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Speak out and use the hashtag #childwelfareonthebrink.
An advocacy campaign by Nova Scotia social workers
Did you know that Nova Scotia’s child welfare system is on the brink? We need to speak out.
We expect that help and support will be provided for families, children and youth in need.
However, year after year our government underfunds social programs and services like child welfare. Social workers are on the front line coordinating these services and ensuring that children are protected from harm, abuse, and neglect.
Social workers assist and advocate for Nova Scotian families, children and youth, with the goal of keeping families together.
Social workers engage with people in real time. Not from behind a desk. They connect with families, children and youth face-to-face and ensure that they have the tools and resources to support families to stay together.
Their caseloads, lack of administrative support, and lack of community resources creates a situation where social workers are unable to get out from behind their desk. They are running from crisis to crisis rather than working with families towards meaningful solutions. Social workers are finding themselves experiencing burnout and illness at an alarming rate as they go above and beyond their duties to hold the child welfare system together.
Government has responded to the crisis by moving positions around to address acute shortages in certain offices. They have held additional training and a social worker symposium in order to talk through the work and responsibilities associated with social work right now. They also added supervisory staff to help support the front lines.
However, in many offices across the province, the crisis remains, and children are at risk where there aren’t enough services or child welfare social workers to provide the support Nova Scotians should receive. Real investment is needed urgently so families can be supported when they first begin to have problems and avoid more serious problems later.
Families and public services like child welfare should be a priority in this next budget.
Speak out and use the hashtag #childwelfareonthebrink.
Share childwelfareonthebrink.org to your Facebook page and spread the word.
Write a letter asking the Premier to invest resources in Nova Scotia’s child welfare system:
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The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN 1989) is the most widely and rapidly ratified human rights treaty in history. When child welfare services are underfunded the right of freedom from abuse, neglect and exploitation is compromised.
Violence and neglect are major causes of early death.
There are several ways in which inadequate care and protection stops children from developing and learning to their full potential. It has harmful effects on the development of very young children, with children in institutional care who lack an attachment with a consistent carer commonly facing problems with physical development and language.
Many children who experience a lack of care or protection have severely diminished life chances as they are unable to learn or develop to their full potential. These children commonly come from already impoverished and discriminated against groups, and such girls and boys are further discriminated and stigmatised by communities because of the exploitation and abuse they have suffered.
Child abuse and exploitation carry high economic costs. The economic costs of child abuse and neglect include: lost earnings and tax revenue as a consequence of premature death and the costs of child welfare, alternative care and health services. In the US, such costs are estimated to amount to $94 billion annually or 1% of the country’s GDP.
A recently released study by the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW), a federal partner of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers (NSCSW), published a report which paints a troubling picture of Canada’s child welfare system.
The report, Understanding Social Work and Child Welfare: Canadian Survey and Interviews with Child Welfare Experts, highlights some troubling statistics:
The statistics reflect how demanding caseloads, the complexity of issues faced by families and an unsupportive work environment lead to vicarious trauma, greater burnout and turnover.
In Nova Scotia, statistics released in the fall of 2017 by FOIPOP show the significant stress the system is facing. There was a striking rise of social worker short-term illness hours, from 16,513 in the fiscal year 2013–14 to 26,105 in 2016–17, an increase of nearly 10,000 hours. This corresponds with the increase of child protection referrals during that time which increased from 10,078 to 11,028 per year, an increase of 10%.
Nova Scotia social workers report that the system is challenged by:
At the root of this issue are austerity policies and the erosion of public services. The current service delivery for child protective services is compromised by inadequate resources placed into this system to accommodate the demands of the amended Children and Family Services Act, the ever-increasing complexity of intersecting issues faced by vulnerable Nova Scotia families and a lack of community resources.
This has resulted in an increase of child and family poverty in Nova Scotia. Child poverty remains stubbornly high and continues to be on the rise. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–Nova Scotia reported that child poverty increased from 18.1% in 1989 to 21.5% in 2016.
Poverty and inequity are neither a necessary nor sufficient factor in the occurrence of child abuse or neglect, as it is caused by many interlocking factors. However, there is a clear relationship between family socio-economic circumstances and the prevalence of child abuse and neglect — either through a direct effect through material hardship, or an indirect effect through parental stress and neighbourhood conditions.
Evidence suggests that the direct and indirect impacts of poverty also interact with other factors affecting parenting to increase or reduce the chances of child abuse and neglect, including:
These interactions between poverty and other contributory factors are complex and frequently circular. For example, poverty increases the risk of mental illness and mental illness increases the likelihood of poverty. The conception of poverty as a contributory causal factor is supported by evidence from experimental and quasi-experimental studies in the US that raising the income of families in poverty had a statistically significant impact in reducing child neglect and abuse rates.
Nova Scotia’s child protection systems pay insufficient direct attention to the role of poverty in child abuse and neglect. To change this, we propose that the Nova Scotia government invest in a broad spectrum of social services.
Canada and Nova Scotia have the financial capacity to invest. A recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study looked at social expenditures across countries and showed that Canada falls well below the OECD average. Canada invests 17.2% of its GDP on public social spending compared to the OECD average of 21%. The percentage has dropped from the 1990s when Canada was at 20.4%. We need to change this.
The Nova Scotia College of Social Workers (NSCSW) exists to serve and protect Nova Scotians by effectively regulating the profession of social work. We work in solidarity with Nova Scotians to advocate for policies that improve social conditions, challenge injustice and value diversity. Learn more at nscsw.org.
Contact NSCSW Registrar / Executive Director Alec Stratford at [email protected].