Media Contacts

Government Communications and Public Engagement

Ministry of Children and Family Development
250 356-1553

Backgrounders

Staffing improvements based on direct feedback

Based on direct feedback from staff and clients, the Ministry of Children and Family Development has made improvements to staffing to further ensure that ministry child-protection workers have the support they need to provide the most streamlined and effective service to B.C. children and families.

Expanded the Provincial Mobile Response Team (PMRT):

  • The PMRT is a team of child-protection workers that travels to communities – on a temporary basis – to assist offices that are critically understaffed, staffed by recent recruits who are in need of mentoring and guidance, or facing a temporary backlog of work.
  • The PMRT continues to provide child-protection services in high-needs offices and in communities where recruiting full-time workers is more difficult.
  • Since November 2014, the PMRT has increased its staffing from five child-protection workers to a full complement of eight.

Created a volunteer roster of social workers:

  • To further support the PMRT and offices where recruitment has been difficult, the ministry has put together a roster of volunteer ministry social workers.
  • Volunteer social workers are from offices throughout the province, and have indicated their interest to help in challenged regional offices for short periods of time, usually between two to four weeks.
  • The number of social workers on the roster continually fluctuates.
  • For example, in August, five volunteers from the roster provided assistance to challenged communities, including Williams Lake, Hazelton, Prince Rupert and Bella Coola.
  • Service Delivery Areas (SDAs) that have volunteers on the roster are being supported to hire additional staff to ensure there are appropriate staffing levels in their offices when volunteers are on the road.

Centralized hiring processes and created a new hiring approach:

  • Following the staffing announcement in November 2014 (http://ow.ly/SuBvm), the ministry worked with the Public Service Agency (PSA) to begin hiring staff in two ways.
  • In communities where recruitment is difficult, applications are ongoing, which means applicants are regularly interviewed for positions. For all other communities, recruitment occurs through quarterly bulk postings that allow for group hires to ensure staff are put in place as quickly as possible.
  • The process for both hiring approaches is now managed centrally, with some assistance from SDA staff.
  • Results to date have been very positive. Decreasing the involvement from SDA staff in the hiring process means that social workers can focus their efforts on urgent and acute cases, and on tasks that require their expertise.