Changes in Ontario’s child welfare state in the late 1990s was prompted by a series of inquests into the deaths of children under state care (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Child Welfare Transformation” 4). In responds to the 1996 Provincial Coroner’s office inquest
report, the 1997 Child Mortality Task Force, and the 1998 report by the ministry’s Panel of Experts, the government introduced legislative changes confirming “the primacy of the child’s best interests” (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Child Welfare
Transformation” 4). These legislative changes established tighter child protection standards and clarified reporting requirements for professional social workers (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Child Welfare Transformation” 4). The Ontario government further strengthened the state’s presence in children’s lives by creating the Ministry of Children and Youth Services in October 2003, the first new ministry in 20 years (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Child Welfare Transformation” 2). This increased state involvement in child welfare including funding and monitoring of Children's Aid Societies, developing policy to support the child welfare program, and licensing children's group homes and foster homes (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Children’s Aid Societies”).
The state mandated CASs to protect vulnerable children. In 2010, there were 53 CASs (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 5). To save costs and better realize
economies of scale, Ontario amalgamated smaller agencies into a total of 47 CAS: nine CAS are Aboriginal and three are faith-based (two Catholic and one Jewish) (Ontario Ministry of
Children and Youth Services, “Children’s Aid Societies”). CAS are independent, non-profit organizations run by a board of directors elected from the local community (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Children’s Aid Societies”). Currently, Ontario CASs serve approximately 120,000 families and over 310,000 children each year (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 12). The organizations’ responsibilities include:
investigate reports or evidence of abuse or neglect of children under the age of sixteen or in the society’s care or supervision and, where necessary, take steps to protect the
children;
care for and supervise children who come under their care or supervision;
counsel and support families for the protection of children or to prevent circumstances requiring the protection of children;
place children for adoption (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Children’s Aid Societies”).
Central to these changes is the degree of state intrusion into the lives of children and whether the state emphasizes child protection or family preservation (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 14). While Sweden and some other European countries generally place more emphasis on providing supports to families, child welfare policy in Canada, like the United States and England, has tended to emphasize child protection (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 13). Until the late 1990s, Ontario child welfare policy reflected a less intrusive bias. Child welfare operated independently of other services and individual state social workers and their supervisors decided the degree of state intervention into families (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 13). The high profile deaths of children in families and under state care in the late 1990s, led to a dramatic policy shift and legislative reforms towards more intrusive and proactive child protection (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 14). Unsurprisingly, as the state took high numbers of at-risk children into state care, government spending for child welfare increased sharply. As the number of open child welfare cases increased by 33 percent, from 1998 to 2003, after the restructuring of the child welfare state discussed previously, child protection legislation in the 1990s widened the child welfare net to include children witnessing violence (Swift and Parada 14). The more intrusive child
families, and reduced social spending in Ontario for marginalized single mother families fleeing violence.
With this sharp rise in child welfare work, state funding for Children’s Aid Societies doubled. According to the report, Child Welfare Transformation 2005, Ontario spent over $ 1.1 billion a year on direct child welfare services, twice as much as the state spent in the late 1990s (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Child Welfare Transformation” 3). The rise in child welfare funding over the last decade and particularly during the 2008 economic
downtown, raised concerns about the sustainability of child welfare services (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 5). To address this financially unsustainable trend in child welfare, Ontario’s vision for child welfare in 2005 reflected a more balanced position between protecting the child and preserving the family (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 6). Government funding estimates for the fiscal year 2010/11 indicated the Ontario Children’s Aid Societies would spend more than $1.4 B to deliver child welfare services
(Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 5). By 2015-16, CAS budget allocation was over 1.4 billion and has essentially flat lined since 2013-14, when the ministry introduced a new funding model to support a significant transformation of Ontario’s child welfare system (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Children’s Aid Societies”). While 40 percent of total CAS costs are for in-care services, such as foster and group care, 60 percent of the funding costs support child welfare work with children in families (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 30). Ontario’s vision of child welfare outlined in its 2010 report “Towards Sustainable Child Welfare in Ontario,” is a sustainable child welfare system that is “child-centered, fully integrated and balanced between the protection of the child and the preservation of the family” (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 7). At the core of the Ontario’s vision is the
belief that “early intervention will reduce the need for more intrusive and costly public services later and lead to better outcomes for children and youth” (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, “Child Welfare Transformation” 2). Sadly, in Julianne’s case early intervention did not happen.
Ontario’s vision also recognized the urgent need to work with Indigenous communities given the colonial legacy of residential schools in the 1960s and 1970s and the special
circumstances of Indigenous children, youth and families (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare 8). Notably, funding inequities marginalize on-reserve children in Ontario. While the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services fund most CAS agencies, on- reserve child welfare agencies are federally funded. In 2016, Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations and Family Caring Society, won her human rights case against the federal government for inequities in state funding. Claiming racial discrimination in social investment by the federal state for child supports on Indian reserves, Blackstock’s case revealed federal government funding for child welfare on reserves is 38 percent lower than off-reserve child welfare provided by provincial governments (Fontaine). This federal underfunding not only compromises child wellbeing and child rights of Indigenous children in Ontario and beyond, but less funding for family support means more Indigenous children end up in the child welfare system (Fontaine). Furthermore, while off-reserve child welfare agencies may benefit from provincial and municipal funded programmes, provincial or municipal governments typically do not provide any services on-reserve, thus limiting on-reserve social programmes to those solely funded by the federal government (Blackstock and Trocmé 28).
Despite Ontario’s vision to balance between the protection of the child and the preservation of the family, the loss of family preservation programs in northern and southern
communities has severely impacted families there. A social worker’s perspective highlights how recent funding cuts in northern Ontario resulted in the elimination of a family preservation program in 2009/10.
CAS had a family preservation program...CAS is about child protection, it is not about family preservation. It [the family preservation program] probably started very
small…which grew into something rather formidable – six person team that commanded the family preservation program…One of the workers said she had been there for ten years…CAS went through some cuts…I am assuming that that had a lot to do with the shortage that CAS was finding in funding. The four people at the top of the ladder still got their bonuses that year and their pay raises but they didn’t have the money to fund the family preservation program anymore…it got cut. (personal communication) Funding cuts to services in northern Ontario providing child supports to a predominantly First Nations/Metis population are particularly concerning. With fewer programs, families and children are more likely to be placed in foster care and group homes far from their communities. A southern Ontario agency also experienced the negative effects of funding cuts over the last few years, as this social worker elaborates.
At my agency, we lost funding this past year [2015]. So the government did not add any more money for CAS in Ontario. They redistributed money to agencies. So where they felt there was population growth they gave more money to those jurisdictions…We lost a couple million dollars…And the result of losing that money? We lost two really big key programs- we have a parent support and family support program where we have workers who go into homes once a week to help with parenting and childcare supports. On the ground, in the home that supports the family to stay together. That gives parents skills
and helps protection workers that there is an added piece of safety…as child protection workers we go in and we assess risk. Is that all we are back to doing now? Because I thought we shifted from the risk assessment piece of child welfare to that strength based supporting families thing. It is like, losing those resources takes us back to the risk focus, not strengths. (personal communication)
This worker is frustrated that state funding cuts resulted in the loss of key family preservation and strength-based approaches in child welfare work that supported families and their safety. This state trend to narrow, risk-based approaches in social work that are more intrusive and punitive is troubling.