JUSTICE IS A GARMENT

JUSTICE IS A GARMENT

Justice is a garment prepared for residents of this planet. It is woven from billions of threads, knit together into a strong and integrated fabric. Love is the thread and it has produced a fabric of integrity. Three year old SS’s justice garment is in tatters.

Injustice occurs when countless numbers of these threads are pulled from the garment. The wearer of the garment is then uncovered and vulnerable.

MCFD'S DELIBERATE EVASION OF APPROPRIATE PROCEDURE

MCFD'S DELIBERATE EVASION OF APPROPRIATE PROCEDURE

SS is the 3-year old Metis girl who lived with upstanding Metis foster parents in BC since she was 3 days old. These parents wanted to adopt her. MCFD had other plans and waited 3 years to enact them. In order to accomplish the removal of SS from her B.C. foster parents' home and send her to another foster home in Ontario, the Ministry of Children and Family Development purposely, one might say deliberately, took numerous questionable actions. You will read about them here. An unnamed friend has written the following points that I deem to be worth considering.

MCFD purposely disregarded every criterion for assessing a child’s best interests as specified in B.C. legislation and in the B.C. College of Social Workers Standards of Practice;

MCFD purposely disregarded the rights of the birth parents and their written preferences to which attention should be given as specified in B.C. legislation and in the B.C. College of Social Workers Standards of Practice;

MCFD purposely disregarded the written position of the B.C. Metis Federation that opposed the move;

MCFD purposely disregarded specialized opinions of medical and psychological professionals who advised against the move;

MCFD purposely disregarded the excellent record of care by the BC foster family, and the child’s superior development during her first three years with her foster family;

The MCFD fabricated charges against the foster parents, and created sham procedures by which to justify intolerable delays in finalizing a permanent placement for the child, by moving her from her psychological family in B.C. to another foster home with strangers in Ontario.

The MCFD procedure began as an adoption to the Ontario family until faced with the law forbidding this, and ultimately called placement with new foster parents;

MCFD in spite of the move being a fostering relationship have insisted that the child refer to the new foster parents as “mommy and daddy,” while insisting that her de facto psychological parents in B.C. be referred to only by their first names.

MCFD's confused bureaucratic manoeuvrings validated by B.C. Courts, gives the appearance that the Courts are complicit in this flawed and insulting treatment of a vulnerable child.

SHE IS GONE

SHE IS GONE

I have written about her earlier. The story has been in the news for months. It was not difficult for me to decide which course of action was most appropriate to the child. The bottom line is, she is gone.

She is no longer in B.C. She may soon be out of the news entirely. At three years of age, she is having to learn to live with the shock, the anguish of loss, the fear, the mistrust, the daily changes. She is gone, gone from foster parents who loved her so much that they applied to adopt her, and MCFD flew her to Ontario to be adopted into a Caucasian family in which the girl's two siblings live. She did not know them and had never seen them. 

Little attempt has been made here to understand a culture, the Métis culture, because that is the girl's birth heritage. Does it matter? Of course it does. It does in every other avenue of Canadian life and law and societal correctness. Yet in her case, with her life, that culture has been minimized and we have another instance of bureaucratic initiative misjudging what is truly in the best benefit of the child. Isn't our history full enough with the bad burden of young lives plucked from families and shipped off to a residential schools or to out of province non-aboriginal families and even over the border into the United States? Did we have to repeat this again with this little girl? No we did not.

I will talk about her a lot over the next weeks but first I want you to see her, well, you can't really, because there is a ban on such publication, but what is permitted, I can offer here. Furthermore, I am providing links to new websites that tell her story very well from the viewpoint of the loving foster family who miss her.

In subsequent pieces you will be shocked again, perhaps outraged by what our government has done.

METIS FOSTER PARENTS LOSE APPEAL - CHILD TO BE SHIPPED TO ONTARIO

Foster dad with Metis girl, photo courtesy of foster mom 

Recent news of Metis toddler - A British Columbia foster family has lost its fight in the province's highest court to keep a Metis toddler they have raised since birth. You should read this week's Times Colonist report that reveals that the B.C. foster parents will not give up. Perhaps you will share Ray Ferris' dismay which he expresses in the piece that follows. He has sent this letter to the Times Colonist. Ray is an author and advocate.

"Your Times Colonist report reminds us that the social workers want to rip this child from the only home she has known and place her with strangers in Ontario, regardless of the consequences. Not only does this fly in the face of common sense, but it ignores all knowledge of early childhood development and good social work practice. Such action also flouts the imperatives in the CF&CSA defining the best interests of children."

    

"The Act lists the following guidelines and rules.

1.Preservation of kinship ties and attachment to extended family are urged.

2.Cultural identity of aboriginal children should be protected.

3.Decisions on young children to be timely.

4. Continuity of care is important.

5. Quality of relationship with caregiver.

6. Child’s cultural, racial and religious heritage to be protected.

7. Where the child is aboriginal placement must be with extended family or in cultural community, or with another aboriginal family."

"Clearly, all these conditions are satisfied with the present Metis foster parents, who also wish to adopt. Courts have defined Metis people as aboriginal. There is a section that says that placement in the same home as siblings should be considered. The Act also states that all the best interests must be considered in context and that judgement must be used. Note that no one right is declared as paramount. However, the Ministry director continues to insist that sibling placement must supersede all other clauses. Obviously the time has long gone when this would have had any benefit and it is perverse to cling to it. The law allows him to do so without challenge."

"Children need to be stabilized in the first year of life. Otherwise they are prone to developing a range of anxiety disorders, which can scar for life. Unfortunately, the scantily trained unregistered social workers of the children's ministry seem to be blissfully ignorant of such knowledge."

From Ray Ferris 105-3900 Shelbourne St. Victoria. Phone 250 477 5723

My Previous GPS blog posts associated with this case are found at these links:

GPS: Metis Child Is In a Mess: Feb 15, 2016 ... She was not permitted to go to a Métis cultural event being held in her honour. Why would the Métis Federation hold an event to honour her?

‪GPS: METIS GIRL'S GOOD NEWS - FOR NOW: Mar 7, 2016 ... The good news is coming but first read the reprise of this situation. If you have been following the long running story of the two-year old Metis ..

GPS: Times Colonist Story about Metis Toddler: Jan 30, 2016 ... FOLLOWUP opinion by Ray Ferris, my advocacy colleague, an experienced ...

GPS: Emergency News of Little Metis Girl: Feb 27, 2016 ... If you have to look back a few posts that pertain to the metis child being taken from her foster parents who ...

THE NEEDS OF A CHILD - TWO STORIES - Story One

COURTESY PHOTO

"I am going to tell you two stories because one arose out of the other. Some years ago I had been trying to help two foster parents get back a foster daughter who had been ripped out of their home. I ran into the mother at a demonstration by wronged foster parents outside the parliament buildings. This is mainly about the needs of the child." by Ray Ferris
Ray is my friend. Ray is the author of 'The Art of Child Protection'.
> Consider Rosanna