Near the end of February, Emily, a social worker with extensive experience working in child protective services, received news that made her heart sink.
A six-year-old child had been stabbed in broad daylight in downtown Halifax, allegedly by a 19-year-old woman.
Her first thought?
It might be one of her clients.
“I honestly went through every teenager that I had on my caseload and thought it could have been any one of them that was in that position,” she said in an interview with CBC News last month.
Her colleague Stephanie wasn’t surprised either.
“My first reaction was: ‘Of course that happened,'” she said.
As more information became known, both were relieved to learn it wasn’t one of their clients who instigated the attack, or who was hurt.
But after the mother of the accused spoke to CBC News about how she warned police, doctors and social workers that her daughter was dangerous, they decided to speak out.
“Front-line workers have been crying out for years that this is going to happen,” said Emily.
“This is an example of a family that has tried to reach out, has come in contact with child protection, and we see this every day where we cannot respond adequately or connect people to resources to help these families in crisis.”
Andrea Hancock spoke to CBC News about the years she spent trying to get her 19-year-old daughter access to mental health care. Her daughter, Elliot Chorny, is facing an attempted murder charge after allegedly stabbing a six-year-old boy.
CBC News is using pseudonyms for Emily and Stephanie due to their fears speaking out could negatively affect their employment.
Last April, both workers were part of a team that sent a letter to then community services minister Brendan Maguire asking for an urgent meeting and explaining that child protection was in crisis. The letter stressed that if nothing changed, “the continued lack of action on the part of the government will result in the death or significant injury of a child.”
The letter received no response, and both Emily and Stephanie say a year later, the department remains understaffed, under-resourced and is failing at its principal mandate — keeping children safe.
One big issue, both workers say, is the heavy caseloads each social worker is carrying. Another is high employee turnover and burnout.
‘A state of constant chaos’
Stephanie says she became a social worker because she wanted to help kids in need. But on a day-to-day basis, she’s struggling to meet the demand with the resources she and her colleagues have been given.
“I am seeing a state of constant chaos,” said Stephanie. “People that work in child protection are there because they want to do better for people. Right now we’re barely meeting that mark. People are coming in and rushing around to put Band-Aids [on] very serious situations.”
Emily agrees with this assessment, saying that high caseload numbers mean that many clients aren’t getting the attention they deserve.
On any given day, she said, social workers may need to respond to three urgent, potentially volatile situations, but only have the bandwidth and time to deal with two of them.
“When we can’t do our jobs, we’re leaving kids in really vulnerable situations, and so we’re facing these moral decisions like who gets our attention? And those are the decisions we’re making on a daily basis,” said Emily.
Making these difficult decisions on a regular basis takes a severe toll, both workers say, and only helps contribute further to employee burnout and turnover.
“When a child gets hurt on my caseload, I’m very upset by it. I take it personally, I didn’t do enough,” said Stephanie.
“What should I have done differently? Could I have reacted differently? Could I have responded sooner? When the reality is I couldn’t have responded sooner. I am one person. I had no services to offer. I had no extra support. I had nothing. There have been many times where I have sat in my car and cried, but you don’t tell people that very often because you’re supposed to be able to handle it.”
In some cases, Stephanie said, she’s had colleagues who are dealing with caseloads that approach numbers that exceed 50.
“We should be having anywhere from 15 to 20 files,” she said. “I don’t remember the last time I had that many files. That actually seems like a dream.”
No accurate picture of caseload numbers
In 2024, the Department of Community Services said the average number of cases per social worker was 22.75, but also acknowledged this wasn’t “the true, accurate count of children and family that social workers are working with.”
That’s because the count includes current cases and those that have been completed. Due to the administrative burden social workers face, they are sometimes unable to close completed files.
Emily and Stephanie say it also doesn’t include cases that social workers are looking after while other workers are on leave or short-term disability.
Alec Stratford, executive director of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, says the college has recommended the province adopt caseload ratios based on the Child Welfare League of America standard, which suggests that workers carry 16 to 20 cases.
But he says even those numbers are outdated, and wants to see an independent review.
What these social workers are saying isn’t anything Stratford hasn’t heard before. Social workers have been raising the alarm about a lack of resources and large caseloads for years. He said he hears the same concerns from the youth and parents social workers are trying to help too.
“They experience social work services that are really challenged by the current environment where we have issues with affordable housing, with food security, with income distribution, access to mental health and social services … and on top of that we have a service that has continued to be undervalued and underfunded, which really creates a crisis in the delivery of it.”
‘We want acknowledgment’
Emily and Stephanie’s complaints also echo the findings of a 2024 report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which found that workers were dealing with excessive caseloads, chronic understaffing, low wages and insufficient training.
Making matters worse, the report found, was a lack of support from the department in charge of social work.
This is something that particularly aggrieves both Stephanie and Emily, who say they want to see the province take accountability for the current state of the system, rather than continuing to pretend everything is fine.
CBC News requested an interview with Scott Armstrong, minister for the Department of Opportunities and Social Development, but he was not made available.
Instead, the department responded with an emailed statement to a list of questions sent by CBC News.
A spokesperson said that instead of responding directly to the letter sent by social workers to the former minister last April, the department responded to their complaints and others in a larger update sent to all 440 social workers in the province.
The department said feedback from social workers, including in the letter sent last year, has inspired a number of changes in the last two years, including increased recruitment efforts, an increase in pay bands for child protection social workers, and new dedicated roles in regional offices to support social workers with administrative tasks.
“These changes have led to better caseload management and reduced administrative burden for social workers across the province,” the statement said.
Stephanie and Emily both say they haven’t seen these improvements.
“We want acknowledgment,” said Stephanie. “We want it to be known that things are hard, things are rough and more is needed.… Enough with the Band-Aids.”
