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MCFD redesign includes better planning for kids: minister

The B.C. Ministry of Children and Family Development was not caught off guard by this morning's revelations that "comprehensive plans of care," or CPOCs, for kids in government care are typically not completed to ministry standards. In fact, the ministry has been working on the problem for at least a year.

In a report released this morning, B.C.'s Representative for Children and Youth Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond revealed only five per cent of case files for children in long-term government care since March 30, 2011 had completed Comprehensive Plans of Care (CPOC) that were updated regularly. Read the Hook post on the report here.

In a telephone interview with The Tyee this afternoon, MCFD Minister Stephanie Cadieux said deputy minister Stephen Brown has spent the last two years conducting a "top to bottom review of the ministry and how we serve children in the province." This includes the ministry's residential redesign project he began implementing this year, which calls for 100 per cent compliance in completing and reviewing CPOCs for every child in government care, as well as cultural reports for aboriginal children in care, by 2014.

"(The redesign) is looking at how do we deliver foster care and residential care to children who need it in the province, and how do we do it better," Cadieux said, adding the ministry has also hired a new associate director of adoptions, guardianship, and permanency, whose job involves ensuring compliance with CPOC guidelines.

Turpel-Lafond's report, which Cadieux called "thorough," also called for 100 per cent compliance with CPOC guidelines and asked for a plan to achieve this by Sept. 30. Other recommendations in the report that Cadieux says the ministry is working on include holding staff accountable for CPOC completion, flexible work hours for social workers, and finding more resources to support social workers in completing CPOCs.

"One of the things that I recognize is that social workers have a very challenging, very stressful job," said Cadieux.

"Ensuring that they have manageable caseloads is vitally important to me and part of what we've been doing and are continuing to do as part of … the redesign process is looking at analyzing caseloads against where the resources are in the province, and ensuring that we have moved resources where they need to be."

Cadieux says the ministry is already in talks with social workers' union about flexible hours that allow them to be available to kids when they need them outside of the 9 to 5 work model.

The ministry has been the subject of numerous cuts and funding freezes in the past four years. The 2009 budget called for the reduction of 185 full-time equivalency MCFD social workers by 2011/12, and total funding was frozen from 2009 to 2012.

But Minister Cadieux told The Tyee she's "prepared to advocate strongly" for more money, but only after Brown has completed and delivered a report outlining funding gaps in the ministry by September.

Cadieux is the 13th minister to control the MCFD portfolio since it was formed in 1996. And she could be out of the position after the upcoming provincial election. She says she can't speak for how a new minister will address the re-design process if the BC Liberals do lose the election or she is reassigned.

However, she says the ministry's redesign project is not just another change that will throw child support services into turmoil.

"Change is necessary at times, because we have to move and adapt, and when we find something that's not working, then clearly the way we're operating in the ministry to date hasn't prioritized these plans of care the way they should have," said Cadieux.

"We've got a larger plan in place, but we've got it structured over three years to allow for the proper and systematic roll out. We don't want to create unnecessary tension or unnecessary workload stress in the system at all -- that's not the desire."

Katie Hyslop reports on education and youth issues for The Tyee Solutions Society. Follow her on Twitter.


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