There remain vulnerable children in Nunavut who are not receiving the support and protection they are entitled to when under the care of Child and Family Services, the Auditor General of Canada has once again found.
As a result, the office is again urging the Government of Nunavut to improve protection of the children they take into their care.
A recent follow-up audit on Child and Family Services in Nunavut indicates that while initial actions have been taken by the Department of Family Services to address what the report calls “failures affecting services for children, youth, and families,” the department’s strategic action plan lacks “the targets and baselines needed to measure progress, specific timelines and clear accountabilities.”
The audit comes after a grim report in 2023 that found Nunavut’s child and family services system was “in crisis,” and “plagued by failures across all areas examined” — the third such finding since 2011.
Accountability for government
After audits of Nunavut's Child and Family Services in 2011 and 2014, "we felt it was time for us to loop back, and unfortunately, the results were rather concerning," said Karen Hogan, the auditor general of Canada.
“We found that many of our recommendations hadn't been acted on, and that's why we called at the time for a whole of government approach and committed to following up on this in a very regular way until we could see some real, concrete actions that would improve the outcomes for children and youth in the territory,” Hogan said.
Deputy auditor general Andrew Hayes recently presented the latest findings to the Standing Committee on Oversight of Government Operations and Public Accounts in Nunavut.
“What we are looking for, frankly, is the improvement of outcomes for those children and youth,” Hayes said. “We did find that the department had taken initial actions. And I want to really emphasize that word initial.
“We are going to come back, and we are going to look for whether or not those outcomes have actually improved, whether there has been a moving of the needle towards better services for the children and youth.
No new recommendations were brought forth in this recent audit, nor in the 2023 one, Hayes said, primarily because despite the recommendations made in 2011 and 2014, there remains a lack of service for many children and youth.
“Those recommendations from the past were still valid. It was troubling. We're talking about more than a generation of people who have been let down. And what our newest audit was designed to do was to see whether or not the government had taken the actions that it needed to take to start the ball rolling in the right direction,” Hayes said.
While it's understandable that a change of staff occurs over time, it is not an excuse for the lack of concrete action, he said.
“It's not a reason for why services were not being provided to the children and youth that need them. We were happy to be able to say that some progress has been made in every area that we that we examined here.
“The problem is that those were only initial steps. There still needs to be a substantial amount of work done to improve outcomes, and that is why we're going to keep our eye on this,” he said.
Root causes for such failures in action were found to be intertwined and pointed towards funding issues, staffing and the use of casual employees, gaps in housing and office space, as well as lack of timely training and poor information management, Hayes noted.
Steady and hopeful
George Hickes, MLA for Iqaluit-Tasiluk and chair of the Standing Committee on Oversight of Government Operations and Public Accounts, said the topic of children in care is not just “black and white words on a report.”
“There are children at the end of these discussions and the end of these gaps, so recognizing where more supports are needed is important,” he said.
While Hickes noted there is “some level of frustration” involved in getting some of the recommended actions completed, department officials “did quite a good job of updating things that have been happening since the last report.”
“It's not a lot of time for the department to initiate some of the recommendations. But it was hopeful with some of the updates on the new case management system that they're implementing and training staff on,” Hickes said.
The next steps for the standing committee will be to draft comments on the report, which will then be tabled in the legislative assembly, after which the government will have 120 days to respond.
Hickes said it was important to note that there is an “acknowledged recognition” at the department level that they have a “steep hill in front of them.”
“There's so many systemic things that need to occur to really make sure that there's a lot of confidence rebuilt, especially with regards to children in care, to make sure that those site inspections are being done, to make sure that the social workers are involved at the family level, where available.
“I think that what we're all expecting is for the government to take action on these issues and help rebuild some of the confidence, not just from the members of the legislative assembly, but from the public that they know where all the children are,” he said.
Priority planning
Hayes said the importance of prioritizing the actions in the strategic action plan “can't be emphasized enough.”
“You can't do 80 things at one time — you’ve got to pick and choose what is going to lead to the best outcomes and where you have to put your scarce resources.
“So it's critical for the department to dig in and prioritize, and it's important we've made the call a couple of times now for the entire government of Nunavut to pull together on this.”
The Government of Nunavut Department of Family Services did not respond to an interview request from Nunavut News by deadline.
