Children's Aid Victimizes Families

Oct 25, 2011
Lori Prentice

CAS unworthy of power - Canstock Photo

Are Children's Aid Societies, as they are currently funded and organized, actually causing more harm than good? Corruption and misuse of power is common.

Last year, Ontarians gave the Children's Aid Societies $1.4 billion, an amount that has tripled in just 10 years. This money is being given to agencies that have no provincial oversight. While protection of children is very important, Ontario is the only province that sources out child protection. These public-funded agencies receive their money based on the number of children in care. Therefore, instead of encouraging families and being proactive, it is to their benefit to apprehend children. While there are many good and loving foster families, there are many cases of children being better off in their homes of origin. More children die in CAS care than in the care of their parents each year.

Let’s be very clear that were it not for the financial incentive, very few would do foster care, as evidenced by children no longer being welcome in the home after they become older, and the funding is gone. With the increased rates as they struggled to find homes, many mortgages, vacation homes and resort getaways have been paid for with tax dollars. While one should not expect people to do this type of work for free, it is clearly a type of earned income; after all, one does not receive such for caring for their own children.

For regular care, foster parents receive $800-900 per month, plus allowances and expenditures, Homes that are considered "treatment homes" due to medical or behavioural issues receive around $1500 per month. Foster homes can have up to 5 foster children in addition to their own. They often have other employment while the kids are in school. These parents are provided with regular relief care, and are not responsible for taking the children to appointments.

Whether this type of remuneration is excessive or not, the sad reality is that Children's Aid has all these resources to take a child into care but not to support a child remaining in the home. Due to the shortage of foster homes, they are less stringent on what is an acceptable home than they are with a child's home of origin. They often allow overcrowding such as three or four foster children sharing a room. There does not appear to be any action taken on concerns that families that are receiving reasonable sums of money are providing little more than the bare necessities, including hand-me-downs from their own children. There have been cases where parents have been told they've violated an Order by having siblings share a room, and yet the foster homes do the very same thing.

Once a family is on the radar of Children's Aid, they can be subject to unrealistic expectations that most people would insist violates a family's privacy, including specifying who they can and can't use for child care, requiring meal plans to be submitted weekly and inspection of homes, even when the society has determined that the child is not in danger. Although this is very individually and culturally subjective (such as co-sleeping) violation of these requirements can, and does, lead to apprehension of children.

It is dangerous fact that CAS holds all the power, yet they don't always have the best information or the best of intentions. Even when safety partnerships where being organized with the Office of the Coroner, less than one quarter of the 53 Ontario Societies participated. They do not appear to want any outside interference to their practices at all.

Each year, the Ombudsman receives hundreds of complaints about CAS, a number that may be smaller than reality, as many people are aware that they have no power to assist anyway. These complaints include issues of harassment, threats, lack of disclosure, inaccurate records, unsubstantiated apprehensions, abuse of children by foster parents ignored, misrepresentation of cases and other staff misconduct.

Ombudsman Andre Marin, who has successfully uncovered several government scandals, has continually pushed for oversight. Even with this historical success of the Ombudsman, a Bill was repeatedly shot down under the majority Liberal government that would amend the Act.

A documentary project being conducted at Ryerson University is finally breaking what they call "voices silenced by fear". At www.blakout.ca a documentary of families, former staff including directors and other professionals shows the often disturbing reality in a film titled "Powerful as God, The Children's Aid Society in Ontario."