Thursday, November 01, 2007

Child Sexual Abuse Treatment: BC Government Lies About Underfunding


Some lessons to heed from question period this week:

1. BC's neoLiberal party abuses Freedom of Information requests to make themselves look good and justify leaving abused children vulnerable.

2. BC's neoLiberal party has lied about the need for better funding for treating children who have suffered sexual abuse.

3. The installation of a Representative for Children and Youth last fall should be viewed in this new light.

4. The government should actually hold legislative sessions for public accountability.

5. Tom Christensen's offices are just gorgeous [see above] with their new renovations using money that could have paid for child sexual abuse counsellors.

It was a sick, sick Halloween when in question period, Minister of Children and Family Development Tom Christensen tried to dance around being caught by the Times Colonist [see below] in redacting critical elements of a report, thus allowing the Ministry to deny providing poor service to child sexual abuse victims.

Christensen, with no sense of irony: "It's unfortunate that the opposition is choosing to politicize this issue."

Then NDP MLA Rob Flemming followed up the questioning, "Sadly, it isn't the first time they've tried to cover up failings when it comes to protecting children. Last fall the opposition revealed an FOI which was sent inadvertently to the opposition, complete with handwritten sticky-notes. That FOI about child protection in the Coroner's Service had a handwritten note from the Deputy Solicitor General asking for more severing because it 'contradicts what we've said to this point.' The FOI also showed the public affairs bureau has been given sign-off authority by this government."

Christensen's ass-covering reply: "I can tell you that the Ministry of Children and Family Development receives well over a thousand FOI requests each year. I have nothing to do with a single one of those, but in fact we have a piece of legislation that balances access to information with a number of other considerations."

So much for ministerial responsibility. I know he doesn't process FOI requests, but the minister is responsible for the ministry's actions. Further, the FOI legislation isn't designed for the government to sever information in FOIs that contradicts their public messaging to keep from appearing duplicitous.

Christensen, later: "I'm proud of what this government has accomplished for children and youth with mental health issues across this province — a child and youth mental health plan that is the envy of jurisdictions across Canada."

I wonder if those jurisdictions envy the BC neoLiberals' ability to redact documents to justify defunding child sexual abuse treatment programs.

And now I think back to last November when the government reluctantly decided to actually hold a legislative session to appoint a Representative for Children and Youth, a session that the NDP stretched out to a whopping 3 days. Knowing now that at that time the government was hiding the report that was critical of their funding of child sexual abuse treatment, maybe that helps explain why that Representative appointment was enough to justify actually holding a fall legislative session.


2006 report identified problems with B.C.'s child abuse programs
Lindsay Kines
Times Colonist
Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The B.C. government has known for 18 months that its program to help sexually abused children is in trouble and needs help, documents obtained by the Times Colonist show.

Long before stories broke last spring about children waiting months for counselling, a review by the Ministry of Children and Family Development uncovered extensive problems with its Sexual Abuse Intervention Program (SAIP).

The April 2006 review concluded that the 47 agencies and societies helping abused children felt neglected, isolated and short-changed by government.

"Providers were unanimous in their view that program funding is insufficient to meet the needs for SAIP services," the 26-page review stated.

The report said the program was a "critical element" of services related to child and youth mental health and "deserving of a more explicit focus."

"There is a pervasive view among providers that the program has been neglected by government decision-makers over the past several years," the report stated

The ministry blanked out those comments from a copy of the review released under the province's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

But the TC has obtained an unedited version of the report that shows many of the agencies complained about a lack of money for training, poor wages for counsellors, an inability to travel to provide services in remote geographic areas, isolation from decision-makers and deteriorating relationships over the past 10 years.

"A more intensive focus on sexual-abuse intervention programming should yield greater satisfaction among providers and improved access and quality of services for clients, resulting in a more consistent standard of care across the province," the report said.

The province's sexual abuse program made headlines last spring when Victoria's Mary Manning Centre was forced to issue layoff notices to three part-time therapists because of a lack of funding. The subsequent publicity prompted public donations totaling more than $130,000 that allowed the centre to re-hire therapists and eliminate a waitlist for sexually abused children.

A TC investigation at the time found that other agencies were also struggling, that sexually abused children were waiting up to six months for treatment in some regions, and that the program's budget had been frozen at $3 million for 17 years.

Children's Minister Tom Christensen expressed concern last May that the budget had been frozen for so long.

"I'm asking my staff questions about that to see if it's something we need to be looking at more closely," he said.

The ministry's review a year earlier, however, had already identified key areas requiring attention, including "establishing appropriate funding."

"Providers maintain that funding has not kept pace with population growth, particularly in high-growth geographic areas, or inflation," the review said.

Christensen said in an interview this week that he did not know all the details of the review last spring, though he was aware his ministry had been looking at the sexual abuse program. The review was done about five months before he was appointed minister.

"Having said that, quite frankly my answers in the spring wouldn't have been any different," he said.

Christensen said it's no surprise that when the ministry surveys agencies to see if they have a shortage of cash, "you get the answer, 'Yes, there is.'"

He noted the review found little consistency among how agencies run sexual-abuse counselling programs across the province, and stressed the need to establish standards before dealing with money matters.

"That's the work that's been underway for the last number of months," Christensen said. Draft standards are ready for review, and the ministry recently held a training session on trauma counselling, he said.

"We are moving forward in terms of trying to ensure that this is an effective program and that the public can be assured of quality services, regardless of where they may access them in the province, and that there's some consistency of standards," he said.

Once that's done, he hinted at a possible budget boost for the program in the 2008-2009 fiscal year. "I didn't make any secret of it in the spring that I was surprised that the funding had been frozen, and I certainly am of the view that when people have suffered sexual abuse and we have effective counselling that can help them to deal with that, then we need to be working hard to make it available."

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Monday, October 15, 2007

Racist Survey Questions on a Survey about Multi-Culturalism


OK. Click on this image. I dare you. I'll go into how offended I am by it below. If you find the questions fine, you can stop reading now and go here.

I'm starting to become far more than mildly concerned about Innovative Research Group. I've already written about the creative nature of interpreting reality that goes on at Robbins SCE Research. Now I can't help but wonder about the validity of IRG's polling.

Among whatever else they do, they conduct monthly polls in an online format. They ask about political support and current events.

Their online polling methodology is questionable. To sign up for their Canada 20/20 polls, you must provide an incredibly personal dossier on yourself, which they can use to pre-determine who gets to answer each month's poll. Maybe they request participation randomly. If so, why bother with all the up-front data-mining? I suppose we should just trust them on this. Here are your views and information they ask about [a poll in itself] before you can participate in their polls:
  1. federal party support
  2. our presence in Afghanistan
  3. Medicare and prescription drugs
  4. gender
  5. birthdate
  6. postal code
  7. citizenship
  8. residency
  9. whether you work in media or polling
  10. whether and who you voted for in the last federal election
  11. whether Quebec is a distinct society
  12. federal party affiliation
  13. your registered and non-registered investments
  14. your personal financial asset wealth
  15. your charitable giving habits
  16. the role of newspapers, tv and the internet in your news gathering, and which media outlets
  17. whether you rent or own your home
  18. employment status, sector, job category and authority position
  19. formal education
  20. union membership
  21. religion!
  22. language at home
  23. and of course the money shot, household income [which you can decline to answer, as with some but not all other questions]
  24. the country where you and your parents were born
  25. whether you wish to be in a focus group
Aside from the poll not being a random sample of British Columbians [the homeless and others on the wrong side of the digital divide don't always check their email promptly enough], their August poll asked "473 British Columbians" from around the province to comment on Vancouver's strike. Asking people far from Vancouver what they think of Vancouver's strike is questionable. This might explain how on page 10 of their August poll report, we find that 62% of those polled found the strike to not have affected them at all while 18% were affected "not much." Perhaps they don't live in Vancouver? Their heading on page 10 is "Most feel no impact from strike." Really.

They do break down the 17% of 473 people [or 80] who reported being affected and 96% of them [77 people] ]live in Vancouver or the lower mainland. I am not thrilled by that sample size. Good thing the Vancouver Sun reported on the poll that includes merely 77 of the over 2 million living in the lower mainland [that's .00386% of the population].

In all, they conclude that poll participants think the union had been more unreasonable than the city. Presumably this includes people from the rest of BC who may have virtually no knowledge of the machinations of the strike itself. In the end it doesn't matter because the percentages blaming each side were within the margin of error. So no one really loses. They interpret this to mean a pox on both your houses. Perhaps the conclusion is lack of information due to living in Fort St. John or Cranbrook.

So I've been wary of IRG's methodology for some time now. But this evening I participated in one of their polls. Why not? I have a chance to win $500.

After many reasonable questions in the monthly online survey, many having to do with general views of federal and provincial politics and multi-cultural acceptance [perhaps having to do with Bruce Allen and his idiocy], I encountered a series of questions asking how I felt about living in a society with so many cultures.

I was even asked to reflect on the idea that after all, our nation is a land of immigrants. [I agreed.]

Then I clicked on the next page button and saw this piece of garbage above.

I thought I had learned to stuff down the bile in my throat after Gordon Campbell's BC neoLiberal party has gone all in favour of treaty negotiations after their racist First Nations treaty referendum, but now we have a "major" polling group asking these ridiculous questions.

Below is the letter I sent to their support@canada2020.com. Feel free to share with them how you feel about asking these ridiculous questions. And pop back here to see any updates. I expect a response from them. If I don't get one, I'll comment on that as well.

Attached is a screenshot of a question in your current web survey [the same image as above].

It is irresponsible, inflammatory and impossible to answer by anyone but the ignorant or at best highly uninformed.

It can provide no meaningful information.

You should be ashamed of yourselves.

While most of the other questions were highly or mostly answerable without having to over-simplify thought, this entire page is an affront. I await your apology and a public apology to all who have answered this survey.

I will be tracking how you disseminate the results of this survey. If you demonstrate that you have included information from this question, I will publicly be demanding a public apology.

Stephen Elliott-Buckley

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Thursday, October 04, 2007

Unspinning the Bush Veto Spin

Not that Bush needs to veto much. He simply issues signing statements indicating the executive branch will not abide by this or that of the legislation he's signing. Soft Fascism 'R Us.

But now the folks at the radically right Media Research Center have spun coverage of this nasty veto thusly:

Again exploiting children and mothers to advance the goal of expanding federal spending and dependency, ABC's World News led Wednesday night by giving voice to the media-political establishment's astonishment that President Bush would veto a bill to provide health insurance "for children."

It's hard to reply to this other than to say that the very first clause has simply been spun backwards. Poor children cannot depend on private insurers, so they depend on the government to keep them from illness and death. Bastards, eh!

And black is white, war is peace...

So after 4 decades of socialized medicine in Canada, it turns out that all progressives do is look for excuses to increase government budgets, not the other way around.

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Wednesday, October 03, 2007

The Prime Minister is In

Maverick! Visionary Leader! Champion of Accountable Government!

The prime minister announces...[trumpets]...that he will enter the National Press Building and stand before...[pinch nose here]...journalists, to answer questions. Maybe.

And in the spirit of open government, he makes this announcement 20 months into his mandate, after using the PMO to stonewall the "free" press [such as it is] in its attempts to...I don't know...ask questions of our elected leaders.

Further, he gives you all an extravagant amount of notice! 67 minutes. See below for the notification, which took over 15 minutes to make it into my email box...but then again, I live in Vancouver.

I shit you not.

The throne speech is on October 16th, World Food Day. Expect a non-confidence motion and a winter election.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Notice
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:38:38 -0400
From: PMO
To: ALLNEWS_E@LSERV.PMO-CPM.GC.CA


>From the Prime Minister's Web Site (http://www.pm.gc.ca/)


Public events for October 3, 2007

October 3, 2007
Ottawa, Ontario

Public event for Prime Minister Stephen Harper for today, October 3rd are:

3:45 p.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be available to take questions from the media.

Press Theatre
National Press Building
150 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario

*Open to media*
The Prime Minister’s Office - Communications
[Note: You are receiving this e-mail for information only, and because you have subscribed to our distribution list. To modify your subscription or to have your name removed from the list, go to: (http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/subscribe.asp?login)]

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

More on the Myth of Media Objectivity

What the evening news shows need is less "objectivity" and more analysis. The problem with objective journalism is that it doesn't exist and never did. Molly Ivins disposed of the objectivity question for all time when she observed in 1993, "The fact is that I am a 49-year-old white female, a college-educated Texan. All of that affects the way I see the world. There's no way in hell that I'm going to see anything the same way that a 15-year-old black high school dropout does. We all see the world from where we stand. Anybody who's ever interviewed five eyewitnesses to an automobile accident knows there's no such thing as objectivity."

I've said it before and Molly Ivins has said it too [see above]. There is no objectivity in the media. Amira Hass has said it: being fair and objective aren't the same thing.

If you don't yet know who Keith Olbermann is yet, you owe it to yourself to YouTube him. Journalism with a soul. Don't bother settling for anything less.

If you don't believe what Ivins is talking about above, you probably don't understand the multiple subjectivity of post-modernism and your value to a 21st century world is limited. Time to get with the program.

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