TIM KOROL & SASK'S 'Arrogant' Child Welfare System / 536

CBC Photo: Tim Korol, Dep Min for 12 mo

On May 4, 2011 columnist Angela Hall’s story was printed in online and hard copy news sources all over the country. She wrote about Tim Korol, a former social services worker in the province of Saskatchewan. Granted he worked there for only one year but that was all that he could stomach. Korol is a former policeman who in the course of police duty saw a good many human unpleasantries yet he has said about his experience with social services in Sask., “I have been emotionally scarred by what’s going on in social services.”

He has recently released a 40-page report entitled, 'The Secret Shame.' He held a press conference and then he submitted his report to the provincial government. In that report Korol relates his concerns about the child welfare system in Canada. The title is apt. Good choice. Blogs such as this one have a limited readership. The secret shame of child welfare, specifically the stories that spin from child apprehensions and the unfortunate cases within the fostering program, are unknown to the general public because they are undisclosed.

Legislators and parliamentarians don’t even hear about them unless a person like Korol draws attention to them. But then, I wonder who will read his report. He worked in social services for only one year. It will be considered questionable that he knows enough, or knows what he is talking about.

Hired in 2008 as a special adviser to then-social services minister Donna Harpauer, Tim Korol later worked for a short time as assistant deputy minister. He was let go in June 2009. He pointedly states that his desire to speak to his concerns is not the reflection of bitterness about his dismissal from the ministry and he underscores that there are many good social workers and bureaucrats who he says are caught in the system.

“Children are being damaged for life. Families are being unnecessarily broken up,” he says. “Every week in Saskatchewan, there are children who are apprehended and parents can go for weeks and sometimes months without knowing the details of what they are being accused of.”

He has called the Saskatchewan child welfare system a "controlling and bullying" bureaucracy.

Haven’t some of you been saying this here in B.C.? Among his recommendations is the suggestion that government should spend an equivalent amount of money on programming that helps hold biological families together, as that amount of money spent to keep children in foster care. Further, he recommends ‘bottom-up” planning, that is, listening to frontline workers rather than dictating plans from the top.

The initial response from new social services minister June Draude was an assurance that many affirmative changes have already been made within the past two years since he left his government role and more is being done.

And here in B.C. we wait to learn what our newly constituted Liberal government will affect by way of improvements to the secret shame that is hurting so many families.