Closing youth support service rapped by social worker

Workers at a Thunder Bay youth detention facility say shutting down a program designed to help young people who are not in custody is also hurting those who are in custody.

Last month, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services cut a Community Support Team (CST), saying it wasn't serving enough clients. The team was there to provide community-based services to higher-risk young persons who would otherwise be in custody in a detention centre.

Social workers say closing down the CST has had a ripple effect.

Beth Alkenbrack lost her job as a social worker with the CST when it was shut down.

Along with other counsellors, she has transferred to the detention centre.

But that meant bumping less-senior staff from their positions. Alkenbrack said those affected social workers were like family for many of the troubled teens in custody. "All the ... shuffling around, and new people coming in ... so that the parental structure, so to speak, has changed dramatically," she said.

Alkenbrack said some of the girls she works with at the J.J. Kelso Centre for female young offenders are struggling with the change.

"They not only have to negotiate with new workers, but figure out how to experience the loss of this worker and the trust and faith in that relationship.

"I mean this is a person who wasn't a family [member], but had become like a family [member]. It was the person that they felt comfortable with, so that at nighttime when they weren't sleeping that was a person that ... helped them sort some issues,' she said.

Alkenbrack said staff are trying to help the girls adjust, but that interrupts regular rehabilitation efforts.

"What happens is you can't do the longer-term work with her while she's in the middle of having this crisis now."

Alkenbrack also speaks for the union local representing social workers, and, she said, their services are still neededout in the community.