Every year some 200 social workers graduate from the University of B.C. and the University of Victoria. Most are women, most know they will be paid slightly more than the average Canadian worker (the starting salary of a child-protection social worker in the service of the provincial government is $33,800 a year), but few are in it for the money. Rather, most are filled with a zeal to make a difference in a society that is increasingly filled with broken families, single parents and problem children.

Theirs is what is known as a "helping profession," a type of work that is the product of one of the 20th-century's more durable institutions, the welfare state, of which Canada is among the world's most advanced embodiments. Significantly, nowhere in Canada is the welfare-state mentality more embedded than in the offices of B.C.'s Ministry for Children and Families. It follows, then, that nowhere in Canada are social workers, university trained or not, more in demand than in B.C. In fact, faced with burn-out caused by heavy workloads and lofty expectations, the ministry simply cannot get enough social workers to keep the front lines sufficiently manned. In response, Victoria recently starting advertising for recruits as far away as Newfoundland.

But as ever more social workers are thrown into the breach, questions surrounding the cause they serve are becoming increasingly common. It was the seizure of 71 children in Quesnel (see story, page 16) and the case of teenaged mother Terry Griffin of Surrey that captured headlines in recent months, but scores of other cases have come to the attention of family-rights advocates. The latter worry about what they characterize as new "apprehend first and ask questions later" marching orders that government social workers were given by the then-new ministry in the wake of the November 1995 Gove Report. Even the B.C. Liberal Party, which was an enthusiastic supporter of Judge Thomas Gove's landmark report, is now suggesting that parents' rights are being unjustifiably eroded.

Families Minister Lois Boone counters, as did her predecessor Penny Priddy, with a heartfelt argument—that it is the government's responsibility to protect children from abusive, and potentially abusive, parents and even from themselves when circumstances warrant it. It is better to err on the side of caution, they say, than suffer the death of a single child. Family-rights supporters answer that children should be removed from their homes only in the most extreme cases; the ministry's current direction, however, is exactly the opposite. They cite some examples:

• In Langley, a tantrum-throwing 12-year-old who repeatedly flees home is apprehended by social workers. Fearing she may run away again and harm herself, a judge decrees she spend five months in foster care. Once the child is relocated, her caregivers make no attempt to discipline her.
• In Mission, a man's ex-girlfriend lodges what proves to be a phoney assault charge against him to gain custody of all eight children they had together. The charge is dismissed and doctors credit the man for being a "conscientious" father, but social workers refuse to return his children because they assume he was convicted of assault.
• In Nanaimo, a problem teenager is apprehended after falsely claiming her mother kicked her out of the house. She is made a permanent ward of the state and allowed to live independently with another ward who has a criminal record and threatens to shoot the mother.

Kari Simpson, director of the Citizens' Research Institute, has been seeing such cases for almost 10 years, but the number of complaints against the government "has quadrupled this year. Normally we get about 400 cases involving wrongful apprehensions and other horror stories annually, but we've already passed that number."

Province-wide, the ministry investigates about 40,000 suspected cases of abuse yearly. If a new 68-page government booklet is any indication, the caseload will rise. "The B.C. Handbook for Action on Child Abuse and Neglect," published earlier this month, instructs social workers, teachers and child-care providers how to recognize and respond to abuse. Many of the pointers reflect common sense, but among its flimsier guidelines is one that children can be apprehended if they fall victim to "scapegoating; rejection; [and] humiliation" (see story below).

The cumulative effect of such policies, says Steveston lawyer Patricia Fleming, is "the loss of our liberty to parent according to our own standards." She calls the Children's Ministry "extremely intrusive, unconstitutionally so," arguing that social workers' intrusiveness constitutes an unlawful invasion of family privacy.

The Ministry for Children and Families was inaugurated in September 1996 to replace the old Ministry of Social Services, which had come under widespread attack for failing to prevent the 1992 death, at the hands of his welfare mother, of five-year-old Matthew Vaudreuil. Judge Gove conducted an inquiry into the case, and his two-volume, 662-page report made 118 recommendations to overhaul child protection; some of them included provisions enabling social workers to screen all families for the risk of abuse, and to remove children determined to be at risk even where abuse is not proven.

The government subsequently created the new office of children's commissioner and appointed Cynthia Morton to the post. She promptly promised that the new ministry, armed with an annual budget of $1.3 billion and 4,700 employees, would involve itself more thoroughly in the lives of all B.C. children. Ideally, she said, intervention in the form of a risk assessment would begin when a pregnant woman first sees a doctor or applies for welfare.

But would this not lead to unsuspecting parents falling victim to a super-bureaucracy? "Betty," a 45-year-old divorced Langley pediatric nurse, says she is such a victim. Betty says she "worked my guts out to raise my daughter and 11-year-old son properly. Both were grade-A students." But when her daughter, "Trish," turned 12 last year, "her hormones kicked in, and she became a terror." She fled home after Betty removed her bedroom door as punishment for slamming it during tantrums. Trish was returned by police, but bolted again on several occasions.

One conflict last December culminated in Trish pulling her mother's hair and screaming obscenities. Betty called in a social worker, but visits to doctors, psychiatrists and counsellors failed to find anything wrong either with Trish or Betty's parenting. "But she still refused to live with me, and nobody was willing to force her back because they were afraid she would run off and get hurt," Betty recalls.

On March 20 a Provincial Court judge decided that, in the interest of her safety, Trish be placed in temporary foster care. Another court session took place March 31, this one presided over by Judge Gove himself. "Gove coddled that brat," fumes Mrs. Simpson, who attended the hearing. "He kept asking her how long she needed foster care before she could reconcile with her mother. A month? No. Two months? No." The judge decided to place her in foster care for five months on the understanding social workers try to resolve her emotional problems.

Not only is this not happening, says Betty, but "Trish is even enjoying taxi rides to and from school at the public's expense." She adds that Trish's supervisor has not filled out weekly report cards ordered by Judge Gove or contacted the child's psychiatrist or doctor. Moreover, Trish's placement in foster care freed Betty's ex-husband from his obligation to pay child support. "I've had to sell our home and move into a low-rent housing unit," the distraught nurse says.

Another worrisome case involves Mission resident Herbert Campbell, 42, a former handyman who collects welfare. Mrs. Simpson maintains he "is a loving father. He homeschools his children, and I've never seen a more well-behaved group—bright and unfailingly courteous." Mr. Campbell says his ordeal with the ministry was not triggered by a malcontent offspring, but by the estranged mother of his eight children, who range in age from one to 13.

The woman told police in June 1997 that Mr. Campbell had assaulted her. He was promptly arrested by Mission RCMP and the seven children who were in his care were apprehended by the ministry. Upon his release two days later he asked for their whereabouts. "I was told only that they were with their mother in a transition house," he says. Over the next few weeks Mr. Campbell distributed posters with the names and descriptions of his offspring. At one point he was visited by another social worker who stated he was going to award his ex-girlfriend permanent custody of his children. "He said if I didn't plead guilty to assault he would make sure I wouldn't see them for a year," he recalls.

On September 29 a Provincial Court judge dismissed the assault charge. Mr. Campbell asked that his children be returned, but ministry officials demanded he undergo a psychiatric assessment first. That was conducted by Vancouver family physician Verity Livingstone, who wrote October 10 that Mr. Campbell "is a conscientious man who is struggling to look after his children. He is very upset but has remained clear-thinking and rational. I do not think he represents a risk to his children."

Mr. Campbell obtained a court order to release his children from custody, but the matter was bounced from one bureaucrat to another. Mr. Campbell's lawyer engaged the services of Mrs. Simpson, who received the same runaround throughout Christmas. Finally, last January, she met with the social workers in charge of the case. "I asked why Herbert's kids hadn't been returned," she says. "After a lot of waffling, one of the workers replied, 'It's because of the assault charge...He was convicted.' I couldn't believe it. These people hadn't bothered to find out that the charge had been dismissed."

Mr. Campbell's ordeal was not over yet. Later that month the ministry agreed to return his children, but only if he signed a paper allowing them to receive counselling and anger-management services. "That's a standard intimidation tactic, not to mention an [attempt to obtain an] admission something is wrong with the family," Mrs. Simpson says. "A lot of parents sign the agreement. Herbert told the ministry he wouldn't cooperate. His kids were returned the next day."

Mr. Campbell counts himself as one of the few lucky survivors of a bureaucracy run amok. Unlucky, on the other hand, is "Jill," a divorced Nanaimo retail clerk whose daughter, "Sandy," became hooked on crack cocaine when she was 15 two years ago. Jill's immediate response was to contact the Children's Ministry and ask a social worker to try to rehabilitate the girl. "She was a terrific, no-nonsense woman," says Jill. "We put Sandy through every conceivable type of counselling, support group, disciplinary action. And by December 1996 she began cleaning up her act."

Unfortunately, Sandy's social worker retired and was replaced by a woman "who took a dislike to me and through sheer neglect undid all the work her predecessor had achieved," says Jill. More rebellious than ever, Sandy ensured her apprehension last spring by falsely complaining that her mother had kicked her out of her house. Jill tried in vain to persuade authorities that her daughter was lying, but, "One supervisor cut me off by informing me that 'children are believed before parents, and social workers are believed before parents.'"

Describing the day a judge made Sandy a permanent ward of the state, Jill sobs, "On October 8 she was taken away from me." The Children's Ministry awarded the girl independent living status and moved her to a house several blocks from where Jill lives—even though, contrary to the requirements needed to secure independent status, Sandy had quit her job and dropped out of school.

Jill soon learned that another ward of the state was living with Sandy, and that he has a criminal record. "I've repeatedly complained to social workers, but they deny he's a criminal," she says. Jill's most recent telephone conversation with her daughter was interrupted by her roommate: "He threatened to shoot me with an elephant gun if I interfered in their lives."

Lawyer Fleming says the hoops that responsible parents must jump through to prove they are not abusing their offspring are monumental. "For one thing, all the ministry has to show is 'reasonable grounds' to apprehend children," she says. "In the week between the child being apprehended and the first 'presentation' hearing, parents may literally go through hell not knowing where their children are, and they may not have access to them."

The later "protection" hearing, in which the judge decides if the child should be returned to the parents or put into temporary foster care, is supposed to occur within 45 days of the presentation hearing, says Mrs. Fleming. "But in a lot of cases it happens months down the road." She characterizes the entire process as "heart-wrenching. I have four children and two grandchildren. I am a family person—that's what gives me the strength to fight for these people."

The behaviour of ministry workers becomes understandable "when you realize many of these people have little training or experience," says Mrs. Simpson. This notion was supported last month by Ombudsman Dulcie McCallum, who, in assessing the performance of the Children's Ministry, pointed out that at least 300 employees have no degree in social work. She also revealed that Victoria has yet to ensure adequate training for front-line contract workers. Furthermore, 250 of the 300 new social workers hired after the Gove report have quit because of case overload.

It has been suggested that the basic nature of social workers prevents them from performing effectively. "They are not articulate when it comes to clear-cut solutions to an individual problem," former Social Credit leader and human resources minister Grace McCarthy wrote in a study of Vancouver welfare services in 1967. "[They] surround themselves in a great deal of mysticism either to confuse their superiors (and the taxpayer) or to justify their existence."

But even if there were better-trained social workers and even if the parent is irresponsible, Mrs. Simpson has misgivings about surrendering babies to the state. That explains her crusade to get four-month-old Summer Griffin out of custody and back to her mother, 16-year-old Terry Griffin of Surrey. Summer was taken by the ministry for a three-month term because she sometimes went more than a day between baths and her bottles were improperly sterilized.

Miss Griffin herself was taken away from her alcoholic single mother when she was 10. At 15 she qualified to live by herself under state care, and it was while she was living in a Surrey duplex that she was impregnated. "Terry's a spoiled brat. Her duplex was an absolute mess, yet when she demanded a 27-inch television from the ministry she got it. She also got a private tutor, and all this cost taxpayers $5,000 a month," says Mrs. Simpson. Still, "it's ludicrous for Victoria to hold her guilty for bad parenting considering Victoria raised her." On April 3 a judge ordered Summer to remain in custody for another three months.

From the miasma of wrecked lives and court battles comes a single question: how to improve the system? On a political level, Liberal leader Gordon Campbell is preparing two private member's bills on the subject. Although he maintains it is too early to disclose the contents of the bills, he says, "I'm consulting with family and citizens' groups. The NDP has completely forgotten that their ministry is called the Ministry for Children and Families, not just children. We want to keep families together, not pull them apart. There's no substitute for a solid, functioning family."

Mrs. Simpson has a more drastic remedy. She is putting the finishing touches on a brochure "on how to survive the politics of parenting. Amongst other things, it will teach children not to respect authority other than their parents. In effect, I want kids to become rebels. I want them conditioned to the point where if they are approached by a counsellor or social worker, they automatically phone the family lawyer before answering a single question."

Families hurt by the ministry's unwarranted intervention say they hope others will learn from their experience. Herbert Campbell remarks, "My kids have changed since being returned to me. They're harder to deal with. They're constantly tense."

Choking back tears, Betty says that in the wake of daughter Trish being placed in a foster home, school counsellors have begun asking her son about the quality of his home life: "He keeps telling them nothing is wrong. It's as if they're waiting for any excuse to grab him too."

—Robin Brunet

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