Dear PAPA,

I am a parent's advocate in the interior of BC. I am always looking for helpful, educational, and reliable resources for my parents, all of whom have current and on-going dealings with MCFD. I came to your web-site and felt a need to send an e-mail for clarification purposes. I have my Masters of Social Work as well as my Bachelors of Social Work. During my Bachelors of Social Work I completed my child welfare specialization. This meant that I took 4 additional classes related to child welfare/protection, as well as completed two practicums with MCFD. Now, I did this specialization more out of curiosity, rather than the desire to work for MCFD. I, myself, had involvement with MCFD as a child of a young single mom, and during my BSW I had many reservations regarding MCFD, their practices, policies and procedures.

An important factor that I consider when looking at a resource's reliability is that they give voice to each side of a matter. I am sorry, but I do not feel you are addressing the good work that child welfare workers do, or the strict mandates that they are oppressed under. No individual goes into to child welfare work to steal children and ruin lives and families. The social workers I have had the honor of working with genuinely CARE about the health and well-being of the children they work with. I was disappointed by your site because I feel it encourages hate mongering towards social workers, rather than producing a well educated distaste towards the governmental child welfare system - which is the true evil in this situation. I chose to not pursue a job with MCFD because social workers have VERY LITTLE power in their job. If there is a intake call and the call meets the criteria of the government's checky-box assessment form, a child MUST be apprehended. Additionaly, if a worker follows the mandate, apprehends and the government then decides that perhaps the mandate is flawed, it is the WORKER who is held accountable and punished. Government needs to throw someone under the bus, and I assure it is not the policy makers up in the emerald tower.

I feel this will fall on deaf ears, but I just want to remind you that there are many amazing workers out there; doing an unimaginably hard job that generates nothing but ridicule from the public and the clients. This job, believe it or not, NEEDS to be done. I have walked into a hospital room where a child was having their face sewed back on because their parent threw them into a bath tub and took a sharp metal object to their face and body...I cried with my fellow workers, MCFD workers included... It is times like those that MCFD workers remember why they are doing their job, which is to protect those that can not protect themselves. Please tell me PAPA, what would you encourage to be done in the above mentioned case? What is your solution, if not for having MCFD?

MCFD in inexcusably flawed and I pray that soon there will be an overhaul of the system, however I beg you to remember that MCFD workers are people - people trying to do the best they can in a flawed system. This is coming from an advocate that works tirelessly to champion for justice and reunification for families. However I refuse to see MCFD workers as the villain; rather, I take the time to educate myself and speak directly to the MCFD workers to try to see child welfare through their eyes. This has made me a better social worker, advocate, and I believe it has helped open up my eyes to the areas in the system that truly need to be reworked, which is the policies, procedures and mandates.

Sincerely,

A concerned advocate