Articles Book III - Pg 300-560 (Birthparents) - triadoption

of time working with the lather and the
rnotlier to ro.establish thc~r parental confidence.
Evontuallv, we reached an agreement
with the Children's Aid Society and
the courts to return the ch~ldreri to their
oarents. First we returned the older
daughter, then the younger daughter, with
a three-month intervnl between them, so
that the family could become used to
having children in the houso again, and to
toking care of them, and also to repeat their
original experience of having the first
daughter alone with them for a whilo before
tho second daughter was born. The child.
ren, too, had to reloarn to have confidence
in their "unfit parents" being in fact fit
parents again. This placement, too, was
successful. The children went home, and of
course, like any other family, they went
through all the problems that come with
growing up, going to school, getting a job,
getting married, and so on. The father died
while the children were still in high school.
but tho mother continued to raise the children
and. as far as I know. this was another
case of the successful return of children to
thcir parents.
Tho first case of this kind that became a
case in law was the Langtree case. This be.
came o teaching case, not so much
because of what it taught about the rights
of the cliild (the right to treatment and
carol, althouyh that cortarnly came into it,
but because it dealt with the problems of
funding. Basically, what this caso established
was that a munic~palily from which o
child came could be charged with tlie costs
of the child's trcatment and care in a facitity
outsldo that municipality. We had to lest
that principle in law and we won the case.
and that became the first. thin edge of the
wedge in terms of childron's rights in On.
tario or, more specifically, the rights of
omotioriallv disturbc!d children in Ontario.
I am going into this litstory in some detail
because I think it is important to under.
stand that you cannot work in services
lor children in Ontarlo w~tliout be~ng con.
corned about children's rights. You cannot
deal with tlie public school systern, you
carinot deal with the luvenile courts or the
government of Ontario, children's agencies
and hospitals without being concerned
about childron's rights. It is important to bu
concerrred about children's r~ghts, but tho
direction your concern takes is also impor.
tant. You cannot separate the cliild from
his family wlien you talk about Iris rights.
Yet in all tho history of family and child law in
tho Western world, certainly in the United
States and Canada, the lamily and child
lravc been separated more and more. Our
social servicos separate them, our courts
separate them.
The adult may be capable of surviving that
kind of hurtful separation experience and
may be ablo to continuo to lunction, more
or less adequately, afterwards, but the
child needs a family In which to grow and
mature. The role of the state is not to be the
parent or family for a child, but rather to be
tho sponsor of programs that help families
meet the needs of thcir children and them.
Selves.
Because this is so, separating the child
from his family has been something that we
have worked against over the years. We
have always said, a chlld has his basic
roots and you cannot ignore the existence
of those roots without damage to him. The
essential part that the ancestry of the clrild.
the relatedness he feels to his family, plays
in tho development of his uwn sense of
values, of self-worth, has been described in
more detail in the article on "Rootedness".'
Because we have always recognized the
importance of a person's roots. while we
have worked lor the rights of the child, we
have also worked for the right of the child
to have his family and the rlght of the family
to have its child: we never separated those
rights. The child cannot grow and mature in
a vacuum, nor can the legal statutes that
spell out a child's rights nourish, care for.
love or protect him.
Now. what I'm getting ro is that in the
Present big push w~tfi~n the legal profession,
rho (ieople who are sponsoring legal
r~glits for children seem to bc approaching
FAMILY INVOLVEMENT