Advocate says New Brunswick's social policy process is broken

New Brunswick's child, youth and seniors' advocate has issued a sweeping and scathing denunciation of how the provincial government runs social programs, saying the system is fixated on following rules rather than achieving results.

Kelly Lamrock traces the problem back three decades and blames it for what he calls the "breaking down" of a range of services in such areas as health care, social development and education.

He decided to write the 49-page report while working on a review of the long-term-care sector.

What he found during that work convinced him there was a bigger picture to examine beyond the normal scope of his mandate.

"The failings in long-term care are also the failings in how New Brunswick social programs have been governed," Lamrock writes.

"The programs can only be fixed by fixing flaws with general government. The centre of government cannot order a department to fix the problem when the centre is a large part of the problem."

He told CBC's Information Morning Fredericton he produced the report out of frustration.

"I'm frustrated because it doesn't have to be this way," he said.

"We've got to have an urgency about solving problems instead of an urgency about going through the motions." 

The report lists several examples across a number of departments where program goals were not set out, from housing incentives and First Nations mental health programs to child protection services and school-based behaviour mentors.

Meanwhile, front-line employees lack the flexibility to adapt to the needs of the people looking for help, because those employees are forced to stick to rigid rules.

Lamrock writes that when he asked the finance department how it came up with its budget for moving seniors stranded in hospitals to long-term care, and how many transfers it aimed to do with the money, officials "could not provide us with any of that."

"The department of finance did not even think to check if the waitlist numbers were getting better or worse, even though those numbers were knowable," says Lamrock, who eventually obtained the figures from the Department of Social Development.

"This is precisely what we mean by the disconnect between the budget process and the actual results that impact New Brunswickers."