It might be argued that Paul and Zabeth Bayne had the option back in 2007 and 2008 and 2009 to negotiate with the Hope crew of the MCFD but that they chose not to do so. That is not wholly accurate. Their case was distressed from the start. Their baby girl was admitted to hospital with injuries that caused suspicion of abuse. Paul and Zabeth were accused of an horrific act – harming their own infant daughter. The Director was reliant upon and then committed to a pediatrician's diagnosis of non accidental injury. That commitment was shared by the social workers who serviced this case and it affected every effort at interaction with the Baynes. The Baynes perceived that they were under unrelenting pressure to acknowledge a measure of responsibility for the dangerous injuries from which the baby's body battled for recovery and discerned no sincere offer by MCFD to negotiate anything.
One glimpse at mediation appeared in 2009. A brief window of supervised parental contact with the two boys in the grandparents' home, lasted only briefly before it was shockingly ended following the Baynes' televised interview with media. Social workers arriving with police support during one of the boy’s birthday parties and apprehending these two small lads seemed then to be cruel and to many observers as retaliatory. What is overlooked is that the Baynes agreed to the taped TV interview before they learned that they would be allowed supervised care of the boys and some days later the telecast aired and MCFD reacted as though the mediated agreement had been breached.
Then the Director's determination to process his strong belief in the Baynes' liability, unreliability and risk probability resulted in the application for a Continuing Care Order, which went to court and used up one more year of these formative children and family years. We all know now that Judge Crabtree threw out the shaken baby syndrome diagnosis which was the foundation for all that the Director has done to withhold these children from their parents. Yet Judge Crabtree concluded that the mystery of Bethany's injuries was still not resolved adequately for him and that therefore some level of risk still applied to a return of this child to her parents. He ventured an arbitrary percentage of risk, 10%. That seemed less than judicial to many of us. Might it not have been reasoned that 90% non-risk supports a return of the children to Zabeth and Paul? Perhaps Judge Crabtree was thinking that way as he left the children in care for another three months and clearly hinted that the Baynes must use this interval to engage in the kind of mediation interaction that can award to them, the restoration of their family. Perhaps in this additional stress-filled time he was providing an opportunity to reduce even that last guessed-at 10% of risk. Some other families have been regenerated after these extended separations. We all still hope that this will be true for the Bayne Family during the next two to three months. Then it will have been almost four years.
The person who sets up mediation guidelines between parents and the children's ministry must be so clever that they can find convincing guidelines for mediation between the wolf and the lamb.
ReplyDeleteMediation does not belong in legislation, where it can be turned into just one more weapon against the parents and used to deny parents their day in court. Mediation belongs in professional guidelines and should be in the basic training of social workers and especially child protection workers. Mediation should spring from ethics, compassion and understanding.
A blogger mentioned suggested lines of inquiry for the auditor-general. Something more specific would be to find out how much money the ministry is spending each year on lawyers and how it compares with previous years. How much the ministry is spending on psychologists and how that compares. Also how much time and money is spent on training and retraining social workers and how that compares with the other two costs.