SHE IS JUST A LITTLE DISABLED GIRL, WHO WANTS TO LIVE LIFE

THE STORY OF AYN VAN DYK

As told by her father Derek Hoare

Part Eleven of Fifteen

SHE IS JUST A LITTLE DISABLED GIRL, 

WHO WANTS TO LIVE LIFE

October 27-28, 2011

All fifteen parts are Derek's own words written in 2011. He has been silent a long while now. This month of April marks the tenth month that Ayn has been in government custody. 
October 27

"Wow what a busy day; tons of details to sort out, Wyatt is ill, Lori Pynn just blew me away, and I just got back from grabbing Lou from the bus stop.... ahhh parenting :) Funny y'know because we immerse ourselves in our kids' lives and face one challenge after the next, each with their own set of tribulations and rewards. To have others look in on your life and take no time to understand where you have come from and where you are going on that journey that we call Family, and then based on those ignorant assumptions impose upon you what they perceive is "best" is an absolutely outlandish sense of justice. It is both scary and dismaying to think that I wasn't the first to go through this and will not be the last. It seems so critical that people wake up to this reality of a system so misguided it has rendered itself to be the very aggressor it was meant to protect us from."

CLEAR COMMUNICATION / Part 150 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

CLEAR COMMUNICATION

Ideally Blue stands for Parent, yellow stands for Social Worker, and red stands for Director. Information freely flows between them as they work to solution. But there is something wrong with that picture. It isn't accurate to the Baynes story, and to many others as well. Quite apart from Paul and Zabeth Bayne, what I hear parents saying is that at every stage that their child is in the protection process with MCFD, the parents are repeatedly deprived of basic information. That is certainly contradictory to the CFCSA intention and prescription because it is essential that the concerns of the Ministry be communicated in order for the parents to improve their situation so they can get their child back home. It is the duty of social workers to keep parents informed about the status of their file and the plan for their child. In spite of that, parents claim they are uninformed or even misinformed. Parents should be apprised of the steps in a plan by which they can have their children returned. Parents also should be notified of any changes of their child’s placement, or health or medical appointments or procedures and it should disturb us all that parents can give evidence of how often their input is not requested and they are left in the dark or at best informed at the last minute. Rather than clear communication a more apt term for what parents should be able to expect is ‘transparent communication.’ Nothing concealed or disguised. It’s preposterous that I even need to describe these distortions of appropriate practice.

Alright now to the Bayne Case. The purpose for Integrated Care Meetings between MCFD social workers and parents is to establish understandings and expectations. During one of the infrequent ICMs with the Baynes, MCFD signed to the effect that the Baynes would be informed and given opportunity to attend all medical related appointments with their children. Before their children were taken, Paul and Zabeth certainly were dutifully diligent about the health care of their children. Just days ago the Baynes were informed that their middle son Baden was scheduled to have an MRI yet they had not been included in either discussing the need for this or invited to attend the procedure. This is their son after all. And had they been invited to the discussion they would certainly want to know why this procedure was being done now when they were the ones with the prior knowledge of his medical care. In fact, when he was very young they recognized Baden’s head was developing an unusual shape so they sought medical advice at Vancouver Children’s Hospital. Baden was given an initial MRI followed by another and then the news that they had no cause for alarm. They were even given professional advice about surgery to reopen the plates of his skull and then wear a helmet twenty-three hours of every day until a normal shape was restored. Further counsel informed them that the treatment was not worth the trauma and the risk and that the boy’s hair covered the slight abnormality. So, here is a case where even while a court hearing is in process, MCFD does something that compels the Baynes to have their lawyer pursue this matter legally. The Baynes also learned that Baden has been registered by MCFD in a mental health program. If this is a necessity, the Baynes should have been informed about the nature of the mental or emotional condition MCFD is seeking to address. What the Baynes have seen is a small boy’s occasional frustration or depression you might call it because of not being able to come home and giving evidence of being hurt and troubled by this ongoing, far too long and insecure living arrangement. If others recognize this, the question once again is why were the Baynes not involved in the decision to register him or given the option of seeking a counsellor or program of their choice, albeit with MCFD approval? Probably, it is fair to ask why MCFD has protracted this process of retaining custody for so long now (thirty months) that a small boy’s need for his parents has produced this result. Let’s be real here. The Ministry has orchestrated care of this child longer than the boy was with the parents and his issues are the result of what the Ministry has done or failed to do.

These past few days have been difficult for them, being able to see Baden for just three hours this week and they know that he needs the parental connection so much just as they need him particularly since the MRI was done Thursday, and as of Saturday, they have not been informed about how this went, what are the results or how Baden felt during this procedure. Would it not have been a generous and proactive gesture to invite the Baynes to be there with their son? But a consideration like that is not in keeping with the MCFD's current court action to remove the children forever.

Part 140 / EXPLANATION & RATIONALE / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Today I have removed yesterday’s post 139 which drew attention to a website, the content of which did not live up to the intended purposes. I was speaking to the confounding phenomenon of similar issues that characterize child protection programs throughout the English speaking world of former colonialized nations. In commenting on my post, one writer pointed out numerous inadequacies to the site that purportedly was a Family Law Resource Community dedicated toward helping and supporting families to establish and solidify their personal dealings and directions within the Family Court System World Wide. The writer cited enough reasons that I chose to disassociate the site from my blog. We will make the point in other ways.

I have been a lifelong writer and when I began this particular blog it was a commentary upon diverse areas of current interest. Concentrating upon the grieving community of families impacted by MCFD treatment was not my original design. In September of 2009 I learned about Paul’s and Zabeth’s heartache. Their loss of family is almost as old as their youngest child. My curiosity was fixated immediately because years earlier I was the officiating clergyman for their wedding ceremony. Life choices moved us out of one another’s lives until that news broke upon me. I was compelled to know more. How could they find themselves in a dilemma this appalling and more importantly, how could they extricate themselves?

Like perhaps 95% of the B.C. population I have had no knowledge of the Ministry of Children and Family Development or of child protection. I have never had personal involvement with such services or until this past autumn known anyone who did. In hindsight it seems peculiar to me that in forty years of pastoral work and dealing with people’s lives and concerns there was never a family in my sphere of work that had an MCFD or child welfare association. MCFD’s need of re-examination is unknown by the vast majority of people and they will not care until they are faced with it either personally or through public awareness.

The more that I learned about the Baynes, the more convinced I was that I should do what I could, that was to write about them. The more that I learned about the system of child protection that interrupted the Bayne family, the more informed I became that theirs was not an isolated case of misunderstanding or confusion or even medical misdiagnosis. Some systemic weaknesses in our government funded child protection efforts were removing and keeping children from parents for far too long and sometimes for unwarranted reasons. As I learned, I wrote and this little read blog began to pick up readers on both sides of the Bayne predicament.

My thematic focus in upcoming posts will continue to be the Baynes’ recovery attempt. They have been without custody of their children for 2.5 years. That may not be unprecedented but it is nonetheless inexcusable because Paul and Zabeth are the kind of parents who will provide a loving, nurturing and safe home for their birth children. Their determination and their personal efforts to right a wrong may become a precedent however, when it evokes concern among journalists, readers, advocates, politicians and legislators.

For Love and For Justice / Part 117 / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Some Realities in Child Protection from which Reform must Emerge Yet Again.

In British Columbia, the Child, Family and Community Service Act (CFCSA, 1996) direct child welfare policy and that document specifies both an ideological and legal framework that proposes least intrusive methods. By that I mean that child protection interventions are only set in motion when a child’s safety falls below minimum community security standards. The identification and alleviation of risk factors that are present in a child’s surroundings is the controlling principle for intervention.

Child protection in our culture receives its mandate from legislation. Our B.C. communities fundamentally support this mandate. Citizens report their suspicions of child maltreatment. Both the legal mandate and public participation validates this child protective function. Even though child protection is considered an essential public service, many people take issue with ways by which child protection is administered. In fact, as with other essential services, such as the police, the public routinely condemns the service for perceived failures and shortcomings. The response of government has been episodic attempts at child protection reform, typified by inquiries, escalated research, reorganizing administration and altering the service delivery model, changing the staff training, or hiring additional staff, or staff with different competencies or slashing the budget and then recuperating the budget.

Child protection as it is presently configured, acquires its cases primarily through reactive processes. For example, citizens, such as neighbours, friends, acquaintances, family members or other observers of the family can and do report protection concerns. Volunteers and employees in youth-services, in schools, churches, childcare, nurses and doctors are all legally and ethically required to report their suspicions of maltreatment. Police when summoned to an urgency where children might be at risk, will file protection concerns. This is the reactive basis of child protection. The reality is that child mistreatment cannot be entirely prevented. Since no single intervention has been found to be effective in preventing or curing child maltreatment, responding to or attempting to prevent further maltreatment are the options left to responders who are charged with this.

Of course in making those observations I haven’t begun to touch upon the manner by which child protection workers affect their tasks as first responders and ongoing workers with the children, with the parents, with the people under suspicion of maltreating a child.

(A well written Master's thesis by Nathan Patton entitled 'Child Protection as a Culture of Negotiation' in 2009 infomred my thinking about the reality of the current status of child protection.)