刘女士探访儿子之后的最新情况

陆海

最初由[PeelBoy]发布
Money vs Humanity

I thought about stoping writing about CAS, however, in the past week or so, there was too much misunderstanding about child welfare in Ontario.  This not so accurate information and emotional reaction may hurt our Chinese community, becuase we may misinterpret CAS work and subsequently don't know how to respond when CAS shows at our door.

One somewhat overwhelming opinion is CAS took the child for money/funding.  It seems we being Chinese always view the outside world through the "lens of money", not humanity.  I would like to clarify how the funding system works.

Only senior managers have access to funding information and understand funding structure.  Case workers and supervisors do not know too much about the operation, so their decision making will not be affected by funding.

There are 53 CAS in Ontario.  In general, they are structured with the following departments: Intake, family services, children's services, support services and administration.

The Ministry of Child and Youth Services funds CAS based on bench marks.  For example, an investigation will give CAS 12.5 hours and an ongoing case 5.5 hours per month, which will then translate into revenues.  This is true a child coming into care means 5.5 hours per month of service, which is a bad "business transaction".  I will explain which department makes a profit and which not, as below.

Administration receives a fixed block funding from the Ministry, which is sufficient to hire clerical staff only.  All senior managers, training, HR, IT, QA and communication belong to this department, which needs subsidy from other departments for survival.  

Family Services and Support Services are about to break even (no profit, no loss).  They are responsible for providing support, counseling, referral, child management, therapy, high risk infant and other services.  The goal is to assist parents to maintain a safe and nurturning environment for their children.

Intake is where the lion's share of revenues are generated.  CAS receives 12.5 hours on every investigation.  In general, 80% of them are "false alarms", but they still have to investigate them.  Just like fire department, if you call to report a fire, they will come to help, even if it is a false alarm.  15% may refer to family services for ongoing support and less than 5% of the investigations will result in children coming into foster care.

Children's Service is the source of serious financial "bleeding".  CAS will have to "pay" the foster parents for cost of care.  Foster parents are volunteers who contribute their free time to help.  They do not receive any salary.  For those with health or emotional problem, the children will have to go to Outside Paid Resources, which are group homes operated by other organizations.  They charge CAS anywhere between $150 to $400 a day, because they provide accommodation, food and intensive staff supervision.  Besides per diem, CAS pays child's health cost, medical and dental care, clothing, psychological assessment, treatment, education (like one on one CYW support at school) and even vacation (they go on vacation with foster parents).

Overall, about 35% of the funding goes to salary and office expenses, 15% to protection support services and 50% towards cost of caring for children.

If I am allowed to run CAS like a business to make a profit, I would do the following:

1. Discharge all children from CAS care, regardless of their safety.  Data shows that Intake Department always has to subsidize the Children's Service Department.  One more child in care means one more source of financial bleeding.

2. Shut down Support Services and Family Services, since they never bring in any net income.  Just like our banks, they shut down branches which cannot bring them any profit.

3. Shut down Administration and fire PeelBoy as well.  We don't need management.

4. Expand Intake. Keep doing investigations.

Of course, if any CAS has such a structure, the Ministry will take over the agency.  CAS protects children from the lens of humanity, not quite as what we think about them.

I notice the lost of momentum.  My post may be the last one on this board.  I still have one more interesting item to share: How to Handle CAS at Your Door, if anyone still wants to read it.

Important messages! It won't be the last one.

I appreciate your writing and I will read your future postings on the CAS subject for sure.

慢步当车

我赞同斯芬克斯的建议。

基本上，你应该以要回孩子为唯一要务，切忌将任何人或机构作为你的对立面而拼命去证明其错误。你要证明的是你爱孩子并能够正常地养育他。

quickcow

Keepgoing, peelboy.

Very informative reading your post.

seawave

Honestly I don’t think PeelBoy can help Mrs.Liu get her son back. Not a chance! No one can affect CAS’s working procedures. NO ONE!

CASs have their own rules, and they work extremely slowly. After parent has been separated frow their child, they have to go through Supervised, Semi-Supervised and Un-Supervised visits for very long long time for CAS to decide if the child can return back to the parent.

CAS will tell you purpose of doing this is to see how the parents interactive with their children, however after doing Supervised visits for more than 2 months, and every single visit are excellent (even in their own report), they still tell you to keep doing it. They will never answer your how many times you have to do more.

I don’t know CAS is corrupted or not, but I know they are not doing good job. I would like to know; in all cases they deal with, what percentage turns out to be not child abuse at all.  At least, I have heard three stories about they investigate “Birth Mark” as child abuse, and before the investigation done, they even take a child away from the parents. How stupid is this?

So why they are so eager to seek for cases? Why it takes so long for them to do so called “investigation”, by the way, when they do investigation, they talk to no body, your neighbours, daycare teacher, even the child, him/herself.

PeelBoy

Seawave, first of all, I have added you to my MSN, so if you would like to chat about your situation, you are welcomed.

Advice is advice, which does not guarantee a favourable result. However, the more you know about the rules, the smarter your strategies can you formulate.  You should not deal with the law with ignorance.

How fast is fast enough?  How slow is slow enough? To parents, a day is too slow.  I will post my other 2 cents after this, which hopefully will give you some insight.

I have to search for Ontario statistics to answer your question.  For my agency, we are able to verify about 20% of all investigations, which will go to family services for case management.  About 5% of these investigations will result in children coming into our care.

Birth mark is an issue for people from the Orient.  We call this Mongolian spot, which happens to Asians.  You do no find too many whites and blacks have these spots.  When a white kindergarten teacher finds the mark, she does not know anything about Mongolian spot, so she has to call CAS to fulfill her duty to report.  CAS will do the investigation and take the child to see a doctor to verify the mark.  It is not difficult to tell a birth mark/mongolian spot from a bruise.  If you press the former, it won't change colour and it won't hurt.  If it is a bruise, you press it, the child will hurt and colour will change, because a bruise is an under-skin bleeding.  Every year, we receive calls about Mongolian spot and we investigate, but I have not seen any children removed from the parents because of birth mark.  This may have happened at night when there is no doctor available to verify it.

I will share in another post: How to Handle CAS at your door, which hopefully can be helpful to you.

PeelBoy

I am not going to talk about philosophical stuff, which is subject to debate.  I will talk about steps a CAS staff will do, so that you can outplay them in a smarter manner.

In North America, if you are stopped by a police officer for speeding though you believe you never speed, put your hands on the steering wheel.  Don't start searching for anything from the grove box to support your claim.  I promise the officer will pull his gun on you.  Again, do not leave your car to yell and scream at the office.  I guarantee he will throw you on the ground and sit on your back to restrain you.  Don't call your friends to come for support.  You can never out-number the officers.  You are advised to sit tight, hand in your driver's licence, receive your ticket, smile and say thank you very much. Thereafter, fight your speeding ticket at court or file a complaint against the officer.  You may not agree with me, but there is behaviour expected from a citizen in close encounter with the police.

The same applies when dealing with CAS.  If we start screaming at the investigating officer, we are asking for trouble.  I write the following information not to encourage you to abuse your child and then to escape from the consequence.  No matter how skilful we have become, we will be in deep trouble, if we abuse our children.

Step 1: Mandatory Reporting
All professionals are mandated by the Child and Family Services Act to report to CAS when they suspect a child is in need of protection.  When a doctor, a school teacher or even a school bus driver detects something suspicious, they have to report it; otherwise they can be charged.  It is not their role to determine whether actual abuse has happened.  When CAS receives the call, they will ask where the child is.  If the child is with the professional, he or she will be asked to keep the child first till investigation, in extreme severe cases. Why?  Because CAS would like to interview the victim first.  Think about that.  If you are assaulted by a stranger, would you want the police to interview the suspect first.  No way, of course the victim first.

At this time, the social worker will have finish checking internal record, records with all Ontario CAS, Child Abuse Registry and where applicable, police record.  If we have any record with these department, they have already know who we are.  If we think they come unprepared, we are very wrong.

Step 2: Eligibility.  Abuse definition in Ontario is not a sentence, a paragraph or an article.  It is a book, defining all circumstances of child protection.  The worker will rate the case, which will determine whether the child must be seen within either 12 hours or 7 days.  CAS operates 24/7, without days off.  I can't explain everything in the book for you, but let me tell you 4 scenarios very common to Chinese Canadians.

a. Physical abuse.  This is #1 problem for Chinese Canadians. I have explained in the previous post under Section 43 of the Criminal Code, a parent is allowed to physically punish a child with reasonable force, which is never defined since we have common law in Canada.  Case law says any use of weapon or hitting causing injury (marks which is internal bleeding) is considered excessive force.  Can we discipline our kids?  Of course, we can.  Can we hit them?  Sure, not with excessive force.  Should we hit them? Hmmm.  I was raised in a culture where back home everyone hit.  We were hit at home by parents, hit by our husbands after marriage, hit at school by teachers, hit at the basket ball court by the coach and hit by the employer at work.  These all are still happening back home and should not be strange to anyone of you.  We lived in a world of violence.  Now in Canada, we don't get hit when we go to school, don't get hit when we go to work and don't get hit in our marriage.  At least, legally, we are protected.  If our husbands hit us, kick them and have them charged.  There is only one vulnerable group least able to protect themselves: children.  We hit them for their own good, for their development sake and for....  What is the logic?  There are so many positive parenting methods.  Please learn them.  Don't just sit there blaming the government.  In social science literature, there is too much evidence to support the harm physical abuse can cause.

b. Neglect.  We always leave our young children unattended at home when we go to the grocery store, pick up the older child from school or gamble our night in a casino.  Under Criminal Code, no child under 10 is allowed to be home alone without supervision; otherwise the parents will be charged with Failure to Provide Necessities.  How about those above 10? Yes, as long as they are not left for a long period of time and there is a back up plan in case for example an emergency like a fire happens.  I had Chinese parents arguing with me the child is 12, so can stay them because they need to maintain another address.  Where is that address?  In Hong Kong.  This sounds atypical, but leaving kids unattended is a problem in our community.  

Under neglect, meals provided to our children sometimes are considered inadequate.  This is an area I keep explaining to teachers the meals are fine.  Canadian kids bring in sandwich with meat and veggie, and juice, milk and a fruit for lunch at school.  Chinese kids have either rice, a bun and a "dirty" plastic bottle of strange liquid.  Of course, I know what that is, but the teachers don't.  Sometimes, because of cultural shock and loss of cultural identity, our kids throw away their lunch, which is not the parents' fault.  We investigate these cases, but never make it a big fuss.

c. Violence Against Women.  You may argue we hit our wives back home for fun and why we can't do it in Canada.  Listen, if you hit, you will be in jail.  VAW is not a reason for CAS intervention, unless the violence has negative impact on the children's safety and wellbeing.  If you hit your wife in front of the children, police will charge you and CAS will ask for a court order to stop you from going home.  The bottom line is in Canada, we don't hit, women or kids.  Period.

d. Parent teen conflict.  Under VAW, your teen child is your responsibility which has nothing to do with CAS.  However, if you kick your 15 year old child out in the dark and in the snow, because she has her first boyfriend, CAS will step in. This is another big area of trouble for Chinese parents.

to be continued....

PeelBoy

Once the social worker determines eligibility is met. A supervisor is involved.  CAS decisions are never made alone by single individual.  All decision must be endorsed by a senior staff.

Step 3: CAS Police Joint Investigation.
CAS and Police will do joint investigations, there are both child protection and criminal components.  They do the investigation together, but each has their focus.  Police will determine whether crime has happened while CAS will assess if the parents can protect the child.  Possible scenarios include:

a. no criminal charges and no CAS apprehension.
b. criminal charges and no CAS apprehension.  Usually when the children are protected by the non-offending parent.
c. no criminal charges but CAS apprehension. Usually happens when police is not confident the parents will be convicted. The principle for criminal charge is beyond reasonable doubt but for child welfare, it is balance of probabilities, so very different.
d. both.

For criminal hearing, you will get plead court, pre-trial, trial and sentence.  CFSA hearing will be described below.

They usually interview the victim first, then the witeness, and last the parents.  They will take the child for a medical examination and pictures.  They will talk to the professionals involved with our family to study us inside out.  

Step 4: Safety Assessment.  Immediately after the investigation, the worker will consult the supervisor, even it is at the middle of the night, so the supervisor will make a decision whether to remove the child.  The process is Safety Assessment, which is a tool with 12 questions to answer.  The real question the worker will have to answer is if he or she walks away, will the child be fine?  This is every child protection worker's nightmare if he or she walks away, then the child dies.  You must have read a similar story lately and blame the CAS worker responsible for the case.

If you scream and yell at the police and CAS, cry hysterically or keep bad mouthing the child, how can police and CAS trust you have the ability to protect your child.  Stay calm, and relax since investigation is no big deal if you didn't do anything wrong.  This is a critical step.  If police has to restrain you to calm you down, it will be very difficult to get your child back.  Whenever you deal with any government department, answer the question with the right details, and do not offer them anything more than the question is asking.  Don't tease them, don't play games and don't befriend them.  

If the worker decides to apprehend your child, don't argue. They are not traffic cops who sometimes may lower your speeding limit in your ticket.  They will have police to keep the peace including restraining you, while they place your child at the back of his car.  If you see more than one worker, you know they are prepared to take away your child.


to be continued during the weekend.

咚咚咚3

您真专业,英文也那么好. 见过很多英文好的国人,自己也一直觉得自己的英语不错.但看您的写作,真佩服.我这个博士也白读了.我是学幼儿教育的.但对于CAS的了解不多, 只知道和他们打交道不容易. 您的专业知识一定会帮到刘女士的,如果她能好好看看你的文章.

斯芬克斯

感谢Peelboy的帖子，尤其是有关中国父母经有可能出问题的地方，要是这些文章能用中文写出来，更多英语不是很好地的同胞们能看懂就更好了。

陆海

PeelBoy写出了很有价值的贴子。有几点我想特别列出，这对来自不同社会管理文化的人可能很重要。

the more you know about the rules, the smarter your strategies can you formulate. You should not deal with the law with ignorance.

尤其是最后一句话：“You should not deal with the law with ignorance” （你不能用对法律的无知和不管法律怎么样而只凭感觉去处理法律问题 ）。我们的问题是我们没有有过在真正的法制社会生活过的经验。在这里不存在“不知者不谓罪”。

Whenever you deal with any government department, answer the question with the right details, and do not offer them anything more than the question is asking. Don't tease them, don't play games and don't befriend them.

"Don't tease them, don't play games and don't befriend them." 不要讥笑他们（那些与你处理事务或执行法律责任的官员），不要与他们兜圈子，不要和他们套近乎。一句话，有礼貌的公事公办。这样可以减少很多不必要的麻烦 -- 如果我的理解没有错的话。

七成新—滕燕青

请Peelboy 把几个介绍性的帖子合并成一个帖子，并请老赵置顶。让更多的华人了解CAS，帮助华人父母调整教育策略；讲究教育子女的方式方法，主动适应加拿大的教育观念；尊重所在国的法律法规。避免更多类似悲剧的发生!!!

知不足，然后改! 这就是在加华人为人父母者面临的处境及子女成长中的必经之路。

mimao

如果懂得什么是[良药苦口]，这样的人在生活中多半不会出现太大的法律问题；因为在日常中的各种忠告、或他人 的教训都能让明白人明白道理。

而悟性差的，真让他或她接受，难呐！
我觉得世界上最难的事之一就是将一个固执的人说明白。
这就是[命中注定]或[命有性格定]的原因。

想让自以为聪明者真边聪明？不容易！

那位PeelBoy 其实也一再表明这个道理：别自认为你自己不懂得法律，就可以逃避法律。

门也没有！

真聪明人要明白，良药苦口。

说实话，说多也没用。我自己知道白费力。

peelboy fans

I am almost sure that you can read Chinese,but I am not sure if  you are able to type/write in Chinese.  If you allowed, I could translate all your articles into Chinese the post it here.  However,  it may take some times.

没办法

最初由[mimao]发布
如果懂得什么是[良药苦口]，这样的人在生活中多半不会出现太大的法律问题；因为在日常中的各种忠告、或他人 的教训都能让明白人明白道理。

而悟性差的，真让他或她接受，难呐！
我觉得世界上最难的事之一就是将一个固执的人说明白。
这就是[命中注定]或[命有性格定]的原因。

想让自以为聪明者真边聪明？不容易！

那位PeelBoy 其实也一再表明这个道理：别自认为你自己不懂得法律，就可以逃避法律。

门也没有！

真聪明人要明白，良药苦口。

说实话，说多也没用。我自己知道白费力。

Absolutely right.

Actually we don't have to know the laws in detail. It is impossible for ordinary people like us to read every law. But we should know one thing, that is, there are laws for every thing and so that we should be cautious in acting and behaving when situations occur. When we are evolved in a case, we should consult friends or lawyers to advise us what lawful actions should be taken. Don’t act immediately in Chinese way.

This kind of suggestions can be heard very often and can be easily understand by educated people. But some Chinese people are so stubborn that they just ignore these suggestions.

Johnson

要养成收集证据的习惯, 要是上法庭的话, 你就应该提交你每一次和儿童保护会打交道的全过程笔录,如某年,某月某日,什么人几点用什么方式通知你,要做什么,时间,地点和人物及其名字. 谁在场,都说了什么话, 你对孩子的观察等. 你需要有人作证时,可以要求法庭传唤证人.

代养家庭和孩子的亲生父母在法庭上争夺孩子时, 哪一方能够提供有关孩子的更多的书面材料,特别是孩子的日常活动记录, 至少能说明哪一方为次案件准备的更加充分. 当法官一问你三不知或者不置可否,而对方能够提交厚厚的关于这个被争夺的孩子的日常活动资料时,  那是可想而知的.法庭是只重证据的.亲生父母的眼泪和哭声在法庭上的分量是有限的.