Please tell your friends to read this blog on a regular basis, to become interested in the cause represented here.Ask them to JOIN THE CONVERSATION.
Help the Conversation by Promoting, Listening and Speaking Out.
GPS has over 145,000 hits so far, sometimes 1,000 per day. Some of you envision a movement of ordinary people with a voice loud enough to demand that legislators and government representatives will listen and respond with changes to the way the best interests of children is understood and administered in this province.
Yes of course, this particular GPS blog is dedicated to the return of three children to Paul and Zabeth Bayne. Yet the blog has become more than their story. It has become a story telling forum and a comment platform for countless other people.
In griping initially, I realized that the developing concerns that I had about child welfare and child protection in particularly, at least the way I saw it operative with respect to the Baynes, was more than a single family issue. Hundreds of families have been struggling to recover children from a Ministry that is so powerfully endorsed and equipped and bureaucratic that the Ministry work is invariably adversarial. It could and should be far more grace and compassion oriented. If it were it would evoke responses in kind from clients rather than the vitriolic reaction of helpless parents and the anguished cries of desperate children.
We are within weeks of learning whether the Baynes' hopes of a reestablished family will become a reality. It has been slightly over three years since the children were removed. I will be sure to let you know when the ruling is delivered. In the meanwhile, other sympathetic parents and suffering parents, and supporters, and advocates for change, and Ministry employees, and journalists and interested readers are stopping by at this blog as at so many others. Perhaps a movement can develop, an exponential swelling of genuine concerns to improve services to families and children and parents that is articulated well enough that our government, whoever forms it in the next election, cannot and will not want to ignore. invite others to JOIN THE CONVERSATION - Perhaps we can be the Transformation
What is really needed is a Wiki-Leaks version for child protection. It should be mandatory to public child protection chambers proceedings where the names of only the parents and children are blacked out, and the names of social workers and judges and lawyers are left in. The public only needs to be concerned that the process proves they should have confidence in the system.
ReplyDeleteMCFD in the Baynes case are essentially behaving quite well compared to what other parents experience, and I suspect this is because of publicity and this blog.
A caller told me of their recent encounters in court where a JUDGE was reluctant just to FILE a supervision order arrived at through mediation. The matter ended up being adjourned.
The judge apparently went on a bit of a rampage and was questioning whether the father would 'follow' the agreement. This judge went further and took the liberty of extrapolating on a negative incident relayed by a social worker to justify concerns. Even the MCFD lawyer was put off by this display.
There were a number of other lawyers in attendance, and they just shook their heads in disbelief. It is practically unheard of that a agreement arrived at by mediation for a supervision order is deemed unacceptable by a judge.
What is needed is real time commentary on the conduct of individuals that are paid by the public so that they know their words are being read and their actions are subject to being published. Then perhaps these individuals might temper their conversations with parents with the knowledge such soundbites might come back to haunt them in years following when it comes time for promotion (or indictment).
Forcing people to spend hundreds of dollars on a few pages of court transcript is a real barrier to justice. With speech recognition technology at the state it is now, transcription costs should be significantly less than they are.
I should point out that it is immensely useful and validating to see someone like Ray Ferris publishing his advocacy stories which relay challenges from the perspective of a social worker. These mesh with parents experiences, and it can help them formulate responses during intervention periods.
"Forcing people to spend hundreds of dollars on a few pages of court transcrpt is a real barrier to justice."
ReplyDeleteYes, it is. I could be worse. What if court transcripts are created by the judges' hand themselves? They may choose to record or not record or misrecord their questions, the lawyers answers, the witness answers. And then that document also costs plenty over and under the table to get at. That is where I live just to add perspective. Neither system seems to be able to deliver justice consistently anyhow. That comes from wisdom ABOVE, which is slowly but surely being erased from Canadian minds and hearts, psyche's and law books.