PARENTAL CAPACITY ASSESSMENTS (2nd part of 2 parts)

Parental Capacity assessments (2nd of 2 parts)

Written by Ray Ferris. Ray Ferris is a retired child-protection worker and the author of The Art of Child Protection and occasional contributor to this GPS blog.

Let me tell you about a recent case in Victoria family court. A parental capacity assessment was done under contract to the director. This document completely dominated all the judge’s decisions. The PCA was full of serious flaws and I list them below.

1. The psychologist took five months to do the report, claiming it was necessary to read thousands of pages of legal documents. He did no such thing. He read reams of ministry records that he had no business doing because it made him clearly partial and he is supposed to be impartial.

2. He stated he followed standard guidelines, but he failed to state whose guidelines.

3. He stated he was an expert witness before the court. He was not. An expert witness has to be qualified at a court hearing and his expertise can be challenged. His testimony has to stand up to examination and cross-examination under due process.

4. Under section 64 (2) b of the CF&CSA the judge may consider any written submission or documents he considers relevant. So legally a PCA has no more standing than say a school report or a letter of support for a parent.

5. In soliciting input from other professionals such as psychologists and registered counsellors he misrepresented himself. He said he was doing a court ordered assessment. He was under contract to the director.

6.Because of this misrepresentation others felt obliged to share information, which they would otherwise not have done. One of them stated that had he known, he would have not considered him to be impartial and would have been reluctant to help him. ( In one Vancouver case, the judge did not trust the PCA ordered by the ministry, nor the one contracted by the parent and so he ordered his own to be done. Speaks for itself. )

7. The parent sent relevant sections of the PCA to all the professionals who were quoted. They all provided letters confirming that he had misrepresented himself and made a number of changes to their information so that it was skewed in favour of the director. Some of them specifically asked him if he was audio recording the telephone interviews He said he was not, so they took careful notes of what they said. He presented their input as verbatim in his report and so misled the court.

Conclusion. I could go on, but that is enough for a blog. I write this for those readers who may be suffering from a surfeit of parental capacity assessments. I hope this information is of help to you in instructing your lawyers how to deal with these reports, because most lawyers swallow the psychobabble and do not know how to challenge it. Do not hesitate to contact me if you need help with this sort of problem, rtferris@telus.net

DR. CONRAD BOWDEN, CREDENTIALS, EXPERIENCE / 519

Dr. Bowden, Van Psych-Ed Services Site

 

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) is the sponsoring organization that publishes the series of papers under the title Practice Made Perfect, and in that series is one piece written by Dr. Conrad Bowden who is the MCFD engaged psychologist who is conducting a parental capacity assessment of Paul and Zabeth Bayne.
Prepared for a 2009 Child Protection Conference, Dr. Bowden's article is entitled, “Parenting Capacity Assessments: A PsychologistsPerspective.”

We know that Dr. Bowden’s service in the Bayne case is paid by the MCFD. That can make parents like the Baynes understandably nervous. Yet Bowden has written a provocative paragraph. Understanding that this paper is intended for diverse child protection personnel, Dr. Bowden’s remarks express a level of objectivity that is encouraging. “While in most cases the PCA is initiated and paid for by MCFD, the psychologist’s job is to consider the whole circumstances of the parent’s situation including their relationship with MCFD. MCFD social workers and others make operating assumptions about their clients that may be erroneous. The psychologist’s job is to increase understanding of the client so as to make it more likely that a constructive working relationship can be formed between social worker and client leading to a return of the child or children.”

For Love and For Justice / Part 110 / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

The Best that Jensen Can Do
Part One of Two parts


Even a thin case can have the appearance of overwhelming and intimidating evidentiary value when it has been back lighted by a legislated power to remove children and hold on to them until a judicial ruling comes down. It has a perception of strength.

In the case of Paul and Zabeth Bayne and three children, Kent, Baden and Bethany, that darkly sinister evidence becomes smaller and smaller as the lumens of the spotlight of truth and justice are ever intensified.

Finn Jensen may have developed his case believing that it was strong. He is certainly a competent lawyer. Even this far into the trial he may be convinced that he can win this. Sadly, that’s what litigation aims at, winning! If he is successful, what will MCFD win? It will win the entitlement to keep the children from Paul and Zabeth permanently. It will win the right to force each of these three children to live throughout their remaining childhood and youth with adoptive parents and never to see their birth parents again, until perhaps one day as adults they opt to make a connection that was severed willfully not by their parents or themselves but by a judge and a ministry of a government under which they live.

Here is the best that Finn Jensen, counsel for the Ministry of Children can do in court.

What kind of evidence do you consider the following testimony to be? Jensen called Mike and Elizabeth Hoffman, a pastor and wife from Hope, B.C. where the Baynes resided at the time that this story began. These couples were friends, sharing faith and worship. The Hoffmans reported their concerns to authorities in 2007 and confirmed that report with testimony in the current hearing in January 2010. Based upon what he had learned in seminary psychology classes Michael Hoffman wondered whether Zabeth was suffering from post-partum depression and that she may have Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, an uncommon condition in which a person harms another in order to gain attention. Consider the nature of this hypothesis that would imply she might do harm to her children. Is that evidence? Hoffman is not a medical or psychiatric doctor. He is not an expert nor does he purport to be. I too have taken seminary psychology. Seminary pysch informs you enough to state an opinion but doesn’t qualify you to make an assessment that is entered as evidence that a woman is a risk to her children. This is specially true now that medical professionals were told in court that they could not state an opinion as to whether the Bayne baby's injuries were accidental or non-accidental. It is Jensen's folly not Hoffman's that this was entered as evidence in a court of law. Hoffman surmised, speculated or supposed that Zabeth might be suffering from this condition, that's all and that is not evidence. Combine that with his wife's testimony and what does Jensen have? Elizabeth gave testimony that the two boys seemed small for their age and that the little girl started looking increasingly listless. That may be concern but is that evidence? The children’s doctor was more aware than they and was satisfied with the children’s health status. This testimony is in the court transcript and in a CBC online story.