What’s to stop the teachers from calling public health and child services then and declaring that the parents are not mentally fit to make the most informed decision for best interest, well being and health of their kids if the kid tells them that they want to take the vaccine but the parents don’t want them to or trying to talk them out of it or coerce and manipulate out of this decision which is against the health and medical recommendations?
Has this been happening a lot this school year? Could you send a link if you know of this being a thing, as it seems fucking bananas, but I’ll keep an open mind.
Nothing stops teachers, administrators, guidance counsellors, friends, neighbours, co-workers, doctors, nurses, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents or anyone else from contacting Children’s Aid on a child’s behalf. As has been the case for as long as it’s been a thing.
What Children’s Aid does about the report is a Children’s Aid-thing.
I strongly suspect they wouldn’t take further steps after a report like the one you are worried about, unless a parent’s anti-vaccine stance is part of a larger pattern which has created reason for concern of a child’s safety while under their care.
How often do you think the CAS is acting on calls from some lunatic anti-vaxx neighbour who is gravely concerned that the children next door have been vaccinated, and the neighbour feels they should be removed from the home before more harm can be done?
CAS couldn’t force a vaccination, unless the abuse victim was already under their guardianship.
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I have a lot of family and friends in education, but don’t know a lot myself, and threw some questions your post had me thinking about into a couple group chats.
Nobody thought the scenario you posed was reality adjacent.
There was an announcement in the Spring where Ford/Lecce named teachers and guidance counsellors as caring adults they could talk to about COVID-19 vaccine advice. It took less than a day before the teacher unions publicly declined the opportunity, citing the announcement had come with absolutely no training or even literature to help them convey public health advice to students or parents about vaccinations. Who knows what the actual reasons for the decline were, but I can’t imagine a teacher’s union would want to open the doors that require the defence of some brain damaged loon of a teacher using the opportunity to proselytize about the harm these vaccines and others cause.
Public system teachers were later given advice from their unions to not engage in any ‘conversations’ with students or parents about vaccinations, in particular the COVID-19 vaccines, unless it’s covered as an expectation in a course they’re teaching. In high schools they were also told to refer kids with questions to guidance counsellors, administrators, school social workers, and whoever they connect with will connect them with public health.
As an aside, because Ford decided that the COVID-19 vaccination shouldn’t be mandatory for school-aged children this may be irrelevant, but generally, PH liases with the guardians through the school and board administration when an unvaccinated student attends school. There is no (or very limited) teacher involvement in the enforcement of Ontario’s mandatory vaccination laws. Almost without exception, since it’s privileged medical information teachers don’t need to know, they’d never know who is vaccinated and who is not.
Kid got his first at a pop-up clinic while mom was protesting a hospital earlier in the fall.