1.8 Agency Notified System

Agency Notified Child Abuse in Canada

All Canadian provinces and territories have child welfare agencies, the Children’s aid societies. They serve to ensure the safety of children, who might not be safe at their homes for a variety of reasons. The Children’s aid societies are responsible for investigating reported cases of abuse or neglect of children, protecting children if necessary, providing counselling and support for families, and arranging children for adoption. With all of these agencies grouped together, they cover the whole country and form the Canadian Child Welfare System.

With reporting child abuse and mistreatment, everyone in Canada is required by law to report suspected child abuse or neglect. It is also worth mentioning that one’s duty to report any suspected child maltreatment overrides their professional confidentiality, this includes any provincial statutes. Everyone in Canada is obliged to report that a child is, or maybe in need of any form of protection even when the information is privileged and confidential. The only exceptions will be the privilege between a lawyer and their clients.

Each province and territory in Canada has its version and sets of laws that ensure the safety of children. But let’s just back-track a little, what does it mean to be a child? Well, the answer is it differs amongst the provinces and territories, these laws set a specific age range for their protective services, namely the age of protection. If you are under this age range for the age of protection, which ranges from under 16 to under 19 across Canada, then you are classified as a child and you are under the protection of these laws.

Despite the differences in the child welfare systems, child welfare laws and the age of protection throughout Canada, the first interest of all agencies for child abuse is ensuring the safety of children. Here are also some common features that all agencies share:
– For the children that are in need, their best interest must be considered
– Stability and continued care for children is key
– When decisions are being made, the views of children are important and should be taken into consideration since it impacts their future
– Different cultural heritages should be respected at all times, especially for indigenous children
– The parent’s or caregiver’s primary responsibility for child-rearing is respected

Process of Reporting Suspected Case of Child Abuse

Here is a schematic overview of what it looks like from when an agent receives a referral to when the file is closed.

Strengths and Limitations of Agency Notified Child Abuse System

After taking a look at the process of reporting a case of child maltreatment, let’s talk about the potential strengths and weaknesses of the agency notified child abuse system that Canada is currently using.

Strengths of Agency Notified Child Abuse System

Collaborative interventions refer to actions that require one or more departments working in collaboration towards the same and goal. To put it in context for child maltreatment, collaborative interventions mean that the Children’s Aid Society would be working alongside other related departments when it comes to protecting children from abusers. Whenever a social service staff accepts a new case and starts investigating, they will contact related departments for assistance. For instance, they might contact available foster families, shelters or care centres for the child that needs placements and temporary safe environments.

To add on, they might also contact the Public Health Agency of Canada since they are also involved in surveying child maltreatment, collecting collaborative data, and data interpretations. Social service staff might also contact other human agency services for family preservation services and programs if the families require this service. For some more serious cases, social service staff and agents might also have to work with the police force for various reasons, like safeguarding the child, taking protective actions, and investigating crimes whenever necessary.

This forms an extensive network that involves multiple departments to work together towards a case. This also ensures that all cases are investigated thoroughly, extensively but also promptly so the affected child and family get the appropriate help and intervention as soon as possible.

Since everyone in Canada is obliged to and not just encouraged to report incidents of child maltreatment whenever they see one, the chances of saving the child and stopping further maltreatment are significantly increased.

Other than the agencies notified system, another system is the self-reported system. The self-reported system relies on those being abused or maltreated to report their history of abuse. Although this might be more straightforward, this method is more costly, more prone to recall bias, and measures for self-reported child abuse aren’t usually reliable nor valid. Moreover, in cases of child maltreatment and abuse, agents often do not get enough or valid information from the children because of their young age.

Hence, adopting the agency’s notified system allows social service staff to investigate cases in a cheaper, more time-efficient, and subjective way since the agency notified system already has its well-developed guidelines such as the Child Welfare Eligibility Spectrum.

Limitations of Agency Notified Child Abuse System

There are always two sides to the story, limitations might include:

Agents might not be from the same cultural heritage from the family he/she is investigating on, therefore interventions may not be as successful. A good example would be when a child ‘got a bad grade’ from school. Western parents tend to comfort their children with words of encouragement, with positive comments, telling them that they have already done their best, they have done a good job and just study harder for the next test. But Asian parents might encourage their children with negative comments, they are still trying to enlighten and encourage their children regardless, but just in a different way. Asian parents might pick on their children’s mistakes, asking them why did they make those ‘silly mistakes’ or telling them they are not good enough.

Although this might seem stereotypical, it does happen in real life. This all comes down to different social norms from different societies, different upbringings, there is nothing wrong with both educating methods, it all just comes down to cultural differences. But because of this cultural difference, it might be hard for the agents to understand, investigate and evaluate whether the child has been subjected to maltreatment.

During investigations, questions would be asked by the agents to both the abuser and the child subjected to abuse or maltreatment. Children might lie to the agents just to protect their abuser because for various reasons; it could be out of love or attachment, where the child simply just doesn’t want to leave their family or caregiver, and they don’t want to live at unfamiliar places such as with foster families or shelters.

It could also be because they were told or threatened to lie by the abuser! The abusers might simply tell the child to lie about being maltreated so they could avoid taking up the responsibilities and penalties.

Without an objective and observable facts, it is hard for the agents to investigate whether a child was being maltreated or not and makes it even harder to address the problems and give put respective solutions.

This might seem cliché but a shortage of staff is a real problem! Investigating individual cases of child maltreatment is a labour-intensive job. From current social service reviews, turnover rates range from 30 to 60 percent in a typical year for social workers, mainly due to stress and emotional exhaustion.

Agents and social workers are subjected to high caseloads and workloads, handling an average of 24 to 31 children at any given time, but it is recommended that each agent should be responsible for 15 cases at most at any given time.