Bailie.com

Saturday, March 03, 2007

I’m not a gambler but when it comes to social worker

OK, here’s a hypothetical back story: The Ministry hands you and your spouse a kid to take home, lends you a car seat, and says, “here’s your son.” They promise you that everything is hunky dory and in a couple of months, adoption papers will be processed, no problem because you’re poster children for what the Ministry stands for, yada yada, and then everything explodes a year later, and now the Ministry is backpedalling faster than Lance Armstrong and your life (and your kids’ lives) are going to hell in a handbasket, courtesy of the infamous Ministry of Children and Family Development.

And then one day, the Child Protection branch of the Ministry says they need to visit.

Wouldn’t that raise the hair on the back of your neck? I am so wondering what their motive could possibly be.

Now, I’m not a betting woman but here is my suspicion - I’ll make my wager - anyone want to raise me a 16-month-old? (OK, really bad joke - just because the Ministry moves kids around like poker chips, I shouldn’t be emulating them.)

My bet is that the will come in and find some reason - even if they have to manufacture it - to remove the child and place him elsewhere. Likely it will not be a concrete reaon that could be proved wrong, because then someone could prove them wrong. It will be one of the nonsense reasons that I’ve seen them pull out of their butts when they want to do something but can’t find a way to justify it. (I can even think of a manufactured reason, but I wouldn’t want to give anyone ammunition.)

And then they will move the child out. Why? The big reason will be that if the child is picked up by the “duh, geez, lez go git that there kid I sperm donored” birth parents from the current parents’ house, there is the possibility of the media there to show the child being ripped away from his loving family, and people will see the effect that the Ministry is really having on the child and those around him. But, if they take the child away quietly and place him elsewhere, they can hand him over, quietly and anonymously, to the other party without anybody watching. There will be no news bites and no scandal on the news. And that’s the Ministry’s big concern: optics! So ... who’s in the betting pool?