As I write daily, I occasionally return to the specifics of the Paul and Zabeth Bayne case of their three children having been removed from their home and custody almost three years ago now. October 22nd will mark the third anniversary of that disruption. When I write about the treatment that they have received from the regional staff of the Ministry of Children and Family Development, my lines have been increasingly less for the purpose of fault-finding but rather for identifying what went wrong.
From the Ministry's standpoint any failure at resolution will rest with the Baynes' refusal to acknowledge harming their youngest child. No member of this MCF team has ever believed the Baynes' protestation of innocence and their story of an accidental fall by one child upon the other or injuries exacerbated by preconditions stemming from prematurity. That presumption of guilt, and that's all that it can be since there is no substantive evidence of parental harm, has affected every MCFD response, decision and judgement with regard to the Baynes.
If, the accurate medical findings in autumn 2007 pointed not at cause as is suggested by the unfortunate diagnostic title of shaken baby, but rather pointed only at trauma induced injury consistent with the accidental collision of siblings and the consequence of a lengthy delay by medical services to accurately identify the nature of the infant's failing condition, then service providers and supervisors have been responsible for numerous errors and misjudgements in this unfolding story of their treatment of these children and this family.
That is a concern, not just for the Baynes, but for every family whose lives are interrupted by the intervention of a regional unit of this provincial Ministry which is decentralized for understandable and valid reasons yet a Ministry which appears still to be struggling with supervision, quality assurance and consistency of operations in child protection within all communities.
