Seven Oaks not ruling out school social worker layoffs

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This article was published 20/04/2023 (903 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Seven Oaks School Division is not ruling out layoffs as leaders undertake an overhaul of clinical services and reassign travelling social workers to fixed posts.

Eight professionals currently fill a total of 7.4 full-time equivalent social worker positions in the north Winnipeg division; it remains unclear how many of these individuals will have jobs and what their titles will be in 2023-24.

This week, administrators informed employees about coming changes, owing to school needs and budget constraints.

“Our board is managing funding increases that have not kept pace with cost and enrolment increases. We’ve cut staff and programs that we wish we could have kept. We are simply looking to make the best possible use of the limited resources we have,” said superintendent Brian O’Leary, who oversees the public schooling of roughly 12,000 students.

O’Leary said school leaders have indicated they want full-time support services staff rather than travelling specialists who visit their buildings on a part-time basis.

“We’re moving away from a clinical approach to social work to school-based supports,” he said, noting counsellors, learning support teachers and administrators are among those who can offer similar services to social workers in city schools, and already do so.

The division is in the process of evaluating its support staff roster at present. While psychologists and speech pathologists have unique skill sets that lend themselves to a model where they can manage caseloads across the division, O’Leary indicated the same does not make sense for social workers.

Last month, local trustees voted to raise local taxes — in defiance of a provincial directive to freeze fees as Tory government works to phase out the tax in its entirety — to avoid sizable staffing and programming cuts.

At the time, the board indicated the move would allow it to make “very modest increases” in teaching and other staff, and continue providing free lunch supervision, musical instrument rentals and field trips. However, the superintendent suggested funds would still fall short of meeting student support needs.

The national OurSCHOOL study, undertaken in divisions across Canada looks at student well-being, achievement and related topics. Seven Oaks’ recent findings show the number of Grades 7-12 participants who indicated they were struggling with mental health challenges rose significantly between late 2018 and early 2022.

The amount of students who disclosed experiencing “prolonged periods when they feel sad, discouraged and inadequate” around this time last year was 11 percentage points higher than the total who reported the same prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

There was an almost identical spike in participants self-reporting moderate or high anxiety levels.

“(Our members) have never been so busy,” said Nicole Scott, president of the Manitoba Association of School Social Workers. “They’re getting called into schools that they maybe haven’t been called into before or as much, and their caseloads have increased post-pandemic.”

Pandemic-related challenges have prompted some divisions to recruit and hire more social workers to their student services teams, Scott said.

School social workers’ responsibilities vary from division to division, but their duties may include everything from engaging families with poor attendance patterns to supporting students with self-regulation.

Manitoba’s largest school division, Winnipeg School Division, employs about 35 full-time equivalent social workers every year. That figure is currently about 11 in both River East Transcona and Louis Riel, almost 10 in Pembina Trails and approximately nine in St. James-Assiniboia.

The Seven Oaks Teachers’ Association, which represents social workers, did not provide comment Wednesday.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie