NDP to unveil child-welfare strategy

‘Bold’ plan to include 39 measures province must complete by 2022

More funding for kinship providers, a better process for assessing potential caregivers, and an aggressive tact with Ottawa are among the major promises of the NDP government’s new four-year strategy to fix Alberta’s child intervention system.

The plan, entitled A Stronger, Safer Tomorrow, features 39 specific actions the government plans to accomplish by 2022, including 16 that are to be completed by next spring.

“Some of these actions are pretty bold, but I think that’s important,” Children’s Services Minister Danielle Larivee said of the strategy, which was shared exclusively with Postmedia ahead of Thursday ’s official unveiling.

“The only way we are going to make a difference is by really envisioning a different way of delivering the services we need to kids.”

A total of $4.3 million has so far been committed to fulfil those initial, short-term actions, though Larivee acknowledged that substantially more will be needed in the years ahead to make substantive change.

The plan is the province’s most comprehensive attempt to get right a child intervention system that has long been criticized for failures to protect children from unstable homes, a lack of family supports to prevent breakdowns, and a chronic inability to learn from past mistakes. Critics maintain that such failings have played a direct role in the rising numbers of deaths among children receiving government services.

Indigenous children account for more than half of those deaths.

Among them was the 2014 death of four-year-old Serenity, whose case was one of the major catalysts for the formation of the all-party Ministerial Panel on Child Intervention.

The panel’s final recommendations, released in March after a year of work, served as the basis for the government’s new action plan.

Though wide ranging in approach, one of the strategy’s key priorities is finding ways to keep kids in their home communities — largely by improving the system of kinship care in which children are placed with their extended family rather than a foster home.

The need to make changes to kinship care came to light, in part, due to Serenity ’s case. An investigation by the province’s child and youth advocate found a number of issues with her kinship care placement, particularly around caregiver training, appraisal of risks to the child and oversight by caseworkers.

Currently, foster parents receive more funding than kinship caregivers, mostly due to extra training they are expected to maintain.

However, the province’s plan is to equalize the funding rates between the two groups, and offer further support as necessary for kinship families that are struggling.

In some cases, this could mean kinship guardians receive even more than foster parents, which, the province hopes, will see more families stepping forward to serve as caregivers.

“That (current) discrepancy can make a difference as to whether families can take a child in or not,” Larivee said.

The province also hopes to improve its success rate with kinship placements though a new assessment tool that will be piloted this fall.

The current assessment process is overly rigid and asks intrusive questions — including queries about people’s sex lives — that are particularly off-putting to Indigenous families, the ministry said.

The new tool will still obtain the necessary information to evaluate the risks to a child, but will do so in a more respectful way, they said.

As well, it is touted to better pinpoint the unique needs of each child and family, including what extra resources and training might be useful.

However, kinship caregivers will not be automatically required to complete an orientation — a recommendation of the advocate — or other specific courses. That will be up to the discretion of the caseworker.

Another thrust of the government’s plan is to address what Larivee called a “shameful” disparity in funding and services available to kids on First Nations reserves.

The strategy to fix this is largely centred on a new round of appeals to Ottawa to increase service levels for Indigenous communities under its jurisdiction — including more funding for on-reserve child intervention agencies — though Larivee said the province will fill gaps where needed. This includes fully implementing Jordan’s Principle, a concept that says a First Nations child should be provided services they need without delay, and any uncertainty over who should pay is resolved later.

The action plan doesn’t explicitly say that Alberta will come through in all such cases, but Larivee insisted that is her government’s commitment.

“If a child needs services in this province and they are not getting it, then we will fund it. But we will also be tracking every single dollar we are spending that we know the feds should have stepped up to spend,” she said.

Larivee said the province is already doing a good job of responding to Jordan’s Principle cases, but Alberta and Ottawa must develop a smoother process to avoid delays, denials and disruptions.

Other strategies in the plan call for increasing the availability of mental health and addictions services, improving the workplace culture of case workers and enrolling more Indigenous students in social work programs.