COMMUNITY WELLNESS AND SAFETY
Commitment 4.3.3: Continue to support at-risk children and families through preventative and collaborative approach, including:
•Introducing a risk assessment tool to enable child protection workers to support families more effectively
•Ensuring services for children in care focus not just on safety, but also on stability and child development
•Improving the coordination, delivery and effectiveness of family services through an integrated care model
•Improving system supports for Aboriginal children and families including improving the cultural competence of service providers.
Implementing Structured Decision Making (SDM) responds to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada’s recommendation that the child and family services system needs an improved way of assessing both short and long-term risks to the safety and wellbeing of children. SDM is a state-of-the art, internationally-recognized approach to child protection work, which is developed by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Children’s Research Centre. SDM is a suite of six assessment tools that support child protection work at key decision points in the life of a case, will help make child protection work more family-friendly and will emphasize a focus on family strengths and needs. Four of these tools have been adapted for use in the NWT.
One of the Goals under Building Stronger Families is that every child who is taken into permanent care and custody should have a permanency plan developed at the earliest opportunity. Permanency planning is based on the principle that every child has the right to a permanent family, with the child’s family of origin as the first option. Permanency planning lays out the steps, the services and the outcomes required to re-unit the child with his or her family. If all efforts to re-unite the child with the family are unsuccessful, permanency planning may include placement with extended family, kinship care, adoption or other arrangements.
The Department intends to make improvements to coordination and delivery of family services by integrating training opportunities for service providers working in child and family services and mental health and addictions. To improve support systems for indigenous youth and families in the NWT, the Department has incorporated cultural competency into staff training through the use of a traditional knowledge holder.