Thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody.
On behalf of the Canadian Association of Social Workers' board of directors and our federation partners in the provinces and territories, I thank you for inviting our profession's perspectives to these important consultations.
We've been asked to provide recommendations on economic growth. Our simple message is that Canada will only thrive when children and families are supported to reach their potential. Over this past summer we released a major research report on child welfare that surveyed over 3,000 social workers, and also did 20 stakeholder interviews with leaders and experts from across the country. We found that right across Canada excessive caseloads are preventing child and family-centred care.
The intended role of social workers in child welfare roles is to protect children, yes, but also to develop relationships with communities, to reduce risks for children, and to support families to remain together safely. Families that could benefit from preventative interventions are only seen once they're already in full crisis. It puts children at risk and often leads to their placement into care. Beyond the critical argument for compassion, removing children from their homes and placing them into alternative care is incredibly fiscally costly, and it has compounding intergenerational consequences as well. Most social workers serve a mix of rural and urban communities, and for three-quarters of the social workers we surveyed, indigenous families made up more than a half of their caseloads.
We also know that child welfare practice is the most successful at keeping families together when the community has a long-term relationship with the worker. Currently, though, because of these high caseloads, we're seeing frequent burnout creating a turnstile effect in the communities that's rupturing families' relationships with these professionals and discouraging families from seeking supports up stream.
As it stands, there's no national standard governing caseload size in child welfare. There's been no large-scale study to help child welfare organizations, both on and off reserve, to determine what a healthy and appropriate caseload for social workers might look like. Tools for how to measure appropriate caseload size and complexity vary from region to region, and of course practices and successes then vary as well.
In light of this situation, we have three recommendations.
The first is that the federal government fund a nationwide child welfare caseload study to gather data and begin developing those standards. Right now we have no mechanism in place to gather information or to see what's working. We need caseload standards to make sure social workers can put children first and serve families effectively.
Our next recommendation is to implement student loan forgiveness for social workers who are in rural and remote communities. A 2012 CIHI report on rural and remote care found that out of 11 countries Canadians waited the longest for care. Things have only gotten worse since then, and the Mental Health Commission of Canada has identified harms directly correlated to these waits. Additionally, when you consider our particular context in Canada where many indigenous communities are located in rural and remote areas, these underserved populations are made even more vulnerable.
Social workers are highly trained professionals able to offer many of the same services as other mental health providers, and often at a lower cost. In a small community that can maybe only support one mental health provider, a social worker provides excellent value. We have broad skill sets and can provide myriad types of care: assessments, therapeutic counselling, case work, referrals. At the same time, many communities are having a tough time attracting mental health practitioners. We propose that eligibility for student loan forgiveness would greatly support social workers to be recruited to practice in, to stay in, and often to return home to rural and remote communities.
Finally, we recommend that to ensure Canada's competitiveness moving forward, we must determine where money is being spent, and of course whether it's being spent effectively, before we spend more. That's why we continue to advocate for the introduction of a social care act for Canada. This federal government has rightfully placed a high importance on data, evidence and innovation, but we argue that without accountability to the Canada social transfer, which we would hope would include a requirement to report on its use and outcomes, we are woefully without the right data or the conditions to support innovation and best practices in our country.
We are proposing that we adopt a social care act with principles similar to those of the Canada Health Act to guide the Canada social transfer and other social investments. The act could help the provinces and territories design policies that best fit their unique needs, while also helping the federal government to understand where the dollars are being spent and, in turn, where more targeted investments might actually be needed. It would help share evidence and best practices across different regions and to foster innovation.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, it would also support Canada's first poverty reduction strategy by helping to produce comparable outcomes across our country.
Thank you. We look forward to any questions.