Canada’s Auditor General unequivocally condemned the Northwest Territories’ child and family services, again, in a report published on Tuesday.
Examining the territory’s child protection services for the second time in four years, the Auditor General’s office – which had been deeply critical of what it found in 2014 – said simply: things got worse.
Social workers lost contact with almost nine in every 10 children placed in foster care, didn’t carefully screen where children were placed, and frequently failed to take basic steps like consulting criminal record checks, the report alleged.
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The department made mostly administrative changes that didn’t work and weren’t properly resourced, appointed senior staff who didn’t have the right experience, and sometimes did not know what front-line staff were doing.
“We determined that many of the services provided to children and families in the Northwest Territories that we examined were in fact worse than when we examined them in 2014,” Glenn Wheeler, who led the audit, said in a statement.
“We are deeply concerned by the findings,” Wheeler continued. “Children will…
