WILL THE GOVERNMENT ACT ON INDEPENDENT RECOMMENDATIONS?

Bob Plecas

Recommendations are valueless when they are ignored. Bob Plecas' independent review will contain recommendations for improvements and change for the Ministry of Children and Family Services. I have zero confidence that the recommendations will bring change within the Ministry. Plecas' work will be thorough and predictably commendable but it will have been ineffectual unless the Premier Christy Clark, and the Minister Hon. Stephanie Cadieux and preferably the Deputy Minister Mark Sieben construe the Plecas recommendations as beneficial and indispensable and determine to affect them. They must make them happen.

AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE – PART 1of5 / 563

Ray Ferris is my guest writer for the next five GPS posts. He retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. In five parts this will be the substance of a letter already sent to specific officers of the government and offered publicly now using the Bayne Case to expose flaws and remedies in the child protection system. Here is part one of his letter.



THE BAYNE CASE AS A GRAPHIC EXAMPLE OF FLAWS – PART 1
My purpose in writing to you is to draw your attention to the facts in a particular case and in some related cases in order to illustrate a number of serious problems in the child protection system. Some of these problems are systemic and others are not. Where the problem is systemic, I offer some suggested remedies that can be tried. I think that there are possible remedies for the non-systemic problems, but they are deep-seated and difficult to correct. It can be noted that non-systemic problems cannot by remedied by making administrative or systemic changes. This is one of the reasons why the past systemic changes recommended by people like Gove and Hughes have not worked and have in many respects simply created new problems.