The Order of Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists of Quebec announced on Saturday the imminent holding of the Estates General to take stock and find solutions to the problems which are becoming more and more widespread in the field.
During the year and a half that the process will last, the Order wishes to tour the province and hear testimonies from social workers, but also from other stakeholders, such as community organizations, Aboriginal communities or schools.
With an overload of tasks, social workers often find themselves “unable to do their job in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the profession”, warned the president of the Order, Pierre-Paul Malenfant, in a telephone interview. He recalled that 20,000 Quebecers are on waiting lists to receive mental health assistance.
“Often, we will find ourselves working continuously in crisis, managing waiting lists rather than being able to take the time with people who have needs to support them in solving their problems,” said he explained.
Result: the profession is experiencing an “exodus of professionals”, as many of them are leaving the network. “For us, this is a warning signal, we must stop this erosion. »
Mr. Malenfant called on the government of François Legault not to forget social work in its future plan to restore the health and social services system.
In the budget tabled this week, Quebec invested $5.2 billion over five years for this purpose.
The consequences of the Barrette reform
In recent years, “the budgets have mainly been concentrated around the medical, around the hospital,” said Mr. Malenfant. However, “if we do not invest significantly in prevention […] people end up going to see their doctor, end up in the emergency room, when they could rely on front-line, local and accessible social programs”.
He cast some blame on the 2015 Barrette reform, which “created megastructures with management where everything is concentrated around the ministry”. “We, what we say, is that we need decentralized structures,” he pleaded.
“In the new structure, there is no longer a Department of Social Services. It’s all broken up and everyone is on their side doing their job as best they can. »
As a result, he says, there is a “lack of clinical support” provided to social workers, who often “can encounter difficult situations that require expert opinion, to be able to speak with clinical counselors “.
He would thus like to be able to “enlist all the professionals, be it social workers, doctors, psychologists or other members of the network, so that they can work together with a reality”.
According to him, the pandemic has been able to “bring to light that our social safety net, which was perceived as so much at the forefront, is pierced everywhere”.
A society in constant evolution
The Estates General, the first in the field since 1998, will also be an opportunity to look at the new issues to which stakeholders must adapt, in order to identify best practices in this regard.
Aging is a major issue, while “in 2030, there will be 25% of the population who will be over 65, so that requires adjustments”. Mr. Malenfant also cited “the growth of social inequalities”, linked to “galloping inflation”. The latter exceeded 5% last January, according to the most recent data from the Bank of Canada.
The climate crisis is another issue that did not exist before.
Marginalized groups have also started to take their place in the spotlight, such as indigenous peoples or transgender people.
This article was produced with the financial support of the Meta Fellowships and The Canadian Press for News.