When the Executive Director of the Ottawa Children’s Aid Society told a news conference in June that her organization and the system was at a “breaking point” she was speaking a hard truth.
The Director was referring to the crisis facing children living with “complex special needs”, whose parents unable to find resources to support their children were also at a “breaking point”. Parents who love their children fiercely. Parents who struggle in exhaustion to hold their families together. Parents who made had to make the horrific decision to attempt to give up custody of their child in order to obtain the resources their child needs to one day thrive. Sadly the truth is the Children’s Aid Society has no supports for these children either.
This is not about funding. This is about children. This is about parents. This is about family. I cannot emphasize this more strongly.
The situation in Ottawa is not isolated.
In May the Toronto Star printed a story about 14 year old Jonathan Mitkovski, an amazing young man, with incredibly dedicated parents, who had approached a Children’s Aid Society to take care of their son because there was just nothing they could access in the Greater Toronto Area. Heartbreaking.
Stop for a minute. Can you imagine what it is like for parents who dedicated themselves over 14 years to meet the needs of their child? Stressed. Worried. Broken. After 14 years of struggle and no support there. Can you imagine how Jonathan feels?
Right now a CAS in another part of Ontario, as CUPE Ontario has told us, has an 11 year old child living in their office. For 8 months! You read that correctly. 8 months. This child who is autistic and has other special needs is in care because again his parent just could not cope. The CAS has no alternative to their office for a “home” for him. This child is but one child in the agencies care who has no real “home” to live in
The situation across the Province is unbelievable really and unprecedented.
Last week in answer to a question from Trillium Press about the emergency facing complex care children in Ontario the Premier stated “ I have called for an audit of CASs “. Seriously Premier you want to make this about money?
Child protection agencies have asked the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS) and the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care (MOHLTC) to come together with them as an “emergency task force” to in the short term find solutions for children in the midst of this crisis.
The Premier should order his Ministries to act immediately and accept this ask with open heart and mind
An “audit” is folly. It is always punitive. It may uncover some savings but no where near the savings that would provide a financial solution. No where near.
This is not about money. It is about children and their families.
Make no mistake the issue of the needs of complex care children and the Children’s Aid Societies of Ontario is but a symptom of a failing child protection system after six years of government redesign.
The Premier rather than calling for an “audit” should be calling for the building of a new “child well being system” that would ensure every child receives what they need when they need it and would ensure every family, however constituted, would have what they need when they need it to do right by their children. A ‘child well being system” as proposed by the Representative For Children and Youth of British Columbia in the report “Don’t Look Away” https://rcybc.ca/hfaq/dont-look-away/ A child well being system that the government of British Columbia has committed to. This is a “call” the Premier could make that all of Ontario could join him in.