Family and Children’s Services of Frontenac, Lennox and Addington announced Wednesday that several staff members would be laid off or not have their contract renewed.
The Kingston-area children’s aid organization said the layoffs were not due to the coronavirus pandemic, but were rather due to falling caseloads.
“We’re working differently and that’s had an impact over time on the number of cases we have,” said Sonai Gentile, executive director of the children’s aid society.
The decision was made in February, before the pandemic was announced.
Seven staff members are being laid off, while six support worker contracts are not being renewed. The children’s aid society said two of those people left the agency on their own accord, while others were hired elsewhere inside the organization.
Six family service workers and one in-house lawyer were notified in early March and laid off in late April. One other person had an offer of employment rescinded.
The agency is attributing the layoffs to its “signs of safety service model,” which was introduced several years ago.
“The focus is on strengthening families who are in crisis, using prevention to keep families together and making more use of community services. The result is that the agency is opening fewer new cases, closing existing one’s (sic) faster and taking significantly fewer children into our care,” a news release from the local organization read.
The agency noted that usually it uses attrition to balance staffing issues, but the number of employees retiring could not balance out the much lower number of cases being dealt with by staff over the last few years.
No further cuts are expected over the next year, despite further expected cuts in provincial funding.
Comments