In the aftermath of the ongoing news about critical injuries and deaths of children in the care of the province, Bob Plecas was brought in to discover what’s causing the problems in the Ministry of Children and Family Development and then offer some suggestions to fix them.
When the former deputy minister released his report – the first of two – on his Child Protection and Policy Review on Dec. 14, it garnered immediate reaction.
As would be expected, some was favourable and some was far from favourable.
Plecas noted staffing and policy caused the ministry’s problems with the children it was supposed to protect.
He noted there were too many changes in policy and practice, inconsistent leadership, instability and turnover of staff, and that was adversely impacting the ability of ministry staff to do its job.
That is a fair and accurate assessment, especially when it comes to the front-line workers – the social workers.
These are the people who are overworked and under-staffed.
Social workers saw their caseloads increase exponentially while the provincial government squeezed the life blood out the ministry by not providing increased budgets to help ministry employees deal with the increasing numbers and problems of their clients.
In his report, Plecas proposed three options for the B.C. Liberal government.
The first was maintain the status quo. No thanks, we all know how well that is working.
The second was a one-time injection of $50 million. Not enough, the case loads are rising; they’re not stagnant.
Furthermore, Representative For Children and Youth Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond has already said accumulated cuts and freezes in the ministry leaves it at least $100 million below what is currently needed to keep up with the caseload.
The third option was to shift from a culture of blame to one of learning, respect and commitment.
Well, isn’t that warm and fuzzy.
What he is really saying is get rid of Turpel-Lafond – who is independent of the government and looks at issues of this ministry – so she can’t raise the red flags and make people aware of problems that need to be fixed.
Plecas suggests hiring a “Contrarian” to look into the issues and quietly offer options for government. Combining this with a new standing committee, which allows MLAs from both sides of the legislature to be briefed on high profile cases, and, therefore, make them accountable for problems that arise.
It appears Plecas is attempting to muzzle the release of any information that will embarrass the government, which appears to only move forward when it has to react to negative news in the media.
At this point, the report appears to be little more than a political Band-Aid.
