My blog holds Ontario Works (OW), the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), and other welfare agencies accountable for their pervasive corruption, ineptitude, and lack of concern for their public mandate.
Hudak says he wants to crackdown on healthcare and other social service fraud... Could this policy be one of guilty until proven innocent or criminalization of poverty? Chris
: a result or occurrence that seems proper because someone who has done bad things to other people is being harmed or punished ▪ After the way he treated his staff, it was poetic justice that he lost his job.
The NDP's push to have the Ontario Ombudsman given the power to oversee CAS complaints. Attached is the transcript of a question raised in the Ontario Legislature yesterday (May 9th) by New Democrat MPP Rosario Marchese. For almost a year the McGuinty government suppressed news that its Child and Family Services Review Board had stopped hearing CAS complaints as a result of a court decision that has seriously hampered the board's ability to function.
Sheila White
Executive Assistant
to MPP Andrea Horwath
Children’s aid societies – May 9, 2011
Mr. Rosario Marchese: To the Minister of Children and Youth Services. Is the minister aware that, almost a year ago, the Superior Court of Justice made a decision stating that the Child and Family Services Review Board does not have the power to hear children’s aid societies’ complaints that are before the courts?
Hon. Laurel C. Broten: I’m pleased to have a chance to spend a moment talking about the important oversight that we do have when it comes to children’s aid societies.
I want to highlight that there is Family Court oversight; there is the Child and Family Services Review Board oversight; the Ombudsman, who does have oversight of the Child and Family Services Review Board; the Auditor General; and the Office of the Chief Coroner.
Yes, my colleague opposite does raise an issue that the CFSRB has an appeal presently before the courts where they continue to defend the rubric and the area of authority that they importantly have as a specialized tribunal that has expertise to deal with the complicated and sensitive matters, and that in our view is the appropriate forum to deal with these issues involving children and families.
The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?
Mr. Rosario Marchese: The minister would know that since the Superior Court of Justice’s decision was made last year, over 50 children’s aid societies’ hearings have been put on ice. Many more will be on hold in the coming months.
Let me understand this: The government will not allow the Ombudsman to oversee children’s aid societies, the courts are not allowing the CFSRB to hear any cases before a judge, yet the government is adamant there are no problems with the system.
How is the government planning to help the growing number of families who are no one to turn to when they have a problem with the children’s aid society?
Hon. Laurel C. Broten: I think it’s important for families right across the province who might be watching to understand that we have a very rigorous variety of oversights that allow you, as an individual, to come forward with a complaint if you do have one with respect to a children’s aid society. The OACAS and other organizations have been very clear about their support for rigorous oversight of CASs. It’s a very regulated procedure, as it should be. These are highly important and emotional and technical matters that involve our children, and so we very much appreciate the variety of oversights that we’ve put in place.
At the same time, the CFSRB is a specialized tribunal. We have expanded their powers, increased their mandate to give them the opportunity to review these matters in a holistic way. There is an appeal presently and that should proceed and is proceeding through the courts where arguments are being made with respect to their oversight capacity —
The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. New question.
Distress leads to employment difficulties, says conselling agency
The vast majority of Ontario Works clients experience severe distress that leads to difficulties finding employment, according to a Halton-based counselling agency.
Susan Jewett of Burlington Counselling and Family Services (BCFS) told the Region’s health and social service committee about the strong relation between financial and mental distress during a recent presentation.
The agency receives funding from the Region to provide Ontario Works (OW) clients with free short-term counselling (up to 20 sessions). Jewett said 83 per cent of those on OW report experiencing severe distress.
“Is it any wonder that they face barriers to employment? They are much more likely to have multiple and significant stressors that interfere with their ability to participate in training, job readiness programs, or employment,” she said.
Of the clients surveyed, 100 per cent of those suffering with severe distress reported feeling blue, 89 per cent said they lack interest in things, 88 per cent have trouble falling or staying asleep. Thirty per cent of those surveyed have thoughts of ending their life and only 24 per cent reported being satisfied with life.
“Personal problems will be barriers to employment unless some relief is found,” said Jewett. After completing the counselling program, five per cent of clients made a full recovery, 47 per cent are still experiencing some levels distress, but it’s not considered severe, and 47 per cent feel better, but they’re still experiencing severe distress. No one reported feeling worse.
“We need to be realistic and acknowledge that short-term counselling is not usually enough when a person is experiencing severe levels of distress. But it can be helpful and it is a great start, as demonstrated,” said Jewett.
With the $75,000 BCFS receives from the Region for OW counselling, the agency sees 60 to 70 individuals.
But Jewett said statistics show there’s a far greater need in Halton.
Regional staff, however, say the need is being met.
According to Halton’s director of social services, on top of the funding provided to BCFS, $225,000 is funded to ADAPT (Halton Alcohol, Drug and Prevention Treatment) for concurrent disorder programs.
In total the Region is providing $300,000 on mental health support.
“Anyone of us can fall on hard times…But most people don’t stay on social assistance forever,” said Jewett. “It’s a temporary rough period and many of the people we see will get beyond this if they have the proper support.”
The Toronto Community Housing townhouse project where a mother and two youngsters perished in a fire three years ago was allegedly deemed “too dangerous” for city welfare workers to make home visits.
The information is contained in an unsuccessful motion by the victims’ family to have a coroner’s inquest expand its scope, The Globe and Mail has learned.
The motion was denied March 28 by presiding coroner David Evans.
What the ruling means is that the inquest won’t explore the role of the social services agency that had the longest-standing involvement with the family and that the jurors won’t hear that while five children lived in that townhouse, and countless others still live in the complex, Toronto’s welfare department allegedly wrote off the address as a “waived” one where workers wouldn’t venture.
It also leaves unanswered the question of how a complex could be considered too dangerous for case workers to visit for a short time, yet at the same time be home for the youngsters who have no choice but to live there.
On Dec. 22, 2007, 35-year-old Diane Anderson and two of her five children – Tayjah Simpson, who was 9, and Jahzial Whittaker, 3 – died when the two littlest boys set some papers alight with their mother’s lighter, accidentally starting a three-alarm blaze that within minutes engulfed the unit in toxic smoke and flames.
Ms. Anderson’s oldest daughter, Ieisha, then just 16, made heroic efforts to save her siblings, returning to the house three times after escaping. Ieisha and the two wee boys survived.
The family lived in a unit that is part of 303 Grandravine Drive, the address for the townhouse complex in the Jane Street-Finch Avenue West area, a part of the city that has a high proportion of poor single mothers and high unemployment.
The inquest is a discretionary one, with its focus on the roles played by the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, Toronto Community Housing and the Toronto Fire Services.
Yet Dr. Evans also ruled earlier that the scope would include “the community services/resources available to the family” and the “sufficiency of these services.”
It was under that rubric that family lawyer Roger Rowe, supported by Suzan Fraser, lawyer for the provincial advocate for children and youth, asked the coroner to expand the scope to include Toronto’s Employment and Social Services Department as well.
Lawyers for the other agencies with formal standing at the inquest either took no position on the motion or supported it, with only David Gourlay, the lawyer for the city, arguing against it.
According to documents obtained by The Globe, Mr. Gourlay, who in fairness is representing the city’s fire service and not its welfare arm, said if Dr. Evans granted the motion, he would need a delay of several months to bring his new client up to speed. The other lawyers agreed to the delay if necessary.
But Dr. Evans ruled that an inquest must be “a focused inquiry” and that there was no connection between the welfare department and the deaths.
Mr. Rowe and Ms. Frazer argued that because city welfare was “involved with Ms. Anderson at the time of her death,” and off and on since 1993, the agency’s role wasn’t peripheral to the family’s circumstances.
According to the policies of Ontario Works, for whom municipal welfare agencies are so-called “delivery agents,” case workers may on occasion visit welfare recipients and are supposed to offer recipients job or skills training and “screening for substance abuse.”
According to affidavits from Ieisha Simpson, who is now in the witness box, and Ms. Anderson’s older sister Sophia, the family never received a single home visit from their welfare case worker, and were told that welfare “had listed her residence address as one that was too dangerous to visit.”
It isn’t clear from the documents why 303 Grandravine was a “waived” address, what “waived” means, whether the too-dangerous designation was temporary or permanent, or what led to it.
Ms. Simpson, just 19, is now a single mom herself, with an eight-month-old daughter she has named Tayjah after the sister who died in the fire.
In her affidavit, Ms. Simpson said she is now receiving social assistance too, yet has received no help with “housing, upgrading, life skills or employment.”
It appears the sad cycle of grinding poverty and hopelessness that in the end defeated her mother may have begun to repeat itself.
Now in its fourth day, the inquest has heard a plethora of evidence about Ms. Anderson’s personal failings – depressed and grief-stricken when within days her fiancé was shot to death in the summer of 2005 (he was an innocent or mistaken target, Toronto Police said at the time) and she lost the baby she was carrying, she began drinking heavily and using drugs.
Yet lawyers for the various agencies, with narrow questioning of witnesses designed to put the best shine on things for their respective clients, have collectively managed to create an impression that each agency tried its best to help the family. The inference that is the elephant in the room is that but for Ms. Anderson herself, who sometimes was too proud or stubborn to accept help, all would have been tickety-boo for the family.
The truth is, she was still black, still poor, still living in a housing complex called too dangerous for workers to visit but still good enough for her kids: No wonder she drank.
