The Advocate Asked Us To Not Look Away

‍For me, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Three documents, in as many weeks, have outlined tragic outcomes for vulnerable individuals in our province. The open letter to members of the New Brunswick Legislature outlining failures of the Y.E.S program, offered three immediate actions they could take to follow up on the information he conveyed. The second report, “Nobody’s Problem” outlines a series of decisions that ended with a young life coming to an end. It contains recommendations as well for government to consider. And finally, Death by System. The story of “Alice”, an older adult that died from a preventable death. Five recommendations followed.

‍ ‍The Advocate asked us to not look away, and I for one, cannot.‍ ‍

Let’s begin with the children. In New Brunswick, we have been taught so many lessons and on the other side of those lessons were young lives who perished or lived in trauma that should have been prevented.

John Ryan Turner (1994), Jessica Dawn Brewer (1996), 5 children found living in squalor (2016) and now “Bobby” (2026).

‍The non-profit sector and front-line workers know this list is longer and will continue to get longer. They dread it.

‍And there cannot be one past or current Minister of Social Development in our province that doesn’t feel heartbroken, deflated or even overwhelmed at hearing news like this. But here’s the feeling a current Minister cannot feel: helpless. Because they are not. The same goes for front-line social workers. It’s tough to take this news and not feel like you want to bury yourself and sleep for a year. I will admit, I can only imagine how difficult this is. But social workers and the current Minister can decide that recognizing the chain of events that have been validated needs a strong determination and willingness to strive for it to never happen again.

‍I came through my time in government a little scarred. Some of it was political, and some of it was working within a system I felt was too slow to respond to important issues. I came out of my elected time feeling that things will not change unless government and the civil service share a joint responsibility of being accountable for outcomes.

‍I have spoken about my observations of the civil service in my blog “the Gatekeepers”. I leveled those opinions at the senior civil service. However, there is a whole hierarchy of management positions within the civil service that I believe should be looked at closely. Accountability has to be at every single layer. And if there are too many layers, then maybe that’s where it begins. But what I am willing to put my name on is that I feel there has aways been, based on my lived experience in the positions I have held, an aversion to act urgently and decisively against an interpretation of policy.

‍Let me frame this from a taxpayer perspective, many of us who don’t have the education of the civil servants who serve the province. It’s simple really. If a child, senior or vulnerable adult is in crisis, I believe the public expects our social services system will respond with the appropriate measures to deal with it immediately. And I believe we expect that urgent efforts will be made to validate serious concerns and act on them.

‍As a citizen, I don’t care what region they are in, if they crossed regions or if it crosses departments. Departments, including the RHAs, do not work seamlessly together; far from it. That is not a government problem. That is a civil servant management problem. This is their system. How difficult is it to have a supervisor from one region pick up the phone and call a supervisor from another region?

‍So, here’s the opportunity.

‍Have an immediate gathering of those important managers and supervisors and quickly implement a strategy to fix this. One meeting. A couple of hours. Hammer it out. Fix it. Who calls who, and when? And who’s responsible for keeping the ball rolling until there’s a decent resolution for the child or person our system is there to serve?

‍We have known, for years, that at least a third of our homeless population was once a child in the care of the province. That has been a huge red flag. Yet those numbers have stayed stagnant. They are not getting better. What’s the plan?

‍From where I sit, it won’t get better because Social Development will say it’s Health, and Health will say it’s Education, Education will say it’s Social Development.  Newsflash ….it’s all of them. And working in silos (a constant complaint of every government for the past forty years) shows no sign of letting up. It is like pulling hens’ teeth to try to get departments to find ways to overlap services so they are not duplicated. Everybody wants their own fiefdom.

‍With regards to older adults, long-term care is dependent on our third-party service providers; Home Care Services, Special Care Homes and Nursing Homes. Inspections and implementing regulations is the basic minimum of ensuring the people they serve are within a system qualified to take care of them. But process…process is the civil service domain. It is their responsibility to ensure timely and adequate response to ensure the client or patient has been given every consideration. In most cases these are highly educated people who should be able to apply common sense solutions to common, albeit, complex problems. Front line workers should be empowered to advise for immediate implementation of solutions that are deemed necessary, especially for safety.

‍I used to think that outside consultants were not necessary in government. I used to think that the civil service had the necessary skills to fix the problems government-after-government couldn’t fix. Respectfully, I no longer feel that way. Human nature is human nature, and management of the civil service will not change how they do things if they feel it will interfere with their preference to do things a certain way. The outcomes will not change if the approach does not change.

‍No amount of pointing to the government of the day is going to fix this. I might suggest the need for a Deputy Minister of Government Change Management. And every scenario of overlap between Social Development, Health and Mental Health (including the RHAs), Education and Justice be laser-focused on how these departments work seamlessly, day-to-day. Departments must find a way to put the needs of children, families and/or clients at the forefront and know that at the end of the day, they are safe. This is the role of civil servant management.

‍It’s long overdue. It’s not impossible. And I believe the only barriers are in the minds of civil servants who say it cannot be done.