WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?

A final word from Ray Ferris today who has written for the past four days. I trust you have appreciated his insights into the machine that is MCFD operations and practice. Some people get chewed up in the gears. It would be nice if the power could be turned off while the service is upgraded. 

Here's Ray,

"Today I will mention another couple of things coming out of the J.P. case. You may have noticed that I went into detail about complicated the process for handling cases appears to be and how many people are involved in a relatively simple piece of work. It’s simple if the person handling it has any skills in interviewing, assessment and evidence, but it’s difficult it’s and error prone if the intake workers are green and under-trained. It becomes even worse if they are incapable of exhibiting judgement. Not only that, they can only report to a team leader who again goes through a process. If there are more than one intakes on one case, a different worker may handle it each time and each one may assess the situation differently. Anyway, even if an intake worker does show good judgement, it makes no difference, because a rigid set of processes must be followed and no deviation can be allowed. This obviously consumes a great deal of duplication by people and of work that is wasteful and unnecessary. Why does this happen?

LODGING A COMPLAINT AGAINST THE MINISTRY OF CHILDREN

If you have a complaint to lodge about or against the Ministry of Children and Family Development, or the Child Protection branch, or a specific ministry official, or a court case or decision, then read this for some pointers. It’s Ray Ferris again, writing. He knows what he’s talking about.

“I will make one last point on today’s blog. If you complain about a court case to any ministry official you will always get the same stock reply. 1. They cannot discuss a case that is before the court. 2. They cannot interfere with the court process and influence a judge. Both these statements are nonsense and I will tell you why. It is true that they cannot tell a judge what to do, but they control what goes into the court and what they choose to tell a judge and what to conceal. They are notorious laggards when it comes to making the required disclosures under section 64. The guidelines stress that the hearings on young children must be completed in a timely manner. Both directors and judges seem to forget all about these guidelines when everything is delayed due to lack of disclosure. Yes the director is very successful at influencing the court; so don’t let them tell you otherwise. Likewise under section 48 a director can withdraw from the case at any time after a presentation hearing. All they have to do is to appear and withdraw and to file a written report giving the reasons. The reasons don’t have to make any sense, because only the paper and the signature matter. To the bureaucrat only process matters and content is nether matter. Even after 65 days of hearings, the judge has no choice but to allow the withdrawal.”

RAY IS THE AUTHOR OF 'THE ART OF CHILD PROTECTION.'

THE LAW PROTECTS REGIONAL DIRECTORS OF MCFD

Ray Ferris is picking up where he left off yesterday.

“One thing you have to understand. The law protects regional directors from political interference and it also protects them from accountability. The minister is powerless to interfere with their decisions. The deputy minister also usually stays out of it. All they can do is fire a directors or promote them out of harm’s way, but they cannot overrule. The provincial head honcho was a guy called Ross Dawson. He embarrassed the government by refusing to heed the advice of a watchdog called the children’s commissioner who used his privilege of going public. The minister could not overrule him, so then premier Usal Dosanjh took over. He passed a special order in council removing Dawson as director for that case only and appointing someone else, who obliged with a more sensible decision. After that they did away with the top job and returned all power to the regional directors. Of course one of the first things the liberals did when they came to power was to scrap all the watchdog branches of government. Also when they eventually initiated the current re

THE CHILD PROTECTION PROCESS IN B.C - A CHART

http://resources.lss.bc.ca/pdfs/pubs/Child-Protection-Process-in-British-Columbia-flow-chart-eng.pdf

HOW THE MINISTRY OF CHILDREN FUNCTIONS AND MALFUNCTIONS

Today’s entry is a continuation of yesterday’s guest posting by Ray Ferris, when he commented on Justice Paul Walker’s stunning judgement. He picks it up once more.

“Yesterday I wrote about the Walker judgement. Today I continue with some other lessons to be learned from this case. One reason why this case is important is because it is a good object lesson in how the children’s ministry functions and malfunctions. It can be viewed as a staff performance evaluation of the ministry, because it assesses competence at many levels. It does this either directly or by strong implication. If this were a staff performance evaluation it would compel remedial training at every level. These high profile cases are always governed from on high. Can you imagine that the local director could spend the millions that this case cost and other cases have cost without the top brass being involved? No you can’t and neither can I.

I want to give you a bit of history on how the top child welfare bureaucrats have functioned and how they function today. In the early days the legislature considered child welfare to be so important that they appointed an official who reported directly to the legislature and had statutory powers that were not controlled by the deputy minister or the minister. One of the first of these was the superintendent of child welfare, called Ruby McKay. She was beautiful, feisty and knowledgeable. She was a fearless fighter for children’s rights. She provided staff with leadership, inspiration and informative seminars. Staff was still under the normal command hierarchy, but they were accountable to the superintendent for child welfare matters. This situation continued until a very controlling deputy minister found a way of ousting the superintendent and appointing himself in that role as well as being deputy minister.

Then the law got changed. The legislature in its wisdom granted all power in child welfare matters to the regional directors. This was to protect them from undue political interference. However, the legislature in its innocence failed to consider that some of these directors might be incompetent clots and should be held accountable. These directors were, in theory, answerable to a head bureaucrat, but he usually rubber-stamped their decisions. When some nasty cases got bad publicity for the ministry, the top guy had to take the heat. Eventually he made a very dumb decision and embarrassed the government. Then they did away with the top child welfare official and returned all power to the regional directors. That way the top brass could not be embarrassed.

One thing you have to understand. The law protects regional directors from political interference and it also protects them from accountability. (Read more tomorrow)

Ray Ferris is a retired child-protection worker and the author of The Art of Child Protection.

JUSTICE PAUL WALKER STUNNING JUDGEMENT

JOURNALIST IAN MULGREW

Ray Ferris is a personal friend and more importantly he is an ally to people who are helpless at the hands of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. I welcome his occasional blog contributions here. Ray Ferris is a retired child-protection worker and the author of The Art of Child Protection. TODAY he writes about the judgement that came down recently from Mr. Justice Paul Walker. Believe us, this judgement has shock waves through the MCFD bureaucracy. Ray will speak to that today.

Also, columnist Ian Mulgrew gave a detailed account of the judgement and a link to the shocking judgement. Vancouver Sun article entitled, Ian Mulgrew:   Children’s ministry sided with sexually abusive father, court finds Ministry decided mother lied about abuse, then seized children and gave dad unsupervised access

Here is what Ray has to say today.
“The children’s ministry removed all the children from the mother with no factual evidence. The children were kept from her during a court case lasting three years and 65 days of hearings. On the 65th day the director withdrew from the case on the grounds that they no longer thought that the case was viable. The mother was bankrupt and in debt. She would have been helpless had it not been that her lawyers continued to represent her when she ran out of money. A lot of parents just have to give up when they can no longer pay a lawyer. There are not many like Doug Christie and Jack Hittrich in the ranks of law. One of the reasons that the social workers and their superiors can pursue cases beyond all reason is because they know that they can outgun most parents with money for lawyers.

In this case the judge ruled against the director and against the father and for the mother.

Reasonable Doubt: Coercion and the loss of all Privacy if you're a parent

I paste this here with gratitude to Straight.com online news source

Laurel Dietz practices family law and criminal defence with Dogwood Law Corporation in Victoria, B.C. She takes issue with aspects of Ministry of Children and Family Development work when it is deserving of criticism. Here is a legal voice affirming what many parents have sought to say before but have sounded like cranks. Perhaps some authorities may pay attention to MCFD operations and recognize the need for holistic changes.

Reasonable Doubt: Coercion and the loss of all privacy if you’re a parent

by LAUREL DIETZ on AUG 16, 2013 at 11:20 AM

Laurel Dietz is one of the writers of Reasonable Doubt.

"I HAVE SPENT the majority of my career practicing criminal law. I was well versed in Charter rights that protect people from state intrusions on people’s privacy. In fact, I have written extensively over the past two years on this topic in this column. 

So nothing prepared me for what I was to encounter when I packed it all in, moved back to Vancouver Island, and opened my own shop offering services in many different areas including family law. 

What I have quickly learned is that in family disputes involving the state, as a parent, you have no expectation of privacy: no expectation of privacy in your body, no expectation of privacy in your home.

787 DAYS SINCE SHE WAS TAKEN FROM HER FAMILY

This is the girl.
Ayn is her name.
Isn't she a lovely looking girl?
And she is a sweet girl. Her dad and mom love her dearly. So do her two brothers love her. But she has not lived at her family home for over two years, 787 days as of today.

I've written many posts about her since I learned about her in July 2011.
She was removed from her father's care in June 2011.
You must know the story by now. Ayn has a neural developmental disorder known as autism. Autism affects people in different ways to differing degrees. It is one of the recognized disorders within the autism spectrum (ASDs).

Autism can impair social interaction and verbal and non-verbal communication, and may also be manifested by repetitive or stereotyped behaviour. Simply put, autism affects information processing in the person's brain. That explains why Ayn climbed from a treehouse, over a tall fence that surrounded the back yard, and wandered away to explore. That is a concern of course. I don't minimize that. In fact her father looked frantically for her and when he couldn't locate her, he called the police. A search that even involved a helicopter surveillance located her in a neighbour's backyard three hours later. Ayn was returned to her grateful father. That's where the episode should have concluded.

Police do dialogue with the Ministry of Children and Family Development in situations like this, and then MCFD is compelled to conduct an inquiry. Admittedly I am not privy to Ayn's case file. I have no idea what data about her or her family was already contained within that file at the time of this incident. I cannot tell you why the decision was made to have two social workers come to Ayn's father, Derek, shortly after the incident and present him with a voluntary release form which he was asked to sign, allowing them to remove Ayn from him, temporarily. They suggested that the course of action was in his interest because he appeared overwhelmed with the care of three children, two of whom are autistic.

Derek was enraged. He didn't want to sign a form that allowed someone else to take possession of his child. What kind of request is that? He was responsible. He was the primary caregiver for all three children. His wife Amie, was his ex, yet she was in agreement that he was equipped and committed to the childrens' care and that's where they should be. Yes he was enraged, and the social workers let him know that his refusal would result in their arbitrary removal of the girl. That is precisely what they affected one day, taking her from her school. If the intent was to assess her, Derek's account is that Ayn was immediately controlled with an assortment of drugs that dummed her down. She won't wander then. Some weeks later she was in a foster home on less drugs, and she wandered from there too. Oh really?

Based upon what I have learned over these two years and having met Derek personally and believing that I know Amie from written communications, my opinion about the case has not changed. It was unnecessary to remove this child from her home. Any assistance that MCFD felt Derek needed could have been delivered in a consultative manner. Two years of family life and good memories did not need to be stolen by this bureaucratic irresponsibility.  It's unfortunate that an agency charged with care, doesn't understand how to care.

I am grateful for the family's sake, that a plan is in place for Ayn's return, some time in September, we hope.

Starts Today - Evidence Based Medicine and Social Investigation Conference

Evidence Based Medicine and Social Investigation Conference
August 2–4, 2013, Vancouver, British Columbia
http://evidencebasedmedicineandsocialinvestigation.org

We are pleased to announce our third annual E.B.M.S.I. conference, designed for both families falsely accused of child abuse and professionals and paraprofessionals who work with child abuse cases. The faculty includes physicians and attorneys, expert witnesses and advocates, and social service professionals. These experts come ready to work with and learn from each other and the attendees.

STARTS TOMORROW - Evidence Based Medicine and Social Investigation Conference

Evidence Based Medicine and Social Investigation Conference
August 2–4, 2013, Vancouver, British Columbia
http://evidencebasedmedicineandsocialinvestigation.org

We are pleased to announce our third annual E.B.M.S.I. conference, designed for both families falsely accused of child abuse and professionals and paraprofessionals who work with child abuse cases. The faculty includes physicians and attorneys, expert witnesses and advocates, and social service professionals. These experts come ready to work with and learn from each other and the attendees.