Requests for CFSA Review

December 6, 2004 permalink

A number of requests have recently been sent to the government of Ontario requesting a review of the Child and Family Services Act. The Act provides for two different kinds of review in articles 67 and 224. Each of the following three letters were sent to both Marie Bountrogianni, Minister of Children and Youth Services, and Michael J Bryant, Attorney General.

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Nov 13, 2004

Hon. Marie Bountrogianni
Minister of Children and Youth Services
14th Floor, 56 Wellesley Street West
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S3

Dear Madame:

Thank you for your response to my request for the funding formula for children with special needs.

I am trying to understand the process wherein "children in care" are identified as in need of protection. I need a copy of your risk assessment tool.

I would like to know who is responsible for the case identification and coding?

Please forward me a photocopy of the Ministry regulations regarding Risk Assessment Tool and identification process. I want to understand the workings of your Ministry.

I have read what you have had to say before the estimates committee. I have read all the hansards. I would encourage you to do as you say, reform the whole process. The community and taxpayers demand it, but I see that you will be impeded by the "industry".

Through out the estimates committee meetings, repeatedly you ask Bruce to come up and elaborate on what you have to say. He never does. He leaves you on the hook.

Is this only one "renegade" CAS or does it mirror the rest of the province? I think that you already knew the answer to this question but you were afraid to admit it publicly.

In Windsor, piles of children are still being taken. They are using 22-year-old girls just out of school to go into hospitals to take these children. These young girls are paying the price of their conscience.

They will be forever scarred by what they have done. I know one such girl.

She herself is still a child. She is being asked to do something criminal that will change her the rest of her life. Whose duty is it to protect her? Your Ministry oversees her position. Is it your responsibility? I see that CAS as continuing to play dirty legal tricks on these families. I do not see it letting up in this community. The philosophy of Mr. Bevan continues to drive the dissent both within the organization and in this community. Need I remind you that these families and employees are also your constituents?

I can only express my disappointment that your auditors still do not have a grip on the problems here.

I view this process of child abduction as a criminal conspiracy. I have concluded that conspiracy goes to the highest level of government. The people I represent are seeking a criminal investigation. These crimes are not justified in the name of government or child welfare. They will not go unpunished.

The following is a parent whose children were apprehended from her ex-husband. She was not involved in the original incident. Following her divorce, she had remarried and has established a new life. She has applied for custody. The CAS wants to keep the children in foster homes. Because of age, they are not adoptable. She sent me this recent email. She has the 3 children on the weekend. As part of the dirty tricks she talks about, they have tried to decrease her weekends to every other weekend, i.e. to disconnect her children from her.

"I figured it was time for them to start their dirty play and go as low as they possibly could. After listening to my kids for 8 months and seeing what they have been going through, it has only worsened and become more severe...any efforts in the past to bring this to the attention of the CAS has ended in the foster parents being perfect and I being nothing more than a trouble maker as they noted.... the CAS has done nothing to ensure the placement homes are safe and my children are indeed being harmed physically and emotionally and I have no choice but to do what I must to make everyone involved held accountable for the damage that has already been done to my children. I have no intentions of giving up and will see this through to the end and those responsible punished accordingly."

There needs to be a public inquiry into the circumstances of Mr. Malone's actions. Mr. Bevan is telling his employees "to say only nice things about Mr. Malone". Mr. Malone's action sent a powerful statement about the unrest both within and without of the organization. The organization will crumble from within, not just from without. Mr. Bevan and the organization are ruined in this community. The large charitable donations will no longer flow.

The following statement was sent to the paper by a lawyer relative of a 20-year veteran worker, who was fired because she refused to identify a case, which she knew was "not high risk" as "high risk." On the instructions of her supervisor, she had set up the original situation. She was then told by the supervisor to rate the file "high risk." When she balked on the follow through, she was fired. Is this what happens to employees who try to honorably do their jobs?

"One question needs to be asked. What could the management of the Windsor Essex County CAS have done to Jim Malone that may have caused him to feel so hopeless, so devastated and so angry? The tragedy that occurred at the CAS on Tuesday October 26, 2004 begs for a full-scale government inquiry. It appears that funding and unreasonable management has reared its ugly head again, and Mr. Bevan has become skilled at the art of "spin". The wooden boards from the crash have tarnished not only the "façade" of Mr. Bevan shiny new riverfront building, but also the façade of his management style. The truth is 'heads equal dollars' to Mr. Bevan. Which may be why Windsor has the highest rate of apprehension in the Province? The more families scored as "families in need of care" the more money CAS gets. The paradox is unimaginable. In order to really help some who are truly in need, they abuse many others, by unnecessary intervention. Instead of cutting funds to the group home, why didn't Mr. Bevan just drag in a few more unwilling teens to boost the funding to the group home? Nobody would dispute the need for CAS to protect the interests of our most vulnerable in society, but that power must always be reasonable with appropriate checks and balances. It can never be misused. I dare Sandra Pupatello to walk in the shoes of one social worker at the CAS for two weeks Then, interview all 3,000 parents who have signed the petition circulated by "Citizens for Social Morality" and finally, speak to as many former workers of the CAS as you can (excluding of course, those who have been charged criminally). Sadly, both literally and figuratively, the writing really IS on the wall".

I would appreciate your prompt and helpful assistance in this matter. The people I represent will no longer remain silent. These issues will not go away. They have to be dealt with. You must rescue not only the families embroiled but also the employees who are made complicit to this abuse of the legal process.

This will not reflect well on Ontario or Canada as a whole. Along with the residential schools, it will be long remembered as a most shameful part of our history.

Sincerely,

Dolores A. Sicheri, MD FRCPC

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Personal Attention MPP Parsons and all members of the Standing Committee on Estimates c/o MPP Cam Jackson who will receive a copy of this e-mail by fax today, November 24, 2004.

You are fortunate indeed to have been able to access all the facts where you can categorically state at the November 16th Standing Committee on Estimates:

"I would add to that, we never had a child in care who didn't belong in care. What happened to them was truly in their best interests. I'm not criticizing the fact that they went to school and never returned home. In every case, that was in their best interests."

Most foster parents only receive information through the CAS and there is no doubt that is a biased perspective. Ask Mr. Jackson and Paul Legall of the Hamilton Spectator about the Halton CAS case where the foster parents thought it was in the best interests of a Halton child to be in care and the police believed it was in their best interests to have a swat team in family court in Burlington and Milton on three occasions. Once we became involved and obtained the CAS files, the SWAT team disappeared and the child was returned home but not before she told the court about a sexual assault involving the CAS worker which to date as I understood it from the child and her parents was never addressed.

Our files contain the facts surrounding many interventions that were not only unnecessary and contrary to the CFSA but also victimized the children. The one above from Halton that made the National Section of the Globe and Mail for example. Minister Bountrogianni is aware of these files and our desire to share them with her but to date has not set a date for such a review. If you read "Speaking Out" the report put out by the Child and Family Advocacy Office you will have some limited understanding of what I am talking about.

"But they then enter a world where, essentially, there are two options available for them: They may return home or they become a crown ward. They become a crown ward with access or without access. If it's without access, they then become available for adoption.......

Some areas encourage kinship, and I know societies do, but sometimes with the kinship there aren't the financial resources there. For a family taking on three or four other children, it's a major financial challenge; they may not be able to. For the family that's prepared to do it, they're looking for financial assistance and they're looking for a long-term commitment of financial assistance, not a year-by-year commitment but some sense that this is going to be available till the children turn 16 or 18. I think it's an option that saves the government money, but even more importantly, it provides stability in those children's lives."

We have had calls from many, many grandparents from all over Ontario who are refused access to their grandchildren right from the beginning. One set of Halton grandparents were very wealthy respected community business people. The only access they could get to their grandchildren who had been apprehended from the mother's care without the knowledge of the father who was the son of the wealthy respected community business people, were supervised visits at the local CAS! Lack of kinship placements in our experience has nothing to do with funding and more to do with the CAS breaking the family bonds as quickly and firmly as they can. In our experience over the last decade of auditing numerous apprehensions by numerous societies the plan which is immediately implemented is to remove the child from their community, their school, their friends and their family. Several of the children interviewed thought they had been placed in care by their parents when nothing was further from the truth. They had no idea their parents were fighting tooth and nail to get them back and many wanted them placed with family or reputable community members until the issues could be addressed.

Two of the cases we reviewed were children apprehended from families covered by the Toronto CAS when Bruce Rivers was the CEO, he will remember me well. One was a Muslim family the other a Christian family. In both cases I was called in to assist the families, and particularly the children, by respected members of the community who had heard of the work we do advocating for the best interests of children. Mr. Rivers was fully updated on the atrocities these children suffered. Both sets of children were returned when they got a fair hearing in the courts but not without a great deal of damage.

At the invitation of a judge we joined the supervised visitation that took place with one family at the Toronto CAS and were horrified at what we saw happening. One of the children was screaming at us when he had to leave his parents, "call the police I have been kidnapped." He complained about sexual assault by one of the workers, which I understand to date has never been resolved. Shortly afterwards he was accused of sexually molesting his little brother and moved to a group home separating him out even more from his family. Being under 12 he did not become one of the many crossover kids you talked about at a previous standing committee. One of my associates was physically assaulted by a worker when the worker tried to grab her purse believing she had a tape recorder in there. A report to the police resulted in absolutely no accountability. If advocates get assaulted during supervised visits what happens to the children when no-one is around.

After we became involved two very respected lawyers represented the families in these two cases and can confirm the accuracy of the above as it pertains to the children. In the case of the Muslim family who were new immigrants to Canada and spoke very little English the first lawyer to represent them after being paid $600 cash advised the court that the parents were voluntarily placing their children in the care of the CAS which was an outright lie. This only came to light after I was able to show the parents how they could access the court documents. The Muslim children never got an opportunity to tell the court what they were experiencing in a foster home where they were exposed to all kinds of no-nos for Muslim children including the foster parent's boyfriend running around in his underwear (this came directly from the oldest daughter who visited our home to personally thank us for our involvement in their release back to their family). When I asked about the information that was put on the record by the four children's lawyers representing her and her siblings she categorically denied any of it was true.

MPP Cam Jackson is my MPP and is well aware of our child advocacy. I should say that any of the organizations associated with our advocacy do not accept donations and do not charge for any of the services we provide, not even expenses. We do what we do out of a belief that we are expected to use any gifts we have been given to serve the needs of others. That to us is "loving your neighbour as yourself."

I would be very pleased to submit a report to the Standing Committee of Estimates to document why we, and many, many others in the Ontario community believe it is necessary for a Section 67 (1) Review under the Child and Family Services Act take place. Minister Bountrogianni can confirm she received a letter dated November 13, 2004 from another respected member of the Ontario community which stated among other things: "The people I represent are seeking a criminal investigation. These crimes are not justified in the name of government or child welfare." The Minister with the support of the Attorney General has the opportunity to broaden the scope of the Section 67 (1) review to identify any criminal contraventions of the CFSA and to ensure accountability. The process does not need to be onerous, simply a judge reviewing submissions from those concerned about the best interests of children as it relates to the administration of our child welfare and youth justice legislation and policies.

We have fruitlessly lobbied every Minister of Community and Social Services since Tsbouchi's days to have such a review and so we continue to get phone calls that break our hearts because we know we are not superhumans and cannot give of our energy to every individual case regardless of how heartbreaking the story is.

The Brantford Expositor recently reported on a presentation I made to the United Family Front organization at the invitation of the organization who are presently dealing with some very sad cases indeed.

Please don't brush aside what I am saying, as a foster parent of such long standing you obviously care about the best interests of children. It can surely only be beneficial to the work you do in this area to hear all sides of the issues, and have a judge review the issues, especially when the children themselves are speaking out and contacting us for help.

Sincerely,

Anne Marsden

Co-founder Advocacy for Kids in Care

Audit Manager

The Auditors

The Canadian Family Watchdog

Tel. 905-639-5684

E-mail: watching@cogeco.ca

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December 6, 2004

Marie Bountrogianni
Minister of Children and Youth Services
56 Wellesley Street West, 14th Floor
Toronto Ontario M5S 2S3

Honorable Minister:

The Child and Family Services Act (section 224) provides for a periodic review of its operation. It is soon due for such a review.

The Province of Ontario generously supports children in foster care. Figures published by the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies report the amount of money paid in a year for foster care throughout Ontario, and the number of child-days of foster care provided, revealing that the province pays $71 per child day. In interviews with foster parents, they report receiving $27 per day. The difference of $44 per day is the funding that supports the agency. For a baby or toddler in foster care to age of majority, this adds up to over a quarter million dollars.

Ontario has 52 Children's Aid Societies, with the mission under the Child and Family Services Act to protect the children of Ontario. Some of them use their powers genuinely for the protection of children in their areas, some do not; instead they succumb to the temptation to take children for maximum funding. Analysis of complaints suggests that the worst agencies (alphabetically) are Brantford, Dufferin, Durham, Halton, Hamilton, Owen Sound-Grey, St Thomas-Elgin, and Windsor-Essex.

The Child and Family Services Act grants Children's Aid Societies great powers to intervene in the lives of families for the protection of children. When a society decides to abuse its powers, the consequences are devastating for affected families. Children's Aid Societies selectively target families, not for their abusive conduct, but for weakness. Single mothers are the weakest families, and the easiest source of children to fill the numbers of foster children. When they intervene in an intact family, they quickly seek a pretext to get the parents separated or divorced, easing the problem of wresting the children from parental control.

Once a family is targeted, CAS actions defy any rational purpose, aside from the pursuit of appropriated funds. Social workers enter homes under the pretense of assistance and dupe naive families into signing documents while misrepresenting their seriousness. Once a family can be induced to sign a Voluntary Service Agreement, the process of family destruction is under way. They make claims in court that are a mixture of truth, distortions and outright lies. They place such onerous burdens on families as to create a dilemma of losing their employment by compliance, or losing their children for non-compliance. Parents are humiliated by seeing their children only under surveillance by social workers, then when they do visit, the notes made by those same social workers become evidence against them. Examinations of a home are not to determine whether there is abuse, only to find circumstances that can be construed, or misconstrued, against the family. Workers search the catbox so they can report feces in the home. They report home renovations as safety hazards. They make up things never even observed; one family knew they were falsely accused when they were reported as having a toilet so dirty the worker found in hard to tell it was white -- their toilet was green. Locks and barriers in the home installed to protect toddlers from danger are reported as abusive, while other homes are cited for absence of the same barriers. Even positive proof of innocence is irrelevant -- CAS intervened in a family because a medical X-ray disclosed a broken bone, but when later medical evidence showed the bone to be unharmed, the intervention continued. CAS took a baby from a single teenaged mother and placed it with the teenager's mother. Grandmothers have helped their daughters in this way for a long time. But then CAS issued an order preventing the teenager from seeing her mother, and child, instead restricting her to a short supervised visit once a week. This action is senseless as a form of child protection, but purposeful in breaking family bonds in pursuit of provincial funds.

The social services system acts to separate parents against the will of both partners. The separation may start with a domestic disturbance call, with the father subject to bail conditions keeping him from his family. In other cases, women's shelter workers have cajoled a mother into filing criminal charges against her husband. Or CAS workers may take the children, then suggest to one parent that separation or divorce could improve their chances of getting the children back. Once any kind of separation document is in place, CAS is relentless. When parents meet, CAS will find out from the children and hold it against their parents. One father reported that an observer parked his car outside his home for several hours a night hoping to find him meeting his wife. There was even a fantastic claim in justification of child removal -- the social worker found that the parents had engaged in sexual relations.

CAS also intervenes in the lives of children of parents already divorced. They capriciously override custody arrangements ordered by a judge in divorce. When a social worker tells a parent to keep a child in contravention of a judge's order, the police respect the word of the social worker in preference to the order of the judge.

Not all CAS workers aim to destroy families, and there are plenty of decent workers in child protection. They are just not the ones doing the front-line work in the rogue CAS's. They are in peripheral areas, where they have no responsibility for seizing children, only caring for those already taken from their parents. In taking complaints from hundreds of families in Dufferin, not one has complained that their pre-teen child was harmed while in CAS care (though teenagers are another matter). So in at least some areas, they do conscientious work. For the job of removing children from good parents, CAS has no option but to hire staff lacking the empathy characteristic of the helping professions. The turnover in this job is enormous. Workers are quickly disillusioned, and quit after finding out their true mission. One CAS insider reported resignations at a rate that required replacing the entire staff every 18 months.

CAS uses its powers also to suppress dissent. They routinely claim confidentiality, even in cases where the family itself wants public disclosure, preventing families from publishing the circumstances of their own case. They threaten families with jail for mentioning their case in public. When a Dufferin family appeared at the courthouse with a CAS opponent, CAS changed their legal plea within a day to ask for the family death-penalty, crown-wardship. The habits of CAS in retaliating against families require in a letter such as this the omission of facts that would identify specific families, such as names, dates and places.

And what can families affected by CAS do to defend themselves? Resort to the law is ineffective for single mothers, since they lack the resources to hire the legal, therapeutic and investigative professionals required to mount an effective defense, and legal aid is ordinarily useless. Parents with means are faced with a legal system that is more interested in raising money than mounting a vigorous defense. The hearings occur in private, usually without any record made of the proceedings. Only those parents willing to pay over fifty thousand dollars have any chance of getting to a trial where witnesses can be cross-examined. In instances in which families have mortgaged their homes and retirement to fight a legal battle, CAS simply litigates until the family funds are exhausted, leaving them defenseless. Many families have counter-sued CAS for various kinds of wrongful actions. In all such suits, CAS moves immediately for a protective order keeping the proceedings secret. This ends any possibility that the suit could correct CAS policy -- from that point, the only issue is whether the parents will get some of the taxpayers' money. The CAS wrongdoing leading to the suit will remain confidential. Some community opponents have attempted to reform their local CAS by signing up members. When faced with this kind of opposition, CAS has not permitted free elections for their boards, nor have they changed policies in response to opposition. Instead, they have altered their bylaws to make opposition impossible.

What happens to children seized by Children's Aid? The preferred result is long term foster care, or a long-term arrangement in which the family is under continued control of the caseworkers. In the smaller number of cases that end in adoption, there are a remarkable number in which the adoptive parents are functionaries of the child-protection system itself -- former social workers, policemen, lawyers representing Children's Aid.

Children's Aid desperately needs the review provided in the act. For the review to be effective, it must go beyond merely interviewing executive directors and social workers. The person conducting the review needs to be empowered to examine the records of individual cases, and compare the statements in the record with the actual facts of the case. Another productive avenue is discussion with opponents who have already tried to reform Children's Aid or protect families from destruction.

Should you decide on genuine reform, here are some suggestions, with the most important first.

• Open the process.

  The process should be open to public scrutiny at all stages. An open-records rule for Children's Aid Societies might become ineffective through foot-dragging, but applied to the courts it could work.

  Most courts dealing with criminal and civil matters are now open to public scrutiny, and family courts should be as well. Then anyone could walk in off the street and sit in the courtroom while a family court matter was heard, and even more importantly, he could examine the document file where most of the legal action takes place, thus viewing the same record presented to the judge. For children as well as adults, public trial is an ordeal, but secret trial is worse.

  Such a reform could provide a remedy for families falsely accused, through reference to the court record exonerating them. Rogue Children's Aid Societies would come to public attention quickly, and scholars could sample the files to measure the level of effectiveness of child protection.

• Limitation or elimination of immunity for caseworkers

  Currently, child-protection workers are immune from all legal actions, placing them beyond the reach of the law even for blatant wrongdoing. In private meetings between caseworkers and parents, they regularly bully parents with their power. One caseworker told a father: "Fathers have no rights"; another was only slightly exaggerating when she boasted: "We have as much power as God".

• Never suggest divorce

  One activity that needs to be stopped is forcing a divorce on a couple against the will of both, a shotgun divorce. In tiny Dufferin county, a dozen instances have been reported, a rate that if true for the province, suggests thousands of such cases.

• Do not seize children until after hearing both sides

  The law now in most places requires judicial authorization before child removal, but excepts children in immediate danger. In practice, children are always picked up first on pretense of emergency, and court hearings are after-the-fact. Owing to caseworker immunity, they cannot suffer from any misrepresention.

  The law could be changed to eliminate the exception, delaying child abduction until a judge has signed a warrant on probable cause. This may have limited effectiveness, since Societies with millions of dollars in revenue may get friendly judges to rubber-stamp their requests. A more meaningful reform is to require an adverse hearing in which the parents can present evidence in opposition before the issuance of an apprehension order. This would at least protect innocent families with means to hire competent counsel.

• Trial by jury before crown-wardship

  Juries, not judges, should have the final word on removing parents from a child's life and turning them into crown wards. This protection exists now for liberty and money, things normal parents value less than their children.

• All persons exercising police power should be in uniform

  The law grants child protectors (and animal protectors) the powers of police, and immunities even superior to the police. Yet they appear in civilian clothes, misleading clients. The law could suspend the powers and immunities of child protectors when not in uniform. This would at least warn parents of the seriousness of contact with Children's Aid.

• Require that the child be in the courtroom during proceedings about him.

  This procedure is followed now in criminal matters, though not in the more consequential custody cases. It would prevent consideration of the case of any child currently out of the jurisdiction of the court, even when the court had jurisdiction in the past. And as long as the child is old enough to understand, he could witness the proceedings in his own case.

• Fully investigate all child deaths, including those in care

  Deaths sometimes occur of children under the protection of Children's Aid Societies, but their names, and even numbers, are usually concealed from the public. The publicity that is now claimed to hurt the emotional development of the child cannot harm him after death, and these cases should be fully opened to public scrutiny. The public has a strong interest in preventing child deaths, superior to any privacy concerns.

• Refusing psychotropics is not neglect

  Failure to follow a doctor's orders is now treated as neglect, so when a medical professional prescribes psychotropic drugs for a child, parents cannot refuse to administer them. In a few American states, parents now are granted authority to refuse such drugs, without that being treated as a reason for child protection intervention. Ontario should give parents the same authority.

• Open adoption

  Persons who are adopted should by right be able to see the record in their own case. What purpose is served by preventing an adult from finding the names of his birth parents?

• People should be able to see their own records at all levels

  The records open to an adult should also include the records made of his life while in foster care. Now the disclosure of records is discretionary with CAS, allowing them to conceal wrongdoing by social workers and foster parents.

• Outlaw anonymous reports, and fully disclose reports to family

  Anonymous reports of child abuse should be disregarded. Right now, an anonymous report is an easy way to sic CAS on a personal enemy. And parents kept in the dark may suspect the wrong accuser. In June 2003 the press reported an unnamed mother lost her children to Toronto Children's Aid. She (falsely) suspected a neighbor, Madeline Monast, attacking her with a machete and cutting off both hands. Had the identity of the accuser been disclosed to the mother, the neighbor might have kept her hands.

• Eliminate mandated reporting

  Because of mandated reports by child care professionals (doctors, teachers, day-care operators), parents are fearful of taking an injured child to a professional. Every child care professional knows of cases in which persons have been prosecuted for non-reporting, inducing them to over-report, causing extra work for CAS, and more fears for parents. Without prosecution of non-reporting, doctors could still report abuse, but the elimination of frivolous reports would allow parents to make use of a doctor's services without fear.

• Eliminate vagueness in definition of child abuse and neglect

  Both child abuse and neglect are vaguely defined in the law. In other areas where there is vagueness in a statute, examination of past decisions eventually builds up a body of common law as clarification. But where the courts operate in secret, no parent can know, until it is too late, what actions would avoid a charge of child abuse or neglect. The law should define child abuse and neglect with sufficient precision that parents can know their responsibilities.

• Notify parents when children are removed

  Several parents have reported not learning of an apprehension until their children failed to return from school, when they began frantic inquiries. Parents deserve to be notified immediately when their children are taken into custody.

• Require child protectors to tell parents their rights at start of case

  The United States Congress enacted a provision requiring social workers to notify a parent of certain rights at the onset of a case. That might be a good idea in Ontario as well, though no parental rights are now enumerated in the Child and Family Services Act.

• Video tape all contact between families and CPS

  This would eliminate much of the private bullying by CAS workers. It would also eliminate another abuse, coaching children. In Orangeville, a three-year-old girl was coached, off camera, then induced to say on camera that her mother hit her with a frying pan. The mother later found that the girl did not know what a frying pan was.

• Require child's guardian or lawyer to actually meet the child

  Children are now appointed lawyers through the Office of the Children's Lawyer. The most common complaint about these lawyers is failure to interview their own clients. Parents recognize this when the lawyer makes arguments at variance with the child's true condition. An actual meeting with the client should be a requirement for representation of a child.

• Provide meaningful accounting of the distribution of public funds

  Currently, the published accounts do not answer the most basic questions about CAS operation: How much is spent on foster care? How much on group homes? How many child-days of care are provided? How many child-protection cases were opened? There are lots of numbers printed in the financial statements, but they do not answer the real questions.

• Allow other family (grandparents) to get kids when parents are unfit

  The law formally favors this now, but it is rarely done.

• Do not separate parents from children when placing with family members

  When the child of a teenaged single mother gets placed with his grandmother, the mother should continue to see the baby.

I hope this letter is of some assistance to you in reviewing the workings of the Child and Family Services Act. Should you wish anything further from me, you are welcome to call or write.

Yours truly,

Robert T McQuaid
RR 5
Orangeville Ontario L9W 2Z2

phone: 519-942-0565
email: rtmq@stn.net

Addendum: The following is a community reaction to the letter writing campaign. Since most CAS opposition has to be discreet, identifying paragraphs have been omitted.

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Writing to Marie Bountrogianni or other government ministers may not be very productive. Unless this issue comes to broad public attention and a significant number of residents become concerned, these individuals will do nothing.

As chief psychologist to the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board (one of the more dysfunctional school boards in Ontario), Marie Bountrogianni has a long CAS association. Until this year, the Hamilton school board employed sixteen social workers to interview students behind parents' backs and inform CAS of anything they considered suspicious. Marie Bountrogianni was a key part of that system. Today, she makes gushing speeches at conferences sponsored by the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies and similar "child welfare" organizations, while deferring information regarding CAS corruption to ministry officials - without reviewing it and without responding.

If the government wished to do anything about CAS corruption, they would have done so long ago. The system is entrenched because a long list of vested interests - people that are corrupt (and often psychotic) - profit from it. The only way to fight the system is to attack its jugular. I remember reading comments made by a spokesperson for one of the local groups, suggesting they were not "against" CAS but merely wanted to change some of the organization's practices. If anyone in your group feels that way, they do not comprehend how evil this organization is. The entire child welfare system is rotten and has to be scrapped.

The local school boards are in bed with CAS. Teachers are professionally obligated to report the merest suspicion of abuse to the agency, no matter how ill-founded. At the same time, parental abuse of children is nothing compared to physical, emotional and sexual abuse inflicted by teachers and ignored by CAS. Of course, both these entities are paid from the same provincial pot. You probably know that when the province's elementary school testing program was initiated, over seventy students were reported to CAS, solely on the basis a creative writing exercise on the test. A delegation of parents committed to educating school boards about the damage CAS agencies is inflicting on their students would be wonderful.

As for specific problems with CAS, here are a few things the agency can't deny. We have clear evidence CAS:

• Fabricated two malicious court actions and knowingly attempted to jail us for no reason
• Exposed two children to extreme risk while attempting to conceal their negligence
• Knowingly attempted to exert unwarranted control over our lives
• Fabricated material evidence to conceal CAS wrongdoing
• Lied repeatedly and enlisted a third party to lie in affidavits sworn before the court
• Removed or withheld key documents from the court's official record
• Knowingly engaged in dirty tricks intended to diminish our ability to defend ourselves
• Attempted to cover up serious professional misconduct of several employees
• Refused to discipline these employees, contrary to the agency's code of ethics

I could go on, but you get the point. Another thing you might wish to address is CAS' corrupt complaints procedure, which forces families to seek satisfaction from the individuals that are abusing them.

Another key point to pick up on is the financial waste of these agencies - a billion dollars in direct costs without factoring budgets for courts and police services or the financial toil on families.

Addendum: Marie Bountrogianni responded, after almost two months. Bruce Rivers is also the Executive Director of the Children's Aid Society of Toronto.

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Ministry of Children and Youth Services Minister's Office 56 Wellesley Street West 14th Floor Toronto ON M5S 2S3 Tel: (416) 212-7432

Ministère des Services à l'enfance et à la jeunesse Bureau de la ministre 56, rue Wellesley Ouest 14e étage Toronto (Ontario) M5S 2S3 Tél 416-212-7432

February 3, 2005

Mr. Robert T. McQuaid
RR 5
Orangeville, Ontario
L9W 2Z2

Dear Mr. McQuaid:

Thank you for your letter concerning child protection services. I apologize for the delay in my response.

The safety and well-being of Ontario's children is a key priority for this government, and the role of child protection is a very difficult one.

You may be interested to know that my ministry is currently undertaking a review of the Child and Family Services Act, which is scheduled for completion by March 31, 2005. We have also created the Child Welfare Secretariat to look at how the child protection system works and suggest changes to improve it. Our goal is an Ontario where children will be safe, healthy and able to reach their full potential.

I have taken the liberty of forwarding a copy of your letter to Bruce Rivers, Executive Director of the Child Welfare Secretariat, so that he may be aware of your concerns. We will take your views and suggestions into consideration as we continue to work on behalf of Ontario's children.

The issue of adoption disclosure falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Community and Social Services. I have taken the liberty of forwarding a copy of your letter to my Cabinet colleague, the Honourable Sandra Pupatello, Minister of Community and Social Services, for her consideration.

Once again, thank you for writing.

Sincerely,

/signed/

Dr. Marie Bountrogianni
Minister

c:

The Honourable Sandra Pupatello, Minister of Community and Social Services

Mr. Bruce Rivers, Executive Director, Child Welfare Secretariat

Addendum: Sandra Pupatello further responded, after almost three and a half months.

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Ministry of Community and Social Services Minister's Office Hepburn Block Queen's Park Toronto ON M7A 1E9 Tel.: (416) 325-5225

Ministère des Services sociaux et communautaires Bureau du ministre Édifice Hepburn Queen's Park Toronto (Ontario) M7A 1E9 Tél.: 416-325-5225

March 21, 2005

Mr. Robert T. McQuaid
RR 5
Orangeville, Ontario
L9W 2Z2

Dear Mr. McQuaid:

Thank you for your letter regarding access to adoption records. The Honourable Dr. Marie Bountrogianni, Minister of Children and Yourh Services, forwarded it to me for my consideration.

I appreciate the time you have taken to share your concerns and understand that the issue of adoption is of great importance to you. I would like to assure you that our government is reviewing the matter of access to adoption records and trying to find a resolution that will balance the desire of adult adoptees and/or birth relatives to access information and the desire of those who want to maintain their privacy.

On November 22, 2004, Premier Dalton McGuinty made a commitment in the Legislature that our government would be making changes to the rules that govern adoption disclosure services. I intend to bring these changes to the forefront of my ministry's agenda shortly. Our plan for 2005 is to change the adoption disclosure process to take into account the needs of all affected parties.

To date, I have met with representatives of various adoption disclosure advocacy groups and listened to their concerns. I have also examined the policies and changes that have taken place internationally. The changes made to adoption disclosure services will be informed by listening to the opinions of diverse stakeholders and by building on the best practices.

As you can appreciate, the issue of adoption disclosure is complex. That is why Premier McGuinty has asked me to draw on the experiences of other jurisdictions to improve upon the services we currently have in place. I can assure you that this issue is being examined very carefully and it is essential that we move forward in a thoughtful and responsible manner.

Once again, thank you for sharing your perspectives on this matter. We will keep your comments in mind as we move toward improving adoption disclosure services in Ontario.

Sincerely,

/signed/

Sandra Pupatello
Minister

c: The Honourable Dr. Marie Bountrogianni, Minister of Children and Youth Services.