MCFD HAS CHANGED AYN’S ASSIGNED SOCIAL WORKER

Listen! We all understand life and business. Sometime employees are reassigned and replaced. Sometimes personal life events require time off. So in one sense it is not surprising to learn that the Ministry social worker to whom the Ayn Van Dyk case was allocated, is off the case and a different social worker has now got the file. Of course he or she doesn’t merely have Ayn’s case with which to become familiar, but several others, perhaps many more cases. That sounds daunting. It also generates concern for parents that the resolution of their cases will be unsettled and delayed. There is apprehension that the mediation already accomplished will be misunderstood, forgotten or dismissed. That is certainly some of the unease with which Derek Hoare has been left after recent phone calls.

On Tuesday Derek said, “Well I just got off the phone with the new SW for the first time.... interesting to say the least. They would not comment on the length of absence to be expected. We seem to be looking at a very steep learning curve ahead for this worker. They are going to read the file, but as of yet seem largely unaware of where we are at in our dialog.”

Foster Parent and a Foster Child / Part 358 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

The next quotation of a child's comment comes from Tuesday's post, called 'Listen to the Children.'  “Can we stay now?” A small child's earnest request to remain with birth parents from whom he has been separated for half his life is without any agenda other than personal satisfaction of the heart.

It is not a child's comment on the care received within the foster home. It is not a child's comment about foster parents. It is not a child's statement that affirms or denies appreciation for what a foster parent has done for the child. It is simply a child's stated desire.

Foster parents motivated to care for children who are temporarily in need of a place to stay and in which to have their daily needs met, and to provide some sense of stability and affection are to be commended. I have said this before. Never having offered this service myself, I am unsure how you foster folk maintain the necessary objectivity to remain emotionally unattached to the child. Of course it helps if you already have children of your own. You do not require or want the additional permanent responsibility of someone else's child or children. This is a temporary service you do. Most foster parents understand perfectly, their roles and functions. They are foster, surrogate and alternate and are interim, impermanent and want it that way.

Yet, can a foster parent become attached emotionally to an infant or a small child in one's care? I can believe that this happens.

The foster parents of the Bayne children did not initiate this question or this blog post, nor did the birth parents. This is entirely detached from them. The ideas arose elsewhere in a rather general discussion rather than case specific. Could a foster parent become jealous of the affection of a child shown to the biological parents – an affection demonstrated by a simple statement such as, “Can we stay now?” Would that be an awkward and somewhat troublesome tug of war. Would that influence a foster parent's care program? Would it affect how a foster parent treated the child, spoke to the child? Would a foster parent attempt to win the child's affection somehow? Could a foster parent regard birth parents as rivals? How does a foster parent show care with affection and then successfully shut that down because their task is completed? I said in an earlier post that there are 16,000 children annually in BC who live for some time outside their parents' homes. The issues must therefore be handled many times by foster parents in this province.

I have to say, I never thought of these things, certainly not when I wrote the piece entitled “Listen to the Children.” It was merely a means to convey that a child has something to say about the way he wants his life to unfold. He should be heard.