Advocate warns of impending ‘crisis’ in B.C. child welfare staffing

The representative for children in British Columbia says the provincial child welfare system is either in a state of crisis or close to it with understaffing and unmanageable workloads.

A report released by Jennifer Charlesworth says the environment for those working for the Ministry of Children and Family Development is unhealthy for staff, characterized by undue stress, burnout and fear, and there’s no time for the government to wait to address the “critical circumstances.”

“The capacity within the ministry right now is not sufficient, according to the workers, for them to be able to fulfill their responsibilities, their statutory responsibilities, on a day-to-day basis,” she said Tuesday.

Charlesworth says a lack of staff, the mental health crisis, and COVID-19 have made the job of social workers particularly challenging.

“You can put yourself in the workers’ position — here you’re feeling you can’t fulfill your responsibility and you can’t even refer out to fulfill your responsibility. That’s going to add to a tremendous amount of feeling of stress and overwhelmed. So 88 per cent of workers indicated that they were feeling significant stress,” she added.

The latest investigation comes days after her report on the torture death of an 11-year-old boy who died at the hands of relatives after not being checked on by a social worker for seven months.

Charlesworth says the boy’s death happened within the context of a child welfare office that was not fully staffed, had unstable and changing local leadership and had an extended period of social worker medical leave with no backfill.

Her office conducted a survey of 700 social workers and managers and more than 80 per cent said they are unable to properly do their jobs because their caseloads are too high.

The report credits the ministry with taking action to improve working conditions and compliance with the requirement for in-person visits following the boy’s death, but says more work must be done to support current staff and recruit more social workers.

“Social workers in this province have incredibly difficult jobs and to see how understaffed and overworked they are is truly disturbing,” Charlesworth said in a statement accompanying her report.

“We have known about chronic understaffing at this ministry for decades, yet successive governments have not addressed these challenges. Now, here we are yet again, reeling from the death of a child that was entirely preventable.”

In the wake of Charlesworth’s Don’t Look Away report, the B.C. government said that it was taking action through new child welfare measures.

It announced changes to its approach, including the establishment of a cross-ministry group comprised of “senior public officials.” The group will be tasked with guiding the development of new strategies.