ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the preliminary findings from faculty interviews with field staff. In Canada, child welfare is a provincial jurisdiction, as are health, education, and other social services, but the federal government plays a very important role because it provides significant funding. A major review of Canada’s social security programmes took place in the early-1990s at a time when the federal and most provincial governments had large budget deficits, when there was an economic recession with increasing unemployment, which added to the costs of unemployment insurance and welfare programmes, and decreased revenue from taxes. Child welfare services are funded through the federal government, but operate under provincial child welfare legislation and regulations. The majority of residential services for children and adolescents in the province of Nova Scotia are operated by private non-profit boards under policies and standards established by the Department of Community Services.
