SWs LEARNING FROM MISTAKES / Part 364 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Eileen Munro wrote a 2006 volume called "Effective Child Protection.”

One of her most poignant lines quoted from page 141 is, "The single most important factor in minimizing errors is to admit that you may be wrong." This is fundamental to turning MCFD around. I explore that premise today.

Among the hard realities of child protective work is that we do not live in a perfect world and there are no perfect parents. Good parents sometimes make mistakes. All parents may not meet the arbitrary standards that a social worker has developed as a model. These parents can nonetheless function capably as loving caregivers and have a right to do so. They might benefit from services offered with no attached strings and provisos. Another hard reality is that child protection workers do make mistakes, yet if there is a willingness the same workers can learn from those mistakes and improvements can be made to practice. Reluctance to learn informs superiors that these workers may not be made of the right stuff for this work.

We would begin to minimize the mistakes that are being made in child protection if we employed the right people. Hiring and retaining the right people for child protection in British Columbia is a difficult science. I don't believe that the Ministry of Children and Family Development has yet mastered it. It's easy to be critical and I must sound like that often. If employing the right people for child protection is a priority for us, then what must be understood at the top of the stuctural chart is that there has to be a balance between acquiring people with an academic ability to meet the job demands and the emotional intelligence to work with families, colleagues and other professionals.

Did you catch that? Emotional intelligence is not to be shunned but valued. Child protection is not merely an academic exercise whereby one follows the letter of the law. This is human welfare with which we are dealing. These parents are fellow humans of the same stuff as you are social workers, and these parents are not antagonists by nature. Their adversarial buttons have been pushed sometimes by the mistaken actions of social workers who have failed to, or been unable to use emotional intelligence.

“The skills and knowledge Eileen Munro thinks are needed to do the job properly include:

• using comprehensive and rational frameworks to make decisions
• using both current and historical information in relation to making judgements about families
• being prepared to change their beliefs about a family based on new information i.e. not clinging to old beliefs whilst ignoring new information
• workers testing their hypothesis about a particular judgement.
• having a critical approach to the work they are undertaking
• refraining from letting first impressions of the family shape case direction
  

These skills should be the common framework or language between the team leader and worker. A common ground that is used to measure and monitor what is happening in a family.”
“Mistakes will continue to be made in the helping professions. Child Protection is not immune from this. The challenge is to be proactive in developing systems that enable practitioner's to make the best decisions possible. Where mistakes are made, it is important that processes are put in place to salvage whatever lessons are possible.”

(This post inspired by the Child Protection and Youth Justice Professional Development Unit of State Government of Victoria, Australia, Department of Human Services) 

CHANGEMAKERS PLEASE STEP FORWARD / Part 312 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

Countdown: It's the 17th. Four days from now, is the final Court Date for the Baynes. 

Yesterday I alluded to the purpose of this particular blog.

I return to this point because there seems some confusion.

The GPS blog began as a personal commentary on life and times and issues filtered through my wide angle lens (wide angle defined by age and experience).

When in September 2009, after years of not being in communication with one another, I learned about my friends Paul and Zabeth Bayne and the distressing life to which they have been subjected, the blog became a daily recital of their pain. I couldn't help myself. Their story needed to be told, frequently.

Familiarizing myself with their case raised concerns about which I had to write - concerns about the operations of child protection in my area. People did read the blog, not many, but a few and they seldom commented.

As everyone knows, exposure to one complaint against child protection services leads rapidly to other cases. The concern intensifies. It was staggering to realize that protests against child removals and unjustified sustained time in care was not exclusive to the Fraser region but existed in all provincial MCFD regions, in all provinces of Canada, and furthermore, in the U.S.A and the U.K, and other countries.

The subject matter for me has remained focused upon this one family's ordeal but it has included numerous side trips to broader issues that pertain to any government's involvement in the care and protection of children.

As I continued to write, readership increased and comments accumulated. I realized there was an audience consisting often of people who have been deeply injured by a government agency and who need an avenue to express their anguish. The comment section of this blog has often been an expression laced with bitterness but it is understandable given the helplessness that contributors feel.

There are many more online blogs and websites where these topics are discussed angrily, even offensively. While I understand the emotion and disgust associated with the issues, I purposed to use this blog to discourse openly, honestly and respectfully the relevant subjects and insisted that comments be added with a comparable courtesy. 

Inherent to my approach is the awareness that society has troubled people, dysfunctional families, adults with addictions, people with histories of abuse, people who did not plan to have children, didn't want children, shouldn't have children. There are children who are angry, maligned, bitter, injured and unhappy. Someone must help all of these people. I accept that one of the first orders of action for our society must be protecting the most vulnerable, and therefore safeguarding children. Who else but our government is in a position to do this?  I don't like that particularly, but the church isn't doing it, and I don't have greater confidence in private institutions. It is not a quantum leap for me to accept that removing a child is sometimes imperative. It is not difficult for me to accept that there are principled and good foster parents who genuinely care for children and youth. I have no difficulty appreciating that many social workers are motivated by a sincere desire to help people. Therefore I welcome the comments of people who can speak from experience as children, parents and workers within the child protection network, can speak to the glaring problems, can speak to the past as well as the future and can make recommendations for change. 

The result has been a readership that is international. Big deal. It doesn't change anything. The change-makers are the people who have gone beyond talking about the problems within the child protection and care programs to organizing concerned people in such a way that help is provided to those victimized by these systems and in such a way that politicians must pay attention.