A Child Welfare system with no memory…
As 2014 draws to a close, I am fortunate enough to have always been able to add things up. This helps considerably in counting my blessings. One of my pivotal blessings was in having parents who supported me through my topsy-turvy teens and my somewhat roaring twenties. While they weren’t always amused by or appreciative of my coming of age antics, they stuck by me out of some primal duty, or curiosity, or love, or a combination, I suppose.
As a social worker, I had the opportunity to engage in the lives of dozens, even hundreds of young people. My employer, the people of BC, never really had a systematic or effective way to gauge how well we serviced these young people. Any sense of success or failure was, and likely remains, anecdotal.
While I have had the opportunity to know little bits and pieces of the post-care lives of the young people I worked with and for, I have no real sense of what became of most of them, how their time under my tutelage benefited them. More than just my lack of follow-up, my professionally necessary distancing, what also came in to play was the BC child welfare system, an entity that had and continues to have no sense of how effective it has been. Perhaps it doesn’t want to know what worked and what didn’t.
A recent article in the Vancouver Sun examines services offered to youth in their post-majority years. Terms such as “small steps” and “modest” are the best anyone can say about those services. The government is so disinterested in the lives of these young adults, the article implies, that a recent innovation by a third of our post secondary institutions to waive fees and offer additional supports, is not tracked. Government, apparently, has no idea how many of its former charges are benefitting from this welcome and generous largesse.
Not every former youth in the care of the State needs additional services. Many do, however. How many? You could well ask the Ministry of Children and Family Development but they don’t keep those sorts of statistics.
During my tumultuous younger years, my parents paid some attention to my evolution. I think it little to ask that Government do the same for the young people it once attempted to support, and had some measure of responsibility for. Sadly, and all too often, the State seems to be a substitute parental system with no memory.
Even though the Sun article does encourage the notion that the Premiers of all Canadian Provinces should have a summit to address the needs of youth formerly in their care (not to mention those still in a balkanized child welfare system, ) I cannot forget that in Canada, change come slowly, reluctantly, unimpressively, and always, almost always, with our patented Canadian caution.
