Minister Carmant urges DPJs to use new bonuses

Photo: Jacques Boissinot The Canadian Press This new bonus, “we are not using it often enough in my opinion in places where waiting lists need to be reduced,” stated Lionel Carmant.

The Minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, is getting impatient. The incentive measures he launched at the beginning of the month to reduce waiting lists in youth protection are not being used enough, and he will alert the network this week.

In a press scrum on Tuesday afternoon, the CAQ minister called Quebec’s youth protection directors (DPJ) to order.

Monday evening, Le Devoirhad revealed that the CISSS de Chaudière-Appalaches has recently been advising some of its employees not to work overtime. A decision that directly contradicts a bonus launched at the beginning of the month to reward work done in addition to regular hours.

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“There seems to be a lack of understanding in the DPJ,” said Mr. Carmant, a few minutes before question period on Tuesday.

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• Overtime discouraged at the Chaudière-Appalaches DPJ
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By concluding an agreement for a new bonus with the Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux (APTS), Québec wanted to offer DPJ social workers an incentive to work full shifts on Friday evenings and weekends, and thus reduce the time taken to process reports.

However, “we still don't use it often enough in my opinion in places where waiting lists need to be reduced,” said Mr. Carmant, confirming in passing that this was not an isolated case at the Chaudière-Appalaches DPJ.

As he had announced the day before in response to questions from Devoir, Mr. Carmant plans to “intervene” with the DPJ in the coming days. Even if some of them — “for example [Montérégie]” — use the bonus “very well,” he said.

“It has to be used consistently across the network,” Carmant stressed. “So that everyone understands the message of what we want to do.”

At the end of September, the average waiting time for a report to be processed at the DPJ was more than 50 days. Less than half (48.7%) of these reports had been processed within a 14-day period, less than the departmental target of 53%.