RAISE THE FLAGG / Part 251 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

I encourage you to peruse Leah Gainer/Flagg's blog site.

She too is rallying awareness to the issues that surround MCFD methods and practice and she is going a step further. She wants you to sign a petition in support of reforming MCFD.

Leah will tell her own story about the impact of MCFD's incompetent policies and practice in her blog. I have related this story myself. You can read my pieces 219 and 220. She has initiated a petition to enlist your signature encouraging our government to consider the need to reform MCFD. There are presently only 202 signatures listed. Please look it over. She has drafted a statement addressed to Premier Campbell, Minister Mary Polak. If you can agree with it, add your signature. On her site Leah provides a number of other links that you may want to follow. She includes a reference to Paul and Zabeth and their children.

Here is the petition page. "Reform B.C. Ministry of Children and Family Development"

Here is one of the CBC stories on this family. This one entitled “Children taken because of mentally ill brother” is written by Kathy Tomlinson. In it she explains what is behind the Flagg's claim that lack of government help for their son put their other children at risk.
A CBC Video gives you another perspective on their story. 

THIS BLOG'S PURPOSE IS CLEAR / Part 224 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

To be unclear about the 9-month old purpose of this blog is to be confusing the messages in the comment section with the message of the blog postings.

Paul and Zabeth Bayne's three children are in care of the Province of British Columbia government's Ministry of Children and Family Development. This has gone on since October 22, 2007, because the Director of the MCFD Fraser Valley Region, based upon the filed reports of his staff, has concluded that Paul and or Zabeth were responsible for medical issues and injuries sustained by their youngest child and that because they have adamantly refused to confess to this, are a continuing risk to all three children.

This blog exists presently to draw attention to what I believe has been an injustice to the Bayne family based on an inaccurate medical diagnosis, which it turns out is a much disputed diagnosis in the medical community. I further write on behalf of the Baynes because I believe that they have told me the truth, and because I take issue with some of the methodology and treatment exhibited by the MCFD relative to them. I am displeased with what appears to me a lack of objectivity in reporting and assessing and in some instances intentional distortion of facts. I am repulsed by what occasionally appears to me a self protective response by an agency commissioned to care for us.

In the course of writing on their behalf, I have become aware of countless other parents and families with similar accounts of accusation and child seizures and unsympathetic and unkind treatment by social workers. I am alarmed at the level of unfettered power an agency has, against which ordinary people have little recourse because they lack the resources to contest for their children and their families. I am appalled to learn that reports and concerns about malevolent child protection agencies is almost universal. As sympathetic as I am toward the Baynes, I am hearing true stories of child removals that even trump their horror. Some comments on this blog allude to lives irreparably harmed, children who have never been returned to parents.

I do not deny the need for a society endorsed ministry to safeguard vulnerable children. I do not vilify social workers en masse. I do not berate all foster parenting. I admit the inability of some parents to care for their children. I prefer for removed children to be with family, kin and close family friends. I am opposed to sealed Ministry files on people which can contain opinion, hearsay and unverified statements which fuel the Ministry agenda without any real possibility for the subjects to refute it. I do see a pressing need to regenerate and perhaps to replace the Ministry modus operandi.

Churchman that I have been for decades I am drawn this morning to a phrase that was intended to safeguard our conduct within society. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That's a maxim, a behavioural code, an ethic that while applying to us all, is particularly necessary among those who are charged with the sensitive tasks of relating to fragile people.

So while the blog's purpose is focused, it cannot help but to embrace a broader function as readers feel compelled to interact with the subjects and leave comments that expose the widespread inequities for which the Baynes themselves recognize they are only examples.

For Love and For Justice / Part 133 / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

B.C.’s Child Protection legislation states, “Children are entitled to be protected from abuse, neglect and harm or threat of harm.”

That is laudable. No argument.

There are inherent themes in our BC system of child protection.
It is acknowledged among us that natural (birth) parents of a child should have full rights over their child. ‘Full rights’ is termed custody or guardianship or parental rights. Custody changes only when by agreement or court order full rights are removed to someone else. Our government can and does intervene to apprehend a child from parents. In such a case all or most of the ‘full’ rights are removed from the natural parents. The Child Protection Ministry then has custody of the child pursuant to the statute which empowers it.

Within B.C.’s Child, Family and Community Service Act, is clearly stated that within our free society there are expectations of natural parents or other caregivers for that matter to provide for necessities of life to children.

Any time a child has been or is likely to be harmed or abused physically, sexually or emotionally or if the child is deprived of necessary health care or when a parent is unwilling or unable to care for the child, then a child is deemed to be in need of protection. And this list of justifications for intervention is unrestricted, that is, the Ministry is authorized to extend this list to accommodate situations where protection seems the safest course of action. For instance here is a quote from the ACT, “A director may, without a court order, remove a child if the director has reasonable grounds to believe that the child needs protection and that the child's health or safety is in immediate danger, or no other less disruptive measure that is available is adequate to protect the child.”

What makes many of us uncomfortable is that extravagant endowment of power over lives of children and parents when coupled with another feature of our child protection legislation. I refer to the mandate, the command that everyone must report any child needing protection. In fact, it is considered an offence not to report. At first glance such good Samaritanism seems appropriate if protection of children is important to us. A second glance through a lens of experience and the flaws are glaring. The B.C. Government helpfully suggests examples of such reporting scenarios which in my mind can easily be interpreted as meddlesome and intrusive and dangerous. The examples include (1) a school teacher noticing bruises on a child which the child and family cannot explain; (2) a person notices that a child is often ill or unclean or falls asleep.

A child can be apprehended on the basis of such a report. Then a court hearing called the Presentation Hearing is required speedily. Parents and families and friends are distressed with this step because the parent's essential and comprehensive challenge of the evidence is deferred to a later Protection Hearing. Parents are virtually helpless here. Their children’s lives are significantly interrupted by such an abridged process. How appalling must it be for a parent that a child can be forced to stay with strangers while suspicions, sometimes bogus, and anonymous allegations of abuse are investigated.

Do I think that apprehension decisions by the Ministry are made lightly? No, I don’t. I believe that as a society, as individuals, as policy makers and as social workers we concur that there must be exceedingly strong grounds for surrendering ‘full rights’ or removing ‘full rights’ of natural parents. I honestly believe that in most cases a judge does seek to make an unbiased and careful decision. Yet I also observe that we have certified a system that reduces the stringency of these ideals when it comes to apprehending children based upon suspicion. The worst scenario but not uncommon is that children engaged in a cycle of protection hearings may remain in the Director’s custody for a long time, in some cases this has been to the age of majority. Of course many parents become exhausted, disconnected from help, hopeless and impoverished by legal service bills. They give up. They become embittered. In desperation and anger they unite in online support and advocacy groups to raise awareness of abusive treatment. And an uninformed constituency and a self protective Ministry enterprise can write them all off as flakes.

I am more convinced each day that there is room for improvement if not comprehensive reform of our Child Protection training, policies, accountability structures, methodology and procedures.

For Love and For Justice / Part 120 / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Here is a USA website, the content of which becomes a challenging read. It is entitled and subtitled in this way. ‘NATIONAL COALITION FOR CHILD PROTECTION REFORM, Working To Help America's Vulnerable Children By Changing Public Policy Concerning Child Abuse, Foster Care, And Family Preservation.'

NCCPR advocates for systemic reform. The membership of this coalition is comprised of professionals who have been involved in or with the child welfare system within the United States. This coalition provides them with a forum for affecting positive changes to policies that concern child abuse, foster care and family preservation. They are most concerned to make the system better for vulnerable children.

Besides the website rich with article and document resources, NCCPR also operates a blog called ‘NCCPR Child Welfare Blog (News and commentary from the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform concerning child abuse, child welfare, foster care, and family preservation.)'

In its rationale for child advocacy NCCPR states, “But we don’t see getting the word out or “raising awareness” as an end in itself. Rather, our goal is reducing the number of children needlessly torn from everyone loving and familiar. In addition to sparing children from the harm that comes from being consigned to America’s chaotic system of foster care, keeping those children out of the system also gives child welfare agencies more time to find children in real danger.”

The careful research and the boldly accurate writing has earned the contributors high respect among journalists and reform-minded child welfare professionals. Among the comments about this advocate group are the following.

“A voice of reason …[that] can find fault with an agency without sounding like [they’re] denouncing the Third Reich.” --Tom Lyons, Columnist, Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune

“You are a tremendous force and asset to children across the country and I have nothing but the utmost respect for your work. I think you have made a tremendous difference in people's lives through your media advocacy work. … Now more than ever the services of NCCPR are needed to keep the heat on. You helped reporters like me stay focused, to not be swayed by the state bureaucratic and political machines and to remember what child welfare and child protection is really supposed to be about - helping children and preserving families - which, sadly often gets lost in the rhetoric of the day …” --Colin Poitras, former reporter, Hartford Courant

“A remarkable advocate for child welfare reform [with] an impact all over the country.” --Benjamin Wolf, Director, Children and Institutionalized Persons Project, American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (counsel for plaintiffs, Illinois class-action child welfare suit)

“NCCPR has been a key support for the child welfare reforms in Maine. … The strong voice of NCCPR gives voice to ideas that challenge the status quo. The children of Maine need that voice. … The work that [NCCPR] has done with the media in Maine has helped them understand the complexity of the child welfare system and has helped them to understand that the reforms are in the best interest of children and the people of Maine.” --James Beougher, Director, Office of Child and Family Services, Maine Department of Health and Human Services