The province鈥檚 Ministry of Children and Family Development is once more in uproar. The latest crisis arose when staff left four young children in the hands of an abusive father.
That prompted a sa国际传媒 Supreme Court judge to flay management and social workers for negligence, breach of duty and reckless disregard for their obligation to protect children.
But how often have we heard these complaints? The ministry was formed two decades ago, on the heels of another tragedy.
In 1992, five-year-old Matthew Vaudreuil was taken to the sa国际传媒 Children鈥檚 Hospital with rope burns on his wrists, a broken arm, 11 fractured ribs and a foot imprint on his back. He was pronounced dead on arrival.
During his short life, 21 different social workers saw the boy. He was taken to a doctor, or to hospital, 75 times. At least 60 reports were written, detailing his suffering. Yet right up to the end, Matthew was left in the care of a deeply dysfunctional family. His mother confessed to smothering him.
These are not isolated events. The sa国际传媒 representative for children and youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, has levelled similar complaints.
This year, following the suicide of a young aboriginal woman in Vancouver, Turpel-Lafond blasted the ministry for 鈥減rofessional indifference.鈥�
In 2014, after the suicide of a 14-year-old, she pointed to a 鈥渄ysfunctional child-welfare system.鈥�
In 2011, she blamed the death of a four-month-old, in part, on 鈥渢roubling inadequacies in planning, case-management and decision-making.鈥�
And these are only a sample of the frequent denunciations laid at the ministry鈥檚 door. What on Earth is going on in that place?
In the wake of last month鈥檚 reprimand from the bench, the minister responsible, Stephanie Cadieux, asked a respected former public servant, Bob Plecas, to investigate. Along with the Child Welfare League of sa国际传媒, Plecas has until Oct. 13 to bring in a report.
His terms of reference are narrow 鈥� he is not to 鈥渞elitigate鈥� the case, but simply establish what went wrong and how to correct it.
However, Plecas is savvy enough to understand there are much deeper matters involved. The litany of crises is too extensive to blame on bad luck.
Yet is incompetence a plausible explanation in all cases? The ministry has been through scores of senior managers and numerous ministers 鈥� both Liberal and NDP.
And social work, by its nature, is a compassionate profession. Are we to believe child-welfare officers become callous when they walk through the ministry鈥檚 doors?
But what about poor planning? Staff can mean well and still fail in their mission if organizational support is missing.
Yet here, too, this explanation seems inadequate. There have been several major reorganizations of the ministry. None, apparently, have corrected the problem.
Lack of co-ordination between agencies might be a more plausible concern. Beyond the ministry, several authorities, some of them fiercely independent, have a role in child protection 鈥� the courts, law-enforcement agencies and health-care providers. It was a failure to share information within this circle that led, in part, to the death of Matthew Vaudreuil.
Yet overcoming these obstacles lies well beyond the power of individual case managers or social workers.
Plecas would do both the government and the public a valuable service by going into this matter in depth. If the ministry鈥檚 history of failure is due, largely or wholly, to internal shortcomings, we need to know that.
But if social workers are hostage to an inter-agency environment of limited co-operation and reluctant file-sharing, that must be said.
The ministry is an obvious target when tragedies occur. Plecas should tell us whether that鈥檚 the whole story, or not.
