Children's stories.

Unhappy stories of children are prominent in this issue. They are about children murdered by their own relatives while under the watchful eye of the child welfare system. The particular children were placed in the custody of their relatives by child welfare agencies. Again, we have more inquiries and reports on what went wrong and what might be done about it.

Child protection is a very demanding field of endeavor. It requires keen sensitivity and discerning judgment to determine if a child is in need of protection. It requires great skill to solve or mitigate the problems that emerge. The expectation is that the "least intrusive" measures will be applied and removal of the child from parental custody is the choice only when all other measures fail. This is a hard task.

The scope of the child protection system has changed over the years. The law has redefined child protection to cover a broad range of physical and psychological abuse and neglect. The people who administer child welfare spend more time than ever investigating problems and trying to help families cope with parent-child issues. They spend more time involved in legal procedures and in attending court hearings.

While the system protects children generally, some children have been harmed and have died from abuse, neglect and criminal violence while involved with the child welfare agencies. Few as these cases may be, society finds them intolerable. One is too many!

In the past decade, some fine minds have been employed in reorganizing the child welfare system, doing it several times over. The changes aimed to make the system more efficient and "accountable." The efforts produced newer and more complicated reporting systems to keep tabs on the social workers involved. Social workers that we talk to complain that the "accounting" they do adds burdens and contributes little value to their work with children and with their families. However, the innovations when they are not confusing to the social workers, appear to protect provincial ministers and senior officials from blame rather than getting at the root causes and what to do about them.

The real aim of this reorganization and accounting activity has been of containing child welfare expenditures. Budget managers over the past decade have not been kind to the social workers who run the system, treating them as unruly children whose excesses need to be curbed.

Where have front-line social workers been while the problem grows? They have been doing their job in child protection work as best they can and with the resources available and taking the criticism that goes with deadly failures. That there have not been move tragic situations is a tribute to their skill and also to luck.

If any fault is to be found with the front-line workers, it is that they have not spoken out vigorously and clearly enough about the situation in which they find themselves. The only time these issues come to the fore is if they are raised in union contract negotiations as "workload" problems. Then they are dismissed as bargaining ploys.

Child welfare is a labour-intensive venture that cannot be done by computers or robots. It is carried out by people who must meet intellectually and emotionally demanding tasks. Pay levels have not been commensurate with the skill and judgment required and compensation has trailed behind other areas of public service. Staff turnover, not surprisingly, is high.

Certainly, more staff is needed and they need proper training, and support. They need conditions that tell them that their jobs are valued. This requires a change in attitude at the top levels of our society. It will certainly require more money.

"You can't solve a problem by throwing money at it," has been the mantra over the past decade. In the past, we have given in and allowed the money managers to do nothing more than count pennies. Its time we changed the mantra to: "You can't protect children by squeezing the system for tax savings."

Whenever our political leaders do provide meagre funds to support the social services, they love to call it an "investment." Now is the time for a real investment in our children to reflect the confidence we feel in our ability to care for them properly and safely.

Its not a cliche to repeat: Our children are our future!

--LK.