Nova Scotia Child Welfare in Crisis

A Shared Perspective

BY JACQUELINE BARKLEY, MSW, RSW & ROBERT S. WRIGHT, MSW, RSW

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The child welfare system in Nova Scotia is currently in crisis. Our experience in Nova Scotia is consistent with a Canadian Association of Social Workers report published in the summer of 2018 that outlined similar concerns regarding child welfare practices across Canada. As clinicians who have long worked with families in the child welfare system, we have seen things get worse for families, not better, even as recent changes to the Children and Family Services Act were pushed forward despite heavy criticism from practitioners and others.

We are aware of the necessity and complexity of delivering child welfare programs and services, and do not wish to criticize the many front-line workers who do what they can in a broken system.

What are the ideas that are preventing effective child welfare interventions? Families experience issues of substandard housing, lack of access to culturally competent mental health services, horribly inadequate minimum wage and income assistance rates, barriers to accessing subsidized day care. These challenges relate to larger issues about how we have designed the society we live in, and dealing with these issues in depth is not the purpose of this paper. Instead we have outlined possible changes to our current child welfare system, with full awareness that a siloed solution would be insufficient.

The CASW report on child welfare mentioned above outlined five core recommendations made by social workers to address child welfare services. We would agree generally with these national recommendations, and offer our own as they apply to the delivery of child welfare in Nova Scotia. We have moved from caring for the welfare of children and families to diminishing child protection work, policing parents and fetishizing risk. We need to develop local models of practice, and cultivate and empower local champions. We need to focus more on measuring child welfare outcomes and effects, and plan our interventions accordingly. We must evaluate how child welfare works in cooperation with early childhood education and public school settings; family resource centres; income supports; afterschool programming; and health and mental health services. We also need to foster the wellness of social workers.

We have long legal battles, royal commissions, state apologies, and huge compensation packages result from failing to address the needs of Canadian children and families. The current crisis in child welfare in Nova Scotia is ripe for such an outcome. We suggest intervening systemically now rather than engaging in disingenuous hand-wringing later. Protestations of “we did not know” can no longer be an excuse for inaction.

To read the full text of this paper online, visit: http://bit.ly/SharedPerspective

JACQUELINE BARKLEY (MSW, RSW) has over 35 years as a social worker. She is a private practitioner and community organizer with significant experience in mental health and child welfare, and a strong professional interest in cultural competence and anti-racism work.

ROBERT S. WRIGHT (MSW, RSW) is a social worker and sociologist. His 29 year career has spanned the fields of education, child welfare, forensic mental health, trauma, sexual violence, and cultural competence.

To contact the authors about this paper, email info@robertswright.ca.

The authors would like to thank James Dubé for his editorial and research assistance in the preparation of this paper.