Know Your Rights: Working with Child Protection Services

This article is geared toward Ontario, but the advice is helpful for any families working with Child Protection authorities anywhere.

Know your rights – 6 things you need to know to protect yourself and your child
APTN National News  (November 3, 2016). Retrieved from: http://aptn.ca/news/2016/11/03/know-your-rights-6-things-you-need-to-know-to-protect-yourself-and-your-child/

Any engagement with the child welfare system is traumatic and apprehension is devastating. You’re stressed out, and so is your child.

While child care workers have a lot of power given to them by the province, and in their eye they’re doing right by the law and your child, they have to do things by the book.

Toronto area lawyer Katherine Hensel says there’s too much at stake to be overwhelmed by it. She says you have to keep your head and focus on what you need to do to get your child back.

Here are six points to keep in mind if you’re dealing with the system.

1. Get the documents from the society, they have to serve you, they have to provide you with an explanation in writing that’s also going to be filed with the court about why they are apprehending your child. Look at those documents. Consider them. And get a lawyer right away.

2. Make sure you find out when the court date is. You have to go to that court date. And if you don’t, it may be characterized as you don’t care enough or you’re not organized enough to make it to court.

3. Get on legal aid funding, a certificate or whatever province or territory you’re in. Make sure that you’re in a position to find and retain a lawyer, before the first court date. That is going to take a fair amount of work.

4. Look at the risks they say you pose. That your life and your home pose to your children. Be honest with yourself and sort out what you agree with and what you don’t agree with. Take immediate steps to address, or to begin to address the risks that you agree with and what you don’t agree with. Start to build evidence, to contradict what the society says.

5. Don’t sign any agreements, unless you completely agree that you cannot safely care for your child in the present, because it may be difficult to go back from that. Don’t sign any voluntary agreements without the advice of lawyer.

6. Engage with your First Nation or community, for whatever resources and support and advocacy that they can provide to you.

news@aptn.ca

Letter to the Editor: Province to blame for homeless crisis

Province to blame for homeless crisis
Young, T. (June 23, 2016). Vancouver Courier, A11.

Re: Homelessness at all-time high but not the story it used to be (June 9, 2016)

 

The Marquis de Sade would no doubt be enamoured of the cruel, inhumane, and harmful behaviour of the BC Liberal government in driving the biggest homelessness crisis in British Columbia since the Great Depression. 

 

Make no mistake about it, the public policies of the BC government have set the stage for this human, and societal tragedy. 

 

Since 2007 the shelter rate for basic income assistance has been capped at $375, with $235 for support. If you are homeless, you may, or may not be provided with the support portion. This policy is totally random and inconsistent in how it is applied. 

 

As a social worker, I have worked with the most marginalized, vulnerable, and poor people in the province. Time and time again these high-risk/high-need people have been completely shut out of accessing basic income assistance due to the cicular hoops they have to jump through. 

 

Applications to income assistance through the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation are now only available online. If you struggle with literacy, ESL, mental health, or other issues, how can you be expected to complete something like this online? If you do not have an address, where does MSDSI send the stack of papers you have to complete to possibly qualify?  

 

Many people who are homeless have lost everything they own. If you have no birth certificate, you cannot obtain identification. With no ID, you have no ability to access bank records for the past 60 days, part of the application process. If you have no ID, or access to bank records, you cannot access income assistance, medical, or prescription coverage. If you are "lucky" maybe you will receive a short-term "hardship" allowance, which has to be re-applied for on a month-to-month basis. Again, its completely random whether individuals will be granted hardship. 

 

Another example of the injustice and inhumanity of the BC government's policies is the trumpeting in the increase of disability assistance, only to claw back this "increase" by forcing disabled people to sacrifice their access to affordable transportation in the form of a disability bus pass. I wonder how many of us would be able to survive on $906.42 per month, the cruel amount disabled people in B.C. are expected to shelter, feed, and care for themselves with? 

 

This government-sponsored, and institutionalized, impoverishment, when combined with the current real estate disease inflating house prices, and a dearth of affordable housing is spreading throughout the province this epidemic of homelessness is increasing. Its going to get much worse too as the B.C. government clearly has no intention of doing anything substantial to improve the situation. While the BC government plays its flute Rome is burning and increasing numbers of us face chronic situations of housing insecurity, where the rug can be pulled out from under us at any time.

Women and the NDP: Gender inequality institutionalized within the party

Women and the NDP

Re: Leadership Hopeful Learns NDP Doesn’t Stand For ‘No Deposit Please’, June 8.

Young, T. (June 10, 2016). National Post. Retrieved from: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/letters/letters-trudeaus-hornets-nest

Cheri DiNovo, an Ontario NDP MPP, has raised an important issue about internal policies, processes and governance in the New Democratic Party. How did the NDP get so far from its roots of social democracy, it has created a party where only the most privileged can throw their hats into the ring for the leadership of the party?

Tommy Douglas would be disgusted to learn only those who can pay the required $30,000 fee can run to head the party that arose out of his populist movement — and think this is as shameful as progressive voters like me.

This kind of policy entrenches and institutionalizes structural inequality in a party that should be fighting against this for all. It is a well-known fact female candidates are at a financial disadvantage when compared to male candidates. It is also more difficult for them to raise the kind of election funds men do, which has led to a disappointing lack of gender equality in politics in Canada. This kind of unfair and inequitable policy doesn’t help as it embeds sexism and gender inequality and discrimination in the only socially democratic party in Canada.
Tracey Young, Vancouver.