Thank you, Madam Chair. The department started developing the Child and Family Services Standards and Procedures Manual in 1998, and despite trying to complete this work, it has never ever been completed and has never kept pace with changes to the act or the best practices in child welfare. Just to note the absence of standardized procedures for all key responsibilities

is a significant deficiency. It represents a great failure to support child protection workers and this likely affects morale, staff turnover and, ultimately, the well-being of children when our workers are not supported nor have anything to go by. Committee strongly agrees that these need to be completed by December 2014.