Sandra Azocar has devoted her life to helping children in crisis, but these days she feels more like a firefighter.
“We just go from fire to fire,” the Edmonton crisis unit worker said. “This is a field you go into because you can make an impact on families, but we can’t support families enough to make the needed changes, so we see the same thing over and over again.”
She and other frontline workers with Alberta Children and Youth Services fear that more neglected, abused and marginalized kids will fall through the cracks as the ministry forges ahead with its reorganization plan, which Azocar calls “privatization by stealth.”
The new system, which is being tested in communities around the province, takes decision-making authority out of the hands of ACYS caseworkers and places it into the hands of private and non-profit community agencies.
“That’s giving them a lot of power,” said Azocar, a vice-president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE). “But if something goes wrong, we’re still legally responsible.”
Under the proposed service delivery system, called “outcomes-based service delivery (OBSD),” everything done for children and youth must be measurable in some way. For example, if a child’s school attendance improves, that’s a measurable success. However, whether or not he had breakfast or brings a lunch isn’t measurable, so it’s not a consideration.
Community agencies can subcontract the services a family needs to other providers.
For example, one agency could be hired to administer drug testing on parents, while another might be responsible for helping the child with school.
Spruce Grove ACYS crisis worker Guy Quenneville wonders: “With everything so compartmentalized, is anyone looking at the whole picture of that family?”
He added: “Just because a family is responding in a few pre-selected measureable outcomes, it’s not necessarily going to mean that the family is experiencing success.”
The fragmentation of these services leads to a lack of accountability, responsibility, and consistency and leads to increased costs due to duplication and lack of co-ordination, Quenneville added.
“You need good, qualified, accountable and responsible professional staff with sound judgment and experience to really understand what success and good outcomes for that family is really all about.”
Caseworkers, who used to oversee everything, will spend all their time collecting data and filing reports instead of working directly with the children, their families and service providers.
Quenneville said the paperwork they must file has become so cumbersome, complex and repetitive that in most cases, nobody else involved with the file — psychologists, judges, other professionals — reads it.
The community agencies where OBSD is being tested are now responsible for assessing each child’s risk and whether they can stay in their home or needs to be placed elsewhere, responsibilities that used to be the caseworker’s.
Azocar said there have been times when agency workers, who may not have the training and experience of ministry caseworkers, wouldn’t share information with her about the plans they’ve made for children.
“Communication is a huge problem,” she said.
Caseloads have been a major issue among Alberta’s child welfare workers for years. AUPE has long argued that with caseworkers juggling up to 30 files at time, vulnerable children can’t possibly get the care and attention they need.
At the same time, ACYS caseworkers have tried to persuade the government to put funding and resources where they’re needed, such as more foster and group home placements for children and better support for foster families.
The problems came to a head in 2008 and 2009 when several high-profile tragedies rocked the Alberta government and sparked public outrage.
In one case, a four-year-old girl died in an Edmonton foster home. The foster mother, who was also the child’s aunt, was charged with second-degree murder.
Around the same time, a foster mother was convicted of manslaughter in the death of a three-year-old boy in her care. The victim’s parents launched a lawsuit, alleging that the ministry failed to properly screen, train and support foster families.
In another case, southern Alberta toddler in foster care was hospitalized with massive head injuries.
Then there was the Bosco Homes tragedy in June 2009, just east of Edmonton. The non-profit society shut down its facility for youth with severe behavioral problems after two of its teenaged residents were charged in connection with the deaths of two people in the surrounding rural neighbourhood.
It was during the political firestorm over these incidents that the Children and Youth Services Minister of the day, Janis Tarchuk, decided to reorganize. She traveled to New York, where OBSD was being implemented.
A summary of her trip, found on the ministry website, says that among other things, she discussed with U.S. officials how to “improve investigation and decision-making skills of service providers.”
Though Tarchuk was replaced as minister by Yvonne Fritz in January 2010, the plan has continued.
“Instead of fixing the system by hiring enough caseworkers to ensure each child gets the attention they need and providing adequate resources for families,” Azocar said, “the government is handing over responsibility for children’s welfare to outside agencies.”
She fears that the ministry is simply putting another layer between itself and the children so that when something goes wrong, the government can blame the agency instead of taking responsibility.
“That’s the danger,” she said. “It’s not about what’s best for the kids. It’s about contracting out the responsibility to protect the children of this province.”
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