Frankly I don't know what it costs to
fight the MCFD to regain custody of your children once they have
been apprehended by the Ministry. I know that it has cost the Baynes
very much. They had a home and property. Zabeth had a grand piano.
That all became tinder in the inferno of conflict for which the
Ministry has unlimited monetary ammo.
A number of you will be able to tell me
how much it has cost you. And the horrible truth is that in most
cases the apprehension is for temporary care. Yet in order to
establish your ability and stability as a parent it will cost you
money, which is so frequently that of which the parents have the
least.
The entailed costs are customarily
legal fees paid to a lawyer who knows the protocol and the legalese
to converse in court and advise you about next steps. The truth is
that the parents usually cannot afford the battle. (Look at the terms
I am forced to use to describe this, “fight' and “battle”. )
Then there are other complications for
these parents. The BC provincial shelter allowance policy is flawed
because some parents require this to care for their family but when
the children are removed even for temporary care, part of these
monies is held back. The Ministry of Housing and Social Development
(MHSD) cuts it off immediately, or at the end of three months,
depending on the discretion of social workers assigned to the case.
The dispiriting result is that parents are sometimes unable to retain
their present housing and then the home to which they move is
substandard and is not fit for children. Well guess what, the the
Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) is charged with
helping parents safely receive their children back from temporary
care, so when SWs advise the dropping of the shelter allowance, there
is a significant contradiction happening here as in so many other
areas of MCFD practice.
And then what? Well, the MCFD objective
no longer is the return of the children to parents in that case.
Even in the cases where parents of
children in care are granted a three month extension of the shelter
allowance, that amount of time is inadequate for resolving the issues
that MCFD has with the parents. Delays in process within child
welfare and the courts are so common that before one knows it, six
months, a year, eighteen months have gone by. Only the deprived
parents and their children care. If it is a single parent, a mom on
income assistance, just think how difficult it is for her to find
housing. She cannot have her children back without good housing. It
typically takes two to three years to locate adequate housing. It's
around 35% of children taken into care that come from families
receiving income assistance and get this, the majority are Aboriginal
or single mother families.
With regard to MCFD, Family reunification should be this
government’s number one priority. The Liberal Party over the past
number of years has not prioritized this, has not funded it and
therefore MCFD has diminished staff and resources and increased
caseloads and a backed up court schedule has guaranteed that children
will stay emotionally and psychologically disoriented within a foster
care system for much longer than is either necessary or humane. I guarantee that unless some of you put this to Liberal and NDP party candidates they will not even be thinking about child welfare and protection and family unity.
This Blog has been advocating the return of three children to their biological parents, Paul and Zabeth Bayne, for which a ruling is expected from Judge Crabtree no later than January 19th. Stay posted.
Another unexpected cost is employment. There are the many meetings, appointments for psychological evaluation, monitored visitations - of which an employer may accept initially, temporarily and occasionally. In our case, after months of meetings planned well in advance, we got a call at work from the social worker. It seems that she was in a meeting with a Child Psychologist that we were supposed to be in attendance at. She virtually screamed into the speaker phone that we had missed ANOTHER meeting and that there was no excuse as she had the fax transmittal to prove that she had issued an invitation to attend. Aaaahhh - it all became clear. This was for the Child Psychologist's benefit. No meetings had been missed within the past year. And every meeting had received a written acknowledgement of attendance. But it did mean leaving work unexpectedly and for an undetermined amount of time. Your work begins to suffer and you become considered to be unreliable. Not many jobs can endure this strain.
ReplyDeleteThanks Anon Jan 9:08 AM
ReplyDeleteFor social workers taking a look at this blog site and these remarks, does an over the phone outburst by a social worker regarding a missed appointment disturb you too? Can you explain it? Is it peculiar to that social worker's personal life situations or temperament? Are you aware of overbearing treatment of parents by social work colleagues? The training surely does not include taking control of all situations by aggressive intimidating behaviour, does it?
It costs a lot, because a person is fighting with all their resources that they can muster. If they have savings, they are used, jobs are not in rythmn with the scheduled visitations, they are left. The ministry requires onerous appointments that are not in rthymn with keeping a job. They are insensitive to all this and keep saying that if you care about your kids, you will do this.
ReplyDeleteKids are placed for free (MCFD won't pay for it) with kith and kin. THat is a popular program because it gives the appearance of taking the child out of a supposedly bad situation, and does not cost the government anything.
The test is when the child needs medically necessary dental work that MCFD does not want to pay for, and then they try to give back the child if they are older.
So it is very contrary, they try to hold onto babies the most, but do not want to fund teenagers.
I wonder how many "wealthy" families have had their children removed,or have been bullied. I mean surely they can afford to fight the MCFD. Or is it just the ones who struggle day to day to make ends meet.(the majority I'm sure) Just a thought I'd put out there.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not MCFD is targeting poor people who cannot properly defend themselves is a question worth asking. There was a note I believe in one of the Pivot reports that said poor families do not equate to higher incidence of child protection.
ReplyDeleteIf there are 30,000 calls yearly, a demographic study would indeed be useful. I have often thought that anyone who applies for housing, welfare, and child tax benefits or legal aid, would make it easy for MCFD to then estimate family income. Anyone who goes on welfare results in a notification to MCFD.
If you apply for any financial subsidies from the government, MCFD can then derive household income. Ministries are not supposed to have access to your tax returns. If your children are removed, family allowance is immediately cut off, so it stands to reason they would know how much was cut off, because this helps offset foster care costs.
I know of no MCFD data collection efforts regarding household salary. I wonder if MCFD has access to census information. I don't even recall being asked where I worked, I just said I worked at home to prevent the possibility of calls to my workplace.
I recall the Rahman's case (also an SBS case), they appeared to be very well funded. I would estimate their ordeal was extremely expensive.
The best way to estimate costs to parents is to get time statistics from courthouses, as they track appearances to the minute with their tape logs. Another way to track costs is to find out payment information to service providers, supervision, parenting course / counselling, and psychologists etc.
The Love of Money is the root of all evil, so it is said. Track how MCFD spends their time and money, and one should start to get a better idea of where their collective head is at.
I used to draw data flow and data volume maps for TCP/IP and IVR/Voice networks. What is needed is a similar map for how money flows in various Provinces child protection efforts. One cannot make sweeping statements associated with financial motivations until a good deal of study is done to validate suspicions.