DEVOLVING STATUTORY SERVICES
Welcome to your weekly blog post. Every week, I share with you my thinking on a residential care, foster care and/or transitioning from care topic. This week I’m talking about the devolution of statutory powers and responsibilities. If you find this content relevant and useful, please feel free to forward it on to someone else. All 50+ previous blog posts, covering a wide variety of OOHC topics, are now available on the website at https://www.betteroutcomes.org.nz/better-outcomes-blog
Before emigrating to New Zealand from Scotland in 2002, I worked for Aberdeenshire unitary council as their Strategic Services Manager for children’s services. Sound like an impressive job title yes? And it was a great job. However, including me and my small team, social work ‘headquarters’ where I was based, probably consisted of no more than 25 people and that included disability, aged care, and criminal justice services!
In Scotland statutory social work services are devolved to 32 unitary local authorities. Covering about 6,000 km squared with its 16 towns and many villages, Aberdeenshire’s population is only 260,000. In Scotland this still made it by population a comparatively large local authority (the western isles where I went to secondary school is also a unitary local authority and it only has a population of 25,000 people!). However, as a unitary local authority alongside social workers, it employed a wide range of people including teachers and housing officers. While there was some quite a lot of NGO (and no private) residential provision, all foster care and transitioning from care services were provided directly by the Council. With a workforce of almost 20,000 people it was by most standards a large organisation.
You’ll see a similar pattern of devolution in England and Wales (London famously has 32 boroughs all with devolved statutory child welfare responsibilities). Such devolution is also seen in many other parts of Europe. For example Norway, with its population of about 5m, has 356 local authorities or Municipalities; they have the primary responsibility for delivering statutory (and non-statutory) child welfare services, be it with some provision and support at the Counties level (Norwegian Municipalities are also responsibility for primary-aged schooling, outpatient health services, and unemployment services). While the capital Oslo is both a Municipality and a County, many of the 356 municipalities are exceptionally small.
However, in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand any devolution of child welfare services to date has been to not-for-profit NGOs rather than territorial local authorities (Australians and Canadians will already recognise that constitutionally child welfare service are not devolved to states and provinces by their Federal government). For example in Ontario Canada, responsibility for all statutory child welfare services is devolved by the Province to Children’s Aid Societies (currently 49 including 11 Indigenous societies) and has been for over 100 years. In Australia, while this is probably better seen as contracting-out services rather than devolution per se, most if not all Australian OOHC provision is now delivered through NGOs and in some states and territories NGO’s also provide services that would otherwise have been undertaken by a statutory social worker employed by the state or territory.
In contrast in New Zealand, notwithstanding a number of recent largely localised initiatives with Iwi (tribes) and Maori organisations, (and historically with three mainstream OOHC providers) little has to date been devolved. Indeed, along with the Republic of Ireland (through its government agency Tulsa), New Zealand is rare amongst advanced industrialised societies in even trying to directly deliver statutory child welfare services nationally.
Last week in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, it was announced that the Cowessess First Nation would take charge of its own child welfare services, under an agreement with the federal government. An accord was signed by Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe. The Cowessess First Nation are the first to take up such a right under the Act respecting First nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families. Passed in 2019 indigenous groups, who wish to do so can according to the Federal Government, design and deliver child and family services solutions that best suit their needs. The signing of the Accord also follows Canada’s United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act receiving royal assent only last month (it removed it’s objection to UNDRIP in 2016).
While the Act respecting First nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families has been described by the prominent First Nations child advocate Cindy Blackstock as a ‘Faustian Bargain” (that’s not good!), and Reuters notes that the Federal government has yet to confirm whether they will continue to fund First Nation's child and family services costs, more indigenous peoples are expected to enter into similar agreements.
The Canadian Federal government appears to be ceding sovereignty to First Nations people’s in relation to child welfare services. There are clear parallels with the current situation in New Zealand in the light of the Waitangi Tribunal’s report on Oranga Tamariki - the Ministry for Children, and their recommendations early this year (discussed in an earlier blog post). Amid growing support for a harder form of biculturalism, some form of devolution for statutory child welfare services to Iwi and Maori organisations is now almost inevitable.
In this there is potentially much for New Zealand and Canada to learn from each other, and possibly also with some in Australia, the United States, Scandinavian countries and others with indigenous populations. However, while the contexts are different, I would argue that there are also opportunities for a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges and lessons learnt, by also learning from the successes and mistakes in jurisdictions where others forms of devolution are central to their statutory child welfare systems. Any national and devolved system will have advantages and disadvantages. For the outcomes of indigenous and other children to meaningfully and quickly improve, as well as building upon the advantages that devolution will bring, some consideration also needs to be given to any potential or even likely disadvantages being effectively mitigated.
And as ever, thanks again from me for the important work that you do.
Kia kaha (Stay Strong).
Iain
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