ISIS kidnaps
127 Iraqi children in Mosul
According
to the officials, the children have been transferred to special concentration camps
run by the terrorists group in order to “be abused and tortured.”
Ontario unveils blueprint to reform troubled group and
foster care
Provincial residential care reforms
aim to give children and youth the right services at the right time as close to
home as possible.
https://kmlaw.ca/cases/crown-ward-class-action/
Michael Coteau, Ontario's Minister
of Child and Youth Services, chats with Richard Marcano, 22, a former child in
care and a youth amplifier with the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth,
after Coteau announced sweeping legislative reforms aimed at improving the
lives of children in care in December 2016. On July 19, the minister released
the blue print for reforming the system (Jim Rankin / Toronto Star)
| Order this photo
By Laurie MonsebraatenSocial justice reporter
A long-awaited blueprint to reform
Ontario’s troubled group home and foster-care system vows to boost quality,
increase oversight and ensure children and youth have a voice in helping to
plan their care.
Youth are particularly pleased about
the government’s plan to increase unannounced inspections of group homes and
ensure young people understand and exercise their rights while in care.
“It’s a game-changer,” said Amanda
Owusu, 21, a former youth in care and a member of the residential services
youth panel that advised the government on the blueprint
.
“The system will not function
properly unless the children and the youth are at the centre of it,” she said.
But children’s aid officials worry
the multi-year scheme released by Children and Youth Services Minister Michael
Coteau on Wednesday is silent on what will happen to children living in
substandard homes forced to close due to beefed-up inspections.
And they are concerned the strategy
offers no new funds to address the children’s mental health crisis unfolding in
remote northern communities. The vast number of Indigenous children and youth
in the north are sent to residential care homes in the south due to mental
health problems, not child protection matters, they say.
“It seems like it is a good first
step for kids in care, but we need more steps to be taken for a mental health
system,” said Dr. Michael Kirlew, a physician in the Sioux Lookout region who
regularly travels to northern First Nations such as Wapekeka First Nation,
which has been struggling with a youth suicide pact since last summer.
“My concern is if we don’t,
additional youth suicides are not a possibility, they are an inevitability,” he
said in an interview.
Child protection agencies look
forward to working with the government to “build a quality system where
children and youth are at the centre, feel safe and have their voices heard,”
said Caroline Newton, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Association of Children’s
Aid Societies, which represents the province’s 48 privately run societies.
“We totally support more inspections
and closing substandard homes,” she said in an interview. “But these kids still
need to be cared for, and they need somewhere to go.”
The blueprint comes in the wake of a
damning 2016 expert panel report on residential
care that found a confusing system with little provincial oversight or tracking
of child and youth well-being, no minimum qualifications for caregivers and a
growing number of kids with complex special needs being placed in unlicensed
programs.
Panel member Kiaras Gharabaghi,
director of Ryerson University’s school of child and youth care, said the
blueprint addresses issues that have been raised for years by numerous reviews
and need to be implemented more quickly.
“The government wants all children
and youth to be safe by 2025; this means that the government knows children and
youth are not safe now and is prepared to wait eight years, which is two
generations of youth in care, before committing to this being a safe way of
growing up.” he said.
However he said the government’s
willingness to tackle the “especially dire circumstances” of Black and
Indigenous youth in residential care offers some hope.
“But we will all be watching to see
action, not to hear more words,” he warned.
In addition to unannounced
inspections, short-term measures in the blueprint include new quality of care
standards, more use of serious occurrence reports to improve oversight and
enhanced scrutiny to ensure all licensed settings meet fire code regulations.
A 14-year-old girl and her caregiver
died after fire engulfed a foster home in the Lindsay area in February. As reported by the Star, they were trapped in a
room where a sliding glass door was bolted shut and the only window was too
small for an adult to escape.
Over the longer-term, the government
will explore setting minimum education requirements so that all children and
youth are cared for by qualified, well-trained and responsive staff.
Ultimately, the goal is to ensure
“the right services are available to children and youth at the right time and
as close to their community as possible, particularly in northern Ontario,”
according to the blueprint.
The blueprint “is not just our plan
as a government, it is my commitment to young people across this province that
we will listen to their ideas, we will put them at the centre of all decisions,
and we will build safe places for them to call home,” said Coteau said in a
statement.
Children and youth are placed in
residential care due to parental abuse or neglect, conflict with the law or
mental health needs. There are about 15,170 beds in licensed foster or group
homes in Ontario.
With files from Tanya Talaga
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