************************
Comments to Neglecting neglect?
Public Eye Online.
In February, the ministry of children and family development predicted the rate of recurrence of child neglect and/or abuse would actually increase by 0.9 percentage points to 21 percent in fiscal 2008/09. In fact, that rate was 21.4 percent in the twelve month period leading up to December 2008. So what is Children and Family Development Minister Mary Polak going to do to address that problem?
Continue reading "Neglecting neglect?"
Mary's comments underscore her profound incompetence in "leading" MCFD. Like many in the upper reaches of the monolith, she quite simply has no idea what the mandate of this Ministry is really about, she has no idea why so many kids are being neglected, abused and dying and no idea how to stop all of this from happening. Also no idea that it is her own government that has caused these circumstances.
I assure anyone reading this, changing practice on the frontlines is NOT what is needed. There has been enough change and chaos created by the incompetency of the likes of Du Toit and the other yes people in Victoria. Du Toit was handpicked by Campbell to destroy MCFD, to tear it apart, limb by bloody limb and privatize the whole ugly mess. That is precisely why so many of BC's children are being harmed - they are collateral damage of the BC Liberal government and they clearly DO NOT MATTER.
Public policies that perpetuate deep poverty for the most vulnerable children and families is systemic, governmental neglect. It isn't "practice frameworks," it isn't changing practice on the lines. It is governmental and systemic negligence and the heartlessness of a neoConservative government that explains why a generation of BC's children have been raised in deep poverty & neglect. For that, Gordon Campbell and his incompetent and heartless wonks are responsible.
Mary Polak is unqualified, incapable and will in fact perhaps cause far more harm as a legacy than she is even capable of understanding, same with Du Toit and the rest of the former Ministers who nod their heads and ask high to jump, because fundamentally, none of them actually know what child welfare is about at a very core level.
Here's a dare - if Mary wants to actually learn something, she will climb out of her ivory tower and spend one month working on the frontlines, shadowing people who actually know how to do an honest days work (not just play politics). One week in urban, suburban, rural and Aboriginal offices. She might actually understand things in a small way if she did that. I'm betting Mary doesn't have what it takes to do this and see the reality, just like Du Toit, the plague of BC's kids.
The solution to improving the lot and lives of BC's children is for DM Du Toit to be removed from her position, to leave BC for good, let her be someone else's problem. In the private sector, when people fail in their jobs and fail to produce improvements they are fired. As long as MCFD & Mary Polak allow Du Toit to collect her $2000 per month living allowance on the backs of poor children, these people's opportunistic and parasitic ways will take money out of the mouth's of BC's children. THAT is neglect.
**********************
Comments to The measure of a ministry
Public Eye Online. July 27 2009.
In December 2008, the ministry of children and development released a report monitoring the progress of children in care within its north region. This, as part of its commitment to implement Ted Hughes's recommendation that the ministry "should establish a comprehensive set of measures to determine the real and long-term impacts of its programs and services on children, youth and their families." But when is the ministry going to release similar reports for other regions?
"We don't have specific dates on when the ones for the other regions will be released or will be prepared. We're continuing to work to see what kind of information we can provide that's better. Because, part of it, is learning," responded Minister Polak in an interview on Public Eye Radio.
"When we did the north report, part of what we looked at is what kind of new measures can we include. Because our service plan is fairly limited. So we want to look at including things like progress in schools, timeframes involved in establishing plans of care - the kinds of things we began to do with the northern report - and probably expand those. So it's difficult to give a hard date on it. Because we want those reports to be good. And that means it's difficult to know how much information we're going to be able to get together in a period of time."BC Liberals Suck:
Mary, can you explain to the good people of BC why it's so hard to produce reports about things that are relatively easy to track and obtain when you have one of the most overstaffed departments in MCFD is the so-called "Quality Assurance" branch?
Many of us are wondering what those dozens of people actually do and why so many FTE's that could be used on the frontlines are sucking up management salaries doing so little in Victoria.
So, Mary explain IF MCFD is even bothering to track these recommended benchmarks at all, where each region is in it's reviews and when the reports can be expected? Because you know, it's interesting that the Representative's office, which is outside of direct government has managed to produce some very valuable reports on some of these same benchmarks with far fewer staff.
Mary, we hope, like your predecessors, you come to enjoy explaining away the incompetency of your DM, you will have to get really good at it.
No comments:
Post a Comment