Adversarial system is bad for families

As a parent with 20 years of experience dealing with the family-law system in B.C., I think the system is broken. It needs to be redesigned to serve the children’s interests, reducing the stresses rather than exacerbating them.

An adversarial legal system is not the best way to address the extreme problems involved in family separation. Our family is one that so far has survived the system, but at a great price to the children.

For all those who are harmed in an obvious way, there are many who are traumatized in hidden ways by the adversarial system.

The government needs to call an inquiry into the broken child-protection system and the family-law system. If the judges and social workers believe the system is working, they are sadly mistaken.

The stresses of family breakup are exacerbated once a family enters the embrace of family law and the Ministry of Children and Family Development. I tried many times to give feedback, but no one was interested in hearing from a parent who has been through the system and barely survived it. There needs to be an inquiry, and the government needs to hear parents.

What is needed is a supportive system, not an adversarial system. Families in trouble need support long before it gets to the point of repeated desperate calls for help. No more children should suffer.

We need community support, not arrests and court orders and ramping up of tensions. The children deserve this.

Shannon LeBlanc Victoria