Current work underway

The Panel was tasked with providing expert opinion on the extent to which current and forthcoming plans, activities, legislation, regulations, policies and practices, including the activities outlined in Safe and Caring Places for Children and Youth: Ontario’s Blueprint for Building a New System of Licensed Residential Services and activities underway in the child welfare and children’s mental health sectors address any issues or concerns identified here.

To support the Panel’s understanding of current and forthcoming work, materials were requested from several organizations such as relevant policies and practices. Presenters with knowledge of the current system challenges and work underway appeared before the Panel to share information, insights and expertise. Presenters to the Panel included:

  • Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies
  • Association of Native Child and Family Service Agencies of Ontario
  • Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services
  • Children’s Mental Health Ontario
  • Child Welfare Political Action Committee

In addition to these presentations and the supporting materials, the Panel also examined the activities outlined in Safe and Caring Places for Children and Youth: Ontario’s Blueprint for Building a New System of Licensed Residential Services (Blueprint) in detail. While the Blueprint identifies some initiatives that are either complimentary or directly address the Panel’s recommendations, the Blueprint’s planned initiatives are being implemented in phases. Many initiatives are not expected to be in place until 2019-2020, and some not until 2025, which the Panel asserts is unacceptable. It is the Panel’s overwhelming sense that the young people in Ontario’s care are in precarious, unsafe situations now – they cannot wait another seven years for meaningful action.

Any work that is ongoing or planned for the near future was mapped against the Panel’s recommendations and areas of concern. The Panel felt that the ongoing and planned work failed to adequately reflect a plan to address the major systemic issues identified during the course of their review and the recommendations being proposed.

The identified issues and the Panel’s recommendations are not new; they have been asserted, endorsed and recommended by governments, service organizations, advocacy organizations, panels, commissions and bodies many times over the last 25 years and reflect best practices. Still, they have not resulted in sufficiently addressing identified challenges. Specific examples of recommendations made in the same areas can be found in:

  • Because Young People Matter – Report of the Residential Services Review Panel (2016)
  • Searching for Home: Reimagining Residential Care (2016)
  • Doing it Right Together for Black Youth (2018)
  • The Office of the Chief Coroner’s Death Review of the Youth Suicides at the Pikangikum First Nation (2006-2008) (2011)
  • Truth and Reconciliation: Calls to Action (2015)
  • The Office of the Chief Coroner Inquest – First Nations Youth (2016)
  • Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996)

The Panel asks that those in positions of power and influence who are responsible for the functioning of the systems be accountable for fixing them; that they take the lessons learned from the deaths of these young people and utilize them to ensure timely, meaningful change.