Cutting Money to Child Welfare Agencies

The Manitoba government is cutting funding to child welfare agencies.  Not a couple thousand dollars here and there, but about a hundred million.  Manitoba doesn't have a good history when it comes to child welfare.  Foster hotels are common and don't work.  There have been some epic fails resulting in public tragedy. 

I don't know much about the Manitoba Child Welfare System but I am very familiar with the Ontario system.  Being a child protection worker is very stressful and the average tenure of a worker is 18 months.  Somehow, I lasted 13 years. 

Since we weren't far from the Manitoba border, we got more than a few families relocate to our jurisdiction trying to outrun the agency.  \These families were extreme cases.  We usually had involvement with the family prior to receiving the official referral from Winnipeg.  On one referral, we got a very valuable tip from Winnipeg.  The family was moving from a street that was well known to child welfare.  The residents knew the agency vehicles and had a way of alerting their neighbours when a protection worker was making a surprise visit.  The families had a way of hiding their children on a instants notice.  This proved very helpful.  When I apprehended three children, I remember that there was also a baby in the family.  I returned to the home and found this child under the floor boards in the closet. 

No province or State or country is immune from tragendy when it comes to children being damaged by their parents.  Ontario had its share as well.  The response was a new assessment module called ORAM.  Ontario Risk Assessment Model.  It was modeled after a model in Brooklyn.  It has now been modified slightly and is being used in Manitoba.  What this meant was that any referral received resulted in a report that was minimum 7 pages long and available to be read by any authorized user in the province.  If you could not conclude your investigation in 7 days, you were required to do a more detailed assessment and you would be lucky if you  could complete that in 17 pages.  Essentially, you were highly motivated to complete the case within 7 days.  I used to joke that I knew more about families than they knew about themselves.  You would put the raw data into a computer program and they would tell you the risk factors and whether your monitoring and case planning was urgent or of low risk. 

It was very helpful to know that you had a family at high risk, especially when you didn't have the time to provide them supports because new cases kept coming in.  Not that it ever mattered.  In the eyes of the public, a child protection worker was despised by most.  They either did too much or did too little.  At one point, we almost went on strike bu feared no one would actually care. 

Also, tragedy happens and that is a fact of life.  No matter how much paperwork you do, it will always happen. 

The book that was among the most respected books on child welfare was called The Least Detrimental Alternative by Dr. Paul Steinhauer.  A brilliant book which outlines the complicated ethics in child welfare. 

It is not a perfect system, but it is the system we have.  It needs changes, but it is only common sense that change for the better will not be accomplished by slashing funding.