberately impeding his investigation. The area manager immediately ordered the home closed down. B. was away in Alberta visiting relatives at the time. The area manager called the foster parents into the office for a meeting and while they were there she sent a social worker round to the house to remove the other boy. The lad refused to go as he was happy there. When his foster parents returned, they advised the boy to go with the social worker. They were confident that it was all a huge mistake and he would soon be back with them. Dream on. The removal of this boy was a direct contravention of the Act, which was subsequently admitted by the regional manager, but brushed off as a technicality. After all she had approved the strategy!! It subsequently turned out that somebody completely different was convicted of the crime, but by this time it did not matter. The home was no good anyway and never had been any good and would not be re-opened. The local branch of the foster parents association was horrified at the appalling treatment of this home and tried to advocate for them. They asked me in as a consultant. I wrote a letter to the parents and the association, in which I strongly criticised the manager for breaching protocol, policy and the law. I also pointed out that her actions had been reactive and unprofessional, when she allowed one letter from a policeman, which was based on a mistaken assumption, to wipe out years of trust by the social workers. I suggested the parents and association ask the deputy minister to order a general practice audit in the region. The Association did make the request, but it never took place. The icing on the cake was that the Regional Director filed an ethics complaint against me with the Registrar of Social Workers on the grounds of "misleading a vulnerable client."
We know what will become of too many foster children - they will end up addicted to drugs, homeless, incarcerated and suicidal / dead. This will not happen to the Bayne children, however, because they will be returned to their family, where they belong. In the care of their loving family, they will thrive, and will probably grow up to have a strong sense of justice, and perhaps chose to work in a field where they can ensure that this never happens to other innocent families.
ReplyDeleteAnother CAPP document to follow up from the GPS post 162 (April 9, 2010).
ReplyDelete54 pages - CAPP Description and Update (6/10)
http://www.mcf.gov.bc.ca/about_us/pdf/transformation_update_2010-06.pdf
10 pages - CAP Implementation plan (3/10)
http://www.mcf.gov.bc.ca/about_us/pdf/implementation_plan.pdf
The focus appears to be on CCO kids.