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| Jesse Ventura - 'Conspiracy Theory' reality show |
Here is a thought. Conspiracy theories have become a
cultural phenomenon in our century and that is detrimental for the advocates
for meaningful changes to the services of the Ministry of Children and Family
Development in B.C.
Conspiracy theories are viewed with skepticism. This blog
does not concern itself with conspiracy theories with regard to the Ministry of
Children and Families.
The primary Bayne family story on this GPS blog and the
numerous other family stories to which I or commenters occasionally allude are
not fringe conjectures about the ways by which MCFD is doing its job. They are
factual accounts of ways by which MCFD has dealt with parents and families and
children within the purview of child protection.
Following the game seven post game riot in downtown Vancouver,the internet was flooded with the speculations from flaky conspiracy theorists. Now it is probable that early news reports were correct in saying that anarchists and malicious youth came
intentionally to riot and destroy property. Yet these other conspiracy theorists that I mention,
allege that the Vancouver Police Department was responsible for inciting the riot and they also claim and blame
Premier Christy Clark and Mayor Robertson for being involved in the plan and the cover-up.
The purpose ostensibly would be on one hand to profile the police as having done their best, and on the other hand to bring more attention to the city than a
Stanley Cup win could ever accomplish. Preposterous right?
And friends, that craziness is the reason why the way we report
about MCFD is so crucial. If readers view as conspiracy theory, the collective accounts
of parents struggling with MCFD, then the term is being used in a pejorative sense to
categorically reject the claims as misconceived, paranoid and
irrational. Advocating change cannot and must not be relegated to the category
of conspiracy theory because then it is dismissed as the nonsense rhetoric of a
fringe group of protestors. That’s why I urge sticking to the facts rather than
entertaining some people’s notions of an entire Ministry of renegade employees
looking to pad their pockets through the business of taking children and using
them to bump up provincial ministry budget allotments and crowd the courts so
legal reps have never-ending income streams.
There are true operational reasons why MCFD gets failing
marks in so many areas within the recent annual reports of Mary Ellen
Turpel-Lafond, the Representative for Children and Youth. It is that
evidentiary stuff that must undergird the arguments made in a site like this
and in all the presentations that any of us seriously make to the powers that can
bring change. My purpose is certainly not to castigate individuals
but rather to provoke awareness of problem situations and issues requiring
change and to kindle conscience to affect the necessary changes.
Quite right Ron; you don't need a conspiracy theory. There are enough ugly facts out there without having to invent anything. The Bayne case was one in many that illustrated the adversarial culture that prevails in the children's ministry. In their case the director's actions were downright hostile. Do I exaggerate? I remind you that Loren Humeny presented a risk assessment report, signed off by his superiors, that could not find one good thing to say about the Baynes. Even though he knew about their many accomplishments, as he had to admit under cross-examination. What worried me was that the judge did not bat an eye and in his summary judgement, he completely ignored this clear evidence of blatant bias.
ReplyDeleteEnough of that;you have heard it all before, today I want to tell a positive story. Tomorrow I will write about the illusion of caseload size.
I was recently on a cruise and a woman I met was a former foster parent and she told me how she got into it. She had smashed her legs in a car accident and had to use a wheelchair. She and her husband were driving on a country lane near Oxford, when they saw a young girl fall of a bike ahead of them and hurt herself. They stopped the car to comfort her and offered to drive her and her bike home. She told them that she did not have a home, but was temporarily in a child care facility, having been ordered there by the court.
They took her to the care facility and introduced themselves. One thing led to another and first they used to take her on outings and then she spent weekends with them at their small farm.Eventually she lived with them until she grew up. They became an approved home and took in other children--mostly teens. They did this for some years, but eventually they became frustrated with the burgeoning regulations. They were constantly having to make additions to the home and it just became too expensive too continue, so they gave up foster care. A story of love caring and ultimately the total frustration of having to deal with a mindless child welfare bureaucracy. Many excellent foster parents in this province could probably tell the same story. Tell me all you foster home critics. Do you think that a staff who can be so cruel to parents, can suddenly become kind to foster parents? If you do, you should get real. The ministry comes down on foster parents like a ton of bricks at any perceived flaw. As a past consultant to our local foster parents association, I can assure you that they get treated just as badly as anyone else. Hey let's look on the bright side. At least ministry staff don't discriminate.
It seems, from the innumerable stories on parents and foster parents, that MCFD tends to side with or ignore the bad ones, and make trouble for the good ones. I have read and heard quite a few stories about foster parents who did seem to try hard and who did seem to care about the children, but they were treated badly by MCFD. Yet the ones who were truly abusive, got a free ride. Strange, isn't it.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with conspiracy theories. However, there are different ways to sell them, some more constructive than others. "What-If and risk-analysis scenarios are useful to try and predict events and reconstruct past events.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind, the riot could be summed up as simply as the old saying, "idle hands are the devil's tools." There was nothing for the throngs to do except spill out into the city. The malcontents tested the direction of the wind, and found it was favourable to initiate their activities. Paths out of the city back to home were constricted.
There didn't seem to be any plain-clothes police embedded in the crowd to gather intelligence or conduct any covert real-time reporting to those in charge. These sorts of questions need to be asked and the responses reported to the public. How odd it seems to have to depend on publicly supplied video evidence.
The Olympics had a number of concurrent events that went on throughout the games. During that event, there were hot spots in the city where there were attractions and activities.
The fireworks is a single event that has similar numbers of people, but there are no riots, and high police visibility. There is the odd scuffle and drinking that police quickly zero'd in on and quickly squelched. There were police video sites where collected information was later reviewed.
It is clear that publicly-supplied video and photo information has been helpful in tracking down looters and troublemakers. Will this spawn a drive to have cameras installed on every street corner to save on police manpower like the U.K. has? Who knows.
HIndsight with respect to 1994 seems to have been useless. This can be a fact that is easily guessed at. I like facts. There seem to be a lot of opinions, photos, videos, conjecture, but few answers as to why this happened.
The Ministry of Children and Family Development is like a controlled and hidden riot. Few people know of the war this Ministry has declared on our children and their parents. Make no mistake about it, they have declared war for the purposes of looting our children and taxpayer finances. There are casualties in this war with life-lasting injuries. These are trained soldiers taking pot-shots at citizens at random. People who can't shoot back or otherwise defend themselves.
There is no one to reign these bastards in, because they might as well be wearing masks.
The similarity to how child protection works and the riot mentality cannot be mistaken. These people in authority think no one can see what they are doing. There are no cell phone videos. There are no recordings to show proof. They enact laws to prevent gathering of proof. Reports are constructed to hide and obscure facts that would reveal true human suffering.
Even then, the individuals reporting their woes and child protection agent "crime" are portrayed as perpetrators, deemed to have self-interesting in complaining to draw attention away from the fact they have been found guilty of child abuse by appointed child protection police.
Until there is wide-spread outrage to trigger a demand for evidence that can be anonymously submitted in the same way videos and pictures of the riot are being used to convict perpetrators, these child protection vermin will continue to flourish unchecked.
Eventually, these wolves in sheep's clothing will be caught and burned at the stake. (Figuratively speaking of course, although I would not shed a tear if these scourges of humanity were dealt with this way.)
It might not be a conspiracy theory but they sure DO have an agenda;they routinely target those who are not main stream such as homeschoolers, large families, religious, non-vaccinaters, the poor, single mothers, uneducated, families with handicapped kids.etc. they have something against these groups and go after them with a vengeance, making up false accusations as they go along.I suspect the Baynes family falls into one of these groups.
ReplyDeleteMCFD does seem to target families that don't have the sympathy of the liberal portion of the press and populace.
ReplyDeleteYes, I still can't believe I actually got my daughter back. I remember the early days of losing custody and I trekked around The Lower Mainland looking for any lawyer who would help me. Most of them work on couples fighting with each other. Most family law is about that. I did not end up with a very good lawyer. And most people had no idea of what MCFD was all about. It is because it is too strange of a system. THis blog has helped many and only the people who have gone through it can understand as it is too backward of a system to believe. I saw Mary McNeil in the paper today promoting good eating in school children. That is the public image they promote. No one really knows the other side of MCFD. They take kids based on very little proof of harm and they cannot seem to change tracks once they start. THere is no mechanism for saying sorry to the family. I was proven to not have the issues they started my file with. It was proven by a GP, a psychologist and a psychiatrist but still they can't back out. Now it is hard for my SW to close my file, since all they know to do is to say how the parents do in improving the initial issues, not how about if the parents are innocent????
ReplyDeleteA lot of people retire and take up woodworking or golf or anything that might keep them busy.
ReplyDeleteI just thank God that Ron took up this blog instead.
Anon at June 21, 2011 1:35 PM
ReplyDeleteCan you please tell us how you did manage to get your daughter back? Anything you can say might just help one parent reunite.
I had to have a form of Stockholm syndrome and be very nice to all the SWs. I also had the support of my own family GP who has known me for 20 years. She helped me the most. But in the end I was also very lucky since the Baynes have other medical opinions that are filed with the court but they are being ignored. I had a support file that was later re-opened as a protection file. So, when it was time for the therapist I had already known from Family Preservation for 5 years to speak to the psychologist, she had lots of praise for me. I also had been very active as a volunteer for many years in my childrens' school and those people wrote lots of support letters. But, the scary thing is it was all in the hands of the SW and her boss. My mom was very warm to her and it seemed to work. But, it was all just because of that one SW and my methods can not work if the SW does not like the parent. Scary. I think that the system needs to step back and the SW should be made to jump through hoops.
ReplyDelete