Money wasted because of social worker shortage in foster care: lawyer

Many children across Newfoundland and Labrador are being unnecessarily kept in foster care because there are too few social workers within the system, a St. John's lawyer says.

"It's brutally expensive," Brian Wentzell told CBC News on Wednesday, describing how the provincial government is forced to pay private companies to care for children who have been temporarily removed from their homes, and who cannot be placed in ordinary care because of a shortage of foster parents.

Wentzell, who was reacting to two recently released reports on child and youth services in the province, said the government must focus not only on the effects of foster care on children, but on the unnecessary expense.

"You need to get these children back out of care as fast as you can," Wentzell said in an interview.

"There are risks to children being in care — not at the hands of the caregivers, but the psychological risks associated with embarrassment, anger, frustration, a sense of upheaval."

Wentzell pointed out that delays have become common in the social services system, which he said has meant large costs to the government.

"It's $6,00 or $7,000 a week, so if you have a three-month delay in getting a child home because the parents need counselling services or assessment services that they can't get access to because of wait lists, well, three months would be somewhere between $80,000 and $100,000, and that's just for one family," he said.

Wentzell said the key issue must always be safety, and that no child should ever be returned to a home where they may be at risk for injury or abuse.

A report released this week by the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate found that the foster care system remains plagued by a shortage of social workers, as well as a high turnover in the field.

Wentzell said more social workers are needed in child and family services, in order to reduce caseloads.