Ford Government’s Audit of Child Protection System Another Smokescreen to Evade Responsibility for Mounting Crisis in Child Protection Sector

TORONTO — Many hundreds of young people in Ontario have been warehoused in hotels, motels, office buildings and worse because of an acute crisis of care the provincial government has manufactured. Four years into a “redesign” of the province’s children’s aid system with no progress to show for its efforts, it’s clear the announced audit is another smokescreen to distract from the government’s abject failure to support children and families while opening the door for more privatization in the sector.

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“It’s the 11th hour of this crisis and this government has yet to do anything to solve it. Workers, advocates, and families have been sounding the alarm about challenges they face trying to keep children and young people safe for years. That Doug Ford is trying to lay blame on individual agencies shows just how insincere he is,” said Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario which represents roughly 5,000 child protection workers working at 27 Children’s Aid Society (CAS) agencies across the province. “This government has had every opportunity to prove they care about children. They have shown, time and again, they don’t.”

In 2020, the Ford government instituted an “overhaul” of child welfare, signaling a shift in provincial priorities towards more resource-intensive early intervention work that aims to keep families together. Funding did not follow this reorientation with roughly 90 per cent of agencies currently running financial deficits in the millions, leaving the workers to shore up dangerous gaps amidst ongoing layoffs and service restrictions. The Financial Accountability Office released a report in June that indicated funding for child protection has fallen well behind inflation, with the sector missing $70 million compared to where it was when Ford took over.

“Workers are already worked to the bone, with CAS agencies stretching to fill service gaps exacerbated by this government’s gutting of social services as a whole,” said JP Hornick, President of OPSEU/SEFPO which represents an additional 3,200 child protection workers across 13 agencies. “The solution has always been to adequately fund the system so that the most vulnerable youth in our communities can receive the supports they need. It’s a low bar, and still the Ford government cannot clear it.”

Ford’s recent claim that people are getting rich off child protection work is correct – except it’s not workers or management enriching themselves, it’s parasitic for-profit group home operators that charge exorbitant fees to desperate CAS agencies because of rules created by this government.

“We need to end to for-profit models in all residential care facilities, and introduce province-wide licensing of group homes, to ensure our services place children at the centre of care,” added Hornick. “There’s so much about the current system that is antiquated. Ontario’s current funding formula partially ties agency funding to the number of kids in care. Our members at the Sarnia-Lambton CAS – who are focused on keeping kids in the home with their families – have seen their annual budget alone decline by over $1 million over the last decade.”

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While workers and advocates call for change, this government – and governments before it – have systemically ignored recommendations from every coroner’s inquest. If the province was serious about putting kids first, Ford would instruct his Ministry to start with the hundreds of recommendations already in hand – or he’d reconstitute the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate that his government shuttered because they could not stand withering criticism of their failed policies.

“It’s clear they raise the spectre this promised overhaul to silence critics but they have no intention of following through in good faith. That’s what makes Ford’s words so maddening,” said Hahn. “But I know Ontarians can see right through him. Ontarians know he’s flailing, desperate to quiet a story that reveals another layer of shocking apathy and mismanagement by his government. The fact remains that child protection workers have been put in an impossible situation, trying to keep young people safe with ever dwindling resources. My gratitude goes out to them every single day.”

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