Wednesday, September 24, 2008

"Gulag Archipelago"? We have one in Canada: It's called Childrens' "Aid"

I have been very reluctant to write this post. I've been sitting on it for months. But I can wait no longer.

What would you say to a government agency that has powers the police could only dream of -- that Steve Harper and others wish the police had? Of virtually unlimited and warrantless search and seizure? Except what was being seized wasn't money, or drugs or even paperwork, but children.

An agency that operates not on probable cause but mere rumour, even false leads given on a snitch line. An agency dedicated to ripping families apart, not bringing them together. An agency that does everything to discredit innocent parents no matter what they try to prove their innocence and no matter how much they try to work with the authorities, such authorities view attempts to get one's children back as being insubordinate and they make the parents' lives even more miserable.

That, in a nutshell, describes the child protection system. While in 99% of cases it does its job, there is always the 1% -- and I am right now trying to make sense of a case where a friend of mine, a single mom who's never hurt a fly and is owed thousands in alimony and child support by a father who has the means to pay up, had her children taken from her. And rather than the children getting better, they have gotten worse and less healthy in foster care while this mess is sorted out. And get this: The authorities think the deadbeat would be a better parent. Seriously.

The mother has never wanted to cut the father out of the children's lives, by the way. She just has asked for supervised access for him at least until he pays up.

For obvious reasons I can't name names. Due to some twists in circumstances, the odds are very good that things will eventually work out and that some will have to eat humble pie

That's not to say everyone who works in the system is bad. I personally know a few good ones, who were doing their jobs and continue to do so before and during this situation although to the best of my knowledge they are not involved in this particular file. I believe if they had been, they would have cut through the crap and this would have ended on day one and the children back where they belong -- with their mother, the rightful custodial parent.

But the fact is that too many families have been wrongly ripped apart, too many children have either died in foster care because of inadequate background checks or home studies and a lack of meaningful followup. Or the children have become so manipulated and conditioned to inconsistency that they become criminals, much more likely to become delinquents than those in stable households.

Do you hear Steve Harper addressing this -- or any other leaders? No. Because it's seen as a provincial responsibility. Do you hear any leaders discussing that foster care might explain some of why youth crime is allegedly so high? No, because it's "bleeding heart" to say that.

I'm no bleeding heart. I'm someone who wants to see things work better.

This is a national crisis, happening again and again in every province and territory. We need national leadership on this. We can't keep going on like this because it's driving people who don't deserve the grief crazy. We need the principles of due process and habeas corpus to apply to child protective services as it does to the criminal law system. In cases where parents are proven truly unreconstructable, deal with them appropriately, but where the parents have done nothing wrong they should get their children back and their legal expenses compensated by the Society in question.

We need a national adoption registry, not 13 separate ones -- and the red tape that makes it harder to adopt domestically rather than overseas must be eliminated once and for all.

And those who work in the system and only choose to see the worst in people rather than the best (as the majority of their colleagues do) need to work in other lines of employment. Given how much they're dedicated to destroying people's morale and sanity, they're much better suited to, say, the waterboarding team at Gitmo.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually u are very polite to these people, 99% are good, not so, I would put the number much lower...
Heres why.. I know this man, the mom was bad, drugs and all that comes with it, he had a daughter with her, she was taking away at birth, he tried to get involved, but they accused him of been into prostitution, and told him he probably was the one that put her on drugs, not so. He tried to get her off drugs and she almost killed him for it. After they took the moms side. she went back on drugs, lost the kid, and this hapened twice. Then they told him to sign adoption papers, one of the workers wanted the child, he refused, went for custody and he won. In the process he was told, "why would a man want with a little girl,(notice the indirect accusation,more to come), when he went for supervised visit, while fighting for custody, one of the workers said, to the person who was giving him a ride there,"fucking indians, the only thing they ever do is collect welfare, get drunk and cause trouble". They made him run like hell, to discourage him, but he got custody anyway.
Move seven years and he again tried to help the mom, tried to restart the relationship, for his daughter, did not work, she went to another town, told him she was pregnant, it might be his, (doughtfull) and he accepted resposibility. Supported her financially, was a father to the child, then she disapeared. Took him 5 years to find them, but when he did, the child was adopted or in foster care, not sure, because of lies. He asked if it was possible to put sisters together, the agreed, once that was done, they again started to attack him, more than I can write, but remember earlier when I said more to come? At a xmas, he and his daughter bought this child presents, was told, "We are wondering what kind of man is nice to little girls". This man stays home, to raise his dughter,his body is been ravadged by atheritist, he never goes out, does not drink or do drugs, and they accused him of been a danger to little girls. Why?
Well we found out later, that they gave this child to a worker, no offer of a family plan to the bio-family, no kinship care, the foster mom is emotionaly unstable, the husband went on a jealousy rampadge, on a visit by the youger sister, she told her older sister, my mom, (foster), told me if I come here, no one will love me.
In closing, It is my opinion that they got cought in lies and deception, and tried to get rid of him, in the meantime, damaging the relationship between the sisters. So you see, the cas, is not a good organization, they are anti father, anti men, and anti family, they answer to no one, and do what they want. This story has been shorten for space, but if you want to know more, leave a coment I will check up from time to time.

Anonymous said...

I bet you got nowhere with your blog, no one cares and because your a man, a father, your pushed asside. Not important, you know how these left wing feminist nuts who control the cas think of you? your just another man complaining about a woman, the kids are secondary......

BlastFurnace said...

Anon #2: I'm a single man, and have no kids. But I have a friend who's getting jerked around by the system -- and anyone who's an enemy of my friends, including any government agency, is an enemy of me.