It is to these that I direct some questions which I believe to be appropriate and relevant to good child protection work. They are questions that the child protection workers should ask in each and every case to which they are assigned.
1. What is my distinctive role in this child's life? In other words, why am I here? Why this question? Because the social worker has a distinct aptitude, role and responsibility that is different from that of the police officer or teacher. Those people with other skill sets and professions are not social workers. So, why am I involved in this case?
2. What am I observing and to what am I listening as I monitor this case, this family, and the interplay of family members? What can I smell or perceive that may call for a possible assessment and inform that assessment. What dangers are apparent or what hygiene issues meet my eye?
3. Are there other workers who have been involved in this case? If there were some others, what were their observations and what do the case files already indicate? Can other workers assist my understanding with relevant information?
4. If I decide that there is cause for concern in this case, what are the things that I believe require change in order to relieve the concern? What action plan transparent to all the adults involved, can result in the best outcome and what time frame is best?
What do you think of those questions? Oh, are you saying a very loud DUHHH!!
Are you thinking that most social workers are already asking questions such as these rather instinctively? Apparently not all! Not all social workers have thought this way consistently, otherwise a family such as the Baynes would not have endured an entire year without their children, and then a second year and a third. Now they are in their fourth year of separation, children from parents, children in foster care, parents seeking in every way to demonstrate their parental capacity. In the past 3.5 years any plan to which this Ministry alludes has been haphazard, combative, and in violation of the good intent of the operating policy. Perhaps in these next several weeks the Ministry of Children can demonstrate good judgement because some new case workers are in charge and enough time has passed and the case is of such a high profile nature that continued maltreatment will be ill advised.
Ron; as usual you provoke thought in your own unique way. Four questions, or forty. Social workers should ask themselves many questions. I can think of dozens, but first and foremost, I think there need to be questions about integrity, courage and ethics. One cannot do constructive work in child protection, or any other branch of social work, without having intelligence, integrity, compassion, courage, knowledge and a strong ethical framework. When we look at the Bayne case and many other similar cases, we simply do not see any of these qualities shining through. Not one person, the director, the social workers or the supervisors seemed to have the integrity to say "suppose we are mistaken and the Baynes never hurt their child? What dreadful injustice have we wrought?" Had they paused to ask this question, how could they possibly have waged the relentless campaign for a continuing care order? How could they sleep at night?
ReplyDeleteSo the first question needs to be about what the self-concept as a professional is to be, what is to be my philosophy. When this is resolved, the answer to the other questions will be found. No they will not be found without struggle toil and salty tears, but they will surely be found.
I would like to continue with the theme of evidence based social work. There was only one piece of evidence based on fact in the Bayne case. The child Bethany sustained a head injury resulting in a subdural haematoma. (Brain bleed.) Nobody disputed it. Another fact was that despite the repeated concerns of the parents, the diagnosis was inexcusably missed by different doctors. This did more damage. The whole case then became about whether the injury was accidental or non-accidental. From this point on factual evidence went out of the window and the whole case was based on opinion, rumour and junk psychology.
The ministry case rested almost entirely on the opinion of one paediatrician, who asserted that the injury must have been through shaking. If this opinion became untenable, then the whole of the ministry case collapsed. Early on in the case, the judge ruled that cause of injury could not be determined from medical symptoms alone. This view was repeatedly reinforced by defence medical experts. Right then and there the judge had scotched the director's case. In spite of this, he allowed the case to drag on for months and tolerated every time wasting tactic by the director and his counsel. Incredibly after months of deliberation, he ruled that the child had not been shaken, but still managed to find a feeble rationale to make a protection finding.
Suppose he had simply said that there was no proof of risk and ordered the children returned. That would make the director look like a monster for having dragged the family through the muck for three years. What a waste of resources, money and what cruelty on the family. What would it have said about the judge's own role in letting this drag on for three to four years? He failed to try to make sure that the time lines in the act were followed. He failed to control the huge time wastage in court taken by dross evidence. He failed to control the time wastage by the director's counsel. He buried his nose in process and failed to protect the children. His protection finding was blatantly self-serving. at the end he ducked out of his judicial responsibilities and foisted them on a psychologist.
Regarding your question #3:
ReplyDelete"Are there other workers who have been involved in this case? If there were some others, what were their observations and what do the case files already indicate? Can other workers assist my understanding with relevant information?"
I would add, what are the assumptions other workers have made about this person/this family? Are those assumptions accurate? Are they based on direct, observable evidence?
Child care workers are prejudiced, because they work for a private corporations, that needs to inflate their figures by all means to get funding from the government. The problem here is that your government has abandoned you in this very sensitive social issue. Private corporations like CAS would hire unskilled workers and encourage them to get as many children as possible into their care, to boost public funding. Private corporations are here to make money, not to create a healthy society.
ReplyDeleteA politically castrated society like the Canadian society deserves this kind of treatment.