the truth? wow. you know, what saddens me is that mcfd is entrusted to care for these kids because it is not safe in original family home, and at that time, not investigating the allegations that were made against the foster parents right away creates this situation where they are more suspect because of savannaugh's death. If a virus caused this, mcfd left the foster parents out to dry, with suspicion and damage to their reputations, after all those years of service? In my opinion, BC should not tolerate any deaths of children in care...deaths of children in care should not be anything but disease, and had better not be due to medical neglience. Any other standard of accepting deaths of children in care is not acceptable, or tolerable, ever.

As far as the harness is concerned, why are social workers expected to be experts on stuff they know nothing or little about? The harness is not a good idea....at least to us outside the system. it is disturbing. But, why were the social workers acting like it was ok, or lying about whether or not it is suitable, at the time? Social workers routinely are left to make decisions on complex cases on their own, knowing little of the issues; which are routinely mental health, fasd, or other special needs in that population. To your face, they will act like they know, rather than saying " I dont know, I will check with my supervisors". What is wrong with the system when simple ignorance cannot be acknowledged, and allowed, so that these workers make better, informed decisions? Not every decision they make is crisis of emergency, but sometimes I suspect that happens far too often.
As far as assuming the lack of discipline in the family of origin....ha....sometimes the kids just have more adults in the system to triangulate, because communications within mcfd totally suck, and the kids learn they can get what they want most of the time, by acting out and making allegations, as the social has to listen, so the children learn very quickly how to exercise this power. Truth is, with BC's multiple removal intervention system of dealing with families, these kids have so many different caregivers after a while that the kids learn that if they hold out long enough on getting their own way, they will....because a new caregiver will be caring for them soon.

to me, if the crib was breaking from the thrashing, and a harness is not a good idea, why not build a mattress pad to the floor type of bed for her. She is three, and would not fall off the floor. People do this camping, and this would seem far safer than using a crib...unless of course there was no room for it.

The investigation processes the ministry uses are a joke. In the efforts to save time, they usually only interview and listen to children. Not taking and fully interviewing other parties in kids lives, they routinely make decisions on kids allegations if not in a foster home. Because of the fact that so few allegations in foster homes are "true", apparently, they are not investigated at all, or postponed.

The problem with the system is the intake process. It is NOT STAFFING. The Ministry alleges that staffing, staffing, staffing. If all ministry files were subjected to the rules of evidence, and the investigations were conducted to the standard the police use, which is criminal standards, we would have better information. And, certain decisions, such as presentation hearings after removals, should have evidence tested to a legal standard of 60 % burden of proof, not the 10% they can legally do now. That would eliminate many of the kids in care. And, it would force the ministry to stop bullying, or strongly suggesting relinquishing children into their care, as they would need more proof.

The sad reality is that BC does not practice preventative child prevention. All help services for families are organized under a "child protection" umbrella, and that leaves no ability for families to get help before things get out of hand...a no harm no foul approach would save us lots. On the salary of one child protection worker, we could provide counselling supports to 120 families, and have more knowledge of what these families are facing well before the ministry needs to get more involved. Once the ministry is involved, they tell and demand that families do services, even if they are not suitable or appropriate, which wastes money, as they are unlikely to work. Which leaves social workers having to justify why the services didnot....which is blame the parents.

Furthermore, the files are episodic...they report only incident to incident, and very little in between on the "families" they are "tracking." Having those preventative supports would give social workers having to intervene a whole lot more information about the family, and would assist the ministry in creating and planning better services for mandated client families. Sad reality is, the ministry likes cookie cutter service approaches, and if it did not work, the family or the child "chose not to cooperate." How cooperative would you be in doing some service or program that did not help you, or did not really address your concerns, or in many cases, the learning needs of poverty facing, low education families? They are being helped by university grads, who cannot appreciate any of the lifestyle challenges they face to start, never mind teach them.

I just wish that living in BC, that I did not hear about so many child deaths in mcfd care, it is appalling, because to me, mcfd care means, a) higher chance of child death, and b) 80% chance of not achieving dogwood diploma. What kind of future is that? Are we really saving kids, or creating more grief for them in a system that is supposed to help?

I think I understand what "janecitizen" may be trying to say,although I only agree up to a point.
I recently sat on a Coroners Jury in regards to the death of a child, and I can honestly say I now firmly believe that the system is in fact very sick!
Following this inquest is like sitting on that jury all over again for me, and it was gutwrenching to say the least.
Let's be clear about one thing.
It is NOT the frontline care/social workers out in the street that are at fault.They only have so much to give, and they are expected to give a lot, with very little in return.
The issues (and they are many) come from above where the purse strings are pulled, and the politics are practiced.
Unfortunately, we keep being told that the issues are currently being worked on to make things better but, I really don't believe that anymore.
It's all about money, so what is a child's life worth these days?
I don't see anything getting any better.
Whatever the outcome of this particular inquest, nothing will change until something is done where it needs to be done,at the top.
It starts in Victoria with the Campbell government, because they are the only ones who can fix it.
They may not have created the monster,but they have done very little to fix it either.
Inspite of what they like to tell us.
Sadly,all I expect we will see is more spin,politics, and promises that will change very little in the long run.
I would like to believe that this inquest can and will make a difference, but I really don't think it will under the present circimstances.
There have been too many inquests of this nature and too many recommendations that really haven't changed a damn thing.
Maybe they are just not willing to listen.

janecitizen ... the benchmark in court is 51% probability ... not 10% as you state. Also ... around 70% of the MCFD budget is out in the community ... the ECE, Success by Six and many other community programs ... all aimed at prevention are funded through MCFD ... only 30% of the budget is spent on child protection ... social workers, staff salaries, payments to Foster Parents etc ... the rest is spent on the many, many preventative programs aimed at helping families ... no one knows this though ... because these programs do not announce where they get their funding from ...
It's the community's job to keep children safe and healthy ... we are all responsible ... MCFD social workers are just stuck with cleaning up the mess that society has created ... so what are you going to do to make your community better and safer for children????

the truth? wow. you know, what saddens me is that mcfd is entrusted to care for these kids because it is not safe in original family home, and at that time, not investigating the allegations that were made against the foster parents right away creates this situation where they are more suspect because of savannaugh's death. If a virus caused this, mcfd left the foster parents out to dry, with suspicion and damage to their reputations, after all those years of service? In my opinion, BC should not tolerate any deaths of children in care...deaths of children in care should not be anything but disease, and had better not be due to medical neglience. Any other standard of accepting deaths of children in care is not acceptable, or tolerable, ever.

As far as the harness is concerned, why are social workers expected to be experts on stuff they know nothing or little about? The harness is not a good idea....at least to us outside the system. it is disturbing. But, why were the social workers acting like it was ok, or lying about whether or not it is suitable, at the time? Social workers routinely are left to make decisions on complex cases on their own, knowing little of the issues; which are routinely mental health, fasd, or other special needs in that population. To your face, they will act like they know, rather than saying " I dont know, I will check with my supervisors". What is wrong with the system when simple ignorance cannot be acknowledged, and allowed, so that these workers make better, informed decisions? Not every decision they make is crisis of emergency, but sometimes I suspect that happens far too often.
As far as assuming the lack of discipline in the family of origin....ha....sometimes the kids just have more adults in the system to triangulate, because communications within mcfd totally suck, and the kids learn they can get what they want most of the time, by acting out and making allegations, as the social has to listen, so the children learn very quickly how to exercise this power. Truth is, with BC's multiple removal intervention system of dealing with families, these kids have so many different caregivers after a while that the kids learn that if they hold out long enough on getting their own way, they will....because a new caregiver will be caring for them soon.

to me, if the crib was breaking from the thrashing, and a harness is not a good idea, why not build a mattress pad to the floor type of bed for her. She is three, and would not fall off the floor. People do this camping, and this would seem far safer than using a crib...unless of course there was no room for it.

The investigation processes the ministry uses are a joke. In the efforts to save time, they usually only interview and listen to children. Not taking and fully interviewing other parties in kids lives, they routinely make decisions on kids allegations if not in a foster home. Because of the fact that so few allegations in foster homes are "true", apparently, they are not investigated at all, or postponed.

The problem with the system is the intake process. It is NOT STAFFING. The Ministry alleges that staffing, staffing, staffing. If all ministry files were subjected to the rules of evidence, and the investigations were conducted to the standard the police use, which is criminal standards, we would have better information. And, certain decisions, such as presentation hearings after removals, should have evidence tested to a legal standard of 60 % burden of proof, not the 10% they can legally do now. That would eliminate many of the kids in care. And, it would force the ministry to stop bullying, or strongly suggesting relinquishing children into their care, as they would need more proof.

The sad reality is that BC does not practice preventative child prevention. All help services for families are organized under a "child protection" umbrella, and that leaves no ability for families to get help before things get out of hand...a no harm no foul approach would save us lots. On the salary of one child protection worker, we could provide counselling supports to 120 families, and have more knowledge of what these families are facing well before the ministry needs to get more involved. Once the ministry is involved, they tell and demand that families do services, even if they are not suitable or appropriate, which wastes money, as they are unlikely to work. Which leaves social workers having to justify why the services didnot....which is blame the parents.

Furthermore, the files are episodic...they report only incident to incident, and very little in between on the "families" they are "tracking." Having those preventative supports would give social workers having to intervene a whole lot more information about the family, and would assist the ministry in creating and planning better services for mandated client families. Sad reality is, the ministry likes cookie cutter service approaches, and if it did not work, the family or the child "chose not to cooperate." How cooperative would you be in doing some service or program that did not help you, or did not really address your concerns, or in many cases, the learning needs of poverty facing, low education families? They are being helped by university grads, who cannot appreciate any of the lifestyle challenges they face to start, never mind teach them.

I just wish that living in BC, that I did not hear about so many child deaths in mcfd care, it is appalling, because to me, mcfd care means, a) higher chance of child death, and b) 80% chance of not achieving dogwood diploma. What kind of future is that? Are we really saving kids, or creating more grief for them in a system that is supposed to help?

In a presentation hearing , which is to tell the court why a child has been removed, the ministry only has to prove its case at that point to a burden of proof of an estimated legal burden of ten percent. The hearing does not follow like a preliminary hearing, is short and civil in nature. The ministry only has to prove it is justified in removing a child to that standard. In basic english, the ministry has the power to remove without warrant children from any family in bc, at anytime, as long as "it believes" that the child needs protection. This is very subjective, because the information MCFD has does not have any review of accuracy before removal. In other provinces, a judicial review to warrant or justify removals has to happen first, because removals are recognized as traumatizing, especially to children.
In the presentation hearing, families do not get to question or cross examine the information in the file, or the social workers, as this is a hearing only to present the information the ministry has gathered to justify, or legalize, the removal of the children. If any of the information is wrong, misleading, inaccurate, or inflated, or outright untrue, it is not dealt with at a presentation hearing. And the seven day thing,...well, the courts only have "to start" the presentation hearing....with remands, it could be weeks or months later. The protection hearing does have a higher burden of proof, but that happens months later. Interesting how the time limits in the act mean nothing.

So, in many cases, because of the time issues, MCFD gets to deal with families directly, and bullies families into plans which may or may not help, because many families try to avoid court, because parents want their children back, and the ministry uses the attachment of the parents to the children as emotional blackmail. If MCFD pushes too hard, some parents find it easier to give up than try to get their kids back. Now, we have another child to raise from public money.

Second, the ministry gets to pick from the files they gather what gets "presented" to the court. They do not have to say when or how the information came, whether it is the equivalent to gossip or hearsay. In fact, the information could be years old, of questionable relevance, whatever. Does not matter, they are presenting why they removed a child. Basically, the law was written so that the removals are cosigned by the courts. At minimum, the ministry is legally allowed to remove any child at any time, and only has to prove it was not "random." Which means, depending on the family, a child can be removed, and depending on court processes, spend months away from their families, without "proof" or evidence. Oh yes, opinions and theories about what is going on in a family is allowable in the files, and they only have to question children. It is dangerously subjective, highly emotional work, and driven by crisis. Can mistakes be made? Sure. Problem is, once the removal is done, trauma has already happened to a child. In fact, social workers are amazingly myopic to the trauma the removals and their jobs demand to the children. Must come with the job. Oh yes, and the families are to blame for the removals...not the ministry, because it never makes mistakes? really.

As far as ECE and success by six....the problems with these programs is that they are "child centred", and not family centred. Because children are the holy grail in this province, the ministry and political machines have forgotten where children are raised....in families. That means parents....and parents face a variety of challenges that are not addressed at all anywhere. Parents have no rights dealing with mcfd directly, and have very little say after mcfd exercises its power. Disempowered, parents eventually have no authority to parent, not even in their own homes, if the children are returned, because the kids were "taken". Sadly, after intervention, the removals themselves add to the problems within a struggling family, as a new layer of uncertainty exists for those kids...their own family is not permanent. Family centred, supported programs do not exist, whereby all members of the family are considered important, in a program, or in one agency, are rare. The child is protected to the point that the other family members not important. Given residential school abuse and trauma, and the total lack of support politically for keeping families together, it can be seen that aboriginal claims of genocide using child protection systems are not far off. Aboriginal peoples have no sense of family in some cases, functional or not, and these families get over represented in the system....no one experiences family, or has a clue how to make one happen successfully, but they all share the loss of family. This needs to be addressed to restore some of what was lost by them as a people. There needs to be a balance in the system, and sadly, there is not.

I know this comes from Gove, but Gove assumed a few things....a)if a family is known by the ministry, the parents are not likely to change, or cannot learn to parent, b) ironically enough, children who are raised in government care seemingly are unable to parent...but who is not held up to guide these kids into readiness to parent...the government...yet that is not addressed anywhere....and c) all social workers act with integrity all the time, ....so sadly, those recommendations have taken mcfd to an extreme of child centredness.

That being said, in other jurisdictions where social workers do not have the power to walk in and remove children forth with, the protection systems there have to document CAREFULLY verbatim transcripts of children, and OTHERS. In fact, you would not be able to secure removal warrants without documentation. Here, they remove, and apparently, then gather evidence.

My own contact with most citizens is that the ministry's power is so feared, that families generally let the social workers say and do whatever, regardless. Some of the existing problems with the system are based on a power differential that is so bad, many families are bullied or intimidated into cooperation or, " we will remove the children". How threats and bullying is supposed to make a difference is beyond me. In other jurisdictions, social workers get real good persuasion and negotiation skills, and probably much better cooperation, because the service environment comes from a real place of trust. Here, fear reigns apparent, and even with the best intentions, the social workers never get to be onside with a family, but onside with the child.

Bottom line, any program in this province for children has some connection to MCFD. What is needed to get real accountability is for the government to stop doing it. MCFD should be watching agencies, not doing the work directly.

As far as the spending is concerned, how do you know it is working? Stats? Because the money is spent, does not mean it actually works.

The dynamics of service need to change. Since I moved here to BC over ten years ago, I have met up to twelve people who have lived at one time or another "in care". Where I used to live, I met two in the same time period. There is something fundamentally wrong with a society that tolerates this kind of thing...as these adults still suffer familial problems and relationship problems years later, as their lives and family life was so disrupted. And, they are not praising the ministry for "saving them."

Not acknowledging the ugly side of MCFD does little to get it where it needs to be, protecting children through prevention. It is near impossible to access services without a social worker, because no one knows about them, or the ones that can really help are "gatekept" by social workers in MCFD; if you tell a social worker exactly what you need, they will rework the whole problem solving process, because you could not possibly know exactly what you need, and it is near impossible to approach them, when they have no real political interest in helping you the parent, just your children. I challenge you to get to know a client family of MCFD and find out exactly what goes on in dealing "with MCFD." Vicious circle....we tell people to get help, but the next you know, they ask for help, and then they are "told" what to do. "There there now dear, just do as you are told, and you will be ok." Doesn't the patriarchial attitude of the service providers to the client families not seem a little disturbing? So much for getting help. And this undermines most of the work they do, and fixing this costs nothing.