ANONYMOUS MOTHER WRITES - HER GIRLS HAVE BEEN TAKEN FROM HER

This happens frequently, that a parent or caregiver writes a comment on one of my posts that is years old. They have responded to a topic that has popped up in their online search. The likelihood is usually remote that the writer will know where to return to see whether I or someone else has responded to them.

Yesterday, Anonymous wrote on a 2010 post. Here is the communication.
 AnonymousSeptember 12, 2017 at 4:08 AM

my 2 girls were apprehended based on the falsifying of drug test results by my social worker or someone else who is obviously paid by mcfd to do so. funny how I was not using and yet, every single result came back positive for fentanyl and norfentanyl...
I am hoping and praying for the truth to come out at trial in October...has anyone else had the same experience? I am literally dying more every day that my girls are not with me. and the truth is they were stolen from me for NO REASON. which makes this even harder. I am a good mother and everyone, even the sw says I am. so then I ask, why are you doing this to us when you KNOW I would NEVER abuse or neglect my girls? while you are wasting resources and foster care placement on my girls there are other kids out there in ACTUAL need who are suffering. go save them and leave us be. please! 

Reply

Replies

1. 
   RonSeptember 12, 2017 at 11:40 AM

   Well Anonymous Sept 12, 2017 --- I hope you have returned to read. Since you wrote your comment on a blog piece done in 2010, I think you may not find this again, so what I am going to do, is to put your comment on a post for today, Sept 13, 2017 to see if someone responds.

If you are reading this Anonymous letter and you would like to provide her/the writer with some counsel or share your own story, please do.

The original post to which she was responding was entitled,

IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE US / Part 372 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

and it began this way. "Child Protection workers and administrators would like us all to understand what an almost impossible task they have. Well, impossible in the sense of making all citizens happy with the results of their work. They will tell us that a perfect balance is unachievable between not protecting children from abusive parents and not making unfounded accusations against innocent parents. Stated differently and more positively, it is difficult both to protect children and to correctly assess risk by parents. To which I and others will quickly declare, “Then become more proficient at the latter in a hurry.”

I was writing then, in the middle of the horrific 4 year MCFD custody of the 4 children that belonged to Zabeth and Paul Bayne. They were finally returned in August 2011. Rejoice.

Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 3 of 6 - Unsupervised Access

This is my synopsized prose version of Justice Walker's 140-page judgement presented in several segments that reveal the substance of Walker's overview of evidence that demanded his verdict against the Ministry of Children's Child Protection. No stated opinion or fact appears here that does not also appear in the Justice Walker's ruling (legal document). It is public information

Because of the allegations of sexual and physical abuse, Judge Walker issued a court order on December 21, 2009, that permitted B.G. to have only supervised access (A Supervised Access Order) to his children. Then on December 30, 2009 without any basis for the action, the Director apprehended J.P.'s children. Mr. Strickland without foundation, misled the Deputy Director by informing him that J.P. was suffering from mental distress and illness so severe that she was a risk both to herself and to her children. Mr. Strickland and his subordinates failed to insure the truth of information contained in their prepared report drafts to the Director. The Director then initiated the Apprehension Proceeding in Provincial Court in January 2010, but did not disclose to the presiding judges the allegations of sexual 
and physical abuse or the Supervised Access Order and the circumstances relevant to it.

The Provincial Court relying on the Director's information, made orders that permitted the Director to use her discretion in providing to B.G., access to the children, even unsupervised access. Against the vigorous objections of J.P., in May 2010, the Director did provide to B.G. unsupervised access, even though B.G. would thereby be in breach of the Supervised Access Order with which the Director was familiar.

As early as February 2010 almost all of the social workers involved with the case had become convinced that the children should be returned to their father and they supported his claim for sole custody. The children were briefly placed in care of J.P.'s sister and subsequently with her brother and sister-in-law, and by June 2010 they were with a foster parent. The Director continued temporary custody of the children well beyond the maximum time permitted by the governing statute, and kept the children in foster care until June 2012. To do this, the Director relied on part of a section of the governing legislation that she should have known was inapplicable.

PRIORITY: RETURN THE CHILDREN / Part 409 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

If the Ministry of Children and Family Development devoted as much time locally to develop plans to return children to their parents, as it does to justifying child removals and CCO's, fewer children would become traumatized and embittered, fewer children would be adopted, fewer families would be destroyed, fewer parents would be viewed as arch-rivals.

When the Child and Family Community Services Act was originated, the intention was clearly that the apprehension of a child would be a last resort. Social workers would be expected to ascertain the least disruptive measure by which to guarantee the safety of the children. Removing a child was then and is now understood to be a serious intervention. However, the social workers who do not walk away from their MCFD careers because they cannot tolerate the system that has evolved, are the social workers who are impaired by lack of time due to staffing shortage and case overloads and by the lack of resources caused by government cut backs of funding for services that if available, would facilitate returning children to their parental homes. Overloaded social workers often do not do proper assessment not only of parents but also of the available alternatives to apprehension. When other resources and options are unknown, unavailable or non existent, apprehension becomes not the last resort but one of the first or the only choice. I believe that is what has been happening in B.C. over the past ten years. Child Protection thereby breaches the spirit of the CFCSA and fails to defend the integrity of families or children's best interests.

The parents from whom I hear, have lost or are losing hope that their children will ever be returned to their homes because the Ministry is evasive and ambiguous about its expectations of parents, or resources are unavailable for an extended time or the MCFD changes the expectations midstream. It has appeared to me that reunifying families is not a priority to a director, supervisors, team leaders and therefore not to social workers either. It is far easier to spend time looking for more reasons to justify the continued care of children. This is a dismal alternative and a failure for our province of families.

This Blog has been advocating the return of three children to their biological parents, Paul and Zabeth Bayne, for which a ruling is expected from Judge Crabtree within the next three weeks. Stay posted.

THE WAY IT WORKS / Part 341 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Natural parents have full rights over their child unless mitigated by an agreement or court order to the contrary. These rights, known as parental rights are also referred to as custody or guardianship.

Occasionally a parent is unable to cope with parental responsibility and voluntarily turns a child over to the government. By law, in all jurisdictions of Canada there are child protection, sometimes called child welfare services. On this blog we tend to highlight the cases in which the government has take initiative for a child protection order. The term 'apprehension' is applied to the government intervention by which a child is removed from the natural parent(s) care, and this is affected by the extraction of all or most of the parental rights from the natural parents, through a quick confirmation by the Court.

British Columbia's legislation is entitled Child, Family and Community Service Act. In Ontario, the related legislation is the Child and Family Services Act, and, in Alberta, the Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act. The BC CFCSA is unique in that it personifies the role of the government in child protection cases by a reference to the Director who is a senior public servant who interestingly seldom becomes involved in individual cases and never appears in court. So 'Director' means the child protection office or social worker responsible for the file.

In BC a child apprehension is followed promptly by a presentation hearing where in court the social worker discloses the facts for the apprehension and also provides a plan and the court makes an interim ruling. Much angst and criticism from parents and lawyers results from the brusque and summary process of this presentation hearing. The threshold for custody by the the Director is startlingly but predictably very low because the system is designed for the parent's challenge to be deferred until a later date, the later protection hearing. It is profoundly crushing for parents to know that their child will remain with a stranger while false suspicion or anonymous allegations of abuse are investigated.

In some cases the Director and the court may consider a supervision order which returns the child to the parents subject to the Director’s terms and conditions. Sometimes, the Director will come to agreement with the parents as to what should happen next. Other times mediation or judge-presided conferencing is scheduled. Nevertheless, for parents who have unjustifiably lost the care of their child, compromise or negotiating becomes an extremely difficult proposition, specially if admission to abuse is pressured or required from a parent who is innocent.

The protection hearing is a more substantial hearing that results when the Court has endorsed the Director's opinion that the child needs protection. This can then proceed to the Continuing Care Order and once a child is engaged in the cycle of protection hearings, the child may remain in the custody of the Director until the age of majority. Well intentioned parents may not survive and some will acquiesce to litigation fatigue or impoverishment due to legal costs. That attrition is predictable for all but the extremely hardy or well supported because the government has limitless resources and a bottomless bank account.

It is apparent by now in the posts I have written and in the unsolicited comments subsumed under them, that the office of social worker in child protection proceedings is a very challenging and thankless job. Given the demand to respond to every report concerning a child, opportunities abound for error and misjudgment. We are told by the government that in the vast majority of cases, apprehension decisions are not made lightly and are submitted to thorough and careful analysis and ruling of an interested and unbiased judge. There are many who read this blog who do not agree and refuse to see anything inherently good within the present Ministry of Children and CFCSA. Personal pain and loss when wed to helplessness against what appears to be authorized brutality does not readily result in forgiveness.

Advocating for the return of Paul's and Zabeth's three children, in MCFD care since October 2007.

IF I DID IT OVER AGAIN / Part 340 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

I can look back across a lifetime, 45 years ago when I was a young man in my early twenties and working at a shoe store in between college terms. Two women came into the store with two or three children. One of the women was there to buy shoes for a child. As she spoke with me, one of the small children, perhaps three years of age was jumping across the padded seats and unfortunately came into her wheelhouse. She had told him to stop but he didn't so she let him have it with the back of her forearm. She caught him fully on his chest and sent him flying through the air to the other side of the aisle, perhaps six feet. I recall it with amazement still. I was horrified by the mother's action and anger. It was instantly clear that this public display would not have been the first time this child was struck by his mother. It likely would not be the last  - because I did not act.

I said nothing and did nothing with regard to that incident. I was certainly unaware of any responsibility on my part to notify authorities. Such reporting was certainly uncommon then. After all, school teachers still practiced corporal punishment in 1962. Believe me, I know because I got it - the strap that is. A sixteen inch long, three inch wide and quarter inch thick strand of leather. As a seven year old in grade three in 1949, I received three strokes on each open palm for having stepped out of formation to playfully wrestle with another boy on the way home from school during lunch break. A few years later I was twelve years old when I was strapped by the male principal for throwing a stone at a girl and striking her on her ankle. Throwing the stone was wrong. Corporal punishment administered by a six foot two inch adult whacking a child's hands was wrong as well. It was my practice to deliver newspapers after school but that was interrupted for one week because I could not open my swollen hands and in fact didn't attend school for a couple of days. My mom and dad were merciful enough to permit me to remain at home but they did not contest the principal's action. He was a professional after all. He was a principal of a school. You did not stick your nose where it did not belong, was a general rule.

And saying anything to this mother in the shoe store or telling someone else about her so there would be repercussions was something you didn't even consider doing. People didn't involve themselves in other people's domestic affairs.

That autobiographical peek is simply to say, that if I were a young man today working in a retail store and confronted by a similar situation with a mother as obviously out of control with what is appropriate discipline or out of control of her emotions, I would not hesitate to notify authorities. That's right.. There is a keener consciousness today to protect children, and my high respect for parental rights would not supercede my feeling of obligation to do the right thing for that defenseless child. He may be a brat but he does not deserve to be belted across the room. He may be a brat because his mother is a brat.

“A common feature of child protection legislation is to require everybody in the Province to report any child needing protection. Typically, the legislation will protect the identity and civil liability of the disclosing party but otherwise makes it an offence to not report. It is one of those rare areas where Good Samaritanism is mandatory.” (from the Duhaime online legal dictionary) http://www.duhaime.org/LegalResources/FamilyLaw/LawArticle-125/Child-Protection-Law-in-Canada.aspx

Now you may be very disappointed with me at this point today, but I ask. What would stop a woman from regularly resorting to excessive force to discipline her child? A remonstrance from a store clerk would be mute. Apprehension of her child would be a wake up call. Do I think that apprehension is an excessive first measure? YES! Do I think it is reasonable to remove the child for the child's own safety? YES! That is double speak for “do you see how delicate this area can sometimes become?” On one hand, the child protection agency could approach the parent with an ultimatum that requires attendance at parenting class or an anger management class while leaving the child in the care of the parent. On the other hand, during the time that the parent is indignantly attending the class, in an uncontrolled moment he or she may club the child with a broom handle and fracture the child's hand.

Do any of you who are vehemently opposed to all things MCFD, see the complexity and delicacy of these life shaping questions? Do you detect a lot of greys in our humanity rather than merely blacks and whites? And of course can you see how the readiness of MCFD to remove children and then to KEEP them TOO long makes all good people reluctant to report. This Ministry is going to have to get it right, very SOON.

Advocating for the return of Paul's and Zabeth's three children, in MCFD care since October 2007.

UNRESOLVED CRISIS / Part 147 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/ Part 147 /

MCFD IS IN UNRESOLVED CRISIS


In spite of inquiries and recommendations, changing governments, legislative reforms and in-house restructuring that MCFD calls transformation, this child welfare system in B.C. has failed generations of both children and parents. British Columbia’s child welfare system has been in crisis for decades and it still is. Mary Polak can only solve the predicament if she understands the history and acknowledges the existing problems.

The foundation of B.C.’s child protection system is articulated in The Child Family and Community Services Act approved in 1996 contains the values for child welfare as the Legislature expects it to be practiced. In 1996 this Act held enormous promise that the service provided would support families to care for their children in the family home using apprehension as a last resort and in the event that temporary placement was deemed necessary the goal was reunifying children with natural parents as quickly as possible. The CFCSA understood that removing a child from the parental home is a severe intervention. I join the crowd of serious reviewers who have concluded that the current child protection practices are violating the law established within the principles of the CFCSA. I'm not writing simply to rag on a Ministry or upon people but rather to present the case for changes, improvements.

When evaluating this Ministry, assessors are obliged to hear service providers, social workers, and lawyers representing parents in child protection cases. Wisdom dictates that another group needs to be heard and that is the parents whose children have been or are involved in the protection system. They have too often been ignored or silenced yet they have experiences, opinions and insights that can inform conscientious appraisers in ways that will make a difference. MCFD cannot in good faith say that it acts in the best interest of children until its management pays unbiased attention to parents.

The 'Child, Family and Community Services Act' Link

It concerns me that I have said nothing here that has not been said before by authorized probes and legal society reports. Ms. Polak must restore MCFD practice of the fundamental principles of the ACT.

Art: 'Broken Dreams' by Murray Unruh, acrylic and glass, 36X49 inches