Like Any Battle It Is The Front Line Workers Who Battle

And I salute those who really care and see rules and regs as a necessary evil rather than a battle plan.......

Saving the children

Children's aid societies across Ontario have come under fire from the provincial auditor for lax monitoring and questionable spending practices. But that's only one story about the CAS. On the frontlines there are many different ones. Judy Gerstel goes behind closed doors with a caseworker

Dec. 16, 2006. 01:00 AM

JUDY GERSTEL

Tuesday morning, children's aid social worker Nandita Junnarkar sets out in her six-year-old Mazda with the noisy muffler to try to fix three broken families.But first, she meets in the North York CAS office with the mother of a 4-month-old girl and a toddler boy, a mother who doesn't know a baby needs to be fed. It's one family that can't be put back together again."She couldn't read the baby's cries at all," explains the 34-year-old caseworker. "She'd leave the baby at the edge of the couch and walk away."

Sad, Sad.........