SOCIAL WORKERS NEED CHILD-PROTECTION TRAINING

This is an opinion piece by my colleague and guest writer, Ray Ferris appeared in The Times Colonist. Ray sent it to me after it was published there. whom you know as the author of 'The Art of Child Protection,' and as a frequent contributor here, as well as an advisor to countless parents as well as lawyer and members of parliament. You can order the book at rtferris@telus.net

The Walker judgement and several others have made it evident that an adversarial and even hostile culture permeates the ministry responsible for child protection. There are probable causes for this. One is that provincial social workers used to be responsible for both financial assistance and child welfare. The deep-seated antagonism to assistance applicants rubbed off on child welfare cases, often the same cases. The three children’s aid societies were kinder, because they handled no assistance. All services were amalgamated by the first NDP government.

The courts used to function well. In the late seventies I studied about 200 cases which went through the Victoria court. No cases exceeded statutory time guidelines and judges were vigilant in demanding proper notices and other parental protections. Only four cases went to contested hearings. Most cases were settled by negotiation. There were many registered social workers and there was a sense of professionalism among the staff members.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 10

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray has written here.)

ETHICS

Registered social workers have a code of ethics, which was drawn up by the BC Association of Social Workers. This code is fairly general and open to interpretation, but it does provide some sort of guidelines. When the social workers act was first passed and registration started, a good number of registered social workers were employed in child protection and related work. One children’s aid society urged all eligible employees to become registered. The registrar recently told me that they do not need to devise practice standards for protection workers because no members do that work any more. The director of the BCASW told me the same thing.

RESOLVING SYSTEMIC AND NON-SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS IN CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES, Part 2

How To Define the Problems

By Ray Ferris (This piece is one of a series Ray will write here. )

           Some simple tests can be made to define systemic and non-systemic problems. Consider this: - There have been a number of systemic changes over the years, but whichever system has been used, there have always been staff who could make the system work reasonably well and those who could not. This has been a reliable constant.

            We can infer from this that the most important factor has been the skills and commitment of the various staff. No system will work without a definable and teachable body of skills. These skills will take time to learn. They will be learned by a combination of theoretical instruction and supervised field practice with only manageable responsibilities. This training programme will take two or three years. It is most important that there is a high quality mentoring during that time.

             It should be noted that this training will not be provided by the various schools of social work. They do not teach the skills of child protection and they do not pretend to do so. This has been noted in both the Gove and Hughes reports.

            The systemic change to be made would be to fund and plan an in-service training programme, which will define and teach the necessary skills. An important component of this would be an ethical training programme and a clearly defined code of ethics. I will return to this topic in a later context.

 Ferris retired after a career that included significant years with the MCFD. He has written a book entitled 'The Art of Child Protection.' This is the first in a series of pieces Ray will write here. You can order Mr. Ferris' book entitled 'the Art of Child Protection' by contacting the author directly at rtferris@telus.net.