Criminal checks can lag years for foster parents
REGINA Saskatchewan kids are being placed in foster homes that aren’t properly assessed for safety with adults who aren’t subjected to updated criminal record checks, says an audit published Tuesday.
Provincial auditor Judy Ferguson said the Ministry of Social Services has strong rules, but staff aren’t always following them. That’s led to delays of more than a year in checking adults to see if they have a history of neglect or abuse.
Her office also found fault with a lack of any requirement for periodic updates to criminal record checks. Families have gone as long as 29 years without one.
She warned such gaps could increase risks to vulnerable children, though she didn’t find any examples where actual criminals or abusers slipped through the cracks. “Maybe they got lucky,” she said of the ministry.
“Why isn’t the government doing background checks on foster parents, and what’s the plan to make sure those checks happen in order to protect vulnerable kids?” NDP social services critic Nicole Rancourt asked in question period Tuesday.
Natalie Huber, assistant deputy minister of social services, committed to implementing all of Ferguson’s recommendations except for a call for regular updates to background checks, which will be reviewed. She said the others call for following existing policy and will be fairly easy to implement. They could be ready over the coming weeks.
“What I can also assure you is that children are safe in those homes,” Huber said.
The audit did find workers were quick to respond to serious issues, including one case of alleged child abuse. The ministry removed children the same day allegations were made. The home was one of 12 closed over 2018-19.
A total of 856 children were living in 486 foster homes across the province as of March 2019, the year audited. The Ministry of Social Services had 65 resource workers responsible for monitoring and approving those homes. On average, workers were responsible for 20 families each, a “manageable caseload” the audit found.
According to Ferguson, the ministry cited staff turnover as the “primary reason” for the problems it’s facing with monitoring homes. Huber said child protection is “high-stress” and “difficult” work, and the ministry is looking how to better support staff retention.
“There’s room for improvement there,” said Huber.
Ferguson’s office scrutinized 30 files, finding that staff did not always follow requirements for approving foster families. In one file, there was no criminal record check conducted at all.
In that same file, the worker took 14 months to do a ministry record check for two adult children living in the home. Subsequent checks found no concerns of abuse or neglect.
But the audit warned that the lapse “may result in a potential threat to a child’s safety when placed in a home.”
Ferguson recommended the ministry “complete all required background checks prior to approving foster families.” She also urged Saskatchewan to require periodic criminal record check updates on all adults living in a foster home, much like in B.C.
That was the only recommendation Huber could not immediately commit to, saying more study and consultation is needed. Under the current system, families are only required to have a record check when they’re first approved. That can leave years or even decades without any updates.
Adults in foster homes have to self-declare if they are subject to a criminal charge by filling out a form annually. But there were no such forms on file for eight of 30 families. In one, the last declaration was completed in 2015.
Ferguson recommended annual updates to criminal record declarations, in accordance with existing policy. She also called on the ministry to consistently follow its standard for home safety checks, after finding gaps that could last years.
Though workers regularly visited homes, the audit noted that they did not always fully complete annual reviews. They sometimes failed to do annual home checks to confirm homes were safe by looking into potential overcrowding, fire safety and firearms safety.
For seven of 30 files the audit looked at, workers had failed to complete that checklist in 2019. One dated back to 2016.