Issue
The Alberta Social Policy Framework was created to coordinate and inform the development and delivery of social programming across Alberta.
Background
As a result of extensive consultations with individuals and organizations province wide, Alberta’s New Social Policy Framework was launched in February of 2013. The Framework was designed to improve the capacity of Alberta’s social programs protect the vulnerable, reduce Inequality, support a person-centeredsystem of high-quality services and enable collaboration and partnerships. Through this Framework, the Alberta Government is seeking to become more of an influencer, convener and partner and less a service provider, funder and legislator. Albertans wish to move away from having their government attempt to control and regulate behavior and towards empowerment, facilitation and opportunity creation. Services need to be more integrated and coordinated and focus on providing skills and resources instead of addressing symptoms and deficiencies. Our success will be measured by the outcomes that we achieve. These outcomes will be assessed on the basis of measureable improvements to quality of life, community values and human dignity not adherence to arbitrary bureaucratic timelines and procedures.
This plan seeks to empower communities, groups and individuals to get involved with building and delivering the services that are important for them and is not intended to continue to entrench the existing top down system of service delivery.
As we move forward, additional discussions will be needed to clarify roles, address complex priority issues in a coordinated way, and identify the best ways to monitor and evaluate progress made towards the framework’s outcomes. (Alberta Social Policy Framework, 2013, p.21)
The province wide consultation process identified several shared areas of need and eight specific transformational initiatives have been identified in response: Early Childhood Development, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Common Service Access, Primary Health Care Initiatives, Results-based Budgeting,partner with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, Safe Communities, 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. However, this Framework was not designed to limit innovation and services to these specific areas.
Suggested Key Message
Under Alberta’s new Social Policy Framework, social programs will be delivered more efficiently and effectively.
The Framework will increase our focus on prevention, empowerment and inclusion and move away from a crisis driven, bureaucratic approach.
Social services will be planned and delivered by the people and communities that they are intended to serve.
Analysis
This is a well designed and researched policy with tremendous potential to reduce costs and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of social programing across the province. However, Albertans are being denied these benefits due to poor implementation of this initiative. Moving away from an expert driven, top down, service delivery model to a system based more on empowerment, mutual support and community development can be very challenging, especially for the existing bureaucracy. Letting go of control is never easy. Encouraging and supporting individuals, groups and communities to step up and take on responsibility for addressing their own struggles can also be very difficult. Further, moving away from the current way of doing things and onto a new approach is nearly impossible when alternatives and options are not yet in place. However, once better choices for support and service delivery are available, the entire system will begin to move. Therefore, initiatives to assist, encourage, empower and provide resources to groups and communities seeking new ways to address their struggles is essential to the achievement of the goals of the new Alberta Social Policy Framework.
Examples:
1)The courts and the current legal support system are not functioning. Many Albertans are not able to access the support that they need and the judicial system is completely overwhelmed. Cases of parents fighting for custody of children and child support take up a large portion of the judicial systems time and resources and these lengthy struggles are often very harmful for the children and their families. The development of a group focused on providing legal education in group settings while encouraging mutual support could greatly reduce the time, money and emotional trauma currently required by these types of legal processes.
2)Alberta Government programsare overly involved in the lives of Alberta’s indigenous populations. Services to support these communities are largely tied to band based governments even though this route to empowering these groups is well known to be ineffective and often damaging. Many of the healthiest indigenous populations are not connected with bands or the Indian Act. These people have chosento build healthier alternatives to living under the oppression of the new comer governments but remained connected to their cultures, lands and traditions. Working to include and encourage all indigenous populations to develop inclusive, legitimate, representative and self-supporting groups and then assisting them with providing services to their own populations will greatly reduce their overrepresentation within child welfare, the courts, jails, mental health and other services.
3)Children’s services does a very poor job of parenting. A large proportion of children who are supported by Alberta Government programs, especially those who grow up in alternative homes and facilities, end up in jail, on welfare and facing child welfare involvement relating to their own children. Sadly, few efforts are being made to assess the long term effectiveness of many of children’s services current intervention strategies. There is currently no means to connect with adult foster alumni (graduates of the foster care system) and no interest in seeking out the views of any of these adults who have enjoyed success. Instead, a self-fulfilling belief exists within child welfare that children who experience trauma will go on to harm their own children and will be permanently damaged by that trauma preventing success in adulthood. These beliefs are not based on any scientifically based assessments.
A large portion of children in the care of children’s services and involved with government care are impacted by FASD. Intensifying efforts to identify and better serve this population is essential. These people are living with serious brain damage which greatly impairs their ability to function in society. Many foster alumni adults are successful. This high level of involvement with FASD impacted foster alumni adults inappropriately skews perceptionsof outcomes for the entire population. Addressing this issue via some solid, scientifically based research would be an excellent first step. Also, supporting and encouraging the development of a foster alumni/non-family privileged alliance like those in the US would assist greatly with the research. Once healthy foster alumni/non-family privileged adults have been identified and encouraged to speak up, they can also act as a supportive resource.
Recommendations
Improve awareness of Alberta’s Social Policy Framework and increase understanding of its intent.
Increase involvement with marginalized groups and ramp up efforts to empower them to better serve themselves.
Decrease expert driven emphasis of current program delivery.
Promote development of supportive, empowered groups to deliver and support services to their own communities.