I have been openly acknowledging my
understanding that our society, our communities are comprised of all
kinds of people, some nice and some not so nice, healthy people as
well as broken people, calm and angry people, gentle and mean
spirited people, gregarious and lonely people, some who are stellar
and some who behave badly, some who care for others and some who
cannot care for themselves, wealthy people and poor people.
I have acknowledged that our familial
moral and social DNA has compelled us over generations to develop a
consensus to care for those who become troubled or victimized within
a society as complex as ours is. Consequently I have admitted the
need for responsible work with a segment of individuals, families,
children, youth, parents, seniors, women, disabled, you name them.
And to affect that responsible work I have noted that we have chosen
to be governed by some of the 'better' people among us, that is,
motivated, educated, principled people. This is the operational
theory here. We who gain income are taxed and with the hundreds of
millions of dollars that our governors have available, we are
optimistic that the needs of people within our society will be met.
This should be seamless as the government acts as an extension of our
large societal family. This democratic government should be an arm of
our grand family. I have recognized the necessity of standards,
codes, regulations, ordinances, laws and acts to systematize what
together we deem as acceptable behaviour and ethic.
I have even admitted that the tasks
assigned to social workers within this discipline of protecting
children according to the governing acts and laws is thorny,
emotional, complex and difficult. What we are typically exploring and
discovering on this one blog, are the experiences of merely one small
segment of our society, children and parents, who feel that the
government is no longer part of the family, but has become an
overlord, a master. That suggests that those of us unemployed by the
government are subservient. And when it comes to the Ministry of
Children and specifically the child protection division, the parents
who are deemed clients, are in fact anything but clients. They have
usually not voluntarily subscribed to Ministry involvement. They are
people who feel that they are required to become subordinate,
submissive, compliant, cooperative on threat of child removal.
Explore the MCFD website and you will
read adulatory comments about programs and services being provided.
Show me another site where parents, children and families are voluntarily singing
the praises of the Ministry of Children for what they have provided
and how they have enhanced familial life.
Parents who do take advantage of `services` often later have their children taken by MCFD or whatever child protection agency they are subject to. More and more parents are finding out the hard way, that services are not there to help them, but rather to draw them into the child protection web. Once drawn in, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to extricate their children. The children may end up in foster housing, on drugs, and suffering all the horrible consequences of a system which seems designed to create a generation of broken down individuals, who eventually will probably end up on the streets, or in the prisons.
ReplyDeleteEven women who have been in such dire straights as to have to go to women`s shelters have found that seeking such help has made them and their children a victim of the child protection system (once they go to the shelter, they become known to child protection authorities, who then claim that the mother is unfit to be a parent).
So, even when families might think they are being helped by `services,` it can often be just a matter of time before those services turn into something else, and they quickly see the sinister side of MCFD. It might take a day or a year, but once they are on the MCFD radar, it may only be a matter of time before their children are targeted.
Hence, all programs must be suspect, since any program that apprises MCFD of the fact that there are children who may be apprehended or removed (or whatever Orwellian term is now being employed), is not a service, but rather a metaphorical, and sometimes literal, death sentence for the children and parents.
I'm afraid it's true. My 'sister' was having difficulties with her son's anger management while she was going through post-partum. She called looking for some kind of a class they might offer. Instead they took away both of her kids... She never did get a class for her son.
ReplyDeleteThis is not to say that all of the Ministry and social workers are bad. After three years of fighting she finally got a decent social worker who read the file and got angry over the injustices she had done against her and fought to help her get her daughter back.
Alison of the past two posts has written a comment on yesterday's blog and I didn't want you to miss it.
ReplyDeleteAlison said...
Thanks, everyone, for the great comments on this and the previous post. I couldn't say that I fully disagree with any of the comments. I would like to address the questions asked of me, but I will have to wait until I complete my final exams.
One thing I would like to note is that Ray Ferris' comments and advocacy stories exemplify how a good social worker should act, and I've yet to read anything he's written that contradicts what my profs have taught, either in generalist courses or in those specific to child welfare. Thank you for your contribution, Ray.
December 13, 2010 3:09 PM
Try as I might, I have been unable to find accounts of people relaying positive experiences with MCFD. I am still searching. Surely there must be facebook pages, blogs and personal websites of social workers who are proud of what they do.
ReplyDeleteI certainly must concur with the first poster, Anon 8:34 AM. Over a ten year period I've experienced and heard too many people that say the same thing; that MCFD gathers, sifts out good information and allows bad information to accumulate until an opportunity arises to utilize this old data so it can justify an 'intervention,' which is typically a removal and lengthy stay in foster care.
At that point, MCFD forces unwanted "services" (which are really disguised as low grade examination for discoverys) down 'client's' throats.
The one comment above by Anon 11:31AM who mentions a 'decent social worker' should endeavour to publish some of these encounters so we can have some examples of exemplary social work.
Don't get me wrong, the social workers I have met are not overtly 'mean', impolite, they don't yell or swear or being derogatory in any way, it is more akin to chinese water torture where the accumulation of a lot of individual little things that accumulate which is done deliberately to wear down families.
Vealed threats made for the purpose of introducing stress, such as hints of removing the Baynes unborn child can serve to worry parents for months. Very insidious.
Kids in care not equipped to deal with tactics to zap their moral and self esteem such as bad haircuts, termination of activities, separation from siblings, being fed foods they hate and cannot choose, being fed sugared cereals, an unlimited diet of video games and TV - examples of bad parenting deliberately applied to accomplish a purpose, to create long term cash-cow clients who will reproduce future MCFD victims.
MCFD social workers are indeed socially re-engineering those few they come into contact with. Until one experiences the process and sees the effect on your own children, it is hard to fathom the depravity of what these protection workers do.
The word "government" was mentioned 4 times in today's blog.
ReplyDelete"This should be seamless as the government acts as an extension of our large societal family. This democratic government should be an arm of our grand family."
Let's hear what the Bible says about government in 1 Samuel (8:7-20). In particular, I quoted:
"He (the king or government in modern term) will take your fields and your vine-gardens and your olive-gardens, all the best of them, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of the fruit of your vines and give it to his servants."
Note "give it to his servants". How appropriate to describe the government we now have, except that it is taking much more than 10%. Our tax dollars are generously given to those (civil servants) who oppress us.
Government is not, and will not be, an arm of our grand family.
On Dec 8, 2010 (Part 392), Ron asked: "What unseen forces exist within the system that compel the worker to compromise the ideals with which the career began?"
I shared my insight on Dec 12, 2010 citing 2 Corinthians (11:14) supported by a Nazi example which were both deleted. Today, I quote
"For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 6:12)
It delivers the same message and I hope that this will meet the approval of Ron who seems to have an unique of government.
Sorry, I missed the word "view" in the last sentence of my previous submission.
ReplyDelete"... have an unique view of government."
Mr Anon of 11:33 PM
ReplyDeleteIf you and I and others can deliver our anti-child removal or MCFD critical messages just as well using analogies and terms that do not require the outlandish references to Nazi Germany and other atrocities, then the comments stay. I am weary of the other nonsense. As horrible as the Baynes' experience is, it does not approach the insidiousness of Naziism so I am weary of that. You are correct, I did remove two sentences from your recent post. You have done well to express your viewpoint today. Start quoting the Bible and you enter my domain. So permit me to qualify your comment because you said I have a unique view of government. I don't think that I do. Contrary to what you say about 1 Samuel 8:7-20 that is not what God thinks about government. It is what God thought about Israel's request to have a king over them. God was their King. He delegated his ruling authority through godly judges until this moment in time. Samuel was the most recent judge. This governance had been highly successful. Israel's populace agitated for a king for no other reason than that they could be like other nations. That's when Samuel told them what would be the negative aspects of having a king. In our western world we have witnessed evil monarchs here and there and opted for a democracy, a government for and by the people. That's why I made the point that theoretically our government and its agencies should be the natural extension of us when it governs. That's my ordinary rather than unique expectation of democratic government. However, when segments of the population begin to have rights stripped from them and invasions, interruptions of those freedoms, the kind that you know personally, then we feel that our version of democracy has morphed into a tyranny or a mastery. In quoting from Ephesians 6:12 it is inaccurate to assume that this first century reference is directly associated with MCFD. Rather, the verse looks behind today's actual events. The verse assumes other forces, unseen, spiritual influences and makes this point, that inhuman acts of men and women toward fellow human beings is inspired from a source other than human. The thinking is that the same wicked power(s) that fight against God in extra-terrestrial places manipulate humanity on earth as a means of warring against God. Mr. Anon, even tho I respond like this, you we have more in common than we have things that separate us, so I am with you in focusing on the the true purpose of our advocacy.
Yes, it is like being killed by a 100 knives, each person just makes one cut and each false statement is only one false statement, but accumulatively, it kills a family.
ReplyDelete