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Jean Roberts - Just Another Bureaucratic Throwaway |
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Written by D.L. McCracken
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Friday, 22 September 2006 |
The tragic mishandling of the story of Ms. Jean Roberts has brought to the public's attention just how bumbling and incompetent are the various support systems currently in place. The health and social services departments are equally to blame for the glaring negligence that has kept this lady mired in a hell on earth that has almost swallowed her whole.
The system is broken and has been for way too long. One has to wonder how many lives have been lost because of the incompetence of the very departments created to assist them. How many more have taken their own lives after begging for help only to have their desperate pleas fall on deaf ears time and time again?
Some call the saga of Jean Roberts a case of 'falling through the cracks'. The cracks are long gone. They've never been repaired but have been left to widen. Those cracks have widened considerably into chasms and people like Ms. Roberts don't fall into them, they are pushed. Every time people like Ms. Roberts attempt to climb out, someone from the health department or social services is always there, ready to kick them back in.
The people of this province need to be outraged. The people of this province need to shout from their rooftops that their hard-earned tax dollars will no longer fund government departments that exist in name only. These agencies mired in the stench of bureaucracy need to be held responsible for the death and destruction of the very people they are supposed to be protecting.
The Nova Scotia Department of Health has on their government website a mission statement - "through leadership and collaboration to ensure an appropriate, effective and sustainable health system that promotes, maintains and improves the health of Nova Scotians." A jumble of words that mean nothing describing a department that does nothing. And we pay them the big bucks to do it. The Minister in charge is one Chris d'Entremont who has absolutely no experience in health care or social services. He has plenty of experience in radio announcing, fishing and boatbuilding but when Ms. Roberts was presented to his office on Wednesday, he had no idea what to do with her. But he did renounce Judge MacDonald for being "political" because in the end, it's all politics, isn't it..the human factor is secondary.
The Minister of Community Services is Judy Streatch. She knows the education system like the back of her hand because she is a teacher. But does a teacher have any workable knowledge of community services? I submit that she would not. This department's mission reflects the word jumble of the health department - [Community Services] "are committed to a sustainable social service system that promotes the independence, self-reliance, and security of the people we serve.This will be achieved through excellence in service delivery, leadership and collaboration with our partners". Nothing more than a verbose fallacy. We have yet to hear from her department regarding the case of Ms. Roberts.
If the tragic story of Ms. Jean Roberts hasn't outraged you, perhaps the story of a troubled young man who, after years of begging for help, finally decided that no one cared and killed himself, will finally spark some anger. Ms. Roberts, you see is not the only person who has been neglected and ignored in this city...there are far too many wandering the streets today. The invisible ones. The hopeless ones. We can only hope that the saga of Ms. Jean Roberts will be the catalyst for change.
But I won't hold my breath.
Contact D.L. McCracken
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