PROJECT PARENT - THE BAYNES LAST CHANCE / 512

Project Parent logo/ Family Services

Paul and Zabeth Bayne indicated some weeks ago their agreement to participate in Project Parent. This is an integral facet of the parental betterment and assessment being done by the Ministry of Children and Family Development on these parents. Project Parent is an intensive eight month program for parents of young children. The Ministry will often refer to Project Parent, a family that it considers “at risk.' The Baynes will certainly be one of these.

STAGES 1&2 OF CRABTREE'S DECISION PROCESS / 485

Chief Justice Thomas Crabtree

(On Monday: Judge Crabtree's verbatim Conclusion)

Near the end of the 39 page 'reasons' document released March 2, 2011, Judge Crabtree renders his conclusion in two stages.

Today, I am restating for you the conclusion to which Judge Thomas Crabtree arrived. I have taken liberty here to write the Judge's remarks in the third person. Where most appropriate, I have quoted Judge Crabtree's own words.

RISK RATIONALITIES IN CHILD PROTECTION / Part 413 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

The risk paradigm significantly influences contemporary social work. Social work and risk are increasingly linked as we have seen in a case like Paul and Zabeth Bayne and the removal of their three children in October of 2007. On the one hand, risk is a factor in contemporary social policy and practice because it must be when a report is received that a child is injured and there is suspicion of abuse. On the other hand, the 'risk' concept in social work is not uniform or uncontested. There are different rationalities for risk within social work which result in differing policy responses and practices. What then is at issue is that different rationalities of risk, regard or assess a 'subject/client' differently and therefore respond in differing ways to the subject. We have heard commenters say that one team of SWs treated the client combatively and newer SW assigned to the task was understanding.

In the case of the Baynes, we have had a Director who believes that at the time of the infant daughter's injuries and diagnosis in September 2007, Paul and Zabeth were a risk to their daughter. Moreover, throughout these past three years and still today as evidenced in the most recent affidavit, the Director believes the parents are a risk to this child. They do not deserve ever to have custody of their children again. That's the essence of the Continuing Care application upon which the Judge is deliberating at this moment. So convinced is the Director about the risk that Paul and Zabeth pose to children that he directed the apprehension of the baby girl's two brothers. Those boys aged two and three in autumn 2007 are now five and six years old and have also been in care rather than at home.

Upon what was this risk based? Well no substantiated evidence exists. No evidence pointed to a criminal act by one or both of the parents. The Director moved initially to the apprehension of the couple's children because of their youngest child's injuries. Even the medical diagnosis by a hospital pediatrician was not evidence. The doctor who was part of the child protection unit of the hospital concluded that the injuries were consistent with something called shaken baby syndrome. The diagnosis is not evidence. It is a theory. It assumes that the only explanation for that set of medical findings is willful harm to the child. Because of its name, 'shaken baby,' this theory assumes more than it should. Its description correctly reveals the serious and sometimes life threatening medical condition of the child, but titling the condition this way, passes judgement on caregivers because the name itself imputes liability without verifiable proof. This has got to stop. The diagnosis is even more contestable today because so many medical and bio-mechanical professionals have been doing research and writing opinion papers that offer grounds for other explanations for the injuries that were sustained by the Bayne child. Many of these were presented to the Director first but when the CCO application was made, these facts were presented in court by the Baynes' lawyer. The Director has retained his risk persuasion because he has never accepted the Bayne explanation for their youngest child's injuries. He has never believed that they are innocent as they have insisted without cowering and with so much at stake. In his mind, they were and are and always will be a risk. Redemption is not in this MCFD team's vocabulary. For that reason as Zabeth has come almost to term with her fourth pregnancy, MCFD has made numerous overtures to discuss with the Baynes the care of the yet to be born child. It is to this that Ray Ferris' letter to Mr. McNeill spoke. A personal letter that illustrated the uncaring stress that this conduct placed upon Zabeth whom the entire local MCFD team knows is vulnerable to seriously premature deliveries. It is time that risk assessments are conducted upon MCFD managers and SWs.

What disturbs me is that another Director with different risk rationalities might have already demonstrated willingness to accept the parents' strengths as well as exercised leniency and compassion to them for the sake of the family.

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 two weeks. Stay posted.

I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS / Part 199 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

Don't miss the Comments Section following today's Post.

I ask so many questions.
I don't have answers for them.
The children were removed as a protective precautionary measure following a serious injury to their youngest child in the autumn of 2007. Risk assessment was done initially and later, both informally and then more officially with a filed document. In every case the assessment reflected badly upon Paul and Zabeth as parents because at no time in two and one half years has the Fraser Region branch of MCFD viewed them as no risk parents who can care for their children without supervision. Yet that assessment differs dramatically from Zabeth's own mother's assessment of their parenting skills and commitment that she saw up close and personal. I published her letter May 22. Now, after all of that time, 2.5 years, MCFD believes it can justify the removal of all three children and leave these parents impoverished of their offspring.

Harming a child means that you are a risk to re-offend, whether or not there is enough evidence for criminal charges to be laid. MCFD has a responsibility to adjudicate the risk factor. However, once that comprehensive risk assessment has been done, it is accepted social work practice to develop a Risk Reduction Plan. The purpose of this is to reduce the highest risk factors. The plan is customarily accomplished in consultation with the child if old enough, and with the family and others who may become involved in the plan. Social workers have access to a MCFD Risk Reduction Planning process and documentation. With it the social workers identifies the risk factors to be addressed; describes measurable outcomes of the plan; describes strategies and services required to achieve the outcomes; and specifies a date for reviewing each strategy. It is crucial that the social worker involves the family and child(ren) and service providers and others who have a role in the plan insuring that all understand what is expected of them.

The social worker is authorized to take protective measures that are based on the level of risk that has been identified. The measures must be adequate to ensure the child’s protection and be the least disruptive to the child. Among the available protective options to the social workers are providing protection services to the child at home for which no court order is required; applying for a protective intervention order according to (Section 28, CFCSA); applying for an order to ensure necessary health care (where risk to the child is limited to a medical issue); arranging for the child to stay with family or friends; developing a voluntary care agreement with the parent; applying for a supervision order; and removing the child. These options are categorized as risk reduction.

Programs and plans exist within our society to assist the recovery of people from all sorts of dependencies, maladies, emotional and relational issues, and unacceptable behaviours. All of these seek to reduce the possibilities for re-occurrence and reoffence. How in two and one half years can the authors and reviewers of the Bayne Risk Assessment fail to develop the Risk Reduction Plan whereby parents, as demonstrably worthy, loving, responsible and conscientious as are the Baynes, can be restored to their children? Efforts are made to rehabilitate even convicted criminal offenders. The Baynes were not convicted of an offence. They have been circumstantially suspect by MCFD. So why, would MCFD personnel not make every effort to reconstruct the Bayne family life? Why? If it suspected that the parents are a risk, why not try to reduce the actual risk? Is it because the parents must first confess to harming the child? Is that when such remedial help is offered? Or is it possible that the MCFD management does not have the resources, either in tools and programs, or funds, or in compassion and will? I am telling you, I want to believe in the goodness of people involved in this work. Yesterday, a community worker assured me that most people are good. Yet damaged people and saddened former social workers tell me with expletives I have deleted that so many in the system are far from good. Who can I believe?