Social worker burnout affecting kids in N.S. care

For a child in care, often the person who ends up helping them make life decisions is their social worker. But in Nova Scotia, advocates say the workers themselves are in trouble. Jackie Barkley often works closely with government social workers. I think it's an enormous amount of suffering. I think that's the best word for it. I know moral injury is kind of the right word, but I think it's suffering. Barkley says complex child protection cases are often handled by entry-level social workers. They've told her about burnout, lack of guidance, and high turnover. Recently, Nova Scotia's chief medical examiner raised similar concerns. He was examining the death of a youth in care who died riding a motorcycle. Dr. Matthew Bowes said the quality of the boy's care was diminished because he didn't have consistent contact with social workers. I think it's pretty clear from the record in this one case that the high turnover made it difficult for that person to really trust and to form a deeper relationship with the system. Bose told CBC the problem lies in how the social worker role is constructed and that more support is essential. In the recommendations following the boy's death, Bose made it clear this has important implications for the quality of care that child and family well-being may be able to provide and deserves serious reflection and careful reform. Earlier this month, department staff told MLAs they have been making changes. They say over the last two years, cases per worker have dropped from an average of roughly 23 to 18. Vacancies were about 15 percent, and that's been cut in half. So we are very pleased as well that our vacancy rates for social workers are right now at about 7 percent. This matters to former kids in care. During his seven years in care, Grayson Balzan went through six social workers. He says he rarely heard from any of them except the last one. She actually would take me out for my birthday, which really, really meant a lot to me because I never had a social worker do that. He says his worker visited him for lunch on his 18th birthday. His time in care was turbulent, but that day remains a good memory for him years later. Jackie Barkley believes burned-out social workers are usually too exhausted to provide that kind of personalized care. But she thinks if they could, it would change many things. I think we could dramatically reduce what happens downstream to all the young people who end up being in care. Shana Lux, CBC News, Halifax.