VANCOUVER - The father of Reena Virk wants social workers to follow their hearts and not their policy manuals.
Manjit Virk and wife Suman – the parents of murdered bully victim Reena – were the keynote speakers at the 2nd International Conference on Restorative Practices in Vancouver Tuesday and spoke openly about their family’s troubled past with the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
The Victoria couple at one point lost custody of Reena when she lied about Manjit abusing her at home.
Manjit – who was arrested over the incident – said the way social workers acted was cold in counter-productive.
“They came in and destroyed our family,” he said. “They were not even willing to listen to us.”
Of course, Manjit’s name was cleared once police discovered Reena had lied about the incident but he said it did irreparable damage to their family and led to Reena being swarmed and killed in 1997 – through her interactions with other girls in the system.
“The system failed us horribly,” Suman told the conference audience.
Manjit said social workers are over-burdened by policy and procedure and don’t have the capacity to consider individual cases.
“They looked at us like a number,” he said. “Can we look at each situation instead of a one-size-fits-all approach?”
Matt Kieltyka reports for Vancouver 24 hours.
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Raedwulf
2 years ago
Reena Virk
[OFFENSIVE COMMENT REMOVED. -MODERATOR.]
Wilfred Laurier
2 years ago
Hmmmmm
Interesting Ms Virk does not state the reason why her daughter was in foster care in the first place. Perhaps as a parent she could have changed some things around the home in order to be more inclusive of her daughter. Because her daughter did not wish to adhere to a staunch ideology, the she was cast from the home into foster care.
But not a peep. I certainly would never force any religion on my children, nor would I ever cast them out because they refuse to participate in it.
morechatter
2 years ago
Families and Children
Have their problems and there are times when the parents are not able to cope along with the children. Where do they go? What do they do? Changes that are being made to Families and Children are not for the better. As I'm certain we will see many amputees in our future as BC's poor children are tomorrow's cripples as they eat a steady diet of garbage supplied by food banks and sold by Quest. As its what happens when children live in malnutrition as many of Winnipeg's natives found there way into the city minus a limb or two as disease and diabetes takes its toll on the young.
G West
2 years ago
Of course the system failed you
Just as it's failing tens of thousands of children in care and more tens of thousands of children whose families are mired in poverty.
Still, as always, there will be some who prefer to blame the victim: Truly sad, really pathetic and disgusting.
Building an empire instead of supporting families ought to be illegal. Doing it while lying about the reality of the situation should condemn the folks who set these policies in the Premier's Office to Dante's Fifth Circle of Hell.
Wilfred Laurier
2 years ago
Garth...
Garth, at the time of the Virk homicide, the NDP were in power. This is the subject of the article.
G West
2 years ago
WilFRED
No it isn't.
It's an article about the failure of social services and services for children in care.
I simply pointed out that things have, since the Campbell autocracy came to power, (ostensibly to be accountable and make things better) gotten worse.
The facts are not in dispute - the NDP were far from perfect but at least they tried.
The Premier and his puppets neither care about people, outcomes or rationality nor do they try to improve things for anyone outside of their small circle of friends - they just adopt the appearance of caring.
Perhaps, just once, you should actually try to learn how bad things really are in this province – perhaps then you wouldn’t post such utter garbage.
I invite you to volunteer just one day a week at a soup kitchen in your community WilFRED. I wager if you kept it up for more than a month you'd change your tune here AND in the rest of your life.
Furthermore, YOU were the one blaming the victim - need I remind you.