On child services, MLAs sing from “made-in-Nunavut” songbook

Sheila Fraser, the auditor general of Canada, said that when doing their report on child, youth and family services in Nunavut, some of the files her staff audited were “disturbing and heart-wrenching.” (PHOTO BY JIM BELL

When a committee of Nunavut MLAs gathered in Iqaluit this past week to look at Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s report on child, youth and family services in Nunavut, many members focused less on the report and more on the perceived absence of Inuit values in government.

“We have known the problems for quite some time…The problem with the legislation is it was not made in Nunavut,” Amittuq MLA Louis Tapardjuk said.

The report, which Fraser tabled this past March, found that in 59 of the 61 files that the auditor general’s office studied, social workers responded quickly when notified about incidents of child abuse.

But beyond that, Fraser said the Department of Health and Social Services was not complying with the Child and Family Services Act.

The GN’s shortfalls include:

• a failure to conduct safety checks when children are placed outside the parental home;

• a failure to perform criminal record checks on potential foster parents;

• a failure to complete home studies to find out if foster parents meet the needs of the child;

• a failure to perform annual safety checks on group homes;

• a failure to provide mandatory child protection training to social workers;

• conflicts of interest created by the use of social workers as community corrections workers.

To do this work, the auditor general’s staff members were forced to look at some ugly material, including tales of children under the age of 10 who were sexually abused and diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases.

“I know just from what my team told me, that they saw some files that were very disturbing and heart-wrenching: very young children who were victims of sexual abuse,” Fraser told reporters April 14.

But in the report, Fraser found other serious problems with child and family services that go beyond the child protection issue.

Those problems include:

• a near total failure to implement the Government of Nunavut”s $8.8 million public health strategy, aimed at children and families: only four of 31 action items were done;

• a failure to comply with provisions of the Adoption Act aimed at ensuring the best interests of adopted children;

• problems with the Aboriginal Custom Adoption Recognition Act, which contains no requirements to ensure the safety and best interests of children.

Yet another big problem that Fraser flagged is severe understaffing among social workers.

In 2009-10, an average of 17 community social worker jobs, out of 46, were unfilled.

This, Fraser said, creates huge workloads that prevent social workers from carrying out all their duties or doing prevention work.

“I think there are issues. The government is certainly responding well and indicating they are taking action already in hiring more social workers and that the requirements in the act are being met,” Fraser said.

In response, MLAs offered a mixed range of responses, with some blaming the imposition of a foreign culture, an alien family law, and the preponderance of non-Inuit social workers.

Tapardjuk, for example, lit into the GN over the small number of Inuit social workers after Peter Ma, the deputy minister of health and social services, said only 11 of the GN’s 51 social services staff workers are beneficiaries.

“This is quite disappointing. We are talking about Inuit children… It could be seen by the public that they don’t want to hire Inuit,” Tapardjuk said.

Ma responded by saying that two of Nunavut’s three regional directors of social services are beneficiaries.

But Tapardjuk wasn’t satisfied with the answer and repeated his call for a “made-in-Nunavut” system that gives more responsibility to people in communities.

Johnny Ningeongan, the MLA for Nanulik, took a similar line.

“We have been assimilated to another culture and it’s very, very difficult… It should come from us and not from outside our territory,” Ningeongan said.

While praising Fraser’s report for being “sensitive to Inuit culture,” Ningeongan said “the government system is not sensitive to Inuit culture.”

Mose Aupaluqtuq, the MLA for Baker Lake, said the protection of children is a “core issue” that the GN must do better at.

“We all know that health and social services deal with the most sensitive areas of life… It encompasses everything Nunavut stands for,” Aupaluktuk said.

Jeannie Ugyuk, the MLA for Nattilik and a former social worker, said too many families don’t make their children a priority.

“We don’t push our children hard enough to stay in school,” Ugyuk said.

Ma, who fielded most questions directed at the GN, told MLAs that his department is working on an “action plan” to carry out the various recommendations contained in Fraser’s report.

But he cautioned that “it will take time to address each recommendation” and that the action plan will follow “realistic time-frames.”

For her part, Fraser recommends the GN acknowledge three big priorities.

One is getting the social workers in place. The other is to ensure they are doing all of the reviews and criminal checks and all those sorts of things that are required under the act. And again… monitoring to ensure this will be done,” she told reporters.

But Fraser cautioned that governments can’t do everything.

“We can’t turn to governments all the time to solve these issues… The government can try to protect children who are at risk, but it’s really up to the parents and the communities to ensure that children aren’t at risk,” Fraser said.