1 in 4 Child and Family Services positions vacant: N.W.T. health minister

One in four positions in the Northwest Territories Child and Family Services division are vacant, an issue the auditor general reports is a key reason for many of the department's ongoing issues protecting children in its care.  

Tuesday's follow-up audit report on the division suggested the government bureaucracy is overwhelmed with implementing administrative changes without enough support from administration. That has lead to an overall failure to meet the government's responsibility to protect children.

"It's not that we're not filling the jobs. It's that we're filling the jobs and people keep leaving," said Health Minister Glen Abernethy on Wednesday at a news conference detailing the government's response to the audit recommendations.  

"After the last audit we lost people. Are we going to lose people after this audit? I sure hope not."

​Officials were unable to immediately say how many employees are currently working in Child and Family Services. But as of April 1, 77 people worked within the division, according to the most recent report from the director of Child and Family Services.

If this number is still accurate, that means about 19 positions remain unfilled. Abernethy noted that staff turnover is high and often changes daily, but vacancy rates in Child and Family Services have generally hovered around the 25 per cent mark over the past four years. 

'High-stress, high-burnout profession' 

"This is a very difficult job for individuals and it's certainly a high-stress, high-burnout profession," he said. "These are difficult-to-fill jobs and there are shortages across the country with this kind of work."

Despite these ongoing issues finding social workers, Abernethy said he's directed the department to aggressively recruit new workers and maintain better lists of potential in-house hires to fix this.

In addition to bringing in more people, the department has several ongoing measures officials say will improve outcomes for children and families. They include:

• Developing better quality-control standards and following through.

• Getting the right people into jobs that fit their skills.

• Building up policies and standards that can survive ongoing staff turnover.

• Improving communications between frontline staff and management.  

No one reason why employees leave

The auditor general listed a number of human-resources issues contributing both to staff burnout and a failure to follow through on the government's responsibilities for children in care. 

Nathalie Nadeau, the director of Child and Family Services for the social services authority, explained why she believes people leave the profession, citing the high-stress and at times adversarial nature of the work.

"It leads to a lot of stress in their personal lives as well," she said. "It's not one thing, it's a series of issues raising why there's a high turnover."

She said improvements to human resources in the division — particularly training for supervisors and managers — will make a difference. 

The government's next opportunity to respond to this audit will happen in a few months, when Auditor General Michael Ferguson presents the audit to a standing committee of MLAs.