Monday August 26, 2024 | VICTORIA, BC [Last updated August 27, 2024]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Frontline ministry workers have some of the hardest jobs in BC, says the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
It appears that during the pandemic it’s possible that workers were less willing to engage directly with families that they were supposed to check on, and that the Ministry was less able to find out about those missed actions in real time.
Then-BC Green House Leader Adam Olsen also pointed out that ministry workers have child removal as their only tool. Perhaps during the pandemic there were no other places for children who may have needed them.
After the death of a child in foster care as made public last year, in January this year Premier David Eby appointed Grace Lore to replace Mitzi Dean as MCFD minister. At the same time, there was also a new deputy minister, David Galbraith.
In the past year, BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau has suggested that social workers in community have better (university-level) professional qualifications and be registered with the BC College of Social Workers which is charged with protecting the public interest by establishing and supporting high standards for qualified Registered Social Workers.
There is also the BC Association of Social Workers for professional support which — according to their president Michael Crawford — has been asking MCFD to have their frontline workers register with BCCSW but which the ministry “stubbornly refuses to do so”.
This spring, when MCFD Minister Grace Lore was asked by Island Social Trends as to requiring frontline MCFD workers to have social work degrees and be accredited with the BC College of Social Workers and register with the BCCSW, she defended frontline workers and the current system for what seemed to her to be the most important skill of ‘knowing the community on the ground’.
In April of this year, improvements that might be coming to the MCFD were announced as a new direction.
There’s an app for that:
“Keeping children, youth and families safe and connected to the supports they need will be the focus of a new government-wide approach that reimagines how services are delivered throughout the province,” said Lore in April.
After a press conference on homelessness outdoors at the legislature in Victoria last week, MCFD Minister Grace Lore told Island Social Trends about some new ‘visitation technology’ that is being used to improve communications and tracking of progress with cases in the community.
“There are new measures to ensure all children and youth in care and in out-of-care placements receive regular, private, in-person visits,” as outlined in a MCFD statement to Island Social Trends on August 21.
“Workers’ visits are now entered and checked in real-time through the implementation of a new application introduced in December 2023,” the ministry has stated. That sounds like the app has been used for now at least half a year before mentioning it in any detail.
“The new system provides consistent and efficient documentation of visits with children and youth and enables reporting that can be used to better monitor and oversee visits,” the Ministry says.
“New policy has also been developed to support this new technology, ensuring all visits with children and youth are documented in a timely manner,” states MCFD.
Hiring, training and retention:
MCFD has also provided some detail about the hiring process, in a statement on August 21.
“Frontline ministry workers have some of the hardest jobs in BC – made even more challenging by the pandemic and its mental health impacts on the most vulnerable children, youth and families,” the Ministry states. “Recruitment and retention are a continuous priority for the ministry, front-line staffing numbers are stable,” a spokesperson said.
MCFD says that in the last two years there has been a 17% increase in frontline staff and staffing has been up year-over-year since the pandemic.
MCFD notes: “The ministry has a centralized hiring team focussed on increasing and expediting the hiring process to recruit frontline workers to the BC Public Service and to MCFD specifically. Bulk hiring is done three to four times a year.”
“We have a comprehensive approach to onboarding, training and retention that is constantly evolving to meet the changing needs of children, youth and families.
BC Green comment:
“The current system cannot be fixed with an app or minor adjustments in hiring practices,” said BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau today.
“We need a comprehensive approach that focuses on measuring child and family well-being, ensuring that families and communities get the necessary support and services to keep children healthy and well,” she said in a statement to Island Social Trends today.
“I’ve heard about frontline workers about hiring practices and how merely adding more workers to a failing systems won’t solve the underlying issues,” says Furstenau.
Election upcoming:
“The BC Greens will be presenting a comprehensive vision for child and family well-being for this province,” said Furstenau today.
Last week at a candidate event she expressed much excitement about the new BC Green policy package that Furstenau says has been updated considerably since 2020.
The official campaign period for the 2024 BC Provincial Election starts September 21. The election date is October 19, 2024.
===== RELATED:
- New direction in BC for vulnerable children & families (July 16, 2024)
- Dean & Lore leading for children & families (January 15, 2024)
- Eby shuffles two women at the top (January 15, 2024)
- Ministry workers have child-removal as only ‘tool’ (November 21, 2023)
- Ministry of Children & Family Development claims continued progress (July 18, 2023)
- Minister Dean: These children were failed at every level (June 26, 2023)
- BC Government progress not fast enough for Indigenous families, says Olsen (April 24, 2023)