By John Eldon Green, The Guardian Guest Opinion
The Guardian editorial on autistic children (‘MPs duck the challenge of autism. March 5, 2007) could very well have been written about any set of children on PEl, with likely the same results — political indifference. Within the political spectrum of this province and country, there is no natural band containing children. They can only get onto the political agenda by exception, and then only through sustained action by parents who have the energy and skill to keep attention focused on children with special needs.
Some politicians, such as the premier of Ontario in a recent statement, are given to show concern by focusing on the elimination of child poverty – ‘child poverty’ being less acceptable than the ordinary run of poverty. Child poverty is always the result of parental poverty, concerning which the political system in Canada has little interest, as the Ontario premier made clear.
When I became deputy minister of Social Services in 1971, 1 inherited a scandalous situation whereby the welfare assistance administration held itself apart from the child welfare program of the same department. Welfare was very political, child welfare not at all. On March 31, 1971, there were 429 children in the care of the director of child welfare. By 1981, we had reduced this num her to 225, a nearly 50 per cent reduction in what had been an annually increasing number. Over the next 20 years, that decline continued, on a par with the decline in live births hitting 203 in March 1993.
This record was accomplished by assigning the two programs to the director of child welfare for management, by improving assistance for families on the economic fringes, by focusing on other forms of family support, and by making it possible for young women to reach a decision to rear their own children, as nature had surely intended.
The world changed for vulnerable Island children with ‘health reform’ in 1994-95, when child welfare and social assistance programs were separated, and social services became very subordinate to health. Between then and 2005, the number of live births on P.E.I. has decreased by 25 per cent while the number of children in care has increased by 40 per cent (283 in March 2005,) and still growing. Why the silence of the minister of Health and Social Services in the face of this social epidemic?
With the decision to separate the social services programs once again, professional staff were limited to child welfare and soft family support, while non-professional staff were assigned to welfare assistance, turning the clock back 25 years. A related factor was that federal cost- sharing for social assistance payments ended in 1993, replaced by a funding approach which did not ear mark federal payments for any specific purpose; that is, the money was up for grabs.
In short order, the P.E.1. government began bleeding money from social assistance and assigning it to health purposes — at first about 15 per cent of the social assistance budget ($7 million) and now perhaps more. What other province-wide group of Islanders has ever had to take a 15 per cent reduction in annual income at one time, a reduction, by the wav, which was never announced publicly, perhaps not even known until now?
It is worth noting that provincial civil servants sent a Liberal government into perdition in 1996 for a 7.5 per cent salary cut.
Social assistance management and staff have been commended by successive ministers for their success in reducing social assistance expenditures, without consideration as to how those reductions were achieved.
The objective of the social assistance administration should not be to suppress demand, but to meet survival needs of individuals and families in appropriate fashion. Foster care becomes the social safety valve only where parents are unable to cope.
Foster care is a program where foster families must receive a generous retainer even when they have no children in care, plus actual payments when children are in care. By comparison, social assistance is a bargain in situations where children are not at risk.
Considering government indifference to the issue of children in care, one wonders what chance there is that children with autism, a broad spectrum condition, will be given consideration among the pre-election offerings. Maybe, but if so, will children whose families are simply extremely poor get the same level of political attention?
John Eldon Green was deputy minister of Social Services during 1971-1981.
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