Child and youth care specialists can make schools safer, association says

The Child and Youth Care Workers’ Association of Manitoba is calling on public schools to hire more of its members to prevent student outbursts and related staff injuries.

Not unlike social workers, the professionals — many of whom have a certificate or diploma from Red River College Polytechnic — are trained in child development, relationship-building and crisis intervention.

Chelsea Champagne said she and her colleagues’ skill sets are well-suited for 21st-century schools, but they have long been overlooked by the education sector.

“I see so much positive potential for change,” said Champagne, president of the association that advocates for roughly 2,000 child and youth care workers and support staff in Winnipeg.

“We could create more safe space in schools and we’re ready to be there.”

The workforce is primarily spread out across community health-care settings, group homes and juvenile corrections facilities.

Champagne said practitioners build “therapeutic relationships” with youths and their families. In doing so, they learn about what triggers behavioural challenges and build individualized plans accordingly, she said.

School staff made 844 more time-loss injury claims — a 332 per cent spike — to the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba last year compared to a decade ago.

An April survey of local educational assistants found seven in 10 had experienced violence on the job.

Half of those respondents indicated they were subjected to it weekly, if not daily, as per the findings released by the Canadian Union of Public Employees Manitoba.

Also during the spring, a Brandon-based resource teacher was conducting a similar study for her PhD; Julie Braaksma’s early findings suggest student-on-teacher violence is taking place across the province and it often goes under-reported.

Alan Campbell, president of the Manitoba School Boards Association, said trustees are both well aware of these safety concerns and realistic that they are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

Student mental-health struggles, stressful household dynamics and unmet educational needs are all “manifesting in the form of violence,” Campbell said, noting the COVID-19 pandemic worsened matters although such issues predate 2020.

“There is a heightened need and expectation on the part of communities that schools are better equipped to support students, no matter how they, themselves, are equipped to come to school and to learn,” he said.

The veteran trustee said school boards are paying closer attention to the size and makeup of their clinician teams.

While some boards have added child and youth care workers to their staffing complements, budget constraints continue to prove challenging, he said.

Winnipeg’s River East Transcona School Division was an outlier in 2007 when it began hiring the specialists.

Jón Olafson, assistant superintendent of student services, said they’ve since become “an integral part” of RETSD, visiting early, middle and senior years schools to help implement student-specific plans.

Nearby Louis Riel School Division established the first of its now-seven child and youth care worker positions in 2021.

Administrators in the Pembina Trails School Division followed suit this year. Their roster of the staffers is slated to double, to two, in 2025-26.

Champagne applauded the leaders who’ve embraced the professionals as the experts they are in how childhood trauma and unmet needs impact behaviours.

What makes these practitioners different from their school social worker and psychologist colleagues is their training in real-time crisis support, she said.

Champagne noted that child and youth care practitioners regularly work with the same students so they can get to know them on a personal level, help them build positive habits and prevent outbursts.

“We’re not there to be EAs or TAs (teaching assistants). We’re not there to teach kids. We’re there to help them manage their social, emotional, behavioural needs,” she added.

RRC Polytech has issued 380 diplomas since launching its two-year child and youth care program — which began as a certificate program in 1995 — about 18 years ago.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca