If you were to ask a car dealer how many cars are on the lot and how many are out on lease, in probably less than two minutes you would have the answer.
Cars are valuable and, like many businesses dealing with expensive items, specialized software puts a lot of information at the fingertips.
What's more valuable than any car, or any inanimate object, for that matter?
A human. When that human happens to be a child, it is the responsibility of someone to care for it and nurture it. If, as sometimes happens in modern society, the child is in the care of Social Services, that department has a huge responsibility.
But a new report by Brian Atkinson, the acting provincial auditor, released Wednesday said that after two years of urging, the Ministry of Social Services still does not know how many children are under care, who they are and where they live.
The minister said they can tell how many children are in the system, just that it's convoluted. And the case management system is being replaced, added the minister. But how did it get so bad? A car dealer in such poor shape would be out of business or its manager fired and replaced long before disaster struck.
One estimate puts 4,700 children in the care of Social Services. Even if the ministry is able to track the numbers, it doesn't appear to be able to manage the number of children. On the same day the report was released, a woman accused in a foster baby death had her court case delayed again.
Twenty-two-month-old Evander Daniels was found partially submerged in a bathtub at a farm in the Aberdeen area north of Saskatoon on June 8. The child was pronounced dead in hospital. Saskatchewan's chief coroner has said the toddler had "extensive scald-type burns" that may have contributed to his death. There were four other children in the foster home when Evander died and all were removed.
The child never should have been placed with the family, and the case is an example of a system in horribly poor shape. The system should never have been allowed to get so bad that, in all likelihood, it played some part in the death of a child.
The current government has been working to improve its case management systems, but both it and the previous government let things go sour too long.
They failed the most valuable, the most vulnerable, among us.
With files from The Canadian Press
