MCFD'S CALL IS BAD FOR SO MANY REASONS (part 1 of 4)

MCFD'S CALL IS BAD FOR SO MANY REASONS (part 1 of 4)

MCFD Erred Gravely In Métis Child's Case

Let's begin with the premise that each of the two placement options in this case, the BC home and the Ontario home are good homes for this child. What influenced the Director and Case Management Team of the Ministry of Children and Family Development to arrive at the decision to remove an almost three-year-old girl named SS from her Métis foster parents in B.C. with whom she has been since birth, in order to send her to live with non-Metis parents in Ontario, where her two Métis siblings live?

You might say that the last sentence already reveals the decisive factor, explicitly the sibling kinship. That may have been the rationale in the decision but it is not enough to justify the choice. I cannot tell you how or why that decision was reached but using the Ministry's own legislated and customarily stated criteria for determining placements, I will now tell you why the MCFD decision was unreasonable, and therefore not in the child's best interests.

First, the regulation is that preference is shown for a placement that permits a child's contact with birth parents in order to enrich the child's sense of identity, provided that birth parents welcome the contact. In fact, these birth parents in B.C. are open and have repeatedly begged that the foster parents be allowed to adopt their child. Note that distance makes it impossible to maintain such contact with the family in Ontario and furthermore, no such attempt at contact by foster parents or birth parents has occurred with the two other siblings in Ontario. In contrast, a beneficial relationship was already established between the child and the birth parents in the same B.C. city during the three years she has lived with the Metis foster parents in B.C.

Second, consideration is given to the child's physical, intellectual, and emotional needs and to her level of development. A professional appraisal revealed that irreparable damage would result to these aspects of the child's life if a move involved this significant trauma of removal from the foster family and a move to strangers in Ontario. In her B.C. foster home these needs were met for the first thirty months and her development progressed above norms.

Third, is the importance of continuity in care. It is readily understandable that such continuity of care is ruined completely by the move to Ontario. In the child's B.C. home, her continuity of care was uninterrupted and that remained true until MCFD removed her in preparation for her transport to Ontario.

(Thank you for reading. Tomorrow part 2. Would you please look at one of the websites, bringsshome.ca or bringsshome.com  and glance at the little girl's Facebook page ‘Bring Home Baby S’. )

WHISTLEBLOWERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE

We need whistle blowers. Whistleblowers make a difference - a large difference. Stats show that defendants get nailed when whistleblowers are involved in the case. I am not even hinting at nailing people but reliving them of their jobs. It’s too late to train them.

Advocates and critics and wounded children and adults can go public with their complaints, and news media can give their grievances higher profile, but the legislated immunity worn by the B.C. Ministry of Children and Families will continue to enable moral mistakes in case management because of systemic defects that remain untreated. In other words we are vulnerable and powerless. Habitually in B.C. courts of law, impartiality evaporates as well-funded MCFD lawyers subdue plaintiffs' lawyers inexperienced in family law. Exaggerating the discrimination is the perception that judges predictably concur with MCFD.

Granted that casual readers of Ministry news never have open files to peruse, yet there have been many cases in which ordinary citizens can recognize injustice and can recommend a course of action that would better serve a child and the parents and a culture. The case of three-year-old SS is one of these.

Is there an MCFD employee who knows when the decision was made to move the girl? Can a whistleblower enlighten us as to why this child was left for three years in a foster home before this move was made? Can someone reveal whether Stephanie Cadieux approved this move? Does Minister Stephanie Cadieux relinquish a controversial decision like this to a Director? Is there a whistleblower who can tell us why three out of four Métis service agencies in B.C. approved the government plan to send SS to Ontario? Can someone explain if there were interactions between the non-Métis parents in Ontario and the MCFD of B.C.? Will there be someone to explain the internal discussions about adopting the child to Ontario and changing that to fostering because the former violated the law? Does someone know and will that someone tell us why MCFD so adamantly refused to allow the upstanding foster family to adopt SS?

This kind of case will occur again and again, met with some public interest and even indignation, then will blow over. To recall evenhandedness, objectivity and justice to each and every case and specially to cases involving indigenous people, more noise is needed. We need the kind of noise that comes from inside the MCFD. One person or a few people within the Ministry, who acknowledge botched case handling and wrongheaded decisions and attribute cause and liability. We need courageous people whose personal integrity cannot suppress the information, but who come forward, knowing the risk to their employment and privacy feel obliged to reveal the problems, propose remedy.

If you will consider helping LM and RB as they go forward, look at these links,

Facebook page ‘Bring Home Baby S’, and the two websites that tell her story, bringsshome.ca or bringsshome.com. 

WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A GOODBYE

The government ministry commissioned with the responsibility of care for children erred gravely on this one. The MCFD didn't stumble or bungle it. MCFD planned this.  Here again is the way that I view this case. A small Métis toddler was ripped from a distraught Métis foster family and from her supportive Métis community and she was sent to Ontario to a non-Métis home, a wounding action that has left a bewildered, sorrowing and furious Métis community as well as a crowd of others, like me with systems sensitive to inequality and injustice.

Like I said yesterday, not all Métis have felt the anguish of uprooting a three-year old from the only parents she knows, living with them since she was three days old. The Métis in B.C. who were asked by the government for an opinion on this matter, are the Métis agencies that receive government funding, and they all approved the MCFD child-plucking.  Those service groups are the Métis Commission for Children and Families of BC, the Island Métis Children and Family Services Society and the Métis Nation of British Columbia.  Yes, I know. Make of it what you will. I know how that sits with me. Money talks, an old axiom remains exact.

The B.C. Métis Federation that supported the Métis foster family and their application to adopt the child, vigorously expressed to the Premier and to the Minister of Children, their opposition. The Foster parents did all that they could. They had one of the most committed and competent family lawyers in Jack Hittrich. They appealed to the Attorney General. The Press in telling the story expressed the obvious; the Ministry's plan was distasteful.

The Ministry did it anyway. Minds were made up. Due diligence be damned. I can imagine this worst-case scenario behind closed doors as MCFD colleagues converse.

"The Foster family can't continue to fight this in the courts if we quickly put her on a plane and send her off. The family has already dropped half a million dollars down the hole."

"We've got the majority of Métis in our pocket anyway."

"No one else is going to pay attention to this case in a few weeks."

"If there is any flak at all, we can promise that in the future we are going to give Indigenous people much more control over placements and adoptions."

"Yea, promise, promise, promise, that always works to diffuse present noise."

The princely side of me wants to believe that conversation has not transpired within the MCFD. It doesn't lessen or pardon the professional miscalculation. The lawful and the considerate choice was to permit that child not to experience the heart-wrenching experience of having her mommy and daddy disappear from her life without so much as a goodbye.

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If you will consider helping LM and RB as they go forward, look at these links,

Facebook page ‘Bring Home Baby S’, and the two websites that tell her story, bringsshome.ca or bringsshome.com. 

B.C. MÉTIS FEDERATION are SS'S FRIENDS

The B.C. Métis organizations and agencies that approved the Ministry of Children and Families' plan to remove SS from a BC Métis foster family and put her in an Ontario non-Métis family, were all agencies that receive six-figure amounts of Liberal government funding are the Métis Commission for Children and Families of BC,  the Island Métis Children and Family Services Society and the Métis Nation of British Columbia.

It is not a frivolous observation that recipients of taxpayer monies approved the government plan. It would seem to have been a practical decision, a sensible choice if the 'best interest of the child' is not truly the top priority. Oh, I am not naïve. I am sure that the leadership of such groups can defend their decision and even believe it. It's a stretch but these groups may actually believe that it was best to place SS with her two sibling sisters in Ontario. To arrive at that opinion they needed to overlook or ignore the fact that to affect the child's transfer, the MCFD willingly violated inter-cultural understandings, lawful principles, regulations and policies that are well known and well documented.

You be the judge when I tell you that another principal aboriginal group with something to say about this child removal and transfer is the B.C. Métis Federation that has vigorously opposed the government plan since it was hatched. The B.C. Métis Federation receives no grants or monies from the Liberal government that directs the Ministry of Children, its directors and caseworkers.  Isn't that a noteworthy feature? Significantly this is the Métis community of which the Métis foster parents, RB and LM are members. BC Métis Federation communicated to the Liberal Premier Christy Clark and to the Minister of MCFD, Stephanie Cadieux, expressing its opposition.

These are the members of the Board of Directors of the B.C. Métis Federation. This is a robust and respectable aboriginal community led by effective leaders.

      Keith Henry, President (North Vancouver) 

      Rene Therrien, Vice-President (Terrace)

      Joe Desjarlais, Secretary (North Vancouver)

      Betty Fisher, Treasurer (Surrey)

      Ken Fisher, Director (Vancouver)

      Baillie Redfern, Director (Vancouver)

JJ Lavallee, Director (Surrey)

Joe Desjarlais has written a remarkably insightful, scathing article entitled "#BringSShome", the entirety of which is found on the Federation's instructive website. Here is one paragraph.

"A helpless child torn from the only family she knows breaks down to rubble the myth of a benevolent government looking out for the best interests of Métis peoples, and in full view of all Canadians who care to listen. As the well-being and freedom of a little child comes into focus, the deep exclusion, injustice, oppression and hypocrisy of the colonial myth is laid bare. The tragedy is that Métis communities/nations are, in the historic and contemporary sense, dynamic peoples with valid autonomous histories and cultures of their own. Had governments, agencies, and courts respected our historical difference, a different outcome could have been realized for SS, one that illustrated well that Métis nations can contribute to Canada as ongoing ‘partners’."

If you will consider helping LM and RB as they go forward, look at these links,

Facebook page ‘Bring Home Baby S’, and the two websites that tell her story, bringsshome.ca or bringsshome.com.