My primary purpose for the blog when I began was to expose what I believed was an injustice upon a family with whom I was acquainted, the Baynes.
The writing process required research which has been educational for me. The information has also been disturbing to me.
The unspeakable terror of being accused of harming one's own child when in fact that was untrue, and the confiscation not only of the one child to whom this harm was allegedly done, but all three of one's children was so repugnant that I could not tolerate the thought that we have a Ministry that would condone this and then keep the children for over two years without sorting it out. It is almost three years now.
What I have learned is that conjoined to the removal of children as the first line of solution to suspected abuse or neglect, is a legal establishment comprised of clever, cold-eyed lawyers who defend the actions of Ministry personnel using the files and reports compiled by social workers some of whom have abandoned integrity. What is more troubling to me is that my acquaintances are not a unique case but merely a sample of scores more families whose lives were interrupted or forever altered in British Columbia. Then I discovered that in every province, the governments' initiatives to protect children has resulted in similar miscarriages of rights and freedoms and reputations and privacies. Further, a virtual worldwide pandemic of absurdities within the child welfare programs of nations is destroying families.
I am confounded that our own Minister of Children and Deputy Minister of Children and Ombudsman and ranking Ministry officers, when reviewing the same data to which I have access, are not themselves questioning and speaking to how Child Welfare agencies can fulfill their mandate effectively without leaving these lengthy trails of tragedy and heartache.
