Social assistance cuts making it harder to regain custody
Children’s aid
societies want Ontario to stop making it tougher to get kids back by cutting
housing and other benefits.
From left,
lawyers Jonathan Robart and Anum Malik and paralegal Antonia Baker of the
Scarborough Community Legal Centre helped a single mother whose children were
apprehended by the Children's Aid Society of Toronto navigate housing and
maintain child benefit payments. (Jim Rankin / Toronto Star) | Order
this photo
By Sandro ContentaNews
Jim RankinFeature reporter
Jim RankinFeature reporter
Sun., Oct. 9,
2016
Children’s aid
societies want the Ontario government to stop making it harder for parents on
social assistance to regain kids taken into care.
The call echoes
decisions by Ontario’s Social Benefits Tribunal, which has three times in the
last three years overturned cuts to the benefits mothers receive when their
children are apprehended and placed in foster or group homes.
The slashing of
Ontario Works or disability benefits forces parents into deeper poverty and
makes it “very difficult, if not impossible” to get their kids back, the
tribunal has ruled.
“The state is
creating a situation in which parents are losing their kids,” says Jackie
Esmonde, a staff lawyer at the Income Security Advocacy Centre. “I find that
grotesque.
”
The Children’s
Aid Society of Toronto is so concerned about the financial squeeze placed on
these parents that it has a policy of not informing Ontario Works when they
apprehend children at risk.
Increasing a
struggling family’s financial burden creates “a huge barrier to that child ever
going back to that family,” says society spokesperson Rob Thompson. “So we’re
not reporting it because we understand the implications of it.”
Almost all
children who enter care do so on a temporary basis. The goal is to reunite them
with their families once parents have been helped with mental health,
parenting, addiction or other issues. Children’s aid officials say it becomes
far more difficult for parents to improve their lives when their social
assistance cheques are sharply reduced.
The biggest
concern is housing. The tribunal has dealt with at least one case of a parent
evicted and forced to move to a smaller apartment. But children’s aid won’t
return children to their parents if apartments aren’t a suitable size.
When children are
made Crown wards, making them eligible for adoption, no one disputes the
Ministry of Community and Social Services’ practice of removing them from a
parent’s “benefit unit.” Children’s aid societies have up to two years to
decide that, and family court battles can extend the process.
"LETS BE CLEAR ABOUT ISIL {ISIS} THEY HAVE RAMPAGED ACROSS CITIES AND VILLAGES, KILLING INNOCENT , UNARMED CIVILIANS IN COWARDLY ACTS OF VIOLENCE.
...NO JUST GOD WOULD STAND FOR WHAT THEY DID YESTERDAY AND WHAT THEY DO EVERY SINGLE DAY." -President Obama
The concern is
with families who lose benefits when societies still consider the removal of
children temporary. The three tribunal cases overturned ministry cuts to
benefits before a decision on a child’s permanent placement.
“It makes sense
that families keep their benefits until a permanency decision is made,” says
Danielle Warning, a supervisor at the Toronto society.
Caroline Newton,
spokesperson for the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, which represents
all but four of the province’s 47 societies, called on the government to align
its benefits policy with the goal of reuniting families.
The ministry does
not intend to change its approach.
“For children who
are temporarily in the care of the CAS, decisions regarding continued inclusion
in the parent’s social assistance benefits are done on a case by case basis and
are based on the plan of care established by the CAS,” the ministry said in an
email. “Currently, there is no plan to remove this discretion.”
The ministry,
which says it raised Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program
benefits by 20 per cent since 2003, doesn’t know how many parents each year get
their assistance slashed due to kids temporarily placed in foster or group
homes. Lawyers in legal clinics interviewed by the Star say it is not uncommon.
On average,
15,625 Ontario children were in foster or group-home care in 2014-15. A recent study found that parents who ran out of
money for food, housing or utilities were twice as likely to have their
children apprehended.
The ministry says
it recognizes “keeping the child in the parental benefit unit may be necessary
to allow the parent to retain suitable housing for the child’s planned return.”
That awareness
didn’t help Tiyya, a Scarborough mother who lost three young children to foster
care due to violence between her and the kids’ father. The loss made her feel
“like I couldn’t breathe anymore, like somebody was choking me,” says Tiyya, a
soft-spoken woman in her early 30s.
Children’s aid
took her kids in April 2014. Six weeks later, Ontario Works decided her
benefits would be cut by almost $400 a month, an amount covering the “basic
needs” portion for a family of four and the housing allowance for three kids.
Tiyya also lost
about $530 a month in federal and provincial child benefits, money redirected
to the CAS. Today, a mother of three would lose about $1,800 a month.
With a cheque
reduced to $656, paying $989 a month for her two-bedroom apartment would be
impossible.
“I was lost,”
Tiyya says.
Tiyya is a
pseudonym the Ethiopian-born woman chose because Ontario law prevents
identifying children in care. She says it means “mine” in her Omoro language, a
signal that her children will always belong to her, no matter what family court
eventually decides.
When she turned
to Scarborough Community Legal Services for help, staff lawyer Anum Malik
intervened and Ontario Works agreed to restore the housing allowance portion,
leaving her with $1,020 a month.
Tiyya then
followed the plan set out by children’s aid. She took parenting and anger
management programs, at $100 a month. She visited her children once a week, borrowing
from friends and family to pay for TTC tokens and to make Ethiopian food the
kids enjoyed.
But on March 1,
2015, Ontario Works again cut her benefits to $656. She fell behind on rent and
was evicted six months later.
Ontario Works
temporarily restored some benefits when Malik appealed to the Social Benefits
Tribunal. By then, Tiyya had moved to a junior one-bedroom at $950 a month. She
wanted something cheaper but children’s aid warned her anything smaller would
make the return of her kids impossible.
She went to food
banks. She missed some visits because she didn’t have bus fare. Other times,
she showed up stressed out.
On May 27 this
year, tribunal adjudicator Nancy Ferguson noted the “refusal to continue
benefits impacts the mother’s efforts to have the children returned home
because the ability of the parent to provide a suitable residence is a factor
the court may consider in determining where the children should be placed.”
Ferguson ordered
Ontario Works to immediately restore full benefits — as though Tiyya’s three
children were still in her care — retroactively. Ferguson further ruled Tiyya
should receive $230 per child as temporary compensation for the loss of federal
and provincial child benefits.
Similar
conclusions were reached in two other recent decisions by the tribunal, whose
rulings are not precedent-setting. They referred to a 2008 Court of Appeal
order that a woman should receive full disability benefits for the shelter of
her three children, even though they spent half the year with her ex-husband.
Nicholas Bala, an
authority on family and children’s law at Queen’s University, describes the
ministry as being “penny wise and pound foolish.”
“If we don’t
invest in our children now we pay a huge price later in terms of mental health
services and correctional services,” he says, noting the poor outcomes of many
children in care.
After all
the pain that we feel
After all
those wound’s that never heal…
After all
those year’s and tears that we cry,
CHILDREN’S
AIDS: Do you think you’ll find a place to hide…
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