While Premier François Legault and his government seem to agree that more mental health support must be offered, the Order of Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists of Quebec (OTSTCFQ) offers him two means of take action.
Expressing concern about the labor shortage that is also affecting social workers, the order suggests in particular that access to university programs in social work be broadened. According to data provided by the OTSTCFQ, the nine existing programs would receive approximately 5,000 applications for admission per year, but could only accept 800 students.
Faced with this obvious interest in the profession, the order calls on the Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry, to adequately fund the institutions so that they can train more professionals.
“The universities are willing to do it, but it takes the budget to do it,” said the president of the OTSTCFQ, Pierre-Paul Malenfant, who said he had discussions with Minister Déry’s office on this subject.
Mr. Malenfant states that there is currently a shortage of 1,500 social workers in the network. To train more of them, universities need subsidized budgets, space and internship places in the network.
Keyword: proximity
In addition, the OTSTCFQ, which marks Social Workers’ Week from March 19 to 25, is asking Quebec to review the organization of social services in order to provide better access to the population.
According to a survey commissioned from the firm Léger, 45% of respondents “identified accessibility to social services, including mental health services, as one of their three most urgent issues to be resolved in Quebec,” reads statement released on Monday.
“When there was the reform, where we created megastructures, we ended up with mega-establishments that are far from the communities,” laments Pierre-Paul Malenfant.
“There are dozens of CLSCs that are closed in Quebec, where there are no more services when the population needs them,” he adds, giving the example of his region, Bas-Saint-Laurent. .
The order calls for a decentralization of services “to make it close to the communities that are in need”, insists its president.
“It’s not normal that people have to travel great distances to access services,” he said.
Furthermore, 80% of survey respondents believe that there is a shortage of social workers in the province. A sign that their services are not easy to access or rooted in the community.
The Léger survey commissioned by the OTSTCFQ interviewed 1,007 Quebec adults online between March 3 and March 5, 2023, but cannot be assigned a margin of error, as surveys conducted over the Internet are not considered samples. random.
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