Erin Fletcher
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 24/03) - The Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority is hoping three more child protection workers will be included in the territorial government's 2003 budget.

In 2000, the Child Welfare League of Canada released a review, called "It Takes a Community" urging immediate action be taken in Yellowknife and the Deh Cho region because child protection workers have three times the national average case workload.

The review recommended 22 new workers be hired across the territory. Since the report five new child protection workers have been hired and one supervisor for the Yellowknife region.

There are now 12 child protection workers and three supervisors.

But there is always room for more.

Over the past two years the government has honoured a commitment to hire more workers. Community and family services director Les Harrison hopes the trend continues when the budget is released in April.

But he has had no definitive announcement from the GNWT.

"There is no news yet of how they will come and when," said Harrison.

But more employees or not, things have improved for child protection workers over the past two years thanks to new approaches.

Caseloads have come down over the past year and there are less children in care, said Harrison.

There were 20 per cent less kids ‹ 225 in December 2001 versus 148 in December 2002 ‹ in care.

In 2001 all the kids spent a total 43,996 days in care while in 2002 42,961 days were spent in care ‹ 1,035 days less.

"We're hoping next year the numbers are even lower," said Harrison.

Harrison said the decline is due in part to new approaches like the Yellowknife family-team model.

Although the implementation of the model started this month, the focus on using community resources and encouraging family input have been paramount over the past year.

"I think workers are feeling pretty positive about doing whatever they can to take less intrusive approach with families," he said. "Family preservation and family reunification yields results if we are helping the family to make decisions."

But the lower numbers don't mean there is less of a staffing need, said Harrison. There is more to child protection work then the kids in care. Investigations ‹ which are conducted when a child protection report is made ‹ are on the rise with 50 or 60 more per month, said Harrison.

"These people are not under-worked. They are working hard and they have a lot to accomplish. I'm proud of the work they are doing."