Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As part of our project, we did a survey of front line workers to ask them what they saw as the biggest concerns in doing their job. We heard, overwhelmingly, that a lack of training and training opportunities, was one of the problems they saw. Some of the areas in which people told us they thought they needed more training included dealing with family violence, child sexual abuse, substance abuse, suicide and family...(Microphone turned off).
There are an awful lot of challenges to people in the field. We are not only talking about the challenges faced by social services workers. We are talking about the challenges faced by all front line workers, including community health representatives and people in the health field. Community health representatives clearly told us that they felt they should have better training in public health awareness and better ability to help and train people to understand how to prevent illness.
Nurses told us they thought they could benefit from training in fields of some of the specialists that were travelling through. They wanted to see increased opportunities for in-service training during the tours of specialists.
As well, people in the alcohol and drug field often mentioned to us that they thought there was a need to improve their abilities to deal with the problems they face in their communities. All in all, people said they wanted to receive more training so they could do a better job of dealing with the problems they face with their clients in the communities.