A Children's Aid Society recently apprehended a child from his parents because they honoured his wish not receive further chemotherapy. Oncologists are of the view that the boy is not capable to make the treatment decisions and that the treatment offers the boy the only chance of survival. These are complicated decisions and are currently being played out before a Family Court Judge. But why?
The Province of Ontario has a comprehensive code for capacity to consent to treatment in the Health Care Consent Act, 1996 and the principles of substitute decision making. The child could apply to the Consent and Capacity Board for a review that he is incapable of making treatment decisions. A doctor could apply to the Board for a determination that the parents are not acting in accordance with the principles of substitute decision making. Under Ontario law, there is no need to apprehend a child in order to examine the decision making. It is time for Children's Aid Societies and lawyers acting for children to start thinking outside of the apprehension box!
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8 comments:
I was thinking the EXACT same thing!
The Family courts need to be open to the light of day, CAS use's its own hired folk's, it is one large circle of care, that fails to come close to the children's best interest. Well done Suzan at Smith /Goudge inquest, more then understand.
http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2008/06/it-was-good-day-in-dc.html
Larry Palevsky, MD, will be speaking on vaccine awareness at Georgian College, in Barrie on July 8, 2008.some info re: Dr. Palevsky.....About Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, FAAP
Dr. Palevsky is a board certified pediatrician who received his medical degree from the NYU School of Medicine in 1987. He completed a three year pediatric residency in 1990 at the Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC, and a one year fellowship at Bellevue Hospital-NYU School of Medicine in the pediatric outpatient department and emergency room.
His first full-time job was working as a pediatrician in the emergency room of Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center in the Bronx, NY from 1991-1995. From January 1994 until June 1996, Dr. Palevsky worked on weekends, covering the private practice of 3 pediatricians on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Dr. Palevsky served as the Chief of the Pediatric Acute Care Unit at NYC's Lenox Hill Hospital from 1995-1998. He continued on in the Department of Pediatrics at Lenox Hill until March 2000, when he left to practice as the holistic integrative pediatrician for the Center for Health & Healing, an integrative and complementary care medical facility affiliated with the Beth Israel Medical Center in NYC.
In October 2002, Dr. Palevsky left his practice at the Center for Health and Healing and took a 2-year personal sabbatical. Starting in February 2005-present, he has been practicing part-time at the Northport Wellness Center in Northport, Long Island, and in NYC, offering consultations and educational programs to families who are looking for counseling in preventive and holistic health, nutrition for adults, infants and children, safe alternative treatments for common and difficult to treat acute and chronic pediatric and adult conditions, vaccination controversies, mindful parenting and rethinking the current medical paradigm. Dr. Palevsky continues to provide wellness care and check-ups to families looking for a holistic pediatrician.
Dr. Palevsky’s clinical practice since 1991 includes experience in pediatric emergency and intensive care medicine, in-patient and out-patient pediatric medicine, neonatal intensive care medicine, newborn and delivery room medicine and conventional, holistic and integrative pediatric private practice in NYC.
Dr. Palevsky is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Past-President of the American Holistic Medical Association (www.holisticmedicine.org), co-founder and President of the Holistic Pediatric Association: The Alliance for Family Health and Wellness (www.hpakids.org), a Diplomate of the American Board of Holistic Medicine (www.holisticboard.org) and a medical advisory board member to the Natural Gourmet Institute in NYC (www.naturalgourmetschool.org), Developmental Delay Resources (www.devdelay.org ), Families for Natural Living, the Holistic Moms Network (www.holisticmoms.org) and the National Vaccine Information Center (www.nvic.org).
Dr. Palevsky teaches holistic integrative pediatric & adolescent medicine to parents and medical and allied health professionals both nationally & internationally.
About Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, FAAPhttp://www.nvic.org/doctors_corner/lawrence_palevsky.htm Aluminum and Vaccine Ingredients:
What Do We Know? What Don’t We Know?by Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, FAAPhttp://www.nvic.org/doctors_corner/lawrence_palevsky
As a child advocate that has nothing to gain for saying such,
I would like to know when parents once again, if ever will be allowed to make medical decisions for own children, if a parent say's no thank you to a vaccine for children, CAS can and has and does remove them. If they are harmed by that vaccine it can be far worse, anything from life in prison for SBS, to MSbP.
ASD/spec disorders, and I am not anti vaccine, but ask the refrigerator mothers, how they have felt, the children in care because they did not speak enough words on time, or had behavioural problems, all blamed on mom and dad.
Till far to many lawyers and doctors also gave birth or adopted children on that huge spec.
Medicine changes, drugs get called back daily, capacity to make medical decisions, is never up to a parent, even for minor illness, or vaccines, and something must be done about this. Far to many children are in care for nothing more then a parent saying NO to a doctor.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7g8Fgq2xkTc
Child dragged away by police on command of CAS
July 02, 2008 (Less info)
My 12 year old cousin was taken by CAS. She was being raised by her grandparents. Last year her grandfather was killed in a car crash. She was having emotional problems. She lied one day and said her grandmother hit her. The CAS had the police take her with no investigation done at all. She later admitted she lied and the CAS didn't care. Today she ran from them and came to my house. The CAS worker came to take her back with some cops. 2 cops dragged her away kicking and screaming. The whole time the CAS worker just stood there with a smirk on her face. By the time the 12 year old was shoved in the back of the cop car, there were 6 other cop cars on my street. All for a 12 YEAR OLD GIRL! who only wanted to go home to her family. The woman in the black pants and jacket, pink shirt is a Simcoe County CAS worker. First name is Nicole
Category: News & Politics
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Barrie CAS children's aid society simcoe county
( so good child advocate, please get busy, and advocate against the abuse of children by CAS and public purse)
Seven-year wait
Katie May, Northern News Services, Published Monday, June 30, 2008
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Marina Powless doesn't remember much from her childhood.
She spent a lot of it bouncing between more than six different foster homes from the time she was in elementary school until age 16, when she was no longer eligible to be a ward of the system.
Now 26, and with three children of her own, the Yellowknife resident wants access to records kept about her while she was in foster care. She first requested the records seven years ago and she still hasn't received anything in writing.
"I want to know where I've been," she said. "I don't remember how many foster homes I've lived in in this town.I was moved around like a puppy."
Powless filled out her first access-to-information request to the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority (YHSSA) when she was 19, asking for any information relating to her while she was in care. She received no response.
On April 26, 2005, she tried again, submitting another written request for a copy of the records. Another three years went by before she received a phone call last May from a YHSSA employee informing her they'd received the request.
According to section 8 of the NWT Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, "the head of a public body shall respond to an applicant not later than 30 days after a request is received," unless the request requires a time extension or is unanswerable. But even in those cases, the law says the applicant must be informed "without delay."
The executive director of the Foster Family Coalition of the NWT said Powless is not the only former foster child waiting for personal records.
"I know that access to records is a big issue," said Christine Bressette. "It's a national issue. It's important for closure - you need to understand what's happened to you."
When the records do come back to the applicant, Bressette said, they are often largely blacked out and contain inaccurate or traumatic details for which the applicant may later require counseling, such as a child being put into foster care for the wrong reasons.
"I think the government's really scared that there might be legal repercussions," she said. "I'm on board with all these kids and I agree they should have access to records."
The Foster Family Coalition of the NWT is trying to set up a territorial youth-in-care network that would focus on child welfare and voice foster children's concerns, similar to organizations already in place in several provinces and on the national level.
Bressette, who has been in the field of social work for 30 years, said she's never heard of a request taking seven years to complete.
The president of the Canadian Foster Family Association, Sheila Durnford, said waiting that long for personal foster care records is unacceptable.
"That wouldn't be considered acceptable in our association's eyes at all," Durnford said. "For anybody, it's not really acceptable, but especially for that foster child. They need to know their history."
Dean Soenen, the director of Child and Family Services for GNWT, said access-to-information requests within the department usually take from two to four weeks, depending on the request.
"We like to do it as quick as possible," he said. He added that the department only recently hired a records co-ordinator after the position had been vacant for about six months, and he said that might be a reason for the delay in Powless' case.
Powless said Soenen told her on June 25 that her request was the department's first priority as soon as they get their broken microfiche machine fixed.
At this point, Powless said she's not interested in excuses. She just wants some answers about her past.
"I don't have the money to get a lawyer to pursue this," she said.
"My whole life, I've never been in one place long enough to have a home," she explained, her voice breaking with emotion. "I just want closure."
Parents Arrested, Children Confiscated
September 15, 2008
Both parents of an ailing baby have been arrested, and their two children are in the custody of the Children's Aid Society of Toronto. Since news accounts scramble the facts, here it the story chronologically as well as we can reconstruct it from the account below, Friday's police bulletin and some other press reports:
Erica Caines took her sick nine-month-old baby boy, Heru Sut Tekh El, to the Hospital for Sick Children.
Since she had brought the baby for diagnosis, not treatment, Erica Caines took her child home from the hospital.
On Friday Toronto police issued a bulletin asking for help in locating the mother and baby
The mother brought her baby back to the hospital on Sunday.
Hospital staff, or the police, threatened to take the baby from his mother, resulting in a two hour standoff.
Police arrested the mother and father, and children's aid took the baby and the parents' other child into their custody.
The mother is expected to be released from jail tomorrow, subject to conditions to stay away from the hospital. There is no word on the father's release.
In a Stalinist retraction, journalists now suppress usage of the names of the mother and child.
From the untangled chronology, this likes like a baby who could benefit more from cooperation with mom, rather than arrest and seizure.
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Baby in care, parents jailed
STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR
Boy's parents look to Moorish-American Grand Sheik Kudjo Adwo Sut Tekh El for guidance.
Standoff at Sick Kids after mother, father refuse to treat malnourished boy due to religious beliefs
September 15, 2008, Noor Javed, Staff Reporter
A 9-month-old baby is being treated for malnutrition at the Hospital for Sick Children today, nearly a week after police began searching for the child and his parents, members of an obscure Moorish-American religious sect that doesn't believe in traditional medicine.
But it took the Emergency Task Force to get him there.
The parents, who fled with the child after refusing treatment at the hospital last Wednesday, returned to Sick Kids with the boy yesterday after nearly five days in hiding.
The child's young mom and dad said they returned out of concern for the boy's health, and because of an intense police search for them.
But when hospital officials and the Children's Aid Society insisted on treatment, the mother backed off and wanted to leave with the child.
That led to a two-hour standoff at the hospital, with the mother refusing to hand over the child and authorities refusing to let the family leave.
The Emergency Task Force, which has negotiators trained for such situations, was also called in before the impasse ended with the arrest of the mother, father and a friend, all on obstruction of justice charges.
The parents, who are not married and cannot be named to protect the identity of the child, are due to appear in College Park court at 10 a.m. today.
The child, who weighs only 11 pounds – far short of the normal 20-odd pounds for a healthy baby of that age – is now in the custody of the Children's Aid Society.
Last Friday, police issued a rare public alert for the mother and child, but not even close friends or the family's spiritual leader could say where she was hiding out with the baby, who health officials said was severely malnourished and in need of medical treatment.
Finally, saying she was concerned for her son's faltering health, the 22-year-old mother returned to the hospital yesterday with her son and the baby's father.
As he walked to downtown 52 Division, on Dundas St. W. yesterday, the child's father said he was a "Moorish-American," and didn't believe in invasive medical treatment.
The local spiritual leader for the Moorish Science Temple of America, a small sect with members in Canada and the U.S., stood outside the station to offer support to the parents, and said the group preferred holistic medicines over conventional treatment
"We teach our people about homeopathic methods to stopping disease just because we don't know what's in the pills, we don't know what's in the injections," said Kudjo Adwo Sut Tekh El, wearing a long tunic and burgundy fez over long dreadlocks.
"It's a religious right for us to be able to express that," said the minister, identifying himself as the group's grand sheik.
The baby was born a month before his parents joined the small Toronto congregation of Moorish Americans, the minister said, adding the couple learned about the sect from an information meeting, and were interested in the group's beliefs about ancestral heritage as semi-divine citizens of Morocco.
When the baby was born, he suffered from hypersensitivity and had an allergy to breast milk, solid food and formula, said one neighbour of the family, who identified herself only as Dinah.
"It's been difficult to find the proper food. Even food from the hospital was giving him a reaction," she said. The baby's grandmother said she knew about the eczema, but not about his allergies.
"He's definitely not in optimum health. Everyone agrees he needs treatment," said Dinah.
Friends and relatives agreed that, in the last few weeks, the boy wasn't doing well and his weight wasn't picking up, so the mother was advised by a naturopathic doctor to take him to hospital last Wednesday, just for a diagnosis, so holistic treatment could be better focused.
"We saw the child just last week. I wouldn't say that it looked sick. The child has eczema, a skin condition. He looked skinny, but he didn't look like he was in dire need of assistance," said the grand sheik.
The mother at first refused intravenous treatment at the hospital, "because she wanted to explore other treatments," Dinah said. And when the mother arrived yesterday, she was going to comply with their treatments, then balked when Children's Aid wanted to take custody of the child, Dinah said.
"Things got out of hand somewhere," she said. "She went to the hospital with the full intent of being compliant. They didn't want to surrender custody. There's no need for that," she added.
The mother's surprise at being confronted by the ETF was evident through text messages she sent to the spiritual adviser throughout the two-hour standoff.
"They have ETF here," read one. Another pleaded for help: "Need you here."
"She is a good mother," said Dinah. "She's been totally attentive, and has been trying to find a good solution for him," said Dinah, adding the baby's 3 1/2-year-old brother is healthy. The older child is in the care of an aunt.
The child's grandmother waited outside the police station last night. "All I know is that my daughter is suffering," she said, "and I am worried about my grandson."
She said she didn't know anything about the religion her daughter had adopted but said she was certain the mother would never intentionally harm her own child.
With files from Theresa Boyle
Source: Toronto Star
I don't know how else to contact you but on October 01, 2008 I go into resolution discussions with the CAS of Ottawa Lawyer.
The charges against the Society were brought due to the Society preventing me from obtaining a list of the regular members so I could advocate for Article 12 UNCRC rights for kids in care to become a special class of members of their respective Societies through a Corporate By-Law amendment which would be advocated for from the existing members who would call a meeting under section 295 of the Corporations Act (or as referred to by the Society's own article 13 of By-Law #1)
Their Lawyer, refuses to be in the same room with me ("bilateral meeting") out of a fear I will serve him with legal papers of some sort as stated in his letter to the mediator (The Crown acting as mediator in a private prosecution)
If resolution does not workout, Trial is set for October 08, 2008. More details at http://www.afterfostercare.ca/enforcement.html
I can be reached at 613-228-2178 any time for discussion. Feel free to attend during our resolution disucssions Wednesday if you are free to head out to Ottawa.
I do not have any money but you are welcome to attend as a support person or otherwise as is your freedom to choose.
Matthew-Geigen Miller knows me, Irwin Elman knows me and is in recent dicussion with me as well if you like to contact the Office of the Cheif Advocate about me.
In follow up, we resolved. More details at http://www.afterfostercare.ca on the NEWS page.
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