A front-line social worker in rural Manitoba says her employer regularly keeps social worker jobs vacant in an effort to save money and not run a deficit.
The worker, who is at a non-aboriginal agency within the General Child and Family Services Authority, said her agency hires social workers mostly on term contracts for three to six months.
At the end of the contract, the positions are kept empty for a while to save the agency money, she said.
"The hiring of positions is balanced against the deficit," said the worker, who did not want to be identified for fear of being reprimanded.
In fact the worker said when the Free Press put out a call this summer for people in the system to come forward, the agency sent out a memo to all its staff warning them not to talk.
"If you identify me I will be fired," she said.
The worker spoke out after reading the series on child welfare in the Free Press last weekend. The series uncovered a system in chaos, with social workers carrying workloads so heavy they are unable to work with families to help keep kids with their parents, conduct proper risk assessments, or monitor their cases to ensure kids are safe.
The worker said the agency she works at is so understaffed it can only handle the most severe of cases.
"We have case loads that are all high risk," she said. "There's no such thing as medium risk because we don't get to them."
And families which come into contact with the system because they need counselling or some help dealing with troubled teenagers can't get any help, she said.
"We have not one thing to offer."
The government a year ago pledged to hire 150 new people over three years to relieve heavy workloads and Family Services Minister Gord Mackintosh said 64 new positions have come on stream. Two-thirds of them are front-line social workers.
But the agency worker told the Free Press only one of those positions was added to her agency and while it has been filled, the person hired to do the job hasn't started yet because she is too busy backfilling other jobs.
Jay Rodgers, acting CEO of the General Child and Family Services Authority, said he isn't aware of any agency not filling term positions as a cost saving measure.
He said the union wouldn't allow many workers to be hired as term contracts.
"The length of time a position stands vacant is related to how difficult it is to recruit," said Rodgers.
But Jan Henley, a social worker in Winnipeg who represents child welfare workers on the board at the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union, said term contracts are actually more common than permanent positions in the child welfare system these days.
Term positions became a norm as the system was devolved into aboriginal and non-aboriginal authorities because agencies weren't sure how many long-term positions they were going to have as the case files were transferred between agencies, she said.
Although devolution finished in 2005, Henley said "they are still not hiring permanent people."
"We've got people at Winnipeg Child and Family Services who've been in term positions for five years," she said.
Henley also said vacancy management -- keeping vacant positions empty for a period of time to save money -- is a well known tool government departments are directed to use every year.
She said having so many term positions makes for an unstable workforce, and contributes to high staff turnover.
mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
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