MORE BAD NEWS ABOUT THE MINISTRY OF CHILDREN

             The B.C. Ministry of Children is in the news almost every day. The items are invariably unpleasant. Two more headline stories this week, indications of a systemic limitation - control and accountability. It's not Stephanie Cadieux's fault. The Honourable Minister is an honourable woman. She cannot be responsible for what social workers and their supervisors decide and effect. Ministers change yet the negative press repeats year after year. Protection of children and care for vulnerable children is undeniably difficult and problematic. Before she is moved on, she and her office must genuinely dialogue with Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, Representative for Children and Youth and official watchdog over the Ministry of Children, and address jointly constructed plans, policies and action steps to transform this Ministry. The window of opportunity may be small since Turpel-Lafond's 10-year term is finishing.

            So here are the two newsmaker articles this week.

Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 1 of 6 - Strickland and Tymkow

JUSTICE WALKER'S OVERVIEW OF THE CASE, LEADING TO HIS SCATHING 2015 RULING AGAINST THE MINISTRY OF CHILDREN

My synopsized version of Justice Walker's 140-page judgement presents the substance of his overview of evidence that necessitated his ruling against the Ministry of Children's Child Protection. I present it in a prose style, in several segments. No stated opinion or fact appears here that was not in Justice Walker's ruling all of which has been made public.

Justice Paul Walker heard and ruled upon two cases between JP and BG. The plaintiffs in both cases were JP and her four children.  JP is the mother whose four children were sexually abused by BG, their father, her estranged husband. In the first case JP sought custody of her children as well as confirmation that BG was an abuser who should no longer have access to the children, and further that the Ministry was dead wrong in its assessment of both mother and father and had made a outrageous error in judging JP to be mentally unstable and placed children in BG's care. 

This second court case, J.P.'s lawsuit against the Ministry, began April 8, 2013 and ended July 3, 2015 with the published ruling by Judge Paul Walker on July 14, 2015.

Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 1 of 6 - Strickland and Tymkow

The Director of Child Protection (CP) acted egregiously to the children's reports that their father sexually abused them.  The Director and her agents failed to assess and to investigate the children's claims and then imprudently apprehended the children and also granted the father unsupervised access to the children. The Director held an inflexible but unproven belief that JP had mental health issues and was unfit to parent and that BG was the most capable parent.  

B.G. was arrested and removed from the family home in October 2009 for assaulting both JP and her eldest daughter K.G. (then 5 years old), and on a charge of the uttering death threats against J.P. She immediately sought divorce and sole guardianship and custody. A restraining order was issued that prohibited B.G. from having direct or indirect contact with any of the plaintiffs. Investigative social worker Jeff Tymkow reported to the Director that K.G. had not been assaulted by B.G. Further, B.G. told Tymkow that P.J. suffered from mental health problems that Tymkow determined were not then a protection concern to the children.

Mr. William Strickland was investigative team leader responsible for assessing potential harm to children. He and Mr. Tymkow signed a letter at B.G.'s request that purported to clear B.G. of physical abuse of K.G. B.G. then used this against J.P. in court. J.P. confronted Mr. Strickland, accusing him of acting inappropriately and she also voiced her concern that B.G. may have sexually assaulted the youngest child, who was one year old at that time. Strickland apologized and assured her that he would send a written retraction and that the Director of MCFD would conduct an investigation into J.P.'s concerns about potential abuse of her children.  However, Strickland discouraged Vancouver Police Department (VPD) from taking J.P.'s claims seriously, suggesting to police that she was unstable and selfishly motivated.  Mr. Strickland's conduct adversely affected the police investigation.

OF COURSE, CRITICS CALL FOR CHANGES

For years sympathizers with the Bayne family dominated the readership of this blog site. Then I took a break but began again to write about Ayn Van Dyk, autistic 12 year old removed from her family to undergo assessment and investigate her family life. This was occasioned by her afternoon skip over the family fence and a wander down the street. She could not be found for three hours. Other readers, occasional and curious take a peek. Some with vested interest in the Ministry of Children browse as well. Be assured that the parents and advocates of child protection reform who comment here are not a small troublesome faction of uninformed complainers.

Critics exist across Canada and in enlightened countries around the world. Critics are calling for greater accountability for the child protection segment of child welfare. That is what must be understood and processed by responsible parties.

Please hear me say that I believe child protection agencies do serve a vital function to safeguard children. Note that I am saying just as emphatically that child protection departments overstep their mandate.

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.