Alberta’s auditor general gives child welfare system failing grade
Only 16 per cent of Alberta’s child welfare case workers are complying with provincial rules that require them to make personal contact on a regular basis with the foster children they supervise.
In Alberta, case workers are expected to make face-to-face contact with the children who are part of their caseload four times a year. That’s once every three months, the bare minimum standard.
But a trenchant new report released this week by Alberta’s auditor general, Merwan Saher, said that’s simply not happening.
“This means that out of the approximately 10,000 children receiving services from the department, more than 8,000 did not receive frequent enough contact with their caseworkers to meet minimum standards,” the report reads.
Even more disturbing? Research done by Saher’s team found indigenous children — be they First Nations, Metis or Inuit — routinely get the short end of the stick.
While aboriginal children make up 69 per cent of kids in care — a hugely disproportionate number given they make up just 10 per cent of Alberta’s youth population — they are significantly less likely to see a caseworker or have their care plans reviewed on a regular basis.
About 40 per cent of indigenous children and youth who receive child welfare services are not seeing case workers on a regular basis, as opposed to 25 per cent of non-indigenous child welfare clients. About 12 per cent of indigenous kids had gaps of seven months or more between worker visits. That’s a terribly long time to go without checking to ensure a child or teen is safe, healthy, happy and thriving.
Saher’s data shows children from First Nations that have delegated authority to run their own child welfare systems are twice as likely to receive substandard followup. In part, that’s because child welfare services on-reserve are funded federally, not provincially, and, despite legal challenges, there remains disparity between federal and provincial funding. It may also have to do with high staff turnover and lack of training at some reserves.
Alberta Human Services, says the report, was unaware of that disparity in service levels and has no plan for improvements.
“The department does not have a goal, target or specific strategy to safely reduce overrepresentation or correct the inequity in results experienced by indigenous children.”
The report finds that the province doesn’t have systems in places to provide preventive support to struggling aboriginal families, the kind of early interventions that might help them to retain custody of their children. Nor, says the report, does the province provide enough training to non-indigenous staff to help them understand First Nations, Metis and Inuit culture and history.
By coincidence, Saher’s team was working on its report at the same time that Del Graff, Alberta’s child and youth advocate, had his team working on a special report into aboriginal child welfare in Alberta.
Graff and Saher, who are independent officers of the legislature, decided to release their reports together Tuesday. They make a damning one-two punch.
Graff’s report is a broader, more philosophical look at the longterm emotional consequences of separating families and raising children in environments that are foreign to their experience. It’s a heartfelt call for a more empathetic child welfare system that pays more respect to the unique elements of First Nations history, culture and family structure, one that acknowledges what Graff called “grief and loss across generations.”
But Saher’s nitty-gritty systems analysis is an even more valuable public policy tool.
Yes, we need a child welfare system based in respect and cultural understanding, one that recognizes the powerful strengths, as well as the real challenges, of indigenous family life. But high-flown government rhetoric about building trust and forging new relationships will be worse than useless if we don’t have enough competent, trained caseworkers on the front lines, doing their jobs.
It would help if federally funded workers on reserve got more supports from Ottawa. It would help if we didn’t have three levels of bureaucracy — federal, provincial and First Nation — wrangling over who’s responsible for what. And yes, as Saher said Tuesday, it’s complicated. But, as he said, that’s not an excuse to start tackling big problems, bit by bit, with good data and measurable outcomes.
“If you don’t know what the gap is or where it is, you don’t stand a chance of closing it,” he said. “It takes methodical, hard analysis. Day by day. It’s tiring work.”
But as Graff put it Tuesday: “How will you know if it’s improving if you don’t look?”