This text is part of the special Social Work section
According to Françoise David, the Dubé reform promotes an accounting and hospital-centric vision, within which social services are still the poor cousins.
February 2023. Pierre-Paul Malenfant, president of the Order of Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists of Quebec, and his team meet me in a café in my neighborhood. Pierre-Paul presents to me the draft General States of Social Work. I’m excited! The timing seems particularly good to me, because Minister Dubé’s reform of the health and social services system is coming. At this point, we already feel that there will only be a hospital-centric vision and that social services will be the poor parents of this reform. I would dare say: as always!
I know, when I leave my new friends, that we will see each other again. In the months that followed, under the leadership of the Order and several partners who joined it in the process, the Institut du Nouveau Monde began a long period of consultation. Pierre-Paul and his team came back to me last November with a proposal: to speak at the Summit, a crucial step in mobilizing social work actors. I am enthusiastic ! For what ?
Because the Quebec population is increasingly expressing its dissatisfaction with a government that breaks key promises, quietly privatizes health and social services, heavily subsidizes multinationals allegedly in the name of the fight against climate change and is very little active in the face of the enormous housing crisis we are experiencing.
Cherry on the sundae : Christian Dubé’s reform was adopted under a gag order a few weeks later, even though its article-by-article study could not even be completed! And the Prime Minister stated on December 8, 2023: “This is how it works in the private sector and this is how it should work in the public sector! » The Prime Minister referring to the increased powers of managers. A must according to him. Well no !
Social services: an absolute necessity!
While the current government focuses all its energy on yet another bureaucratic reform of the health system, one thing is obvious: it seems that the “reformers” have never heard of social services, of their importance, of their capacity to help people have less need for health services! Find the mistake !
In its brief presented during the consultations of the Estates General, the Order writes: “Social work works to defend the rights of people, and particularly those who are in situations of economic and social disadvantage or vulnerability. It fights against inequalities in order to support people’s power to act and encourage their full civic participation. » This takes us a long way from accounting, or even managerial, approaches, so far removed from people’s real needs! At a time not so long ago, Quebec governments placed CLSCs at the forefront of essential tools for the well-being of individuals and communities. There were doctors, of course, but above all social workers, community organizers, family assistants and so on. Above all, these establishments, located throughout Quebec, governed themselves, and their board of directors included several representatives of the village and the neighborhood. We did not hesitate to build collective projects. Managers and staff knew that the best way to support people, to give them good health, is to empower them. On their lives and in their community. It seems so far away when a government imposes ITS vision of public services increasingly inhabited by the keyword: performance. This is the other side of the social vision defended by the commissioners of the Estates General of Social Work as well as the numerous participants in the consultation activities.
In the consultation report that I read, the anxiety, and even anger, of the social workers is palpable. I write mainly in women’s terms, because social work is a profession made up of 88% women (ISQ). Why this anger? Because these courageous and dedicated women would really like to be allowed to work in a way that helps people and communities sustainably. Let us stop timing the intervention time, the duration of meetings with people or families. Let us reduce the paperwork, the bureaucratic obstacles!
But that’s not all. As long as we implicitly accept that evicted tenants sleep on the street… as long as too many seniors suffer from poverty and loneliness… as long as our teenagers do not have all the support necessary for the difficult transition to adulthood… as long as we tolerate discrimination and racism, we can turn the health and social services system into a sort of bureaucratic multinational, we will not have solved anything at all. This is also what the three commissioners, spokespersons for the long consultation of recent months, also say. Their report is clear: we must restore citizen power, justice and equality to their full relevance and support all social interventions that go in this direction. This report deserves careful reading.
So, how to do it? Get together, talk to each other, mobilize. Together ! Participate in the Summit of the Estates General of Social Work on April 19 and 20. I’ll be there. And you ?
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