It is true. The GNWT is guilty of failing children.It is also true that the buck stops with GNWT Health and Social Services Minister Glen Abernethy who received much scorn after the release of a follow-up audit by Canada’s Office of the Auditor General on the failures of the territory’s Child and Family Services division.
The audit found that a woefully overburdened system has been shortchanging an average of about 1,000 – mostly Indigenous – children per year who receive protection or preventive services.
In the wake of the follow-up audit, a number of MLAs called for Abernethy’s head and he barely survived a non-confidence vote in the legislative assembly by an 11 to 7 margin on Oct. 31.
But if history is any guide, sacking the health minister is unlikely to produce the ramped-up response the territory needs to address the many threats facing the territory’s most vulnerable children.
Four years ago, another group of smart people also thought they could tackle the problem.
It all started with the original March 2014 audit of Child and Family Services in the territory by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, which found shortcomings in the system that put children at risk.
Following the audit, the Department of Health and Social Services launched the Building Stronger Families action plan in an attempt to overhaul the system.
The top-down approach called for new procedures and more accountability. Six of eight regional Health and Social Services authorities were combined under one larger authority: the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority (NTHSSA).
The idea was to improve services and provide better access to care.
Unfortunately, this command and control approach had the opposite effect. According to the follow-up audit, the heavy-handed reforms rocked an already tippy canoe, the changes weren’t implemented properly and the government’s intervention exacerbated the problem.
In many respects, the system is now worse than before the reforms were handed down from on high.
According to the follow-up audit, social workers are not in regular contact with the children they’ve placed in foster care in about 90 per cent of cases but in 2014 it was only 60 per cent.
Guardians are still not receiving basic criminal record or background checks and in one case, a guardian was actually charged with assaulting a child.
The territory’s front-line social workers are dedicated individuals operating in difficult circumstances. They deserve better and so do the kids. Given that over 95 per cent of the children receiving services in the territory are Indigenous, what’s needed is an Indigenous approach to improving services.
Dehcho Grand Chief Gladys Norwegian said as much in a Nov. 8 letter to the Abernethy and the Premier Bob McLeod where she reached out to the government and said they should work together.
"Dehcho First Nations would like to be involved in some capacity to rebuild a responsive, supportive family program that includes Indigenous values and beliefs and one that is focused on prevention not intervention," stated Norwegian.
As Norwegian suggests, the government and Indigenous groups should talk. They should involve guardians, educators, social workers and the children themselves. They should devise creative ways to improve the situation at the community level.
The government’s mishandling of children is a complex problem with a range of causes including poverty, addiction, family violence and the multi-generational trauma caused by the residential school system.
If the higher-ups want to take a top-down approach to improving child protection services in the territory, the best place for them to start is by helping to create a domestically trained group of professionals who will stay in the North, work with these kids and won’t hightail it down south after two or three years.
The auditor general’s report found that about a quarter of the positions with Child and Family Services were vacant. At the same time, Aurora College’s social work diploma program remains in limbo thanks to budget cuts.
This will hopefully be remedied if and when Aurora College is transformed into a polytechnic university.
In the meantime, the GNWT should waste no time in getting input and support from Indigenous groups in the territory. It’s bound to fail a third time if it doesn’t.