AUGUST 2,3,4 Evidence Based Medicine and Social Investigation Conference

Evidence Based Medicine and Social Investigation Conference

2013 will mark the third year for this conference. I have attended both of the last two and I am hoping to take in the next one as well. The information that I share now is intended to interest you in this opportunity and to explore the Conference website and possibly to register for it. You should bookmark the Conference url and schedule the dates into your personal calendar.

August 2,3,4 2013 http://evidencebasedmedicineandsocialinvestigation.org/

The third annual E.B.M.S.I. conference is designed for both families falsely accused of child abuse and the 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.

The conference curriculum covers the fundamentals of evidence-based medicine and its role in improving how investigators and decision makers handle suspected abuse cases. The goal is to help child protection services truly meet the needs of children and their families.


A service to increase accessibility was offered in 2012 and will be repeated and that is an online broadcast of Conference speakers. You will register and then be given a code so you can listen online if in-person attendance is impossible for you.

The venue once again will be Pacific Life Bible College located at 
15030 – 66 A Avenue
, Surrey, BC V3S 2A5
 CANADA.

It is a convenient venue with adequate facilities for this conference and with some residence facility. The College is located on a 42-acre campus in Surrey, B.C. about 30 minutes from Vancouver, B.C., and 15 minutes from the Canada/U.S. border (Peace Arch Border Crossing). It offers a peaceful, wholesome, suburban setting that’s conducive to study; yet Canada’s third largest city, is readily accessible.

Some resources available presently by sending your request to ebmandsiconference@gmail.com are:

1. The book entitled, Shaken Baby Syndrome or Vaccine Enduced Encephalitis – Are Parents Being Falsely Accused? Written by Dr. Harold Buttram, M.D. and Christina England, Research Journalist. $20.00
2. DVD Recordings of the EBMSI Conference 2012 which includes all Faculty presentations and their relevant powerpoint presentations. $100
3. All recordings of the EBMSI Conference including Faculty presentations, on a stick $20

Topics include:

▪ The evolving child abuse medical literature
▪ Medical mimics of abuse
▪ Defending against abuse allegations in both family and criminal court
▪ The standards and guidelines for child protection investigations and process
▪ The challenges of creating a bureaucracy to handle family matters

The faculty includes:

▪ Physicians from a variety of subspecialties

• Forensic Pathology 
• Pediatrics 
• Neuroradiology 
• Biomechanical Experts 

▪ Veteran Defense Attorneys
▪ Social Services Professionals
▪ Parents who have survived the system

THE FRASER REGION AND CHILD PROTECTION

The Fraser Region has much for which to answer. This is the region with which I am familiar and within which my primary illustration of bad practice occurred. In every region government social workers pride themselves for taking this work seriously and they assume responsibility for children when they deem that a home environment is unsafe or harmful but sometimes, some of them are making mistakes in judgement and it is costing children and families and parents, something precious – time.

DRUGS CAN'T STOP THE TEARS / 576

Daddy Paul and Bethany

The Baynes are working with the Surrey office of MCFD and we are believing that the outcome will be positive with an imminent return of their four children to their care, their home, and their lives of love. Only excellent parents such as they are could possibly endure what they have for what is now, almost four years of deprivation – dispossession of their own offspring. Even while they wait and work, they are sympathetic to other parents who are similarly struggling with the heartache of a child removed by the Ministry of Children. No one wants to mistrust a Ministry that in theory is protective of children. Yet when a steady stream of complainants against MCFD actions are parents who are by all reports sound-minded, stable, committed and lovingly responsible, observers with common sense must deduce that there is something seriously flawed in the practice of protecting children. In British Columbia the fault line lies in connection with the Child, Family and Community Services Act, with the way that it is written, with the ways by which it is interpreted and certainly through the manner in which it is applied by directors, team leaders and social workers who service cases.

THIS STORY IS NEWSWORTHY / Part 301 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

The coverage by CBC of the Bayne Campaign for Justice already aired a couple of segments well over one year ago. You can be assured that when Judge Crabtree rules on this case within the next couple of months, it will be national news once again. Whichever way the ruling falls, it will be newsworthy. If, as I personally hope and as many observers believe, the ruling will restore the three small children to their biological parents, it is possible that their story will prompt not only journalistic investigation but also official investigation into Ministry of Children practice. It is now closing on three years that Paul and Zabeth Bayne's three children have been in the care of the B.C. Ministry of Children. No one alleges that Children's Hospital, medical professionals, MCFD and RCMP responded incorrectly when they were initially presented with concern that a child had been harmed by a parent or parents. There was cause for suspicion. RCMP dropped the case. MCFD has never changed its mind. For that matter neither has the doctor upon whose diagnosis the MCFD has rested its affidavit for Continuing Care of all three children.

The Ministry could have changed its mind however when numerous other medical experts disputed the original diagnosis and offered explanation for the child's injuries which are consistent with accident rather than inflicted injury, and consistent with existing conditions inherent with prematurity of birth. These opinions were not acquired by MCFD as a means of testing the accuracy of the original diagnosis. These were obtained by the Baynes who sought explanation themselves for the gravity of the injuries sustained by their child not through shaking by one of them but possibly by the accidental fall of a sibling on the child whose condition might already have been weakened by premature birth. Long ago the Baynes submitted these experts' reports to MCFD. The Ministry could have changed its mind by assessing risk based upon an unbiased but accurate appraisal of character, of history of parental performance, of attestations by hundreds of people who communicated with the Ministry on behalf of the Baynes. The Ministry could have changed its mind but instead regarded every effort by the Baynes to establish their innocence and to recover their children as further evidence of their guilt and liability.

Here are links to previous and now dated CBC stories.
1. Story: Most recently at start of hearing in January Surrey Couple Challenge Shaken Baby Allegation
2. VIDEO: Kathy Tomlinson reports: Ministry disregarded advice to return seized children (Runs 2:36)
3. Kathy Tomlinson in a 3 min 27 sec video piece entitled “Surrey parents fight for return of 3 seized children.”
4. Printed Copy - “Surrey parents fight for return of 3 seized children.” Last Updated: Thursday, March 5, 2009 | 9:40 PM PT
5. VIDEO: Surrey parents talk about their seized children (Runs 7:15)
6. April 2 2009 article - Birth parents plead for medical treatment for baby girl in foster care
7. April 3 2009 Ministry disregarded legal advice to return seized children

Zabeth and Paul Bayne – Part 63 – The Bayne Campaign for Justice

PARENTS CAN BE TREATED COURTEOUSLY


Zabeth is an accomplished musician, a concert pianist, a music teacher. That was her life before, our of necessity, the recovery of her family took over her life. She awakens to the daily pain of beginning another day without her babies, of returning to daily duties all of which revolve around gathering information to help her own cause and assist other parents with similar complaints with the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development. Weekly, she writes letters to the Premier, to Members of the Legislative Assembly, to media journalists and news organizations in hopes that someone will listen and someone will respond. She and Paul work are custodians at night. That permits them to be available for each of the two afternoons when they can visit their children every week. Customarily the three children who now live in the same foster home, are brought by a commissioned driver to a location to which Paul and Zabeth go to spend three hours from 1 pm to 4 pm.

MCFD is supposed to be a service and help agency. Nothing is gained when its employees manifest an adversarial posture. If protection of children and eventual restoration of the family is the Ministry objective, it is sufficient to withhold the children from living with the parents. It is pointless to treat the parents badly. Yet there is evidence that thoughtlessness, oversights and lack of common courtesies typify the way some workers in the regional sector of MCFD manage the Bayne case. Consideration of the Bayne parents appears to be a low Ministry priority. Disrespect is repeatedly reinforced. This was one of the most recent examples.

They were informed that all through December and to the end of the first week of January at least one of the three children will not be in attendance at the visitation day. No explanation accompanies this notification. No indication of a makeup visit is given so Zabeth is compelled to request one in writing from the social worker that oversees the daily care of the children. Most of these inquiries are never answered. Zabeth and Paul are not told which children they will see on a given day or who will be absent. This week’s Thursday visit has been entirely cancelled for all three children but again without explanation or suggestion of a follow-up. A phone call from the social worker could easily communicate the explanation.

A network of parents having similar problems with the BC MCFD confers casually and it becomes clear that this treatment is being experienced by others as well as the Baynes. In fact, some parents who were told that a visit was cancelled and therefore didn’t show up, have stated that their children later told them that the MCFD told the children that their parents didn't want to see them today. In other instances parents have been told that the children didn’t want to see them on a certain day which they later learned was untrue. This is one of the reasons why Zabeth and Paul show up for every scheduled visitation time even when one has been cancelled. The Baynes have driven from Surrey to Chilliwack for a visit and on occasion have done so in snowy weather and found no children were there. Zabeth says that “On those days the return trip has been filled with many tears.”

Reader, please hit this link and sign this petition to return the children to Paul and Zabeth.