Early Childhood Education (ECE): A Component of the Education System

Our existing programs for intervention and prevention of serious deviant behaviour culminate in increased crime, uncontrollable behaviour, trouble accepting authority and general disrespect for others has called for new analyses and solutions. In Nova Scotia for example, crime by youth is higher than the national average (Statistics Canada). The programs we have to address the situation are haphazard and expensive and have not focussed on the root causes of behaviour but rather the presenting problems. Adults or youth need to be seen as out of control before programs are developed and put in place to address them.

This is not to say that the existing programs should be discarded because no immediate positive results can be seen. There are always two stages when attacking current social problems: (a) address the immediate presenting problem and try to change behaviour so that the individual can lead a more productive and positive lifestyle, and (b) determine the root systemic causes of the problem and devise programs that will prevent the problem from occurring in the first place.

Determining the root causes and devising preventive programs is a far more cost effective way to address social problems in the long term. This is the approach made recently by the study, Early Years Study 3: Making Decisions, Taking Action[1] (2011) which was presented to a large audience at the Westin Nova Scotian on February 9^th. Two of the authors of the study were present during the presentation: Hon. Margaret Norrie McCain, founder and chairperson of the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, which published the study, and former Lt. Governor of New Brunswick, and Kerry McCuaig a researcher in the area of early childhood policy at the University of Toronto. She was also involved with the “Early Years Study 2: Putting Science into Action (2007)”.

Early Years Study 3 transfers the results of scientific enquiry into the realm of innovative social policy and offers suggestions for immediate and concrete action.  The key suggestion in the study is the creation of a solid platform for addressing services for the development of early childhood education which should be the provincial education system. The idea is that our schools are the best place to offer programs for 2 – 5 years olds. “Good quality early childhood education supports children’s physical, social, emotional and cognitive growth, providing a smart start for school life. If organized to allow parents to work or upgrade their skills, it has been shown to reduce family poverty and contribute to healthier communities”.

The provincial education system provides the best platform from which to promote and build early childhood education programs. A comprehensive early childhood education program for 2-5 year olds can be launched from our publically funded schools. The infrastructure is already there so there is no need to start from scratch to build a new program. “By broadening education’s mandate to include younger children, we can bridge the gap between parental leave and formal schooling. Schools can become community centres for families, with supports and programs from pregnancy onward”.

Communities that have integrated programs for preschoolers focussing on education, social development, positive social behaviour, greater independence and self-regulation, show more positive results than communities with non-integrated programs. Another advantage in the “all-in-one”concept is the effect it has on parents. “Researchers have also found that parents whose children attend programs that are integrated into their school are much less anxious than their neighbours whose children are in the regular jumbled system”. Parental stress is a major cause preventing parents from responding appropriately to their children and “…researchers have connected chronic parent stress to the poor academic record of their children”.

Major changes are needed not tinkering around the edges with the existing system. We must be ready to ensure that all children have the opportunities to enter the school system ready to learn and to mature as responsible and successful adults. Let’s advocate for the changes that will ensure that our children truly come first.

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[1]  McCain, M.N., Mustard, J.F., & McQuaig, K. (2011). Early Years 3: Making Decisions, Taking Action. Toronto: Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation.

Can a village raise a child?

The case of a 16 year old youth now before the Youth Court after a long list of serious difficulties in the home and the community may finally be coming to a conclusion. Unfortunately the conclusion may not be satisfactory to those involved. The youth, who cannot be named because the matter is currently before the court, has never been named because he has been the subject of first, custody proceedings and now criminal proceedings. His offences include robbery, arson and driving without a licence as well as longstanding behavioural problems in the home and community. As reported by the CBC, Judge Jamie Campbell said he had a "sense of helplessness" when it came time to sentence the boy.

It’s no wonder that there is confusion as to what should be done to help this boy. He has been in numerous facilities from an early age when his grandparents (guardians) asked the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services to intervene in 2009. He was placed in several institutions and group facilities and foster homes not only on this province but also other parts of the country that had well known programs for difficult youth. His behaviour even included defying court-imposed restrictions numerous times. It was obvious that the grandparents as well as the court system and the services available in the community were not effective in changing this boy’s behaviour.

How this situation is being portrayed in the media and the youth’s existing behaviour exemplifies how difficult it is for available programs to adapt to individual situations. Most programs developed in the community think about services and programs as being set up to serve numbers of children and youth. In fact, children and youth are referred to these programs with very difficult behaviour for which a specific specialized program may not be appropriate. As the community develops these programs we end up with an array of programs and services which cannot serve all children and youth referred to them. This is simply because there will always be a child who will not fit the program. The community is then left with the dilemma of finding a program that is appropriate for the child or youth.

The next thing that happens is for the family and the community to blame the system for not responding to their specific needs. The system has great difficulty to plan for services not knowing well in advance what the treatment requirements will be for a future behaviour problem. However, the public expects that the system can and should respond to their particular need whenever it arises. The system responds and tries to develop services that are flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of presenting problems. Yet this approach does not allow for extreme behavioural situations.  

The prevailing approach over the years has been to remove the responsibility from parents and set up controlled settings where problem behaviour can be modified. It is what society did in the early days to treat mental illness. That is, set up large institutions where mentally ill patients could be placed with the expectation that the patient will be treated hopefully cured and then returned to the community. This was followed by dismantling the large institutions with a preference for small scale facilities such as group homes and supervised apartments where mental illness could be treated in the community. Service planners have learned from the past and now, for some children, the group home solution is being substituted for treatment in the child’s own home supplemented with appropriate services in the community. This presupposes that appropriate services can be made available in each community – a requirement that may be unreasonable or too expensive. The insistence that appropriate services should be available in each community where a difficult problem occurs so that a child or youth can live at home with parents would be difficult to impossible to develop. Its positive aspects are that parents are required to take part in the treatment which they must do in order to responsibility raise their child.  It does not let the parent off the hook by handing over a difficult child or youth to someone else to assume responsibility in their place. Professionals are now insisting that parents take an active part in treatment. Sometimes this means that the parent themselves may need treatment for behaviour that has been transferred to the child or youth. Unfortunately there are other situations where the destructive behaviour of the parent is the cause of the child’s problem. If something cannot be done to correct the parent’s contributing behaviour then a decision needs to be made to treat parent and child separately. This often means that a court has decided that the child must be removed from the home and not the parent because there is no law to force the parent to leave their own home. Courts are reluctant to remove children from their parents and usually is done as a last resort when all else has failed.

So, the prevailing approach to treatment of children and youth is to have a continuum of treatment options available - specialized foster homes, group homes, institutions and parental homes with community support services readily available. There will always be the need to search for specialized programs that exist in other parts of the province or country. No province can have every conceivable program readily available when needed. Unfortunately out-of-province treatment will need to remain an option in rare situations and it is regrettable that such treatment separates parent and child which is a negative factor that needs to be evaluated before placement.

Our government health system has many demands for services and programs for adults as well as children and youth. It does no good to blame one segment of the community or the other. What is needed is a collaborative effort of all interested parties – parents, government and professionals. Often it takes the judicial system to bring all parties together to focus on the needs of a child or youth. This is what seems to have happened in the current case reported in the media. Apparently the latest court hearing was focussed on a new program of the IWK Health Centre called the Halifax Youth Attendance Centre - an individualized treatment day program that allows a youth to return home each evening. Time will tell if it is too late to be effective for this young person and his guardians.

WikiLeaks: Shooting the messenger

One of the best ways to reform social policy whether it is national or international, is for the facts on which it is based to be open and transparent. Policy often comes down from high with very little information for the public to take part in a meaningful debate. Knowledge of all the information that is available is vital for a well-informed public. Attempts to keep information secret only leads to suspicion and distrust of those who are promoting the policy. In our political system almost every day in our legislatures we see the refusal of the government party to provide satisfactory answers to legitimate questions from the opposition parties.


Since 2007 WikiLeaks, a not-for-profit media organization, has been reporting and publishing information for the public to make informed decisions as to what actions they wish to support. What is unique about WikiLeaks is that the organization has developed technologies to enable contributors to send information with impunity to support their news gathering ability. One of the major reasons that prevent whistleblowers from exposing themselves has been the reprisal that they could face from superiors or those who would suppress the information. Often the suppression of information is justified on the basis that it would compromise "national security" another vague term that does not explain how security would be compromised. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights promotes the ideal that all persons should have the right to freedom of opinion and expression including the right to seek, receive and distribute information and ideas through any media regardless of national boarders.

A familiar tactic by those in authority is to vilify those with opposing views rather than a frank discussion of the facts. It seems to be a juvenile tactic that one might witness during an argument between two children not high-level senior officials. What is required for informed debate is an honest discussion of the known facts or recognition that all the facts may not be known.

Another disturbing tactic is the attempt by those who promote changes in policy to engage in rhetoric that does not discuss the facts but rather speaks in pleasant generalities that no one can oppose. It only encourages others opposing the policy to also speak about it in general terms, which does nothing to clarify the debate.

A headline today from the Associated Press reported, "China ordered hacking of Google – sources". The information attributed by WikiLeaks mentioned a cable about the hijacking attacks against Google was classified as secret. In other words the public would never have learned about these discussions unless the cable had been leaked. Of course the media organization is required to try and confirm the information with the source or state that the information is unverified so that the public can form their opinion or perhaps treat the information with skepticism. If people have all the information verified or not, reasonable people will form reasonable conclusions.

Another media report from the Associated Press, in which a leaked cable by a US Ambassador stated that President Karzai was "an extremely weak man". A statement like this can jeopardize relationships. In this case the US official defended the cable by stating: "We are determined not to allow the reckless actions of WikiLeaks to harm the strong and strategic relationships we have built over many years with many members of the government of Afghanistan". Rather than offer an explanation of why he thought that Karzai was a weak man, the spokesperson attacked the news organization for harming the relations with the Afghan government. It may be true that Karzai is a weak man or he may not be weak, unfortunately we may never know because the spokesperson chose to divert attention from the message to vilifying the messenger.

There are two positions that need to be considered here. One is the right of persons to express their opinions freely and the other is to have at their disposal all the information they need to make an informed opinion. Inherent in the latter is access to the information, which can only be supplied by those who are privy to the information. If the information is suppressed or considered secret how can an opinion be expressed and the universal right be maintained? Therefore, the media finds itself in the position of protecting the identity of their sources and in the case of WikiLeaks, have developed elaborate internet technologies that will not only encourage persons to contribute but have virtually assured them protection from detection if they decide to provide information.

What is most disturbing is the attempt by some to shut down national servers using technology (for example the United States and China among others). This has had, to date, very limited success mainly due to the WikiLeaks technology and also the support of friendly organizations who have agreed to host the WikiLeaks website termed "Mirrors". It is assumed that as long as this happens that no nation will be able to completely shut down the WikiLeaks site.

What we need in society are people who are willing to demonstrate integrity by controlling what they say about others in private especially if it is based on rumor or unsubstantiated information. To say one thing in private and the opposite in public is deceitful and leads the public to wrong conclusions. As well, attempts to denigrate the messenger is seen for what it is – an attempt to deflect the truth.

Social Innovation – A new Model?

Whenever the economy begins to take a nose-dive government debt begins to rise, the business sector ceases to expand and unemployment increases. Calls are heard from the private sector to downsize the public service, implement wage freezes, and cut government waste followed by strong opposition from the labour sector. It is then that we see a move to get the non-profit sector involved in the hope that with a little financial nudge community-based agencies with volunteers or lower wages paid to non-unionized workers can take up the slack. Non-profit agencies are provided limited funding in the form of grants to take over social programs but eventually cuts to various government services (health, education, income assistance, etc.) result in more people in need. While demands for more services increase, funding for community-based programs tends to decrease due to government budget cutting leaving the burden of maintaining the programs on the non-profit sector. This attempt to divert social services away from government budgets and to find new ways to provide services is known as "social innovation". Each time this public-private partnership has surfaced over the past decade it is interpreted as a way to reduce deficits and to cut back on government expenditures.

A social entrepreneur is someone who develops an innovative answer to a social problem. According to Stephen Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard University, there are four stages that society has used in the past to address the most difficult of social problems. Stage one was seen at the start of the 20th century, caring for people was largely left to families and charities. Stage two was marked by the welfare state in the United Kingdom and the Great Society in the United States that saw the government taking on the job of ending poverty. In stage three, the government tried to foster partnerships with the private sector and although this had some success, too much emphasis was placed on cost cutting at the expense of measuring successful outcomes. In the fourth stage government will tap the ability of the private and the non-profit sectors to deliver more "transformative innovations". Projects are selected by competition after being scrutinized by government bureaucrats for risk. The aim is to search for social innovations that have succeeded on a small scale and help them have a far bigger impact i.e., "investing in what works". Government funding together with private funding (both private capital and philanthropy) is the basis for supporting social projects that work.

However, how do you measure what works? The private sector has the profit yardstick. The social sector lacks a similar measure and the challenge here is to work out an effective measure of success. The number of people coming through the door of a social centre, or the number of volunteers or the number of hours they work tells you nothing about the program's effectiveness. The challenge will be to develop an evaluation process that will effectively measure success. One way to be effective is to require private capital to ensure a rigorous cost-based evaluation and another is for funding from a new group of philantophic foundations who take a personal interest in the growth of these social innovation groups by investing in a portfolio of non-profit groups and following their performance closely.

To ensure that social innovation projects continue it will be necessary for government departments to divert some of their budgets to a social innovation fund. There is usually resistance from the bureaucratic rule-bound public sector making it difficult to shift funds from old budgets to new ones. To overcome this tendency one suggestion is for every government agency to put aside 1% of their budgets into a social innovation fund thus making it easier to participate in innovative projects.

The evolution of the partnership between the public, private, and non-profit sectors continues. We need to continue to explore innovative ways to develop programs that are shown to be effective and fill unmet needs in our communities.

Why are we attacking the police?

The most disturbing part of the G-20 summit was the horrible display of violence attributed to a fringe element that was bent on destruction and chaos. This group, thought to be in the neighbourhood of a few hundred, hid themselves within the legitimate protestors and at an opportune time donned attire that concealed their identity and brought out weapons that could be used to destroy property and inflict injuries to police officers. Is this the price a democratic society pays for the right to congregate and freely speak out against political decisions that they disagree with?


How do you prevent the criminal element from using a legitimate right to further their illegitimate actions? The police are often accused of either using too much or too little force to control people who may be getting dangerously close to turning their expression of peaceful protest into a violent outcome. From the perspective of the police, controlling a large crowd may quickly get out of control so clear rules of demonstration and protest must be followed.

The police had the responsibility to protect the leaders of the G-20. We can only imagine what would have happened if the police lost control of the crowd and the criminal element was able to attack each of the G-20 leaders with the same vengeance as we witnessed along the streets and businesses of Toronto? True, there needs to be a balance of the right to protest and the need to protect those whom the protesters want to leave their message with. The police need to prepare thoroughly for the event and try to anticipate what might happen in light of the environment in which the protest will take place. This is what the police did, taking into account what has happened in the past at similar events. They had the number of officers, weapons, tactics and other resources to handle arrests and detention of large numbers of protesters who were caught violating the law or ignoring directives from the police.

It was with dismay that we witnessed protesters coming back after the protests and carnage of the first day to confront the police again as if to taunt them for their failure to control and prevent the damage caused by the criminal element. In other words, instead of condemning the actions and helping the police identify the criminals in their midst, they turned their attention to the police and blamed them for their failure to stop the damage.

There is much to be learned about crowd control in a society that values the right of citizens to protest. It appears that some lessons have been learned from past experiences in other places but there is still more to learn to protect the rights of free speech and protest and the need to protect our leaders who make decisions for us all. One problem that was evident during the Toronto rioting were the intentions of the police and their failure to communicate them clearly to the protesters. On several occasions it was clear from the media accounts that this communication did not take place. Protesters faced police lines not aware of the police intention. Communication is vital during these protests. When police want specific actions to occur they need to announce this to the protesters before the action is taken, if possible, but also after the action the action is taken. A continual communication with loud speakers attempting to explain what the police need to do before it happens is vital. Often protesters are not aware what is happening in other parts of the city and the police need to change their tactics accordingly which need to be explained.

The police chief or spokesperson needs to be continually available to the media to explain what needs to be done to make the protest peaceful. The Toronto police chief attempted to do this but it needs to be sustained and available whenever a new situation arises. It would be helpful also if the police had an Internet site available as well as twitter and facebook advising citizens of places and streets to avoid and the reasons for this.

Protesters also have a responsibility in a free society to report criminal behaviour when they see it occurring. There were media reports that legitimate protesters stood back and watched as the criminals unleashed their violence. The media as well, filmed the violence as it was occurring and should readily turn over copies of their videos and photos to the police to help identify the perpetrators.

We need to realize that when the legitimate right to protest occurs in our country there will be those who hide their criminal intent among the legitimate protesters. This diminishes the issues of the legitimate protesters and effectively interferes with a citizen's right of free speech. For protesters to stand back and watch or ignore the behaviour of the criminals in their midst is no right at all.

Why is crime so prevalent in our society?

What is happening in communities in our own country and around the globe as more and more cases of criminal activity are brought to our attention by the media? Is it that the media is focusing on crime because they think this is what society wants to know and therefore will sell more newspapers and guarantee more viewers and listeners? Catastrophic events also get attention and finally they too become routine and uninteresting. In addition to crime, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, fires, murders, shootings, deadly accidents, environmental disasters, wars and other conflicts seem to fill our news media on a daily basis.


Why all this preoccupation with crime and catastrophic events that fills the daily media? The reason could be fear - a fear that misfortune might someday fall on us. Since 9-11 everyone has been made more security conscious and fearful of his or her environment. There is the realization that bad things can happen to good or innocent people. It is just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A matter of fate but now the odds have increased because it is happening more frequently or is it just being reported more frequently? In either case the fear has increased - real or unreal. The prevailing notion of terrorists seems to be, attack innocent people and thereby call attention to your cause. In other words, a cause is more important than innocent human life. What does that say about a system of values held by some people?


Another reason for our preoccupation with crime could be a loss of trust in the competence and integrity of our institutions to protect us. Governments have a primary duty and responsibility to protect the public. In a democratic society citizens hold their governments responsible for their welfare. For the most part, governments do respond to the needs of constituents. However, because all needs cannot be accommodated, there is always some criticism that specific needs are not met and eventually a creeping cynicism that government does nothing to solve the problems of ordinary people. Government needs to be seen as responding to a majority of human needs. This phenomenon is very evident currently in the United States and the government's response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many people of the Gulf region are suffering due to a loss of their livelihoods and recreation resource. They automatically look to their government to protect them from these events and to resolve the problem. However, the problem is so enormous and the solutions so complicated that big government cannot respond quickly enough. It is obvious that the President of the United States, perhaps the most powerful individual in the world, cannot bring all the resources available to him to solve the problem quickly before more damage is done.


Dr. Fred MacKinnon, a respected Deputy Minister of Social Services in the government of Nova Scotia and an architect of the provincial social welfare system addressed social work graduates at Dalhousie University 30 years ago and admitted:

 "There is very much that is unfair, unreasonable and wrong in our institutions, our personal relationships, and in the way life impinges itself at certain times on particular individuals". (The Chronicle-Herald, May 30 – June 6, 1980 as re-reported in the Nova Scotian June 6, 2010).

 It is interesting to note that Dr. MacKinnon with his experience as a long-time civil servant in the human resources and social welfare field, was encouraging and inspiring new graduates to look at our institutions and relationships in a critical way with the expectation that they were not perfect and all needed to be improved or re-invented.


So, the system always needs to be reviewed and improved. Its an incremental adjustment of the system not one giant change that will solve all our problems. Change occurs when we have new knowledge that allows us to propose new solutions that we expect will be successful.

What can we do to mitigate against the problem of crime? Do we need more police, courts, judges, jails, probation and parole officers? Do we need more rehabilitative and restorative programs? Or do we need more human resources such as psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers? All these solutions are well after the fact and occur after the crime has been committed. It's probably true that crimes will always be committed and will never be completely eliminated from society. The goal should be to reduce crime perpetrated by young people before they become hardened criminals. Unfortunately, more youth appear to demonstrate hard-core behaviour at progressively younger ages. The bully at school, the roaming youth getting into trouble in the community, their association with the drug culture, taking revenge in drive-by shootings, and racing high- powered cars in a dangerous manner on city streets.

 What has been left out of this discussion so far is the responsibility that parents have in raising their children. When probation officers prepare reports for the Court during a trial of a young person or anyone accused of a crime, they often find during their assessment that starting at a very early age the accused person missed the very critical teaching of values. Any values will do that have basic respect for another person, concern for another person's welfare and property, and to take responsibility for your own actions and behaviour. All persons should be free from violence and the threat of violence. Most if not all these values can be found in the teaching of religious faiths or associated with the norms of diverse cultures. These values can be summed up as respecting the inherent dignity and individual worth of all persons.

 How then are these values not reflected in the behaviour of persons committing a crime? Could it be that no one has taken the time to teach and instill these values in the child during the early years? To be fair to the parents it may be that they were not taught these values and therefore are not able to teach their own child. Furthermore, parents may be absent from the home much of the time due to job commitments and in recent times both parents are working leaving children to fall under other influences. In some cases the child is living with a single parent where there is no stable other parent to assist in child rearing. In order for families to maintain a satisfactory standard of living, it is not unusual for both parents to work and for preschool children to attend day care at very early ages. Many parents try and compensate but many are not able to and therefore the child suffers from parental inattention or preoccupation with other concerns in their lives.

 What happens when the child is basically left on its own for much of the time each day? First, they are not receiving any discussion of values and are often left to undesirable influences found in our society. Violent video games and movies that depict disrespect for others and the depiction of violence towards others have been demonstrated to be harmful to young children. However, as with many other similar correlations, there are those who maintain that the results are not conclusive and therefore not applicable to all children.

 Where we see this denial of harmful influences most convincingly is in the parent-school confrontation. For example, the teacher or principal informs the parent of destructive or disruptive behaviour in school and the parent becomes defensive and denies the report from the principal. The situation then deteriorates to a battle between the parent and the principal. The principal expects the parent to exercise control of the child and the parent denies the school version even though the parent learns of the problem second hand. In the end no one has a lasting influence over the child and the child misses an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson in positive values.

 Therefore how can we prevent crime? Any rehabilitative program for youth must include the child's parent(s). The child needs to be taught values and in many cases parents need to be taught the same values before they can have any influence over the child's behaviour. Any government or community program must take into consideration a discussion of basic values and a process for implementing and sustaining them. This appears to be a simple solution but may not be practicable to all parents and children. Some parents will refuse to become involved while others will find it very difficult to engage due to other family and personal influences. This will narrow down the number of parents who will be able to participate and fewer still the number who will benefit in the end.

 What needs to be done to mitigate crime especially perpetrated by youth is for government policy to reflect the needs of children and families who are at risk. It might be too late for hardened criminals to change but some impact can be made on today's children, youth and families. There is still time to establish programs that will benefit young families that are at risk. Some programs that have been set up in our communities try to affect change by separating children or youth from their parents. Sometimes there is a need for this in order to stabilize a bad situation and temporarily reduce the risk of harm. Following a brief separation it is imperative that the family be reunited and enter into a therapeutic program. Fortunately there are rehabilitative programs available in the community. Unfortunately the families that need the programs do not have access or refuse to take part in the programs that are available. The programs themselves have deficits or are not suitable to the problem that is presented to them. Many focus on communication, and understanding the intentions and expectations of others. With youth the problem is the lack of a value system that promotes respect, and caring for other people. Changing entrenched dysfunctional behaviour is a difficult task to accomplish in a few counseling or therapy sessions. It requires a change in the way that an individual views the world around them. The task is further complicated because it is not enough to change the youth's value system but in many cases the value system of the parents needs to change as well in order for the change to be effective and long lasting. This is the reason why authorities find it is necessary to separate the child or youth from parents so that the counseling sessions will be more effective. Unfortunately, this is too is not always satisfactory since the child or youth will eventually return to a dysfunctional family.

 If we look at the variety of rehabilitative programs available in the community and also the rate of crime in the community we would conclude that the system is not working properly. There are so many negative influences available compared to positive ones. Children and youth are so exposed to unedited violence in the media and Internet that no amount of positive influence can counteract it. Even parents with positive values systems are helpless to be a positive influence in the lives of their children. So what does this say about our society? Where have we fallen short in perpetrating a positive value system? Can we as a society ever promote positive values in light of the direction that society seems to be headed today? The images we project within our culture seem to be out of control. There is an expectation that the individual has rights and can pursue the satisfaction of their wants and desires at any cost. We are bombarded by advertisements in the media that show that their product is the best and that we as individuals have the right to have the best. This is a powerful message to both parents and their children. The advertisements are filled with messages that have a profound negative effect on young vulnerable minds.


Another well-practiced attempt to change behaviour is the use of positive role models. This is why parents try to ensure that their children are enrolled in sports or other social activities that will expose their child to positive values and to attempt to emulate what appear to be healthy role models. This is not always successful when the role models are found not so positive in their own lives. However, this is an attempt to use what is available in the community and in many cases the use of positive activities and the use of role models has been effective in teaching positive values or changing the dysfunctional behaviour of many children and youth.
 So if we are to recall the evaluation of society's institutions and policies made by Dr. MacKinnon to the Dalhousie social work graduates in 1980, what should we be attempting to do? A society that requires both parents to work outside the home in order to provide adequately for their family and to rely on day care, or the school to teach their child basic values, needs to expect that deficits will occur in effective parenting. A comprehensive and critical analysis of public social policy by experts who have no biases needs to assess where stress is placed on parents, children and youth, and then prepare policy to relieve those stresses.

A strategy for social reform

The recent thinking in the field of global social development initiatives focuses on the need to combine social policy with economic policy when attempting to reduce or eliminate poverty. Social development organizations around the globe are beginning to advocate for the inclusion of social policy when collaborating with government to strategize for poverty reduction and elimination.

In our own country poverty reduction strategies are the "in thing" as governments and poverty groups collaborate to design ways to eliminate poverty. A report released by the Canadian Association of Social Workers in December 2009 noted six provincial governments as developing poverty reduction strategies after extensive collaboration with their local community and social development organizations. There is also the commitment of the Federal government by way of a motion in the House of Commons on November 24, 2009 to, " …develop an immediate plan to eliminate poverty in Canada for all". All these attempts are developed through a complicated process that leads to the perception of progress being made to take action on poverty but as yet we have little data to show positive outcomes.

Poverty reduction strategies have incorporated lessons learned that economic and social strategies need to be mutually inclusive. Lessons learned, as reported in the Economist (May 15, 2010), show it is crucial to take the economic steps necessary to get the government's economic house in order and focus on the social policy at the same time. The development response in the past was to get the markets right first and then deal with any remaining pockets of the poverty. This notion was spurred by the example of Asia's rapid growth over the last two decades due to cheap land, cheap labour and technological change driven by globalization and international trade. Although these developing countries have shown phenomenal economic growth, poverty and its consequences remain. Income inequities continue to exist and they create social exclusion that tends to entrench discrimination in other areas such as education and health care.

However, there remains the battle between an ideology that promotes private enterprise and corporate profits and does not take into consideration the needs of vulnerable citizens who may not have had the advantages that others have had in life. The reluctance to share the wealth is based on the view that all persons have the same opportunities available to them and therefore with hard work can succeed. What we know is that much poverty is generational and once born into poverty it becomes difficult more often than not to rise out of the systemic poverty cycle. Also, catastrophic circumstances or disability may lead to personal poverty.

The poverty reduction strategies developed so far (as indicated above) have promoted the inclusiveness of economic and social policy and in our democracy the economic engine is a source of funding of social programs. Social programs must rely on the tax and employment revenues from a market economy. Yet to ignore social policy when developing economic strategies has been shown to perpetuate poverty and to create dissention and even violence is certain countries that ignored a corresponding strategy to improve the conditions that create poverty.

To indicate where social expenditures are made in Nova Scotia, the 2008-2009 provincial budget figures for government departments indicated that expenditures for departments amounted to 88% of total expenditures or $7.3 billion. The largest three departmental expenditures were: health about 40%; education was about 18%; community services about 11% and all other departments amounted to 21%.

Therefore, taxes are the life-blood of government social programs and according to research by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), over the past 15 years Canada's tax system has undergone major tax cuts. Our tax system used to be more progressive but now the richest one percent of Canadians pays less, as a portion of their income, than the poorest 10%. Tax cuts have compromised public services and reduced the effectiveness of our social safety net. Research by the CCPA recommends corrective measures: (a) make corporate Canada part of the solution instead seeing it as part of the problem by reversing tax cuts to corporations; (b) bring fairness back to personal income tax system with a new higher tax rate for persons earning over $250,000 per year; and (c) reverse the GST cut and restore it to 7% with expanded tax credit to protect low-income earners. This latter recommendation alone would allow programs for national pharmacare; home care program for seniors; and fund a national child-care program for our children. Of these three recommendations the fairest way to raise revenue to pay for social programs is to tax those who are capable of paying by taxing income.

In Canada and Nova Scotia social workers are bound by their Code of Ethics to the elimination of poverty, the equitable distribution of society's resources and the universal entitlement and access to the services and opportunities to meet basic human needs in the areas of housing, health care, child care, education and old age security. As professionals we need to continually remind the public that society's resources are not meant to squandered by a few but rather we are all responsible to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to have their basic needs met.

In our version of democracy social policy is directly related to economic policy. We have made important strides in developing social policy that addresses the needs of people living in poverty and the disadvantaged. We must continue to create incentives for private enterprise to flourish and then tax income both personal and corporate profits to pay for social programs for those without means.