سیاستهای جدید حکومت مبتنی بر جامعه نیاز به یک تغییر اساسی در ماهیت و شخصیت بوروکراسی اداری دارد

The politics of social policy played out in the era of globalization has profoundly altered the relationship between Canadian citizens and their governments. This change in relations, among other things, is marked by a turn to the “community” as a resource in solving social problems. Critics of this movement, however, express the view that the strategic application of community as a central social policy tactic seems to be less about inventing a new social architecture for Canada and more about a shift of government responsibility to the individual away from society as a whole through state institutions. For child welfare services, this expanded role of community is fraught with uncertainty, contradictions, and complexities for both human services professionals and for the children and families in receipt of services.

Over the last 10 years, a profound change has taken place in the relationship between Canadian citizens and their governments. The present-day politics of social policy played out against the backdrop of a rising global economy has fundamentally transformed the role of government as the primary provider of social care and public welfare in Canadian society. This change in relations is marked by the drastic downsizing of civil services around the world, the mounting deregulation of the public and private sectors, political emphasis on tax cuts and balanced budgets, the retreat of government from the provision of public services, the radical realignment of social and state institutions, and a turn to the community as a resource in solving social problems ( Mullaly, 1994, Mullaly, 1997, Panitch, 1994, Silver & Arrighi, 2001 and Slava, 1996). Director of the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University Keith Banting (1995) describes the impact of a globalized world this way: Globalization and the associated technological and economic restructuring have transformed the politics of the welfare state in the West. Domestic and international policy can no longer be separated, and the future of social protection can no longer be contemplated except in a global context. The pressures on the welfare state are intense. There has been a strong convergence in the problems facing Western governments, and the politics of restructuring generates a similar agenda in most countries. (p. 36) While a number of writers present a different view of the relationship between economic constraints and political agency in relation to welfare states (Burgoon, 2001, Doremus et al., 1999 and Hirst & Thompson, 1999), most analysts agree that globalization is associated with new or deepened patterns of inequality between regions, between countries, and between and within different groups of people (Bryan, 1994, Watson, 1998, Kapstein, 2000 and Sassen, 1998). In a report entitled The Challenge of Slums (UN-Habitat, 2003) released in October 2003, the United Nations' Human Settlement Programme broke with traditional U.N. circumspection and self censorship by stating: The primary direction of both national and international interventions during the last twenty years has actually increased urban poverty and slums, increased exclusion and inequality, and weakened urban elites in their efforts to use cities as engines of growth. (p. 6) From a Canadian perspective, the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) reported that a decade and more of shredding the social safety net to deliver billions of dollars of tax cuts to the rich and corporations is anything but a “rising tide” lifting all boats. Rather, an analysis of the 2001 census by CCSD (2003) suggest that only the “yachts are rising”. The report concludes: Canadian society is becoming increasingly polarized. The richest 10% of our population has seen its income grow by a whopping 14% while the bottom 10% has seen only a slight increase of less than 1%. Moreover the income of many working families has actually declined! (p. 1) 2. The impact of the new social policy context on the child welfare system Child welfare as a form of social policy in which the state in fulfilling its historical role as parents patriae1 is granted the power by specific statutory law to look out for the welfare of children (Downs et al., 1996 and Wharf, 1993). As such, child welfare services include counseling services, homemaker services, day care services, services for unmarried parents, as well as protective services and out-of-home placement services such as foster care. In Canada, the responsibility for child welfare services lies with each of the 10 provincial and three territorial governments. Each province and territory has its own legislation that outlines the range and extent of child protection services and provides the mandate for policy and program development. In addition, some Aboriginal authorities2 are legally mandated to deliver the full range of child welfare services under the Federal First Nations Child and Family Services Program.3 Just as in other areas of social policy, the objective of child welfare policy over the past two decades has been to create, expand, and rely on community capacity to assume responsibility for the care and well-being of children. Yet in spite of every reform undertaken by provincial and territorial jurisdictions to bring improvement within their respected child welfare systems, the situation has steadily deteriorated across the country. There is nearly unanimous agreement that our system for protecting children and supporting families struggling with poverty is a mess. A recent report by the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (Trocmé et al., 2001)4 estimated that over 135,573 child maltreatment investigations were carried out in Canada in 1998, an annual incidence rate of 21.52 investigations per 1000 children. Based on statistics found in Provincial/Territorial Ministry of Child and Family Services Annual Reports (2000–2002), there are currently approximately 80,000 children under the protection of Child and Family Services across the country. Moreover, several recent studies have shown that the vulnerable population of children in need of protection is increasing significantly in Canadian society ( Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, 2002, Child Welfare League of Canada., 2001 and Trocmé, 2002). For instance: • The estimated number of investigated children increased 44%, from 44,900 child maltreatment investigations in 1993 to 64,800 child maltreatment investigations in 1998 (OACAS, 2002, p. 7). • The incidence of substantiated maltreatment nearly doubled in Ontario from an estimated 12,300 investigations in 1993 to 24,400 investigations in 1998, an increase of over 12,000 (OACAS, 2002, p. 7). • Between 1993 and 1998, the number of child maltreatment investigations that received ongoing services beyond the initial investigation doubled, rising from 5200 to 10,900 (OACAS, 2002, p. 15). • In Ontario, the number of investigations increased 27% between 1998 and 2000 and the number of children in care have increased 36% during the same period (Trocmé, 2002, p. 1). This growing demand for child welfare services is related to globalization. There is a strong relationship between poverty, child maltreatment, and the placement of children in out-of-home care (Romero et al., 2000, Rutman et al., 2001 and Serge et al., 2002). The overwhelming majority of children involved with the child welfare system come from families living in poverty or in marginal economic circumstances (Wharf, 2002). A US national study conducted in 1993 shows that the incidence of abuse and neglect is approximately 22 times higher among families with incomes below $15,000 per year than among families with incomes of more than $30,000 per year (Department of Health and Human Services as cited in Courtney, 1998). It could be argued that any significant change in the economic circumstances of low-income families is likely to affect the need for child protective services.

Communities' successes in attending to their social issues/needs will depend on their capacity to take a different perspective and create different approaches to shaping healthy communities. If essential change and success is to be achieved, they will redefine the work, create new ways to do the work, and essentially change how they live together. What they do will require imagination, learning, and compassion. It will take time. It will also require a different orientation of provincial and federal governments. Rather than focusing on survival, winning, looking good, and control, government will need to rethink its responsibilities to communities… beyond fiscal accountability. They will need to change their perspective about what communities can do and then let them do it.