VANCOUVER - A recent report revealing high levels of critical injury and death of children and youth under the watch of the B.C. government highlights a system that is understaffed and inadequately funded, says the province's social work association.
“The system is in absolute crisis and this has been coming for some time,” said Tracey Young, chair of the Child Welfare and Family Committee for the B.C. Association of Social Workers.
The report from the province’s Representative for Children and Youth found 49 critical injuries and 30 deaths of children in provincial care or receiving reviewable services over a four-month period ending May 31.
Twenty-six of the injury cases and 12 of the deaths are being investigated by the representative’s office to determine any role played by the welfare system.
“Unfortunately I’m not terribly surprised that children are not faring well at this point in time in B.C.,” said Young.
Child advocates and social workers have been telling the government for years that the child welfare system is understaffed, she said.
“There are mistakes that are made, there are tragedies that occur, because people are absolutely just taxed to their limit.”
The problems include offices that are often extremely short-staffed and a lack of backfill for people on vacation or medical leave, she said, which all create huge gaps in service provision. “These are not expendable roles in our society or province.”
Young acknowledged that the rate of injury and death of children in government care is higher because of the increased fragile health of these children when entering the system.
But she said this only emphasizes the need for a comprehensive plan from the provincial government to combat poverty, since the vast majority of child protection cases are related to family-poverty issues.
These systemic problems are often forgotten and ignored, Young said, with social workers then being unfairly scapegoated by the public.
“It’s really, really easy -- and I find particularly in this area of child protection and child welfare -- to want to blame somebody,” she said.
“But [social workers] work within this vast underfunded system and they are trying their best each day.”
She said the association lauds the work of the Representative for Children and Youth and is calling on the provincial government to provide even greater accountability and transparency on child welfare issues.
“When tragedies occur, a healthy, responsible system will use that to look at what went wrong and what went right, instead of 'how do we fix the optics of this,'” she said.
Garrett Zehr reports for The Tyee.
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Grania
2 years ago
Ministry of Children and Families.
I recently retired and told the Director, at that time, that I could not ethically remain with this Ministry. The budget is squandered on positions that are not required . All the consultants, policy makers, community services managers, etc...all the upper level positions that never see a client are NOT needed and devour most of the budget in unwarranted high salaries. This Ministry made a lot of media noise , not so long ago, about the 250 new positions added but did not advertise the fact that none of these were staff that would provide direct service. The line social workers are not respected in the Ministry and, due to the inability to provide meaningful service; the Ministry is not respected in the community. This government has decimated direct services to balance the books and to pay for the Olympics ...and families are suffering and children are dying. I was asking,at least 6 years prior to retirement. for the stats on the number of children who had died or who had been injured. Nobody was willing to give me this information. I believe this Ministry does not protect children, nor do they really want to... as it is just too expensive. However, they do want to LOOK like they are and hope those watching are too stupid to tell the difference! Thank God for the Child Advocate!