RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 12 OF 12

A FORM OF BLACKMAIL

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray has written here.)

It can be noted that many people, who write for advice on child protection advocacy websites, report that they only agreed to a protection finding out of desperation. They stated that they were told that should they contest, it could take months or years to see their children except on a very restricted basis. It is patently unjust that parents must be faced with the choice of two unacceptable evils largely because the system is broken.

It is only because the court system is completely incapable of giving to parents their day in court within the time frame intended in the legislation, that the director is given almost unlimited power by default. I am not talking about delays of a few weeks or months here, but delays of a year or more. Even if the court eventually returns the children to the parent, a great deal of harm has already been done. Parents are bankrupted with legal costs and children are left with anxiety disorders.

The court system used to work reasonably well to complete protection hearings within a framework intended by the legislators. This is no longer the case and it is a situation which has prevailed for far too long. The time has come to question whether the court will ever again be able to protect children the way it used to do. A major systemic change is needed to ensure that the spirit and the letter of the law are followed. This might mean replacing the court as the primary vehicle of protection and only using the court in extreme cases, such as where there is compelling evidence of the need for a continuing care order.

Ferris retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. He has written a book entitled 'The Art of Child Protection.' This is the first in a series of pieces Ray will write here. You can order Mr. Ferris' book entitled 'the Art of Child Protection' by contacting the author directly at rtferris@telus.net.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 11

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray has written here.)

USE OF TECHNOLOGY

Technology has its uses, but it also has its limitations. Good child protection depends on high qualities in the staff. Protection social workers need intelligence, integrity, compassion and courage. Without these qualities they cannot achieve the difficult skills needed by protection workers. If these qualities are lacking in staff, no amount of technology will help them. Just as this paper is being written using a sophisticated computer, the technology is only as good as the knowledge and writing ability of the user. Fixing problems by using technology often becomes another piece of wishful thinking and a vain search for the quick fix. People at every level of government can be beguiled by this hope. This can be just another attempt to fix non-systemic problems by systemic means.


Ferris retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. He has written a book entitled 'The Art of Child Protection.' This is the first in a series of pieces Ray will write here. You can order Mr. Ferris' book entitled 'the Art of Child Protection' by contacting the author directly at rtferris@telus.net.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 10

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray has written here.)

ETHICS

Registered social workers have a code of ethics, which was drawn up by the BC Association of Social Workers. This code is fairly general and open to interpretation, but it does provide some sort of guidelines. When the social workers act was first passed and registration started, a good number of registered social workers were employed in child protection and related work. One children’s aid society urged all eligible employees to become registered. The registrar recently told me that they do not need to devise practice standards for protection workers because no members do that work any more. The director of the BCASW told me the same thing.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 9

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray will write here.)

ACCESS
The ministry seems to have no clear concept about what access is appropriate and what is not. The Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies does have guidelines and these are vastly different from what is practised in British Columbia. There seems to be no differentiation from case to case as to when close supervision of access is needed and when unsupervised access would seem more appropriate. The rationale appears to be that any protection action means that there is risk to a child and therefore there would be dire risk if unsupervised access were allowed. This is not rational. If the director is seeking a continuing care order, then this is a reasonable assumption and it might well be argued that access should not be allowed at all to parents who are so hopelessly unfit as to merit permanent loss of their children.

However, shall we say that due notice has been served on the parents that a temporary order only is sought and the plan on the presentation report was to return the children, then access should be supportive of such a plan. Every person who has had children in care, even for fairly short periods reports the same sort of thing. Any visits are tightly supervised and every word and gesture is tightly monitored, as if the parent would suddenly attack the child. This is so irrational that it strikes people as paranoid. When parents have no history of child abuse, but perhaps it is a case of borderline neglect, there is no reason to waste public money on such over-caution.

The Ontario guidelines also advise social workers to arrange all access visits to be in the family home whether supervised or not. This is to keep the children in touch with familiar things and to lessen their anxiety. I have had hundreds of foster children under the care of my staff and me. We seldom found it necessary to supervise visiting. When parents were able to pick up their children at the foster home and take them out for the day, it gave us good opportunities to evaluate the progress of the parent. If parents were consistent and reliable, it became positive evidence. I would introduce the parent to the foster parent first and our foster parents were often good mentors for the natural parent. If a supervised visit became necessary, I preferred to do it myself, so that I could evaluate the situation first hand.

The systemic change would be to draw up clear guidelines on visiting and to make it part of core training for protection workers. Old staff should be retrained on this matter. Such a device would save a great deal of money.

Ferris retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. He has written a book entitled 'The Art of Child Protection.' This is the first in a series of pieces Ray will write here. You can order Mr. Ferris' book entitled 'the Art of Child Protection' by contacting the author directly at rtferris@telus.net.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 8

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray will write here.)

LAWYERS

Since the enactment of the Child, Family and Community Services Act the use of lawyers has dramatically increased. Now that proper training in the act has become uncommon, the social workers rely on legal advice for every function.

Interviews with clients have become so adversarial that they are often conducted with counsel present. This intimidates clients to the point where they feel they too must have an advocate present. It should be obvious that the legal profession and the courts have a very old tradition of being adversarial. It is also well known that the more adversarial the culture, the more financial benefit goes to lawyers, so they have little incentive to negotiate.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 7

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray will write here.)

MEDIATION

courtesy www.pa-pa.ca

Mediation is another problem area that needs to be considered. Prior to the enactment of the CF&CSA, discussion, negotiation and mediation were considered to be social work skills. Supervisors would sometimes need to mediate disputes between social workers and clients and this was a much-needed supervisory skill. Mediation is usually most successful when there is no great power differential between the parties. It must also be completely voluntary on both sides.

The legislated mediation often fails for various reasons. First, there is a huge power imbalance between the parent and the social worker. The mediation often takes place when the children have already entered care, and so the parties are already in an adversarial situation. So much so, that some parents feel they need their lawyer present at mediation---even at $2,500 at a time.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 6

By Ray Ferris, (This piece is one of a series Ray will write here.)

Lawyers and the adversarial culture of family court.
Another thing that has developed since the enactment of the CF&CSA is that the use of lawyers has increased tremendously. Now that proper training in the act has become uncommon, the social workers rely on legal advice for every function. Interviews with clients have become so adversarial that they are often conducted with counsel present. This intimidates clients to the point where they feel they too must have an advocate present. It should be obvious that the legal profession and the courts have a very old tradition of being adversarial. It is also well known that the more adversarial the culture, the more financial benefit goes to lawyers, so they have little incentive to negotiate. The adversarial culture is so deeply ingrained into the legal profession and the judiciary that they seem unable to think in a different way. They just cannot help it. This culture now permeates the family court and processes have become as formal and adversarial as criminal court. The informality allowed in the act is soon forgotten.

It has often been said that courts do not dispense justice, but they dispense law. Family courts do not protect child welfare, they dispense process. This process often becomes so lengthy that child welfare gets drowned in process. No wonder many people are now wondering whether the family court is no longer suitable for deciding protection cases. Ways and means should be sought to have cases heard before some sort of panel of experts and only sent to court if unavoidable.

Ferris retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. He has written a book entitled 'The Art of Child Protection.' You can order Mr. Ferris' book entitled 'the Art of Child Protection' by contacting the author directly at rtferris@telus.net.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 5

By Ray Ferris, This piece is one of a series Ray will write here.

Knowledge and skills.

The knowledge and skills needed by social workers in protection work can be defined, taught and trained. I will start with the skills that are most often lacking. The most obvious one is the lack of evidentiary skills. Social workers do not seem to know what evidence is reliable and what is not. They cannot distinguish between factual evidence, eyewitness evidence, expert opinion evidence, hearsay, conjecture, assumption and rumour. Crown counsel should be screening out the weak items in the spectrum of evidence and counselling moderation. This was done in the B. case, but the director ignored this counsel. If the social workers only proceeded on factual and eyewitness evidence, cases could be shortened and of course expert opinion evidence should not be accepted without rigorous process.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 4

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray will write here.)

The Need for Good Leadership in MCFD

Another thing that all these cases have in common is that they involved people at the highest management levels in the M.C.F.D. The actions of the regional staff were fully supported up to the deputy minister level. In some instances there was repeated publicity about the case and it could not have escaped the attention of high management. The expenditure of those enormous sums on legal services could only have been authorised by senior officials in two ministries. In all these cases the stance of the director was always very adversarial. This was true, even in the cases of weak evidence. Sometimes the approach was aggressive to the point when it could have been deemed as hostile.

It seems that in the last 20 to 30 years and adversarial culture has permeated the ministry at all levels. 

The reasons for this are complex and many things have made a contribution. The erosion of knowledge and skills among protection workers has made them verectiony unsure of themselves. Every time a case gets publicity from cases of child death such as Matthew Vaudreuil or Sherry Charlie, a wave of anxiety sweeps the ministry and many cases are over-investigated and pursued without adequate evidence. In spite of huge increases in staff over this period, the service does not improve, because there is no point in hiring more people if you do not know how to train them properly. There is no clear systemic fix for this type of problem, but it needs good leadership, with a strong commitment to eliminating all these damaging delays to children. 

 Ferris retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. He has written a book entitled 'The Art of Child Protection.' You can order Mr. Ferris' book entitled 'the Art of Child Protection' by contacting the author directly at rtferris@telus.net.

TENTATIVE AGREEMENT

B.C. Liberal government negotiators and BC Teachers Federation have come to an tentative agreement that may mean the end of this several month standoff. Once details are also agreed upon today, Teachers will have to ratify this, as will the Liberal leadership. With this hope, school may begin on Monday 22nd September 2014.
UPDATE 5:02 PM Teachers will vote Thurs., 7.5% wage increase over 5 yrs. plus other items I’ll mention later.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD SERVICES, Part 3

SPECIFIC CASES

by Ray Ferris, (This piece is one of a series Ray will write here. )

            I think perhaps that the best way to illustrate some of the problems in the protection services is to look at some specific cases in which the practice inside and outside the courts has wandered far away from what was intended by the members of the legislative assembly when they enacted the Child, Family and Community Services Act or CF&CSA.

            Our current system is based on the clauses of the CF&CSA. This act, for all its flaws, does have some good principles. Some are set out as guidelines and others as statutory requirements. We are reminded that the parents are the ones who bear primary responsibility and if they can make their children safe at home, then every help must be given to do so. Kinship contact must be maintained and, when care becomes necessary, that priority must be given to placement with relatives.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 2

How To Define the Problems

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray will write here. )

           Some simple tests can be made to define systemic and non-systemic problems. Consider this: - There have been a number of systemic changes over the years, but whichever system has been used, there have always been staff who could make the system work reasonably well and those who could not. This has been a reliable constant.

            We can infer from this that the most important factor has been the skills and commitment of the various staff. No system will work without a definable and teachable body of skills. These skills will take time to learn. They will be learned by a combination of theoretical instruction and supervised field practice with only manageable responsibilities. This training programme will take two or three years. It is most important that there is a high quality mentoring during that time.

             It should be noted that this training will not be provided by the various schools of social work. They do not teach the skills of child protection and they do not pretend to do so. This has been noted in both the Gove and Hughes reports.

            The systemic change to be made would be to fund and plan an in-service training programme, which will define and teach the necessary skills. An important component of this would be an ethical training programme and a clearly defined code of ethics. I will return to this topic in a later context.

 Ferris retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. He has written a book entitled 'The Art of Child Protection.' This is the first in a series of pieces Ray will write here. You can order Mr. Ferris' book entitled 'the Art of Child Protection' by contacting the author directly at rtferris@telus.net.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES. (part 1)

By Ray Ferris

The first problem is to differentiate those problems that are systemic and those that are not. It is relatively easy to make recommendations for systemic change where the system is the problem. Much more difficult is trying to think of systemic remedies, which might improve non-systemic problems. Such remedies might have to be so drastic that people with a vested interest in opposing change might find the remedies undesirable.

Accordingly, in this series of blog pieces, I have tried to define some non-systemic and some systemic problems and to recommend how to fix them. To complicate matters there is also the factor that some problems are a combination of systemic and non-systemic, so the solutions will be even more complex. I have especially tried to focus on those non-systemic problems, which might possibly be improved by making systemic changes. The ones that come most quickly to mind are some non-systemic problems that were created by systemic change. For instance, the enactment of the current CF&CSA was a systemic change and it created great problems, so simply repealing the most problematic clauses might help.

One of the first things that one must always keep in mind is to accept the fact that there are no quick fixes. Solutions will be complex and they will take a plan of at least three or four years to bring about. The solutions will also be costly, but it can well be argued that they will not be as costly as trying to make the current broken system work.

 Ferris retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. He has written a book entitled 'The Art of Child Protection.' This is the first in a series of pieces Ray will write here. You can order Mr. Ferris' book entitled 'the Art of Child Protection' by contacting the author directly at rtferris@telus.net.

CAN BINDING ARBITRATION WORK?

Resolving the Contract Impasse between Federation of Teachers versus Provincial Government

The BCFT and the government are in the midst of negotiating a new collective agreement. Negotiations have not gone well. The two parties are far enough apart and each is resistant to further accommodation that potential mediator Vince Ready walked away from the stalemate. Think about it. Over the past three months, both sides have not even met in the same room around a table yet. What kind of collective bargaining is that?