CHILDREN'S AID BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Well now this is very interesting. Several months back we had the case of a local school and Children's Aid AND police overeacting to an innocent comment from a very young child who had drawn a picture of what turned out to be a toy gun in her household. When questioned by "authorities" she suggested that her Daddy used it to shoot "bad guys". Since then there have been all kinds of Editorials, comments and even articles that suggest that sometimes our local Children's Aid (FCS- Family & Children Services) can be just a tad overenthusiastic in their leaping into situations where in fact there is little or no harm or threat to children involved.

Thus yesterday's small article in the Waterloo Region Record took me by surprise as it's one of the first, if not the first, that I've seen where one of our members of the establishment hasn't automatically and blindly defended Children's Aid, unequivocally. The title of the article is "Children's Aid should list all kids on web: PC's". Provincial Opposition leader Tim Hudak has very bluntly criticized the basic standard operating practices of Children's aid. He has stated that the current system rewards them financially for not finding homes for children and that this is a disincentive to their proper operation and mandate. Further by implication the fact that they get paid more money for each child they take into custody certainly to me is a Kafkayesque scenario. Is it a coincidence that more poorer children are seized than children from well off families? Is this due to economic hardship making it difficult for parents to properly feed and clothe their children or possibly is there even a tiny component of poorer parents being less able to hire high priced legal talent to take on Children's Aid and the Courts? I applaud Tim Hudak's comments in this Record article and believe that greater scrutiny and accountability is long overdue.