"As of January 1, 2020 FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN ONTARIO, if you or your family have BEEN DRAGGED THROUGH THE FAMILY COURTS AND NOT received help or support from a Children’s Aid Society, group home, or other child and family service provider in Ontario, you have the right to see and ask for corrections to your personal information in your file... ISN'T THAT NICE OF THEM?
...You can ask to see and get a copy of your personal information in your file. It includes information about your history, your health or notes from talks you’ve had with a social worker or other professional. Your service provider must help you get this information if you ask."
REQUEST YOUR FILE TODAY! Get informed, you have rights!
- Why weren't clients and suspected clients allowed to see their files?
Former Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian wrote:
“I am disheartened by the complete lack of action to ensure transparency and accountability by these organizations that received significant public funding. As part of the modernization of the Acts, I call on the government to finally address this glaring omission and ensure that Children’s Aid Societies are added to the list of institutions covered.”
The only oversight for the province’s children’s aid agencies comes from Ontario’s Ministry of Children and Youth Services.
"As the law stands now clients of the Ontario Children's Aid Society under Wynne's liberals are routinely denied a timely (often heavily censored) file disclosure before the court begins making decisions and the clients can not request files/disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act nor can censored information reviewed by the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario or the federal counter-part."
In her 2004 annual report, which was released on June 22, 2005, the Commissioner called for amendments that would bring virtually all organizations that are primarily funded by government dollars under FOI for the purposes of transparency and accountability: This would include the various children’s aid agencies in the Province of Ontario. Many parents and families complain about how difficult it is, if not impossible, to obtain information from children’s aid agencies. Many citizens complain that CAS agencies appear to operate under a veil of secrecy. Unlicensed and untrained CAS workers are making decisions which are literally destroying families, yet there is little or no accountability for their actions short of a lawsuit AFTER THE DAMAGE TO THE CHILD AND FAMILY HAS BEEN DONE.
“Hundreds of organizations that are recipients of large transfer payments from the government are not subject to the provincial or municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Acts,” said the Commissioner, “which means they are not subject to public scrutiny.” Among the examples she cites are hospitals and Children’s Aid Societies. “Openness and transparency of all publicly funded bodies is essential – they should be publicly accountable.”
In her annual report for 2013 released on June 17 there is just one paragraph on children's aid on page 12:
In my 2004, 2009, and 2012 Annual Reports I recommended that Children’s Aid Societies, which provide services for some of our most vulnerable citizens – children and youth in government care, be brought under FIPPA. I am disheartened by the complete lack of action to ensure transparency and accountability by these organizations that received significant public funding. As part of the modernization of the Acts, I call on the government to finally address this glaring omission and ensure that Children’s Aid Societies are added to the list of institutions covered.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner is appointed by and reports to the Ontario Legislative Assembly, and is independent of the government of the day. The Commissioner's mandate includes overseeing the access and privacy provisions of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and the Personal Health Information Protection Act, and commenting on other access and privacy issues.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/beef-up-information-laws-ontario-privacy-czar-says/article1120573/
http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/commissioner-cavoukian-calls-on-government-to-preserve-freedom-and-liberty-514463911.html
The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice..
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
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2012: Concerns have been raised that child welfare systems may inappropriately target poor families for intrusive interventions.
The term “neglect” has been critiqued as a class-based label applied disproportionately to poor families WHETHER THEY BE WHITE, RED OR BLACK.
The objectives of the study are to identify the nature and frequency of clinical and poverty-related concerns in child neglect investigations and to assess the service referral response to these needs; to examine the contribution of poverty-related need to case decision-making; and to explore whether substantiated cases of neglect can be divided into subtypes based on different constellations of clinical and poverty-related needs.
This study is a secondary analysis of data collected through the 2008 Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS‑2008), a nationally representative dataset. A selected subsample of neglect investigations from the CIS‑2008 (N = 4,489) is examined through descriptive analyses, logistic regression, and two-step cluster analysis in order to explore each research objective.
Children and caregivers investigated for neglect presented with a range of clinical and poverty related difficulties. Contrary to some previous research, the existence of poverty-related needs did not influence case dispositions after controlling for other relevant risk factors. However, some variables that should be, in theory, extraneous to case decision-making emerged as significant in the multivariate models, most notably Aboriginal status, with Aboriginal children having increased odds of substantiation, ongoing service provision and placement. Cluster analyses revealed that cases of neglect could be partitioned into three clusters, with no cluster emerging characterized by poverty alone.
The majority of children investigated for neglect live in families experiencing poverty-related needs, and with caregivers struggling with clinical difficulties. While poverty-related need on its own does not explain the high proportion of poor families reported to the child welfare system, nor does it account for significant variance in case decision making, cluster analysis suggests that there exists a subgroup of “neglected” children living in families perhaps best characterized by the broader notion of social disadvantage.
These families may be better served through an orientation of family support/family welfare rather than through the current residual child protection paradigm.
https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/exploration-relationship-between-poverty-and-child-neglect-canadian-child-welfare
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Is the high cost of clean water and hydro putting your family at risk of CAS involvement?
Researchers at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto say that poverty plays a significant role in kids being taken from their families and placed into care in Ontario.
The effect of provincial policies on struggling families was especially apparent in the late 1990s, when the Conservative government slashed welfare payments and social service funding while at the same time, it introduced in child protection the notion of maltreatment by “omission,” including not having enough food in the home and this after giving the society what amounted to an unlimited funding scheme. The number of children taken into care spiked as did their funding.
“The ministry has been pretty clear with us that advocacy is not part of our mandate,” Goodman said speaking for the society. “It’s not like they’re asking for the (poverty) data. They’re not.” Goodman then when on to suggest the silence suited the government more than the silence suited the society's funding goals.
https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/08/15/report-shines-light-on-povertys-role-on-kids-in-cas-system.html
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2019: Executive director Elaina Groves does say it's important for the public to know that child protection workers investigate differently than police.
Decisions are made on a "balance of probabilities" which sometimes means there's not enough evidence for criminal charges let alone a conviction.
Groves says some may think that sounds "subjective" but she says rulings on abuse are based on the "impressions" of the unqualified unregistered social worker, the opinions of questionable medical professionals, as well as other evidence like the fraudulent Motherisk Test.
Balance of Probabilities Definition: Burden of proof in civil trials. ... The common distinction is made with the burden of truth in a criminal trial, which is beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil trial, one party's case need only be more probable than the other.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/cas-daycare-operator-dowling-sudbury-child-abuse-1.4826325
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/home-daycare-lawsuit-cas-police-investigation-1.4537023
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DO ONTARIO CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY'S WORKERS FIT THE DEFINITION OF A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR UNDER THE ACT AND SHOULD THEY BE ACCOUNTABLE TO AN INVESTIGATIVE CODE OF CONDUCT?
A private investigator is a person who performs work, for remuneration, that consists primarily of conducting investigations in order to provide information. 2005, c. 34, s. 2 (2).
The Private Security and Investigative Services Act, 2005 (PSISA) regulates the private security industry. The PSISA was proclaimed into force on August 23, 2007 to help professionalize the security industry, increase public safety and ensure practitioners receive proper training and are qualified to provide PROTECTIVE SERVICES. The PSISA and its regulations govern the way the private security industry operates in Ontario.
INVESTIGATOR ARE REQUIRED TO ADHERE TO AN INVESTIGATIVE CODE OF CONDUCT.
https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/05p34
HOW DOES THIS ACT NOT APPLY TO THE ONTARIO CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY?
Does Ontario Require a License to be a Private Investigator?
Yes. In the province of Ontario anyone performing the activities of a private investigator is required to hold a valid Ontario Private Investigator License and be employed by a licensed private investigator/agency.
It is illegal to sell yourself as a Private Investigator without holding a license and working for a licensed agency. This does not stop scammers… In Ontario you will find a handful of unlicensed and shady agencies ...
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE STANDARDS, OR LEGISLATION, OR THE BUREAUCRACY - IT'S ABOUT ETHICS AND APPLICATION. IF YOUR GOING TO FIX WHAT'S WRONG WITH CHILD PROTECTION - START AT THE BEGINNING. FUNDAMENTAL JUSTICE.
IT'S NOT THE SYSTEM THAT LACKS ETHICS, MORALS AND ACCOUNTABILITY OR ACTS IN BAD FAITH - IT'S THE PEOPLE ENTRUSTED TO OVERSEE THE SYSTEM THAT LACK THOSE THINGS. IT'S NOT BAD SYSTEM THAT MAKES GOOD WORKERS BAD - IT'S BAD WORKERS THAT MAKE A SYSTEM THAT'S NEITHER GOOD NOR BAD, BAD.
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Under suspicion: Concerns about child welfare.
In 2015, the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) began a year-long consultation to learn more about the nature of profiling in Ontario. Our aim was to gather information to help us guide organizations, individuals and communities on how to identify, address and prevent profiling. We connected with people and organizations representing diverse perspectives. We conducted an online survey, analyzed cases (called applications) at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario that alleged profiling, held a policy dialogue consultation, and reviewed academic research. We conducted focus groups with Indigenous peoples and received written submissions. Overall, almost 1,650 individuals and organizations told us about their experiences or understanding of profiling in Ontario.
If you need legal help, contact the Human Rights Legal Support Centre at:
Toll Free: 1-866-625-5179
TTY Toll Free: 1-866-612-8627
Website: www.hrlsc.on.ca
http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/under-suspicion-concerns-about-child-welfare
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2013: Barbara Kay: Attacking the root of children's aid societies' rot.
Children are not pets. Removing them from the care of their families must be the exception, not the norm.
CAS oversight is desperately needed. As Ontario Ombudsman André Martin said in a recent Toronto Star article: “Every year my office is forced to turn away hundreds of people complaining about children’s aid societies. We are powerless to investigate these cases.” Since 2006, there have been “more than 2,500 people we have been unable to help.” -
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bkay
2019: Court rules Ontario animal protection law enforcement regime unconstitutional.
"Animal protection laws are the only laws still enforced by private agencies, and the court ruled that private enforcement without transparency and accountability is unacceptable," said lawyer Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, in a press release statement.
While Breder says she agrees that in most cases, private organizations shouldn’t possess government-like powers to enter a person’s property and seize their belongings, finding the OSPCA’s powers completely unconstitutional could lead to a slippery slope for other SPCAs nationwide.
WHAT ABOUT ONTARIO'S SELF REGULATED FULLY GOVERNMENT FUNDED NON PROFIT MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR PRIVATE CORPORATION?
THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY...
The sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in question are sections 7 and 8 (concerning individual autonomy and unreasonable search and seizure, respectively). While the decision states there is no direct charter violation of the distribution of legislative powers and “specific warrantless search and/or seizure powers” in the OSPCA Act, Justice Timothy Minnema wrote in his decision that assigning “police and other investigative powers to the OSPCA” violates s. 7.
(FUNNY HOW SECTION 7 AND 8 APPLIES TO PETS AND NOT CHILDREN)
Animal Shelters:
Like group and foster homes for apprehended children in Ontario not all animal shelters are the same. Fortunate homeless and unwanted animals end up in the hundreds of open-admission animal shelters that are staffed by professional, caring people.
At these facilities, frightened animals are reassured, sick and injured animals receive treatment or a peaceful end to their suffering, and the animals’ living quarters are kept clean and dry. Workers at these facilities never turn away needy animals and give careful consideration to each animal’s special emotional and physical needs unlike most group and foster homes who prefer to use prescription cocktails, police intervention and physical restraints on children at the first sign of a child in need.
Many less fortunate lost or abandoned animals end up in pitiful shelters that are nothing more than shacks without walls or other protection from the elements, where animals are often left to die from exposure, disease, or fights with other animals like apprehended children in Ontario's child welfare system.
https://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/animal-shelters/
https://www.ctvnews.ca/mummified-cat-found-in-t-o-humane-society-ceiling-1.458967
https://www.cp24.com/official-calls-animal-shelter-house-of-horrors-reports-finding-mummified-cat-1.458960
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/11/28/humane_society_it_seems_like_house_of_horrors.html
https://thepetshopsite.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/animal-shelter-turned-into-a-%E2%80%98house-of-horrors%E2%80%99/
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2019: Court rules Ontario animal protection law enforcement regime unconstitutional.
The current animal protection law enforcement regime in Ontario has been ruled to be unconstitutional by the Superior Court of Justice.
The court struck down the province’s current regime Jan. 2 in a Kingston court in Bogaerts v. Attorney General of Ontario, declaring that it is unconstitutional for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a private charity not subject to reasonable oversight measures, to enforce public animal protection laws.
Unlike the majority of SPCAs across Canada, the OSPCA is both government funded and also privately funded by donations. The OSPCA, a charity, holds law enforcement powers, without the same transparency and accountability a public or government agency has.
“There's a bit of a divide within the animal protection movement,” says Rebeka Breder, a Vancouver-based animal law lawyer at Breder Law. “I think the concern here is that if you're going to have someone's property being searched and someone's property, like animals, being taken away, then those powers should be [given to] the government and not a private organization that's not subject to freedom of information requests. There's very little transparency and arguably, perhaps even accountability, because it's a private non-profit organization.”
The sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in question are sections 7 and 8 (concerning individual autonomy and unreasonable search and seizure, respectively). While the decision states there is no direct charter violation of the distribution of legislative powers and “specific warrantless search and/or seizure powers” in the OSPCA Act, Justice Timothy Minnema wrote in his decision that assigning “police and other investigative powers to the OSPCA” violates s. 7.
(FUNNY HOW SECTION 7 AND 8 APPLIES TO PETS AND NOT CHILDREN)
As a result, the court suspended the declaration of invalidity for 12 months to provide Ontario time for restructuring its animal protection regime to ensure the desired accountability needed to operate with having such a public function. Minnema wrote that it would be “an untenable result” to “compromise animal welfare for even a transitional period” of time as the province “considers its next step.”
The Canadian animal law organization, Animal Justice, intervened after the case’s hearing last May and argued that in order for animals to maximally benefit from legal protections, the enforcement agency needs to be transparent.
"Animal protection laws are the only laws still enforced by private agencies, and the court ruled that private enforcement without transparency and accountability is unacceptable," said lawyer Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, in a press release statement.
While Breder says she agrees that in most cases, private organizations shouldn’t possess government-like powers to enter a person’s property and seize their belongings, finding the OSPCA’s powers completely unconstitutional could lead to a slippery slope for other SPCAs nation-wide.
“The SPCAs across the country should remain having the powers that they do to investigate animal welfare and cruelty concerns because [due to] a lack of financial and human resources it means they're in the best position to look into these issues and to deal with them,” she says. “If we just left it up to the government, I think we would be seeing significantly less animal welfare issues being investigated.”
Suzana Gartner, mediator and founder of Toronto-based Gartner & Associates Animal Law, says she agrees with Breder’s sentiment.
“This [decision] is like a win-win for everybody in my view because if they're given an opportunity to restructure their enforcement regime and to be accountable and transparent, I think that's going to help the province. It can help them mandate their policing powers,” Gartner says.
Legal Feeds contacted Daniel Huffaker, a lawyer representing the Attorney General of Ontario, in Bogaerts v. Attorney General of Ontario. A ministry media representative, Philip Klassen, declined comment, stating via email: “We are currently reviewing this decision. As this matter is in the appeal period, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
On Jan. 4, OSPCA general counsel Brian Shiller sent an email statement to media outlets clarifying the role of the OSPCA in this case. “There was no allegation that the Ontario SPCA was at fault for anything regarding the subject matter of the application and the court did not criticize any conduct on the part of the Ontario SPCA in its administration of the Ontario SPCA Act,” he said. “Rather, the court created a new legal principle and used it to rule that it was unconstitutional for the Province of Ontario to enact legislation that permits a private charity to have policing powers in the absence of government oversight.”
https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/general/court-rules-ontario-animal-protection-law-enforcement-regime-unconstitutional/275753
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ANOTHER ODDLY SIGNIFICANT FACTOR ADDING TO THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN IN CARE.
Motherisk Report: 13 OF 32 Recommendations to Prevent Children Who Don't Need To Be Placed In Care From Being Placed In Care Anyway.
Summary of Recommendations: Accessibility of Legal Aid funds.
8. Legal Aid Ontario should a. in authorizing disbursements to parents’ counsel related to expert evidence, consider the complexity of child protection cases and the miscarriages of justice that could result from failing to vigorously challenge expert evidence;
(IS THAT WHY FAMILY LAWYERS DON'T ASK TO SEE THEIR COURT DISCLOSURES, FILE THE REQUIRED PAPERWORK BEFORE DEADLINES HAVE PASSED OR PRESENT ANY EVIDENCE THAT MIGHT COUNTER A WORKERS SWORN AFFIDAVIT OR CHALLENGE ALLEGED EXPERTS BEFORE THE FAMILY COURT JUDGES START MAKING LIFE ALTERING DECISIONS ON A PRIMA FACIE BASIS?)
b. expand its Big Case Management program to child protection cases; and
c. expand its Complex Case Rate policy to child protection counsel.
9. The Ministry of the Attorney General should ensure that the total funding available to Legal Aid Ontario is sufficient to enable the Recommendations in this Report to be implemented.
Specialty legal clinic for child protection
10. Legal Aid Ontario should establish an independent specialty legal clinic focused on child protection that could accept “hard to serve” clients, provide research and mentoring for private practitioners, engage in advocacy, and bring test case litigation to protect and enhance the rights of parents in child protection proceedings.
Disclosure
11. The Family Rules Committee should amend the Family Law Rules to require children’s aid societies to provide automatic, ongoing, thorough and timely disclosure to parents. Education for judges on gatekeeping role in child protection.
Former Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian wrote:
“I am disheartened by the complete lack of action to ensure transparency and accountability by these organizations that received significant public funding. As part of the modernization of the Acts, I call on the government to finally address this glaring omission and ensure that Children’s Aid Societies are added to the list of institutions covered.”
The only oversight for the province’s children’s aid agencies comes from Ontario’s Ministry of Children and Youth Services.
"As the law stands now clients of the Ontario Children's Aid Society under Wynne's liberals are routinely denied a timely (often heavily censored) file disclosure before the court begins making decisions and the clients can not request files/disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act nor can censored information reviewed by the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario or the federal counter-part."
In her 2004 annual report, which was released on June 22, 2005, the Commissioner called for amendments that would bring virtually all organizations that are primarily funded by government dollars under FOI for the purposes of transparency and accountability: This would include the various children’s aid agencies in the Province of Ontario. Many parents and families complain about how difficult it is, if not impossible, to obtain information from children’s aid agencies. Many citizens complain that CAS agencies appear to operate under a veil of secrecy. Unlicensed and untrained CAS workers are making decisions which are literally destroying families, yet there is little or no accountability for their actions short of a lawsuit AFTER THE DAMAGE TO THE CHILD AND FAMILY HAS BEEN DONE.
“Hundreds of organizations that are recipients of large transfer payments from the government are not subject to the provincial or municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Acts,” said the Commissioner, “which means they are not subject to public scrutiny.” Among the examples she cites are hospitals and Children’s Aid Societies. “Openness and transparency of all publicly funded bodies is essential – they should be publicly accountable.”
In her annual report for 2013 released on June 17 there is just one paragraph on children's aid on page 12:
In my 2004, 2009, and 2012 Annual Reports I recommended that Children’s Aid Societies, which provide services for some of our most vulnerable citizens – children and youth in government care, be brought under FIPPA. I am disheartened by the complete lack of action to ensure transparency and accountability by these organizations that received significant public funding. As part of the modernization of the Acts, I call on the government to finally address this glaring omission and ensure that Children’s Aid Societies are added to the list of institutions covered.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner is appointed by and reports to the Ontario Legislative Assembly, and is independent of the government of the day. The Commissioner's mandate includes overseeing the access and privacy provisions of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and the Personal Health Information Protection Act, and commenting on other access and privacy issues.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/beef-up-information-laws-ontario-privacy-czar-says/article1120573/
http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/commissioner-cavoukian-calls-on-government-to-preserve-freedom-and-liberty-514463911.html
12. The National Judicial Institute, the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario, and the Ontario Court of Justice should enhance their efforts to provide education programs and resources on expert evidence in child protection proceedings. Education should emphasize the skills judges need in order to perform their gatekeeper function in the unique context of child protection.
Extension of Counselling Services
1. The Ministry of Children and Youth Services should make free counselling services available to all affected persons,10 whether children, youth, or adults, upon request, for three more years from the date the Commission ceased to offer services (January 15, 2018).
Ensuring the Reliability of Expert Evidence
Bodily samples
2. The Ministry of Children and Youth Services should direct children’s aid societies to ensure that all child protection workers meet the requirements for obtaining valid written consent, in accordance with s 4(2) of the Child and Family Services Act (s 21(2) of the Child, Youth and Family Services Act), in every situation where a parent is asked to provide a bodily sample.
The directive should require workers to document (why not video record?) the steps they took to obtain consent and should require workers to obtain confirmation signed by the parent acknowledging that the requirements for valid consent were met.
(SO DOES THIS MEAN THE UNREGISTERED UNQUALIFIED SOCIAL WORKERS WILL HAVE TO DOCUMENT THREATENING TO REMOVE CHILDREN FOR A LACK OF COOPERATION SIGNING EVERYTHING A WORKER WANTS PARENTS TO JUST SIGN?)
3. The Ontario government should amend the Child, Youth and Family Services Act to a. require courts to exclude evidence of tests of parents’ bodily samples unless the court is satisfied that the parent provided valid consent, or that the sample was obtained by order under the Act. The only exception should be situations where the introduction of the evidence is critical to protecting a child’s immediate safety. The provision should require the court to consider the parent’s right to privacy and security of the person before making this exception;
b. prohibit courts from admitting evidence of a person’s failure or refusal to voluntarily provide a bodily sample for testing where the evidence is being introduced in order to demonstrate that the person is less worthy of belief, is or has been engaging in substance use, or is being uncooperative; and
c. provide specific criteria for judicial orders that require a person to provide a bodily sample, with those criteria relating to the safety of a child.
10 We considered “affected persons” broadly to include the following:
• Children whose families were involved with CASs in part because of concerns arising from positive Motherisk hair testing, as well as their siblings, biological parents, adoptive parents, and foster parents;
• Family members, such as grandparents, aunts and uncles;
• Any other person who offered a plan for the children;
• Individuals caring for the children under a customary care agreement, kinship arrangement or a custody order; and
• The bands or communities of Indigenous children.
Harmful Impacts: The Reliance on Hair Testing in Child Protection
|xiv|
Expert reports
4. The Family Rules Committee should amend the Family Law Rules to
a. require that, where a party wishes to introduce medical or scientific test results in a proceeding, the results be accompanied by a report from an expert explaining the meaning of the test results and the underlying science behind the testing; and b. require the content of expert reports to include the requirements in Rule 52.2 of the Federal Courts Rules, and in addition, require these reports to include the known or possible impacts of gender, socioeconomic status, culture, race, and other factors in the testing or assessment of results, as well as an explanation of what steps, if any, the expert took to address these impacts.
(SO DOES THIS ONE MEAN THE CAS WILL HAVE TO SUPPLY THE COURT WITH TWO CROOKED EXPERTS NOW?)
Temporary proceedings
5. The Family Rules Committee should amend the Family Law Rules to require courts to assess the necessity for and reliability of any expert evidence through a voir dire before admitting that expert’s report into evidence on any motion in a child protection proceeding, except at the first appearance. Deviation from this requirement should only be permitted where the parent expressly acknowledges to the court that the findings of the expert are correct and the court is satisfied that the parent adequately understands the expert opinion and the Consequences of such an acknowledgement.
6. The Ontario government should amend the Child, Youth and Family Services Act to prohibit the admission of hearsay evidence of expert opinion, including test results and the interpretation of those results, at any stage of a child protection proceeding other than the first appearance.
Deviation from this requirement should only be permitted where the parent expressly acknowledges to the court that the findings of the expert are correct and the court is satisfied that the parent adequately understands the expert opinion and the consequences of such an acknowledgement.
Summary judgment motions
7. The Family Rules Committee should amend the Family Law Rule relating to summary judgment motions to a. permit only evidence that would be admissible at trial, and in particular, to prohibit hearsay evidence that does not meet the common law tests for admissibility;
b. require all expert evidence tendered at a summary judgment motion to comply with the Rule regarding experts and expert reports (as amended by these Recommendations);
c. require the court to conduct a voir dire before admitting any expert evidence; and
d. permit deviation from these requirements only where the parent expressly
acknowledges to the court that the findings of the expert are correct and the court is satisfied that the parent adequately understands the expert opinion and the consequences of such an acknowledgement.
Report of the Motherisk Commission
|xv|
Strengthening Families and Communities
Funding for band representatives
13. The federal government should immediately provide adequate funding for First Nations band representatives. The Ontario government should help to support their ongoing training needs.
The Ontario government should also move quickly, in consultation with Métis and Inuit peoples, to determine how representatives from these communities will be identified and funded to participate in child protection proceedings under the Child, Youth and Family Services Act.
http://motheriskcommission.ca/wp-content/uploads/Report-of-the-Motherisk-Commission.pdf
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ANOTHER FACTOR ADDING TO THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN IN CARE.
Ontario Court of Appeal Confirms Ongoing “Gatekeeper” Function in Respect of Expert Evidence. Ryan Morris and Ravi Amarnath June 22, 2017.
In its recent decision in Bruff-Murphy v. Gunawardena (Bruff-Murphy), the Court of Appeal for Ontario (Court) set aside a jury award and ordered a new trial on the basis that the trial judge did not correctly apply the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) test relating to the admission of expert evidence.
The Court’s decision in Bruff-Murphy provides valuable guidance as to the nature and extent of a court’s “gatekeeper” responsibility with respect to the admission of expert evidence both when the evidence is first sought to be admitted and thereafter, if prejudice emerges that was not apparent at the time of admission.
https://www.blakesbusinessclass.com/ontario-court-of-appeal-confirms-ongoing-gatekeeper-function-in-respect-of-expert-evidence/
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/christie-blatchford-getting-to-the-root-of-ontarios-family-law-mess
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Parents Rights were ripped out by the roots...
“The testing was imposed on people who were among the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society, with scant regard for due process of their rights to privacy and bodily integrity,” the report states.
Without checks, balance or judicial oversight all of the parents who were tested were powerless to resist because they weren't testing people with the resources their own lawyer or to get a second opinion. Poor disadvantaged parents told us that they submitted to the testing under duress, in fear of losing custody of or access to their children” only to lose access or custody anyway.
The ministry sidestepped a question emailed by the Toronto Star on whether it would impose the requirement to register their 5000 plus employees with the College of Social Work, stating instead that it is funding the authorization process and leaving the society to police themselves with secret internal processes.
Respecting Procedural Safeguards:
There is a major power imbalance between an impoverished parent (we know that families of low socio-economic status are hugely overrepresented in the child welfare system) and a state agency. To guard against such an imbalance, it is critical that our legal system respect the time-tested procedural safeguards developed to specifically ensure that the disadvantaged party is treated fairly.
Yet according to the Motherisk report, these safeguards were ignored. The report describes a litany of procedural injustices perpetrated on parents: parents were pressured to consent to testing; were not informed of their right to reject testing; they had adverse inferences drawn against them when they rejected testing; they were required to prove the unreliability of testing instead of the other way around; and they were refused the right to cross-examine Motherisk "experts" at summary judgment motions.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees procedural fairness when the state interferes with fundamental personal rights, such as the right by parents to care for their children. Ironically enough, the issue of taking body samples (such as hair for testing) without proper consent for the purpose of criminal investigations was found to be an infringement of the Charter 20 years ago by the Supreme Court.
It is unconscionable that these protections are available to accused persons, but were never considered applicable to parents at the mercy of child protection services.
There is nothing new about the commission's finding that many parents were explicitly or implicitly told that there would be negative consequences if they did not undergo hair testing. In fact, this type of coercive action continues to happen: parents are often given messages that if they do not consent, for example, to a finding that the child is in need of protection, that there will be negative consequences. For example, they may be prevented from bringing further motions, or — more damning in CAS work — labelled as being "uncooperative."
One would have thought that post-Motherisk, we would want parents and children to have more procedural protections and safeguards, and yet, it looks like the opposite is happening again.
In the wake of Motherisk, children's aid societies have continued to emphasize working with parents outside of court on a "voluntarily" basis, which might include parents giving up their children to the agency under a temporary care agreement. These agreements are usually signed without lawyers and circumvent the court, which is the only place the powers of the CAS can be kept in check.
To me, Motherisk is a symptom of a larger problem in child protection work. The Motherisk scandal came about because of the failure of the legal system to protect parents and families. Somehow, we have forgotten that the desire to do good cannot be done at the expense of rights violations.
The balance between protecting children from the risk of harm and protecting parents' and children's basic rights to fairness is a challenging one. It is easy to fall too heavily on the side of overriding a parent's rights in favour of efficiency and expediency. But to ensure that something like Motherisk never happens again, it is something to which everyone involved in child welfare — lawyers, judges and caseworkers — must strive.
Tammy Law is a lawyer practicing in child protection, family and criminal law in Toronto. This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.
http://www.canada24news.com/opinion/the-motherisk-saga-is-a-symptom-of-a-larger-problem-in-child-protection-work/71858-news
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2018: What separation from parents does to children: ‘The effect is catastrophic’
This is what happens inside children when they are forcibly separated from their parents.
Their heart rate goes up. Their body releases a flood of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Those stress hormones can start killing off dendrites — the little branches in brain cells that transmit messages. In time, the stress can start killing off neurons and — especially in young children — wreaking dramatic and long-term damage, both psychologically and to the physical structure of the brain.
“The effect is catastrophic,” said Charles Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School. “There’s so much research on this that if people paid attention at all to the science, they would never do this.”
Separating kids from parents a 'textbook strategy' of domestic abuse, experts say — and causes irreversible, lifelong damage even when there is no other choice.
“Being separated from parents or having inconsistent living conditions for long periods of time can create changes in thoughts and behavior patterns, and an increase in challenging behavior and stress-related physical symptoms,” such as sleep difficulty, nightmares, flashbacks, crying, and yelling says Amy van Schagen - California State University.
The Science Is Unequivocal: Separating Families Is Harmful to Children
In news stories and opinion pieces, psychological scientists are sharing evidence-based insight from decades of research demonstrating the harmful effects of separating parents and children.
In an op-ed in USA Today, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff (University of Delaware), Mary Dozier (University of Delaware), and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (Temple University) write:
“Years of research are clear: Children need their parents to feel secure in the world, to explore and learn, and to grow strong emotionally.”
In a Washington Post op-ed, James Coan (University of Virginia) says:
“As a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Virginia, I study how the brain transforms social connection into better mental and physical health. My research suggests that maintaining close ties to trusted loved ones is a vital buffer against the external stressors we all face. But not being an expert on how this affects children, I recently invited five internationally recognized developmental scientists to chat with me about the matter on a science podcast I host. As we discussed the border policy’s effect on the children ensnared by it, even I was surprised to learn just how damaging it is likely to be.”
Mia Smith-Bynum (University of Maryland) is quoted in The Cut:
“The science leads to the conclusion that the deprivation of caregiving produces a form of extreme suffering in children. Being separated from a parent isn’t just a trauma — it breaks the relationship that helps children cope with other traumas.
Forceful separation is particularly damaging, explains clinical psychologist Mia Smith-Bynum, a professor of family science at the University of Maryland, when parents feel there’s nothing in their power that can be done to get their child back.
For all the dislocation, strangeness and pain of being separated forcibly from parents, many children can and do recover, said Mary Dozier, a professor of child development at the University of Delaware. “Not all of them — some kids never recover,” Dr. Dozier said. “But I’ve been amazed at how well kids can do after institutionalization if they’re able to have responsive and nurturing care afterward.”
The effects of that harm may evolve over time, says Antonio Puente, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington who specializes in cultural neuropsychology. What may begin as acute emotional distress could reemerge later in life as PTSD, behavioral issues and other signs of lasting neuropsychological damage, he says.
“A parent is really in many ways an extension of the child’s biology as that child is developing,” Tottenham said. “That adult who’s routinely been there provides this enormous stress-buffering effect on a child’s brain at a time when we haven’t yet developed that for ourselves. They’re really one organism, in a way.” When the reliable buffering and guidance of a parent is suddenly withdrawn, the riot of learning that molds and shapes the brain can be short-circuited, she said.
In a story from the BBC, Jack Shonkoff (Harvard University) discusses evidence related to long-term impacts:
Jack P Shonkoff, director of the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child, says it is incorrect to assume that some of the youngest children removed from their parents’ care will be too young to remember and therefore relatively unharmed. “When that stress system stays activated for a significant period of time, it can have a wear and tear effect biologically.
:::
2018: What separation from parents does to children: ‘The effect is catastrophic’
This is what happens inside children when they are forcibly separated from their parents.
Their heart rate goes up. Their body releases a flood of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Those stress hormones can start killing off dendrites — the little branches in brain cells that transmit messages. In time, the stress can start killing off neurons and — especially in young children — wreaking dramatic and long-term damage, both psychologically and to the physical structure of the brain.
“The effect is catastrophic,” said Charles Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School. “There’s so much research on this that if people paid attention at all to the science, they would never do this.”
Separating kids from parents a 'textbook strategy' of domestic abuse, experts say — and causes irreversible, lifelong damage even when there is no other choice.
“Being separated from parents or having inconsistent living conditions for long periods of time can create changes in thoughts and behavior patterns, and an increase in challenging behavior and stress-related physical symptoms,” such as sleep difficulty, nightmares, flashbacks, crying, and yelling says Amy van Schagen - California State University.
The Science Is Unequivocal: Separating Families Is Harmful to Children
In news stories and opinion pieces, psychological scientists are sharing evidence-based insight from decades of research demonstrating the harmful effects of separating parents and children.
In an op-ed in USA Today, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff (University of Delaware), Mary Dozier (University of Delaware), and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (Temple University) write:
“Years of research are clear: Children need their parents to feel secure in the world, to explore and learn, and to grow strong emotionally.”
In a Washington Post op-ed, James Coan (University of Virginia) says:
“As a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Virginia, I study how the brain transforms social connection into better mental and physical health. My research suggests that maintaining close ties to trusted loved ones is a vital buffer against the external stressors we all face. But not being an expert on how this affects children, I recently invited five internationally recognized developmental scientists to chat with me about the matter on a science podcast I host. As we discussed the border policy’s effect on the children ensnared by it, even I was surprised to learn just how damaging it is likely to be.”
Mia Smith-Bynum (University of Maryland) is quoted in The Cut:
“The science leads to the conclusion that the deprivation of caregiving produces a form of extreme suffering in children. Being separated from a parent isn’t just a trauma — it breaks the relationship that helps children cope with other traumas.
Forceful separation is particularly damaging, explains clinical psychologist Mia Smith-Bynum, a professor of family science at the University of Maryland, when parents feel there’s nothing in their power that can be done to get their child back.
For all the dislocation, strangeness and pain of being separated forcibly from parents, many children can and do recover, said Mary Dozier, a professor of child development at the University of Delaware. “Not all of them — some kids never recover,” Dr. Dozier said. “But I’ve been amazed at how well kids can do after institutionalization if they’re able to have responsive and nurturing care afterward.”
The effects of that harm may evolve over time, says Antonio Puente, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington who specializes in cultural neuropsychology. What may begin as acute emotional distress could reemerge later in life as PTSD, behavioral issues and other signs of lasting neuropsychological damage, he says.
“A parent is really in many ways an extension of the child’s biology as that child is developing,” Tottenham said. “That adult who’s routinely been there provides this enormous stress-buffering effect on a child’s brain at a time when we haven’t yet developed that for ourselves. They’re really one organism, in a way.” When the reliable buffering and guidance of a parent is suddenly withdrawn, the riot of learning that molds and shapes the brain can be short-circuited, she said.
In a story from the BBC, Jack Shonkoff (Harvard University) discusses evidence related to long-term impacts:
Jack P Shonkoff, director of the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child, says it is incorrect to assume that some of the youngest children removed from their parents’ care will be too young to remember and therefore relatively unharmed. “When that stress system stays activated for a significant period of time, it can have a wear and tear effect biologically.
:::
ANOTHER FACTOR...
Motherisk Is Another Symptom Of A Much Larger Problem In Child Protection Work.
Family Law Information Centre (FLIC)
Child poaching funding predator Karynn Von Cramon, Manager of Legal Services for FCSLLG is married to Perth's legal aid lawyer Andreas Von Cramon who runs a legal clinic giving free advice to families dealing with the CAS.
Legal Aid Ontario: Lake 88.1 “In Focus”interview with LAO’s Andreas Von Cramon and Nathalie Champagne Description: Transcript of April 8th, 2014 “In Focus” interview by Bob Perreault from Lake 88.1 FM in Perth and Andreas Von Cramon, Supervisory Duty Counsel Criminal/Family Law and Nathalie Champagne, District Area Director, Ottawa Region Date: April 8, 2014.
https://www.legalaid.on.ca/en/news/newsarchive/downloads/2014-04-08_In%20Focus%20interview.pdf
Supervisory duty counsel Andreas Von Cramon who practices in both Criminal and Family Law, has seen a trend lately wherein low income residents of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville are representing themselves in the court system rather than seeking advice through the Family Law Information Centre.
COULD IT BE BECAUSE HE DOESN'T GIVE GOOD ADVICE?
The reason may be that people are not aware of the services that are provided. His concern is that these services and resources can be of assistance to those going through trying times. - Doreen Barnes
https://www.insidehalton.com/news-story/4495905-family-law-services-expanded-in-tri-county-area/
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New expanded hours for family law services in Lanark, Leeds & Grenville legal clinic in Perth. Posted: Friday, March 28, 2014
Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) is helping the Lanark, Leeds & Grenville legal clinic provide more hours of support for financially eligible families, beginning April 1. This support will supplement the services already provided for families at the Family Law Information Centre (FLIC) in the Perth courthouse.
The expanded services for families at the clinic will include document preparation, assistance in applying for legal aid in addition to the legal advice offered at the FLIC. Independent legal advice is also available for clients who are using mediation to solve their family law matters.
Services at the clinic are by appointment only. To arrange an appointment, clients must first meet with the advice lawyer at the Perth FLIC to confirm that they require legal services and that they qualify for legal aid. LAO will be reviewing this initiative over the next six months and welcomes feedback from local community partners and stakeholders.
The expansion of family law services in Perth is one of a number of family law projects that LAO is undertaking, thanks to $30 million over four years in additional funding from the provincial government. LAO is investing the majority of this funding into sustainable improvements to family law programs and services.
Location:Lanark, Leeds & Grenville Legal Clinic
10 Sunset Boulevard, Perth, Ontario, K7H 2Y2
For questions or further information, please contact:
Feroneh Neil Manager, Communications
Phone: 416-979-2352, ext.5103
Email: neilfer@lao.on.ca and/or media@lao.on.ca
https://www.legalaid.on.ca/en/news/newsarchive/1403-28_lanarkleedsgrenville.asp
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2015: C.A.S. ATTITUDE: WIN CHILD WELFARE CASES AT ALL COSTS $$$.
By Gene C. Colman of Gene C. Colman Family Law Centre posted in Child Welfare.
It should not be a matter of "win" or "lose" when it comes to Ontario child welfare law yet it isn't actually about the actual condition of the child or the child's welfare. It's about accusations, Cosmo quiz style parental risk assessments and fake experts and every time the society decides your a risk they get paid.
Ontario's Child and Family Services Act tells us that the paramount purpose is to "promote the best interests, protection and well being of children." One might note the glaring lack of any reference to family. In fact, there is a paucity of references to family throughout the entire CFSA even though many judges recognize the importance of maintaining family whenever possible.
I had a recent experience with CAS counsel at court when representing a family unjustly caught up in the system. Our office had prepared a very persuasive and comprehensive response to the Society's Application. We attended at the mandated five day hearing that follows apprehensions from parental care. The CAS certainly had not expected such forcefulness; normally parents are so overwhelmed at this early stage that they are unable to mount an effective defence. Generally, the court will rubber stamp the CAS requests. We did not agree to just stand idly by at the first appearance and CAS counsel was surprised by our aggressive (yet fair) approach.
Our written material seemed to have persuaded the judge. He instructed the lawyers to prepare a consent endorsement along the lines that we were seeking (which of course included an immediate return of the children to parental care). As we were returning to the courtroom after preparing the consent, the experienced and respected CAS counsel turned to me and my clients and remarked: "This is the third time your lawyer has beaten me."
The CAS counsel's comment was made innocently enough and indeed was intended to be complimentary. But still I was shocked (but probably should not have been). (Playing dumb) Why was I so shocked?
https://www.complexfamilylaw.com/blog/2015/01/cas-attitude-win-child-welfare-cases-at-all-costs.shtml
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The Motherisk Commission details years of rights infringements by courts. "If the same problems were identified in criminal court, there would be a huge public outcry." Tammy Law.
(Tammy Law's delusional thoughts, excuses, rationalizations and justifications for using the Motherisk test to justify denying parents due process and circumventing the Constitution, the Charter of Rights and the principles of fundamental Justice behind the closed doors of Ontario's family courts.)
I want to be clear about what I think some of the fundamental problems are and how I think we can start to change this system. Because I am first and foremost a lawyer, my thoughts naturally focus on the role of lawyers in this mess. My thoughts are summarized as follows:
As lawyers, we need to recognize that good intentions are not enough. It is really easy to hide behind “the best interests of the child” and agree or acquiesce to all types of infringements of our clients’ basic human and Charter rights. This needs to stop. Lawyers need to start seeing their role in the context of defending our clients’ very real rights to human dignity and security of the person.
The culture of cooperation has gone too far. While I agree that it is very very important to work with the Children’s Aid Society to address their concerns, a line must be drawn when they demand cooperation that crosses the line. As a state agent, the Society has an obligation to ensure that it works in the most minimally intrusive way possible – respecting the client’s right to individual freedom while trying to ensure that its clients are served. This is a difficult job. Lawyers and courts should be there to ensure that the fine line is respected.
Society counsel need to understand that they have a public interest role. They should be providing advice to their clients in the context of being a public interest litigant. They have a duty to the court to be fair. This means that if unreliable evidence is being tendered (and there were many signs of this with respect to the Motherisk testing), they should be advising their clients about the unfairness of relying on it. Lawyers are and should be gatekeepers of evidence as much as courts are.
We need to be more vigilant. As noted in the report, our role as advocates is to raise every defense possible for our clients.
HOW ABOUT PRESENTING EVIDENCE THAT COUNTERS SWORN AFFIDAVITS WHEN CLIENTS HAVE IT IN ABUNDANCE - JUST SAYIN'..
Our clients are often extremely vulnerable, having lived lives that were challenged by multiple obstacles.
SO LAWYERS FAILING TO REPRESENT THEIR CLIENTS ISN'T JUST ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE OBSTACLES???
Many have made admirable attempts to parent their children. We need to be fearless in our advocacy for them. As a lawyer, I have experienced and seen derisive, sarcastic, or rude comments directed at myself and other lawyers who attempt to defend their clients. This needs to stop. It’s our client’s right – their children’s right – that they have a full defence.
http://www.tammylaw.ca/…/report-of-the-motherisk-commission/
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2019: OACPL Response to Canadian Lawyer Magazine. TAMMY LAW.
As President of the Toronto Chapter of the Ontario Association of Child Protection Lawyers (“the OACPL”), I was incensed to read the following article “Protecting the Most Vulnerable”, which was published in its latest issue.
The Ontario Association of Child Protection Lawyers started in Spring 2017 in Windsor, Ontario with a group of Family Lawyers who saw an increased need to increase TO GET THEIR STORIES STRAIGHT AND COVER THEIR ASSES ...
OACPL
https://oacpl.org
https://www.tammylaw.ca/oacpl-response-to-canadian-lawyer-magazine/
https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/practice-areas/family/protecting-the-most-vulnerable/275829
https://99.79.133.205/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2019-02-26-Letter-to-Canadian-Lawyer-Magazine.pdf
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FLIC services are available in family courts across Ontario. At the FLIC you can find information about separation and divorce and related family law issues, family justice services, alternative forms of dispute resolution, local community resources and court processes.
Information and Referral Coordinators (IRCs) are available at designated times to help you understand your needs and to make referrals to appropriate services. IRCs can give you information about family mediation and other ways to solve your issues without going to court.
See the listing of FLIC offices throughout Ontario.
Each family court location has the following resources and services available: pamphlets and other publications on issues related to separation and divorce and child protection matters, including What You Should Know About Family Law in Ontario (available in 9 languages) the Ministry's Guide to Family Procedures information about legal services, the court process and court forms at designated times, an Advice Lawyer from Legal Aid Ontario who can provide summary legal advice at certain times an Information and Referral Coordinator who will provide information on alternative dispute resolution options, issues related to separation and divorce and community resources referrals to family mediation services connected with the court information about and scheduling for the Mandatory Information Program.
Feedback
Your feedback is important to the Ministry of the Attorney General. The ministry has established online, confidential client satisfaction surveys for Family Law Information Centres (FLICs), Family Mediation Services and the Mandatory Information Program (MIP). Each survey should take less than five minutes to complete and will help the ministry improve its services. Click on the appropriate link below to access the surveys:
Family Law Information Centres
Family Mediation Services
Mandatory Information Program (MIP)
https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/family/infoctr.php
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"[A]buse of process (is) the intentional use of legal process for an improper purpose incompatible with the lawful function of the process by one with an ulterior motive in doing so, and with resulting damages."
"In its broadest sense, abuse of process may be defined as misuse or perversion of regularly issued legal process for a purpose not justified by the nature of the process."
Abuse of power, in the form of "malfeasance in office" or "official misconduct," is the commission of an unlawful act, done in an official capacity, which affects the performance of official duties. ... Abuse of power can also mean a person using the power they have for their own personal gain.
The act of using one's position of power in an abusive way. This can take many forms, such as taking advantage of someone, gaining access to information that shouldn't be accessible to the public, or just manipulating someone with the ability to punish them if they don't comply.
Covert and overt abuse of power: Covert: covert means that something is hidden, in the case of power, it would mean that someone is concealing their abuse of power from the public/other service users/other care workers. Covert abuse of power can happen in any setting.
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http://motheriskcommission.ca/wp-content/uploads/Report-of-the-Motherisk-Commission.pdf
https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/motherisk/
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/02/26/motherisk-tests-unfair-and-harmful-to-families-in-child-protection-cases.html
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/motherrisk-commission-1.4552160
https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2018/11/27/parents-lose-second-bid-to-launch-class-action-suit-against-motherisk-over-flawed-hair-tests.html
https://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2017-2018/motherisk-tainted-tests-broken-families
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/mandel-victims-of-bad-science-at-motherrisk
https://futurecontent.co/5-reasons-motherisk-scandal-shouldnt-happen/
https://blog.cansfordlabs.co.uk/5-reasons-why-the-motherisk-scandal-shouldnt-happen-again
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2016: IT'S ALL ABOUT AT LEAST MEETING THE MINIMUMS....
According to Mary Ballantyne, CEO of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies achieving excellent child protection standards in Ontario is all about meeting the minimum requirements.
New recruits (leaving out supervisors/managers who are currently responsible for keeping case files open when these under-trained intake workers recommend otherwise?) will have to pass eight standardized courses — and a final exam — during a four-month training period before they are authorized to fully perform child protection duties, including apprehending children suffering neglect or abuse from their parents.
To little to late for tens of thousands of Ontario parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and bothers and sisters.
That’s a significant change from the current practice, in which workers are authorized to perform all duties the minute they are hired. This has long left children’s aid societies open to complaints from parents questioning the competence of the workers that enter their homes.
The college, which regulates more than 17,400 people involved in social work, should be ready to register child protection workers with a BSW “within the next year or so,” she says. For those without the degree, the college and OACAS are working to set up training and courses that would equal one. Ballantyne expects this process to be complete in three or four years.
Once registered, child protection workers would have their practices, standards and ethical code regulated by the college. The college would have the power to investigate complaints from parents and to discipline workers for professional misconduct or incompetence.
Ballantyne flatly states those who do not register with the college will be unable to perform child protection work in Ontario in 3 or 4 years.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/04/03/childrens-aid-societies-launch-major-training-reforms.html
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"Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017 proclaimed in force."
The new regulation was updated to only require Local Directors of Children’s Aid Societies to be registered with the College.
http://www.ocswssw.org/resources/legislation-submissions/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234353/
The majority of local directors, supervisors, child protection workers and adoption workers have social work or social service work education, yet fewer than 10% are registered with the OCSWSSW.
Unfortunately, many CASs have been circumventing professional regulation of their staff by requiring that staff have social work education yet discouraging those same staff from registering with the OCSWSSW.
Ontarians have a right to assume that, when they receive services that are provided by someone who is required to have a social work degree (or a social service work diploma) — whether those services are direct (such as those provided by a child protection worker or adoption worker) or indirect (such as those provided by a local director or supervisor) — that person is registered with, and accountable to, the OCSWSSW.
As a key stakeholder with respect to numerous issues covered in the CYFSA and the regulations, we were dismayed to learn just prior to the posting of the regulations that we had been left out of the consultation process. We have reached out on more than one occasion to request information about regulations to be made under the CYFSA regarding staff qualifications.
A commitment to public protection, especially when dealing with vulnerable populations such as the children, youth and families served by CASs, is of paramount importance. In short, it is irresponsible for government to propose regulations that would allow CAS staff to operate outside of the very system of public protection and oversight it has established through professional regulation.
Regulations under the CYFSA:
The College has worked with government to address its concerns about regulations under the new CYFSA which set out the qualifications of Children’s Aid Society (CAS) staff. Upon learning in late November that the proposed regulations would continue to allow CAS workers to avoid registration with the College, the College immediately engaged with MCYS and outlined its strong concerns in a letter to the Minister of Children and Youth Services and a submission to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services during the consultation period.
The new regulation was updated to require Local Directors of Children’s Aid Societies to be registered with the College.
We are pleased to note that, while the new regulation does not currently require CAS supervisors to be registered, we have received a "commitment" FROM THE OUTGOING WYNNE GOVERNMENT to work with the College and the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies toward a goal of requiring registration of CAS supervisors beginning January 2019.
Key concerns:
The absence of a requirement for CAS child protection workers to be registered with the College: ignores the public protection mandate of the Social Work and Social Service Work Act, 1998 (SWSSWA); avoids the fact that social workers and social service workers are regulated professions in Ontario and ignores the College’s important role in protecting the Ontario public from harm caused by incompetent, unqualified or unfit practitioners; allows CAS staff to operate outside the system of public protection and oversight that the Government has established through professional regulation; and fails to provide the assurance to all Ontarians that they are receiving services from CAS staff who are registered with, and accountable to, the College.
Since it began operations in 2000, the OCSWSSW has worked steadily and completely unseen to silently address the issue of child protection workers.
Unfortunately, many CASs have been circumventing professional regulation of their staff by requiring that staff have social work education yet discouraging those same staff from registering with the OCSWSSW.
The new regulation was updated to only require Local Directors of Children’s Aid Societies to be registered with the College.
The majority of local directors, supervisors, child protection workers and adoption workers have social work or social service work education, yet fewer than 10% are registered with the OCSWSSW.
The existing regulations made under the CFSA predated the regulation of social work and social service work in Ontario and therefore their focus on the credential was understandable.
However, today a credential focus is neither reasonable nor defensible. Social work and social service work are regulated professions in Ontario.
Updating the regulations under the new CYFSA provides an important opportunity for the Government to protect the Ontario public from incompetent, unqualified and unfit professionals and to prevent a serious risk of harm to children and youth, as well as their families.
As Minister Coteau said in second reading debate of Bill 89, "protecting and supporting children and youth is not just an obligation, it is our moral imperative, our duty and our privilege—each and every one of us in this Legislature, our privilege—in shaping the future of this province."
A "social worker" or a "social service worker" is by law someone who is registered with the OCSWSSW. Furthermore, as noted previously, the Ontario public has a right to assume that when they receive services that are provided by someone who is required to have a social work degree (or a social service work diploma), that person is registered with the OCSWSSW.
The OCSWSSW also has processes for equivalency, permitting those with a combination of academic qualifications and experience performing the role of a social worker or social service worker to register with the College.
These processes address, among other things, the risk posed by "fake degrees" and other misrepresentations of qualifications, ensuring Ontarians know that a registered social worker or social service worker has the education and/or experience to do their job.
The review of academic credentials and knowledge regarding academic programs is an area of expertise of a professional regulatory body. An individual employer will not have the depth of experience with assessing the validity of academic credentials nor the knowledge of academic institutions to be able to uncover false credentials or misrepresentations of qualifications on a reliable basis.
Setting, maintaining and holding members accountable to the Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice. These minimum standards apply to all OCSWSSW members, regardless of the areas or context in which they practise. Especially relevant in the child welfare context are principles that address confidentiality and privacy, competence and integrity, record-keeping, and sexual misconduct.
Maintaining fair and rigorous complaints and discipline processes. These processes differ from government oversight systems and process-oriented mechanisms within child welfare, as well as those put in place by individual employers like a CAS. They focus on the conduct of individual professionals.
Furthermore, transparency regarding referrals of allegations of misconduct and discipline findings and sanctions ensures that a person cannot move from employer to employer when there is an allegation referred to a hearing or a finding after a discipline hearing that their practice does not meet minimum standards.
Submission-re-Proposed-Regulations-under-the-CYFSA-January-25-2018. OCSWSSW May 1, 2018
https://www.ocswssw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/OCSWSSW-Submission-re-Proposed-Regulations-under-the-CYFSA-January-25-2018.pdf
If you have any practice questions or concerns related to the new CYFSA, please contact the Professional Practice Department at 416-972-9882 or 1-877-828-9380 or email practice@ocswssw.org.
:::
2016: Regulation of child protection workers by Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers: CUPE responds. (UPDATED 2019)
Please send or adapt any of the following letters to the Executive Director of your CAS.
"I may not hold a BSW or MSW degree, enjoy membership in the College or be subject to its regulation. But I feel like professional practitioner in the child protection sector and, as such, I cannot countenance this move toward the regulation of the child protection workforce. I am resolved to fight it at every step of the way and instead campaign for the measures that will bring real benefits to at-risk youth, children and families."
(The author feels like a professional?)
"I am not a social worker; I don’t want to be a social worker. Had I wanted to be a social worker, I would have trained as one. If regulation through the College of Social Work is introduced, what will happen to us child protection workers who don’t have degrees in social work (a BSW or MSW) or a social service worker diploma? After all, we make up to 50% of the child protection workforce."
Sincerely,
(50% should scare the living shit out of any average person, using normal and honest judgment ---> AND IS IT ANY FREAKIN' WONDER THE "UNION" IS AGAINST REGULATION)
I wish to express my strong opposition to the planned introduction of mandatory registration with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers. I object to the move on several grounds, but I perceive one of the greatest dangers for the future of the sector to lie in restricting child protection work to those who hold only BSW or MSW degrees.
I have worked for [##] years in this sector. In that time, I have personally witnessed the benefits of having colleagues who come to the sector from a variety of backgrounds and bring a wide breadth of experience to the job.
Multidisciplinary child protection teams are a strength. Working alongside child protection workers whose education is in psychology, sociology or mental health enriches the services they provide to children, youth and families, as well as the working environment we all share.
Similarly, those colleagues with backgrounds in such areas as children and youth justice offer insight and knowledge that would not normally form part of BSW or MSW. Sometimes a colleague has gained qualifications outside the country and brings unique cultural or community perspectives to our work.
The variety of approaches, connections and methods in child protection enhances our work in countless ways.
This type of practice, and the accompanying opportunities for exchange and learnings, will be lost in a sector that narrows its potential source of employees to include only College-registered recruits who hold BSWs and MSWs. Agencies will lose the breadth of experience these workers bring to child protection work and the varied backgrounds that inform new and different approaches in child protection work.
I do not believe this is good practice for child protection work in the 21st century. We should be looking at ways of expanding our approach to our work, not restricting it to fit the strictures of the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers.
Here are some facts and figures I think point to significant problems for the child welfare sector and for CAS in particular when it comes to reviewing the credentials of their "hand picked" experts who provide the results they want when they want them:
• There are over 5,000 child protection workers in Ontario (5160)
• The College regulates about 17,000 social workers and social service workers
• In Ontario, only 7% of College-registered social workers are employed by a CAS
• Only 4% of members of the Ontario Association of Social Workers work for a CAS
• Between 30% and 50% of Ontario’s child welfare workers do NOT hold a BSW
• Only 63% of direct service staff in CASs have a BSW or MSW (in 2012, it was 57%)
• Only 78% of direct service supervisors have a BSW or MSW (in 2012, it was 75.5%)
• The 2013 OACAS Human Resources survey estimates that 70% of relevant CAS job classifications would qualify for registration with the College (so about 1500 CAS currently employed workers would be unable to register with the College)
• From 2002 to 2014, 41 child welfare employees who did not hold a BSW or MSW submitted equivalency applications to register as social workers; only 16 were successful and 25 were refused. (was the test to hard for them and cause for concern, are those 25 who couldn't pass the test still loose on the streets...?)
SEE: http://cupe2190.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/SSWCC_CAS-letters-re-college-regulation_Nov.-2016.pdf
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You can hear former MPP Frank Klees say in a video linked below the very reason the social worker act was introduced and became law in 1998 was to regulate the "children's aid societies."
FORMER ONTARIO MPP FRANK KLEES EXPLAINS A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE WORKS.
I'M NOT A SOCIAL WORKER, I'M A CHILD PROTECTION WORKER!
https://youtu.be/SA1YyWO0RTQ?list=PLsYhw09i3If44rMBDuZQ0ztayzSQU35Fy
TWO DECADES LATER...
The union representing child protection social workers is firmly opposed to oversight from a professional college and the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, which regulates and funds child protection, is so far staying out of it.
The report Towards Regulation notes that the “clearest path forward” would be for the provincial government to -again- legislate the necessity of professional regulation, which would be an appallingly heavy-handed move according to OACAS/Cupe.
http://joincupe2190.ca/files/2015/10/Professional-regulation-at-childrens-aid-societies.pdf
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CONSENT TO INTERCEPTION - CANADA.
Documenting the facts is not a crime...
(as long as we have smartphones, bodycams and micro recorders it never has to be our word against against their word ever again)
Broadly speaking, Canadians can legally record their own conversations with other people, but not other people's' conversations that they are not involved in.
183.1 Where a private communication is originated by more than one person or is intended by the originator thereof to be received by more than one person, a consent to the interception thereof by any one of those persons is sufficient consent for the purposes of any provision of this Part. [1993, c.40, s.2.]
The Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46 [Criminal Code] imposes a general prohibition on interception (recording) of private communications, but then provides an exception where one of the parties to the private communication consents to the interception of that communication. Thus, broadly speaking, Canadians can legally record their own conversations with other people, but not other people's conversations that they are not involved in.
Other legislation in Canada protects various privacy rights, but does not prevent Canadians from recording their own conversations with others.
http://www.legaltree.ca/node/908
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“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
It’s a question of education to teach people to be on their guard against the sort of verbal booby traps into which they are always being led, to analyze the kind of things that are said to them. I think it’s terribly important to insist on individual values, that every human being is unique. And it is, of course, on this genetic basis that the whole idea of the value of freedom is based.
https://blankonblank.org/interviews/aldous-huxley-on-technodictators-booby-traps-technology-drugs-brave-new-world-soma-overpopulation-presidents/#read-more
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2010: Psychologist got degree from U.S. 'diploma mill'
A psychologist with the Durham Children’s Aid Society has pleaded guilty to professional misconduct for misrepresenting himself and for making multiple unqualified diagnoses of mental illness.
Gregory Carter, 63, appeared before the College of Psychologists of Ontario’s disciplinary committee on Tuesday. He and the college agreed on the terms of the penalty, which includes a three-month suspension, a recorded reprimand and one year of supervised practice under an approved practitioner.
In his practice with the Children’s Aid Society, Mr. Carter’s expertise was used to determine child custody cases.
A Whitby man who lost his children, now aged 7 and 9, said Tuesday’s judgment is a good starting point.
“The problem I have is that it didn’t really do anything to fix the problems that he’s caused,” said Mr. S., whose full name cannot be revealed to protect his children’s identities. “It’s like a child who creates a mess: He created a mess, then just gets a time-out.”
Lawyer George Callahan said the criminal charges against Mr. Carter seem to be piling up and a civil suit with multiple complainants likely will proceed concurrently.
“A side issue to all of this is that the CAS took steps based upon Gregory Carter’s report,” he said.
Mr. Carter’s credentials with the college still remain in question. On its website Mr. Carter is listed as qualified to practise clinical psychology. However Mr. Carter is a psychological associate and not a clinical psychologist, since the province requires clinical psychologists to obtain a doctoral degree.
Mr. Carter completed his master’s degree at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in 1978 and got a PhD in 1991 from California’s Pacific Western University, which the U.S. government in 2004 accused of being a “diploma mill.”
An investigation into Mr. Carter started in November 2008, when a Durham man lost custody of his granddaughter, now 11.
https://nationalpost.com/posted-toronto/psychologist-got-degree-from-u-s-diploma-mill
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2019: Expert who gave more than 100 assessments in Ontario child protection cases lied about credentials for years, judge finds
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/07/31/expert-who-gave-more-than-100-assessments-in-ontario-child-protection-cases-lied-about-credentials-for-years-judge-finds.html
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2019: Province orders children’s aid societies to review credentials of experts used in child welfare cases
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/08/23/province-orders-childrens-aid-societies-to-review-credentials-of-experts-used-in-child-welfare-cases.html
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2017: All of us can be harmed': Investigation reveals hundreds of Canadians have phoney degrees
A Marketplace investigation of the world's largest diploma mill has discovered many Canadians could be putting their health and well-being in the hands of nurses, engineers, counsellors and other professionals with phoney credentials.
Fake diplomas are a billion-dollar industry, according to experts, and Marketplace obtained business records of its biggest player, a Pakistan-based IT firm called Axact. The team spent months combing through thousands of degree transactions, cross referencing personal information with customers' social media profiles.
The investigation revealed more than 800 Canadians could have purchased a fake degree.
"Keep in mind this is just the one operation," said Allen Ezell, a former FBI agent who investigated diploma mills for decades. "This does not give you totality of how many are being sold throughout Canada by all schools that are operating."
Ezell, who co-wrote the book Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas, estimates half of new PhDs issued every year in the U.S. are fake.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/diploma-mills-marketplace-fake-degrees-1.4279513
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Civilized Oppression and Moral Relations: Victims, Fallibility, and the Moral Community.
Silenced, discredited, stripped of powers of moral appeal, and deprived of the interpersonal conditions necessary for maintaining self-respect, many people suffer from serious but subtle forms of oppression involving neither physical violence nor the use of law. In Civillized Oppression J.Harvey forcefully argues for the crucial role of morally distorted relationships in such oppression. While uncovering a set of underlying moral principles that account for the immorality of civilized oppression, Harvey's analyses provide frameworks for identifying morally problematic situations and relationships, criteria for evaluating them, and guidelines for appropriate responses. This book will be essential for both graduates and undergraduates in ethics, social theory, theory of justice, and feminist and race studies.
In this important new work, J. Harvey analyzes what is involved in serious but subtle forms of oppression involving neither physical violence nor the use of law, and argues for the crucial role of morally distorted relationships in such oppression. She uncovers a set of underlying moral principles that account for the immorality of civilized oppression, and points to some of the implications for social and institutional life.
This book discusses how civilized oppression (the oppression that involves neither violence nor the law) can be overcome by re-examining our participation in it. Moral community, solidarity and education are offered as vibrant strategies to overcome the hurt and marginalization that stem from civilized oppression.
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Civilized_Oppression.html?id=LDrJDNm2Gh4C&redir_esc=y
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2015: Civilized oppression and the urgency to recognize it.
There is an uncivilised oppression and then there is a civilised oppression. Deutsch, M. (2006) in his — A framework for thinking about oppression and its change (Social Justice Research) has used the term “civilised oppression” to characterize the everyday processes of oppression in normal life. This is very different from the other kind which involves the feudal system, apartheid, slavery, and other such illegal issues that once were in the domain of modern nation states and still are being fought daily. However, “civilised oppression” is embedded in unquestioned norms, habits and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutions and rules, and the collective consequences of following those rules.
Civilised oppression is not visible and more often than not, the oppressor hardly realise that they are being oppressive in nature, action and word. Women face a lot of this in the form of culture and one needs to be a victim to really under understand the subtle and profound undercurrents of exploitation, dehumanisation and disempowerment that goes on around, disguised, invisible and hardly so prominent — so used are people to it. Most of the people are well meaning in their intentions when they tell a woman to go inside, or veil her head or not to step out after dark. These ordinary interactions do not only come through men but women also and hence the vast and deep injustices that the most discriminated of groups suffers are a consequence of these unconscious assumptions and reactions of ‘well-meaning people’. Their ordinary reactions are further supported by media and cultural stereotypes as well as by the structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms.
Tilly, C (2000) in his ‘Relational Studies of Inequality’ (Contemporary Sociology) says that we cannot eliminate this structural oppression by getting rid of the rulers or by making new laws, because oppressions are systematically reproduced in the major economic, political and cultural institutions. While specific privileged groups are the beneficiaries of the oppression of other groups, and thus have an interest in the continuation of the status quo, they do not typically understand themselves to be agents of oppression. Which is what is most dangerous especially in domicile situations, when the abuser turns on his own family and starts hurting them. A dysfunctional parent is the best example of such oppression because to the world outside that door he is the provider and protector of the family and if he is displeased about anything, he is just making a noise. Which is what stops people from ‘ringing that doorbell’ upon hearing a quarrel or sound of beatings.
When questioned in places where a victim has the facility and the right to call in help, the oppressor is often incredulous as to why he is being questioned in conducting his duty as it is in his mind. So as stated above, changing regimes, a theocratic system or making new laws is not going to change mentalities that have been shaped over centuries of conditioning of the inferiority of certain groups and their dehumanization. The dictionary defines dehumanization as the act or process through which a powerful class or community or individual divests another of human qualities or personality. According to Paulo Freire, the author of the classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed, there are two kinds of dehumanization — one is animalistic dehumanization and the other is mechanistic dehumanization. The main differences between the two being that in the animalistic dehumanizing process human attributes of the person are shorn off say like the disabled are somehow thought of as inferior or deformed or ‘incomplete’.
This dehumanization is reinforced through the media too where the deaf friend, or the paraplegic neighbour or the autistic child is depicted as the ‘prop’ holding the plot or storyline together. Or the media campaigns which often reflect the overly sympathetic or empathetic attitude of the ‘normal’ ones in contrast to the differently-abled hence shearing them of their own personality, however, strong or dynamic they maybe. Something akin to ‘Rainman’ or ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?’
There is a mechanistic dehumanization too which South Asia is all too familiar with and which is a scourge in the Middle East. This kind of dehumanization enables the “Other” as ‘automata’ or not possessing any core features that make up human nature. The slave on cotton fields of yesteryear, the overexploited maids and man servants in our homes and in oil-rich countries are an example of such ‘automata’. It is a combination of all of this — oppression, dehumanization and exploitation that tends to place severe restrictions on an individual, group or institution and stops them from progressing ahead. Typically, a government or political organisation that is in power places these restrictions formally or covertly on oppressed groups so that they may be exploited and less able to compete with other social groups. Just as privilege tends to open doors of opportunity, oppression tends to slam them shut.
Women, minority groups in countries all over the world, sub-sects within a culture, are all oppressed groups who need reformists apart from regime changes and new laws or upholding of the old ones. Once it is recognized that oppression is acquired rather than inherited, it can be tackled with understanding, moral literacy, empathetic curricula, and a scientific revolution which tends to keep all spheres of life secular. I tend to be very pessimistic when I see children as young as 12 or 13 stabbing Israeli guards on buses, or ISIS creches featuring mock beheading videos of toddlers using teddy bears on the net; but then I also see Afghan women defying their religious culture and carrying the body of Farkhunda (stoned, mutilated, run over, kicked to death by an educated, young mob) to be buried. I also see voices of reformists raising questions about the obsession for women’s clothing, and the constant paranoid perspective of an “Infidel Enemy” out there especially if it’s labeling the ones who are doing the questioning under the convenient word “Islamophobia”.
The best bet so to speak for the abolition of the slave trade was the abolitionists themselves who happened to be white, who despite knowing the economic flip over it would cost their countries, still upheld their belief of the universality of human life and human values and their protection. Who defied their own families and societies and even overcame their own self-doubt to listen to that tiny pricking conscientious voice that told them this was not right. It is that voice that we have to rescue which is silenced through reinforced cultural prejudices and outdated norms and traditions. In the words of Marlon James, the Booker Prize-winning author for 2015, on Facebook “… recently there has been this movement gaining steam largely because nobody wants to give it a name, let’s call it: The Liberal Limit. In fact, it’s been the view of many liberals and leftists, but particularly old white liberal men…that progressiveness has gone too far, so far that even their (white) privilege now feels attacked. They are tired of learning new gender pronouns. Tired of this, tired of that….
But here’s the news, he goes on to say, you’re progressive. You’re supposed to progress. You’re supposed to be more liberal today than you were yesterday. Yes, we’re supposed to passionately debate (not tear down) even the stance of our allies, even those who agree with us 60% of the time. You’re supposed to keep changing your views on race because even the most positive view is inherently flawed and needs work. The whole point to being liberal, to being progressive is to continuously evolve, continuously question, continuously debate, even continuously knock down and build up, sometimes even ripping everything to start again. My views on trans people are different in 2014 than they were in 2004. And you can bet your a** they will be even better in 2024 than they are now because that’s what makes me not conservative. The point to being a progressive is to make progress.”
I’m going to take Marlon James’ words and extend it to the conservatives, the orthodox and the traditionalists. If you do not recognize the dark and brutal nature of humans and their ever-ready tendency to pick up ideologies and theologies and philosophies to suit and feed the perverse in their nature, you will keep the bloodbath between the clash of civilizations alive. Civilized oppression may serve you all for that period of time but then if history is to be believed, change has always been a constant in time and flip-over of cultures or implosion of societies has always contributed to their decline. As the world is opening up to the possibility of more egalitarian societies which benefit people more than the exploitative ones; it seems rather foolish to continue on the march of deadly ideas and not heed to the change in the air.
https://medium.com/@arshiaunis/civilized-oppression-and-the-urgency-to-recognize-it-a0e32cbe4498
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137498069_1
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Abuse of power, in the form of "malfeasance in office" or "official misconduct," is the commission of an unlawful act, done in an official capacity, which affects the performance of official duties. ... Abuse of power can also mean a person using the power they have for their own personal gain.
The act of using one's position of power in an abusive way. This can take many forms, such as taking advantage of someone, gaining access to information that shouldn't be accessible to the public, or just manipulating someone with the ability to punish them if they don't comply.
Covert and overt abuse of power: Covert: covert means that something is hidden, in the case of power, it would mean that someone is concealing their abuse of power from the public/other service users/other care workers. Covert abuse of power can happen in any setting.
"[A]buse of process (is) the intentional use of legal process for an improper purpose incompatible with the lawful function of the process by one with an ulterior motive in doing so, and with resulting damages."
"In its broadest sense, abuse of process may be defined as misuse or perversion of regularly issued legal process for a purpose not justified by the nature of the process."
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Considering how closely the societies work with law enforcement, the courts and the government who does have the powers and the "particular set of skills" to investigate crimes against children in care? The SIU does.. Or, it should have.
The Special Investigations Unit is the civilian oversight agency responsible for investigating circumstances involving police and child protection social workers that have resulted in a death, serious injury, or allegations of sexual assault of a civilian/child in Ontario, Canada.
https://www.siu.on.ca/en/index.php
AND MAYBE IT'S TIME FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO ACCESS A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHILD WELFARE EXPERT?
See: Robert D. Hare, C.M. (born 1934 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is a researcher in the field of criminal psychology. He developed the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-Revised), used to assess cases of psychopathy. Hare advises the FBI's Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resources Center (CASMIRC) and consults for various British and North American prison services.
He describes psychopaths as 'social predators', while pointing out that most don't commit murder. One philosophical review described it as having a high moral tone yet tending towards sensationalism and graphic anecdotes, and as providing a useful summary of the assessment of psychopathy but ultimately avoiding the difficult questions regarding internal contradictions in the concept or how it should be classified.
Hare received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at University of Western Ontario (1963). He is professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia where his studies center on psychopathology and psychophysiology. He was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada on December 30, 2010.
Hare wrote a popular science bestseller published in 1993 entitled Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (reissued 1999).
http://www.psychology-criminalbehavior-law.com/2015/01/hare-psychopath/
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ISN'T EDUCATION THE ONLY WAY TO FIGHT POVERTY, UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE RISING COST OF WELFARE ASSISTANCE IN A HIGH TECH COUNTRY?
2019: Study finds more than half of university students feel they need better basic skills to succeed.
(MAYBE IF THE GOVERNMENT SPENT MORE ON EARLY, SECONDARY AND POST SECONDARY EDUCATION WOULDN'T BE AN ISSUE.)
TORONTO, April 25, 2019 – A survey of students at four Ontario universities has found that more than half feel they lack competence in basic academic skills that would enable them to succeed in university and beyond.
Researchers from York University, Western University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto (Scarborough and Mississauga campuses) surveyed 2,230 students at their universities to learn how confident they were with their writing, test taking, analysis, time and group management, research, presentation and numeracy skills.
Based on the students’ responses, an advanced statistical classification algorithm allowed researchers to conclude in their study that only about 44 percent of students felt they had the generic skills needed to do well in their academic studies, 41 percent could be classified as at risk in academic settings because of limited levels of basic skills, and 16 percent lacked almost all of the skills needed for higher learning.
The study team, co-led by York University Department of Sociology Professor J. Paul Grayson and Western University Department of Sociology Professor James Côté, included professors Robert Kenedy of York University, Liang Hsuan Chen of the University of Toronto Scarborough and Sharon Roberts of the University of Waterloo.
Using the results of the student survey, the researchers concluded the skill deficiencies of students at each of the four universities were about the same. Family background had no noticeable influence on the skill level and neither did factors such as being a first-generation university student or an international student.
Not surprisingly, students with inadequate skill levels got relatively low grades, frequently thought of dropping out, and were generally dissatisfied with their university experience. In other words, skill levels as measured in the study were predictive of important university outcomes. Over two-thirds said they would welcome a first-year course in academic skills such as effective studying, critical thinking, writing and university standards.
The researchers point out that Ministry of Education policy documents show that most of the skills in which they are interested are objectives of the secondary school system in Ontario. Still, students can obtain good high school grades and still be deficient in these skills. In other words, high school grades do not reflect the development of many skills embodied in Ministry objectives. Arms length evaluations of students would be one way of ensuring that grades reflected the Ministry’s objectives.
"Students want help. They want to do well in school, future jobs, and in their roles as citizens,” said Grayson. “Students recognize they are lacking sufficient skills including literacy and numeracy, which are part of Ontario’s secondary school curriculum and key factors for academic and job success.”
The researchers surveyed students in humanities, social sciences and professional studies programs.
“The most shocking findings were that many of the students who were surveyed and said they have low levels of academic skills also reported being given very high grades in high school,” said Côté. “Some of the same students apparently can make their way through university without much trouble and without acquiring basic academic skills.”
Student participants with serious skills deficits earned high grades in secondary school, according to the survey. In high school, 63 percent of students classified as functional earned grades of A or A+; however, 56 percent of the at-risk students and 45 percent of the dysfunctional students also made those grades.
The research team also discovered that the skill gaps did not improve with more time spent in university. About the same percentages of students in all year-levels of university were considered deficient in their academic skills.
Additional quotes from researchers on the study:
"The data regarding student skills is disturbing, even though we suspected this was the case through our anecdotal experiences. We need to make sure student skills courses are available in order to ensure student success and resilience."
– Robert Kenedy, York University, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
“There is a troubling skills deficit - pervasive among domestic, first generation and international students. The need to provide more support to students across the board is clear and urgent.”
– Liang Hsuan Chen, University of Toronto Scarborough, Associate Professor, Department of Management
“These preliminary findings confirm that a significant proportion of our undergraduate students face challenges related to fundamental academic competency skills at all levels of undergraduate study. Our findings suggest that many students need extensive supports in place before and after they enter university.”
– Sharon Roberts, University of Waterloo, Associate Professor, Social Development Studies Department
York University champions new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-disciplinary programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. York students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world’s most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. York U is an internationally recognized research university – our 11 faculties and 25 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. Located in Toronto, York is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni.
York U's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education.
Media Contact:
Janice Walls, York University Media Relations, 416 455 4710, wallsj@yorku.ca
https://news.yorku.ca/2019/04/25/study-finds-more-than-half-of-university-students-feel-they-need-better-basic-skills-to-succeed/
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2010: University students can’t spell. Profs say high schools aren’t teaching grammar.
(maybe were there really enough teachers and schools were properly funded this wouldn't be an issue.)
Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, are all being blamed for an increasing number of post-secondary students who can’t write properly. For years there’s been a flood of anecdotal complaints from professors about what they say is the wretched state of English grammar coming from some of their students.
Now there seems to be some solid evidence.
The University of Waterloo is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require students to pass an exam testing their English language skills. Almost a third of those students are failing. “Thirty per cent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level,” says Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at Waterloo. “We would certainly like it to be a lot lower.” Barrett says the failure rate has jumped five percentage points in the past few years, up to 30 per cent from 25 per cent. “What has happened in high school that they cannot pass our simple test of written English, at a minimum?” she asks.
https://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/university-students-cant-spell/
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2018: One in four Ontario postsecondary students lacks basic literacy, numeracy skills, studies say.
(maybe is there were enough teachers and the schools were properly funded this wouldn't be an issue)
About a quarter of graduating students in Ontario’s postsecondary programs lack adequate literacy and numeracy skills, according to new research from the government agency that monitors the system.
The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) completed two large studies of more than 7,500 students at 20 Ontario postsecondary institutions and found that a large number of students achieved scores below the level it considered adequate to succeed in today’s job market. Less than a third of graduating students scored at a superior level.
Harvey Weingarten, president and chief executive of HEQCO, said the research is among the first of its kind to try to measure employment-related skills outcomes in the higher-education system. He said one of the main reasons students pursue postsecondary education is to get a good job. But while universities and colleges say they prepare students for the world of work, employers are frustrated, he said. Many employers say the students they encounter don’t have the communication, problem-solving and critical-thinking skills they’re seeking.
“It troubles us that, in our opinion, too many students are graduating with skills in those two areas that are not as highly developed as we would like,” Dr. Weingarten said. “We need to do better than we’re doing now.”
This work aims to measure student skills and provide a basis for understanding what is valued in the labour market, and how those attributes could be taught.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-one-in-four-ontario-university-students-lack-basic-literacy-numeracy/
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BACK TO THE SOUP KITCHEN LINE ...
Approximately 700,000 students attend more than 850 publicly funded secondary schools in Ontario. Every student is unique, and our high schools are changing to meet students' individual needs.
Innovative programs that help students customize their learning are helping more students graduate. The government's goal is to have 85 percent of students graduating.
85%... WTF IS THAT???
Might just as well just put 15% of them on welfare now...
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/secondary.html
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2019: Provincial memo lays out plan to cut 3,475 Ontario teaching positions in 4 years. CBC News ·
A provincial memo obtained by CBC Toronto lays out the Ford government's plans to cut thousands of full-time teaching positions in Ontario beginning this fall.
In the 2019-2020 school year, the memo says, there will be 1,558 fewer full-time teachers in Ontario. By the 2022-2023 school year, that number will be 3,475 — about three per cent of Ontario's current teacher workforce.
The total savings for removing those full-time positions would be $851 million.
The memo, which was sent by the Ministry of Education to school board administrators, also clarifies that the positions will be shed through attrition — meaning teachers that quit or retire and are not replaced — as well as changing student enrolment numbers and bumped-up class sizes.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/provincial-memo-teacher-cuts-1.5085851
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Are Ford's alleged net gains greater than the net losses?
2019: Canada’s jobs market suffered its single-worst month since 2009, shedding 71,200 jobs in November, according to Statistics Canada. The Financial Post dug into the numbers and asked some of the country’s top economists whether this is a blip, or a sign of something more ominous.
By Victor Ferreira, Financial Post.
THE DEEPEST JOB LOSSES — 27,500 — CAME IN MANUFACTURING
ACCOMMODATION AND FOOD/RETAIL LOST A COMBINED 14,300 JOBS
Stephen Brown, senior Canada economist at Capital Economics: “It’s pretty clear the slowdown in GDP growth, both at home and globally is weighing on the labour market and you can see that in the manufacturing figure.
https://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/canada-just-had-its-worst-month-for-job-losses-in-a-decade-so-just-how-bad-was-it
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2018: 'Wacky' Canadian economy lost 51,600 jobs, led by Ontario plunge. By Theophilos Argitis, Bloomberg News.
Canada’s economy unexpectedly lost 51,600 jobs, with wage gains slowing and Ontario recording its biggest employment drop in nearly a decade, removing any urgency for the central bank to accelerate rate hikes.
The nation’s largest province lost 80,100 jobs in August, all part-time, the biggest decline for Ontario since 2009. Nationally, the economy lost 92,000 part-time workers, though a 40,400 gain in full-time employment is one sign the labour market is firmer than the headline number suggests.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-s-economy-lost-51-600-jobs-in-august-1.1134558
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2019: Doug Ford hedges on promise that 'no one' will lose their job.
Ontario to lose more than 10,000 teaching positions over five years under Ford government changes: watchdog.
Nurses and education staff among those facing layoffs despite PC campaign pledge.
Premier Doug Ford and his PCs are backing away from his campaign promise that no one in the public sector will lose their job under his government.
As the Ford government prepares to deliver its first budget on April 11, the PCs are signalling that their promise only applies to undefined "front-line" workers.
"Under Premier Doug Ford and the Government for the People not a single front-line worker will lose their job," Ford's press secretary said Friday in a statement emailed to CBC News.
However, Ford clearly promised on several occasions during the election campaign that no public sector jobs would be cut by the PCs.
"Under our government, I'm going to reinforce this, not one single person will lose their job." Ford said during the televised leaders debate on May 27.
"I say it every night and I'm going to say it again and again. No one, no one will lose their job," he said at a rally in Windsor on May 31.
"Don't listen to the scare tactics," he said at a rally in Nepean on June 2. "No one will lose their job, absolutely no one."
"I want to assure our public sector workers, to our nurses, to our teachers and to our doctors, that no one, and I repeat no one, will lose their job," Ford said at a news conference in Burlington on June 6, the day before the election.
Despite all those statements, there is now a significant change in wording from Ford and his finance minister.
"You're going to see our promises kept, and one of the promises that the premier made is that no front-line workers will be cut," Finance Minister Vic Fedeli told a news conference Thursday to announce the budget date.
Neither Fedeli nor Ford has defined what they mean by front-line workers.
There is evidence that some front-line workers are being laid off anyway.
The Grand River Hospital in Kitchener is laying off 40 nurses.
The closure of the Thunder Bay office of the Child and Youth Advocate will result in an undetermined number of job losses.
Scrapping $25 million in specialized education program funding is forcing school boards across the province to lay off staff
"They can mince words all they want, but ... the PC party promise during the campaign that no jobs will be lost is absolutely unbelievable," Horwath told reporters at the legislature this week. "Jobs are being lost as we speak."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-ontario-no-job-cuts-layoffs-public-sector-1.5048662
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2019: Workers at risk of losing jobs can be retrained for health care, RBC says.
OTTAWA -- A new report says some of the more than one million Canadian workers who could lose their jobs could fill growing gaps in the nation's health-care system with the right training now.
The issue is time and money for a sector that previous research suggests doesn't invest as much as other industries do in skills training.
Health-services jobs account for 13 per cent of the country's workforce and federal projections estimate the rapid pace of growth seen over the last decade will continue over the next.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/workers-at-risk-of-losing-jobs-to-ai-can-be-retrained-for-health-care-rbc-says-1.4685009
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2019: Ontario to lose more than 10,000 teaching positions over five years under Ford government changes: watchdog.
By Kristin Rushowy Queen's Park Bureau
Ontario will have 10,000 fewer teaching positions over the next five years as the Ford government boosts class sizes and introduces mandatory online courses, says the legislature’s independent financial watchdog.
Some 994 elementary and 9,060 secondary positions will be gone from the system based on the previous student-teacher ratios, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario said in an explosive report — one that landed in the midst of contract negotiations and just days before the high school teachers’ union is set to sit down at the bargaining table with the government and school boards.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/2019/09/26/ontario-to-lose-more-than-10000-teaching-positions-over-5-years-under-ford-government-changes-watchdog.html
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2020: Province’s tough stance on teacher contract negotiations.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/video/2020/01/16/provinces-tough-stance-on-teacher-contract-negotiations/
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2007: Has Ontario taught its high-school students not to think?
Elementary and high schools spend so much time on the content-laden curriculum that students are unprepared for the analytic and conceptual thinking they'll need at university.
Has Ontario’s educational system taught a decade of students not to think? There is growing evidence that the combination of standardized testing with a content-intensive curriculum that’s too advanced – both introduced by the Conservative government between 1997 and 1999 – has done exactly that.
A dramatic indication that there could be a serious problem was the performance of my introductory physics class on their November test last year. It was identical to one given in 1996, but the class average over this 10-year period had plummeted from 66 to 50 percent. There is about a five-percent fluctuation in this test grade from year to year due to variation in student ability and the difficulty of the questions but, when I looked at the class average over the many times I have taught the course since 1981, I found that four of the five lowest grades have occurred in the last four years, with the lowest this year. When I enquired elsewhere at Trent University, I found the same pattern in the mathematics department, where the first test in linear algebra was down some 15 percent from its historic mean, and the calculus average had dropped nine percent from the year before.
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/has-ontario-taught-its-high-school-students-not-to-think/
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FACT-CHECKING THE FORD GOVERNMENT
https://www.knowmore.ca/government-misinformation
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Making the Grade? Troubling Trends in Postsecondary Student Literacy.
While the benefits of strong literacy skills are well established, there is growing concern that Canadians’ literacy skills, including those of students attending postsecondary institutions in Ontario, are not meeting expectations. The timing is especially problematic given that strong literacy skills are critical to students as
they graduate into a highly competitive and increasingly globalized labour market.
A review of literacy data from Statistics Canada and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including results from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL) and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), point to some troubling trends in literacy achievement and a lack of consistency in expectations for high school students who go on to postsecondary education.
According to IALS, not even a quarter of respondents aged 18 to 65 scored above level 3 – the minimum level of proficiency. The results from ALL, which was carried out several years later to follow up on IALS findings, found no substantial improvement in Canadians’ literacy skills in this same age group. The most recent literacy results from PIAAC also registered no improvement but rather a slight deterioration in Canadians’ scores at both ends of the literacy spectrum, with a greater number of Canadians scoring at level 1 and below and fewer Canadians scoring at levels 4 and 5.
The pressing question for Ontario is whether students entering postsecondary education have the literacy skills required to succeed. Data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests students’ abilities in reading, science and math, suggest that while students who score highest on the reading assessment at age 15 are more likely to attend university, a considerable percentage of students scoring below level 3 will also attend. Results also underscore that colleges are attracting individuals with a much wider range of language abilities, with fewer students from the upper end of the proficiency scale and more students from the lower-mid range.
Research also reveals the existence of several conflicting literacy standards for students entering postsecondary education. On the one hand, the OECD establishes level 3 as the minimum proficiency level for high school graduation. Yet Ontario’s high schools operate with yet another standard, and the expectations of faculty members for high school graduates set yet another standard. This lack of clarity in expectations is problematic both for students and for institutions.
http://www.heqco.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/HEQCO%20Literacy%20ENG.pdf
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ONTARIO FAMILIES SIDE WITH EDUCATION AND THEIR CHILDREN'S FUTURES.
2020: TORONTO — Nearly twice as many Ontarians side with teachers’ unions as those who side with Premier Doug The Slug Ford’s government in the ongoing labour dispute, including 22 percent of Progressive Conservative voters.
“By a margin of nearly two-to-one (57 per cent versus 30 per cent), the public are siding with the unions, not the Ontario government,” pollster EKOS Politics said as part of new research released Thursday.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/ontarians-side-teachers-ford-government_ca_5e2a0c3ac5b6779e9c2fc0b9
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/how-ontarios-teachers-strikes-could-end_ca_5e2b6314c5b67d8874b1b9a4
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Will Ontario students ever forget or forgive the conservative party when it's their turn to vote? Doug Ford provides students with a teachable moment.
This week, Doug Ford did what no parent or politician should ever do to students who look to adults for leadership: He diminished and disrespected them.
More than a teachable moment, Ford gave high-school students a life lesson in how Ontario’s “Government for the People” treats young people.
By Martin Regg Cohn Ontario Politics Columnist Fri., April 5, 2019
https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/04/05/doug-ford-provides-students-with-a-teachable-moment.html
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When Doug Ford attacks student life, he’s attacking Guelph.
The Ontario government's Student Choice Initiative is a threat to local institutions, writes Vish Khanna
OPINION Mar 20, 2019 by Vish Khanna Guelph Mercury
https://www.guelphmercury.com/opinion-story/9231224-when-doug-ford-attacks-student-life-he-s-attacking-guelph/
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2019: In Doug Ford’s e-learning gamble, high school students will lose.
Next school year, Ontario plans to launch a massive learning experiment with high school students that seems set to increase inequality and compound failure for students already struggling in face-to-face classes.
The Ministry of Education, under Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party, plans to require students to take a minimum of four e-learning credits to graduate. This announcement came this past March. The province also plans to “centralize the delivery of all e-learning courses.” This means school boards will have less control over how e-learning is administered locally.
There’s been little detail about how the province will oversee or run e-learning, beyond a 2020-21 phase-in. If Ontario indeed introduces e-learning with no in-person class hours — what’s called “supplemental e-learning” — each student will lose 440 hours of face-to-face class time.
Questioned in the legislature about the plan, Lisa Thompson, then the minister of education, asked:
“What is wrong with making sure that our students, at minimum, once a year, embrace technology for good?”
The fantasy of progress reflected in this statement — that technology can determine educational outcomes — suggests that technology offers simple solutions to complex problems.
I am part of a chorus of voices critical of Ontario’s proposal. My perspective is informed by my doctoral research in the department of geography at the University of Toronto on e-learning in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), and my extensive background teaching e-learning as a secondary school teacher in the same board.
Bad policy
Forcing high school students to take e-learning courses when they get more support in face-to-face classes is bad policy. Advancing mandatory e-learning risks diverting resources and energy away from young people who have a right to a robust and culturally responsive education right where they live. In this way, advocating mandatory e-learning for high school students risks contributing to inequitable public policy.
Research by education researcher Carl James at York University has shown that inequitable public policy impacts Black students disproportionately; scholars Anita Olsen Harper and Shirley Thompson at the University of Manitoba highlight that the lower graduation rate for Indigenous students is due to the many structural oppressions that Indigenous people experience including schooling that doesn’t address the realities of racism or provide support for students to enhance their traditional practices.
http://theconversation.com/in-doug-fords-e-learning-gamble-high-school-students-will-lose-122826
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Editorial: Doug Ford is reckless, and the law agrees
https://westerngazette.ca/opinion/editorial-doug-ford-is-reckless-and-the-law-agrees/article_d13d3d3a-109b-11ea-86bf-6f83a7dac390.html
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2019: Resetting Social Assistance Reform. Summary of Recommendations.
Reduce unnecessary reporting and monitoring – complicated definitions, red tape, and other reporting and monitoring burdens produce inefficiencies for individuals and the government and do not contribute to the overall goal of helping people transition into work
Improve the adequacy of benefits – enhancing benefits could come in different forms including increasing base benefits, adding additional cash benefits tailored to specific needs and circumstances or providing other assistance with costs or services in the broader social safety net
Reduce the cost of working while on social assistance – smoothing out clawback thresholds and rates is critical to incentivizing participation in the workforce
Expand transitional health benefits beyond the social assistance system – pilot an extended, auto-enrolled programs for clients exiting Ontario Works to continue receiving access to health benefits in order to see how it affects attachment to the workforce
Respond to housing cost differences in different parts of the province – use the new Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit to provide place-based housing supports that recognize costs difference in different parts of the province
Use digital and streamlined services to make it easier to access support – digital options for accessing client information and delivering benefits can reduce red tape for individuals and produce efficiencies for government.
Outcomes-based funding that focuses on people’s success – the social assistance system must focus resources on outcome-based metrics including for employment supports and broader support programming
Noah Zon and Thomas Granofsky on resetting social assistance reform.
https://on360.ca/policy-papers/resetting-social-assistance-reform/
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2007: Nearly half of children in Crown care are medicated.
The researchers have found that not only were psychotropic drugs prescribed to a clear majority of the current and former wards interviewed, but most were diagnosed with mental-health disorders by a family doctor, never visited a child psychiatrist or another doctor for a second opinion, and doubted the accuracy of their diagnosis.
A disturbing number, the network's research director, Yolanda Lambe, added, have traded the child-welfare system for a life on the street.
"A lot of people are using drugs now," she said. "There's a lot of homeless young people who have been medicated quite heavily."
'whole range of disorders'
Nowhere is concern greater than in Ontario, where the provincial government recently appointed a panel of experts to develop standards of care for administering drugs to children in foster care, group homes and detention centres.
The move was made after the high-profile case last year of a now-13-year-old boy in a group home outside Toronto came to light. The boy was saddled with four serious psychiatric diagnoses, including oppositional defiant disorder and Tourette's syndrome, and doused daily with a cocktail of psychotropic drugs before his grandparents came to his rescue. Now living with his grandparents, he is free of diagnoses and drugs.
Marti McKay is the Toronto child psychologist who, when hired by the local CAS to assess the grandparents' capacity as guardians to the boy, discovered a child so chemically altered that his real character was clouded by the side effects of adult doses of drugs.
"There are lots of other kids like that," said Dr. McKay, one of the experts on the government panel. "If you look at the group homes, it's close to 100 per cent of the kids who are on not just one drug, but on drug cocktails with multiple diagnoses.
"There are too many kids being diagnosed with ... a whole range of disorders that are way out of proportion to the normal population. ... It's just not reasonable to think the children in care would have such overrepresentation in these rather obscure disorders."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nearly-half-of-children-in-crown-care-are-medicated/article687480/
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2014: Use of 'behaviour-altering' drugs widespread in foster, group homes.
In almost half of children and youth in foster and group home care aged 5 to 17 — 48.6 per cent — are on drugs, such as Ritalin, tranquilizers and anticonvulsants, according to a yearly survey conducted for the provincial government and the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OACAS). At ages 16 and 17, fully 57 per cent are on these medications.
In group homes, the figure is even higher — an average of 64 per cent of children and youth are taking behaviour-altering drugs. For 10- to 15-year-olds, the number is a staggering 74 per cent.
“The medication problem is huge,” says Raymond Lemay, who retired this summer after 32 years as executive director of the Prescott-Russell children’s aid society. “It’s catastrophic.
“We should be doing other things than medicating these kids,” he says, adding his agency discourages the use of psychotropic drugs. “Medication is inappropriate in many circumstances and will do these kids long-term damage.”
At the Brant CAS, drugs make up 52 per cent of expenditures on health insurance claims. The top five drugs prescribed and paid for by insurance are all used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including Concerta, Strattera and Adderall.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/12/12/use_of_behaviouraltering_drugs_widespread_in_foster_group_homes.html
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2015: Ontario Foster Care System Overmedicates, Underdiagnoses Kids.
by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization
Before you read this article and the following blog post, you might want to go back to Sunday’s post about Molly McGrath Tierney’s excellent TEDx talk in Baltimore last year (Toronto Star, 12/12/14). Her talk is just 11 minutes long, but she pretty much demolishes the system of foster care that we foist on so many children. Tierney’s a veteran of the child welfare system and a successful manager in Baltimore. But she’s clear that the system harms kids and is driven by money. The federal government pays states for each kid taken into care where they are all too often less well off than they were with their parents. Studies show that to be the case and when we ask children their preferences, they say they want to go home to their parents.
The Star article is about the shocking overuse of psychotropic medication on children in foster care in Ontario. Mental health experts agree that kids are overmedicated, but that’s just the start of the problem.
Almost half of children and youth in foster and group home care aged 5 to 17 — 48.6 per cent — are on drugs, such as Ritalin, tranquilizers and anticonvulsants, according to a yearly survey conducted for the provincial government and the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OACAS). At ages 16 and 17, fully 57 per cent are on these medications.
In group homes, the figure is even higher — an average of 64 per cent of children and youth are taking behaviour-altering drugs. For 10- to 15-year-olds, the number is a staggering 74 per cent.
The figures are found in “Looking After Children in Ontario,” a provincially mandated survey known as OnLAC. It collects data on the 7,000 children who have spent at least one year in care. After requests by the Star, the 2014 numbers were made public for the first time.
Top CAS officials describe the high number on “psychotropic or behaviour-altering medication” as a crisis.
“The medication problem is huge,” says Raymond Lemay, who retired this summer after 32 years as executive director of the Prescott-Russell children’s aid society. “It’s catastrophic.
“We should be doing other things than medicating these kids,” he says, adding his agency discourages the use of psychotropic drugs. “Medication is inappropriate in many circumstances and will do these kids long-term damage.”
Those percentages for kids in foster care dwarf those for kids in the general population.
For youths in care, the rate of psychotropic drug use is significantly higher than the general population. A 2005 study in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry estimated that only 2.5 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 19 were on psychotropic medication.
Of course it can be argued that kids in foster care are those with abusive family backgrounds, and are therefore more in need of medication. That’s probably true, but foster kids rarely receive proper mental health evaluations to determine whether they need medication. That means that kids who don’t need medication often get it anyway and those who do may be getting the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages.
Ontario’s highly decentralized child-protection model — 46 private agencies funded largely by tax dollars — seems to make matters worse.
Only half of children’s aid societies have a prescribed way of assessing the mental health needs of children, and barely 15 per cent of these use methods recommended by the provincial government, according to a 2009 survey sponsored by OACAS, the lobby group representing the agencies.
The lack of standardization “likely means that many children in need are not identified and referred for treatment,” concludes the survey report, co-authored by Elisa Romano, professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa.
The sheer number of kids in foster care and group homes, the lack of diagnostic resources and the need to maintain control of a population that’s experienced the worst of parental care inevitably leads to medicating children as a means of control. Unsurprisingly, the great majority of the medications given are for ADHD.
MEET THE DRUG PUSHERS:
At the Brant CAS, drugs make up 52 per cent of expenditures on health insurance claims. The top five drugs prescribed and paid for by insurance are all used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including Concerta, Strattera and Adderall.
Again, many kids are getting that medication whether they’ve been properly diagnosed or not.
A soon-to-be-published report by Klein, Taraba and other child-welfare experts also warns of children who have symptoms of attention deficit disorder being misdiagnosed and given “unhelpful medications” for long periods. “The big question is, what are we treating?” [Dr. Ben Klein, medical director at the Lansdowne Children’s Centre in Brantford] says.
Perhaps worse, the overmedication of the kids obscures real mental health issues many of them have. The drugs damp down and alter behaviors that could tip off a mental health professional as to the proper diagnosis for a child.
Drugs can ease disruptive behaviour. But doctors and CAS officials are concerned that mental-health issues caused by trauma aren’t being addressed..,.,
Medication might make them less likely to act out, Klein adds, but it doesn’t deal with the root cause of a child’s trauma. That requires “trauma-focused cognitive behaviour therapy,” which he says is almost impossible to access in Ontario.
This is all going on despite a relative lack of information on the long-term side-effects of many of the drugs being administered. For other drugs, the side-effects are known to be harmful.
A Star investigation in 2012 found 600 cases, reported to Health Canada during a 10-year period, of children and youth suffering serious side effects while on ADHD medication, including amnesia and suicide.
Finally, kids who’ve endured significant periods of abuse, particularly early on, produce high levels of the stress hormone cortisol that can have long-term deleterious effects on learning and impulse control. That’s not ADHD, but it can be mistaken for it, resulting in both a failure to diagnose the correct problem and the wrong medication.
As a sidelight, boys are more likely than girls to undergo that particular response to abuse early in life. As psychologist David Geary has written, “M. Davis and Emory..,., found that newborn boys showed an increase in cortisol levels after exposure to mild but prolonged stressors, but newborn girls showed no such increase..,., [A]n overall sex difference in cortisol responses..,., would make boys and men more susceptible to growth disorders and other diseases – through suppression of immune functions and growth hormones..,.,” That may explain the remarkable difference between the numbers of boys diagnosed and treated for ADHD as compared to girls.
Add to that the fact that parenting in foster care is, on average, markedly worse than it is in biological families, even somewhat abusive ones, and we have a “prescription” for lasting damage to the very children we’re supposed to be helping.
A recent study co-authored by researchers at the Child Welfare Institute of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto found that poor parenting in foster homes partly accounts for higher levels of behaviour problems in some children.
Here’s the experience of one boy, Nick Woolridge, profiled by the Star:
Woolridge was taken into care a month before his eighth birthday. He was bounced from foster homes to group homes — a dizzying 22 different homes during 10 years in care.
“I had a lot of anger issues due to my past, and dealing with my family,” he says. “And, growing up in foster homes and group homes, my anger just kept getting worse.”
During visits with his grandmother, Woolridge noticed she patiently found ways to defuse his outbursts and calm him down. Foster parents rarely tried doing so, and Woolridge says the Brant CAS too easily acquiesced to bouncing him around.
“I don’t think it’s right for a kid growing up in CAS to be shipped from foster home to foster home,” he says.
Is it any wonder that, as Molly McGrath Tierney said of kids in foster care, “they just want to go home?”
https://nationalparentsorganization.org/blog/22448-ontario-foster-care-system-overmedicates-underdiagnoses-kids
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2019: These Are The Most Dangerous & Heavily Promoted Prescription Drugs.
What’s worse is that the number of children prescribed dangerous drugs is on the rise. Doctors seem to prescribe medication without being concerned with the side-effects.
Worldwide, 17 million children, some as young as five years old, are given a variety of different prescription drugs, including psychiatric drugs that are dangerous enough that regulatory agencies in Europe, Australia, and the US have issued warnings on the side effects that include suicidal thoughts and aggressive behavior.
According to Fight For Kids, an organization that “educates parents worldwide on the facts about today’s widespread practice of labeling children mentally ill and drugging them with heavy, mind-altering, psychiatric drugs,” says over 10 million children in the US are prescribed addictive stimulants, antidepressants and other psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs for alleged educational and behavioral problems.
In fact, according to Foundation for a Drug-Free World, every day, 2,500 youth (12 to 17) will abuse a prescription pain reliever for the first time (4). Even more frightening, prescription medications like depressants, opioids and antidepressants cause more overdose deaths (45 percent) than illicit drugs like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and amphetamines (39 percent) combined. Worldwide, prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death.
https://dailyhealthpost.com/common-prescription-drugs/
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2018: What separation from parents does to children: ‘The effect is catastrophic’
This is what happens inside children when they are forcibly separated from their parents.
Their heart rate goes up. Their body releases a flood of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Those stress hormones can start killing off dendrites — the little branches in brain cells that transmit messages. In time, the stress can start killing off neurons and — especially in young children — wreaking dramatic and long-term damage, both psychologically and to the physical structure of the brain.
“The effect is catastrophic,” said Charles Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School. “There’s so much research on this that if people paid attention at all to the science, they would never do this.”
Separating kids from parents a 'textbook strategy' of domestic abuse, experts say — and causes irreversible, lifelong damage even when there is no other choice.
“Being separated from parents or having inconsistent living conditions for long periods of time can create changes in thoughts and behavior patterns, and an increase in challenging behavior and stress-related physical symptoms,” such as sleep difficulty, nightmares, flashbacks, crying, and yelling says Amy van Schagen - California State University.
The Science Is Unequivocal: Separating Families Is Harmful to Children
In news stories and opinion pieces, psychological scientists are sharing evidence-based insight from decades of research demonstrating the harmful effects of separating parents and children.
In an op-ed in USA Today, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff (University of Delaware), Mary Dozier (University of Delaware), and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (Temple University) write:
“Years of research are clear: Children need their parents to feel secure in the world, to explore and learn, and to grow strong emotionally.”
In a Washington Post op-ed, James Coan (University of Virginia) says:
“As a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Virginia, I study how the brain transforms social connection into better mental and physical health. My research suggests that maintaining close ties to trusted loved ones is a vital buffer against the external stressors we all face. But not being an expert on how this affects children, I recently invited five internationally recognized developmental scientists to chat with me about the matter on a science podcast I host. As we discussed the border policy’s effect on the children ensnared by it, even I was surprised to learn just how damaging it is likely to be.”
Mia Smith-Bynum (University of Maryland) is quoted in The Cut:
“The science leads to the conclusion that the deprivation of caregiving produces a form of extreme suffering in children. Being separated from a parent isn’t just a trauma — it breaks the relationship that helps children cope with other traumas.
Forceful separation is particularly damaging, explains clinical psychologist Mia Smith-Bynum, a professor of family science at the University of Maryland, when parents feel there’s nothing in their power that can be done to get their child back.
For all the dislocation, strangeness and pain of being separated forcibly from parents, many children can and do recover, said Mary Dozier, a professor of child development at the University of Delaware. “Not all of them — some kids never recover,” Dr. Dozier said. “But I’ve been amazed at how well kids can do after institutionalization if they’re able to have responsive and nurturing care afterward.”
The effects of that harm may evolve over time, says Antonio Puente, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington who specializes in cultural neuropsychology. What may begin as acute emotional distress could reemerge later in life as PTSD, behavioral issues and other signs of lasting neuropsychological damage, he says.
“A parent is really in many ways an extension of the child’s biology as that child is developing,” Tottenham said. “That adult who’s routinely been there provides this enormous stress-buffering effect on a child’s brain at a time when we haven’t yet developed that for ourselves. They’re really one organism, in a way.” When the reliable buffering and guidance of a parent is suddenly withdrawn, the riot of learning that molds and shapes the brain can be short-circuited, she said.
In a story from the BBC, Jack Shonkoff (Harvard University) discusses evidence related to long-term impacts:
Jack P Shonkoff, director of the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child, says it is incorrect to assume that some of the youngest children removed from their parents’ care will be too young to remember and therefore relatively unharmed. “When that stress system stays activated for a significant period of time, it can have a wear and tear effect biologically.
2019: Court rules Ontario animal protection law enforcement regime unconstitutional.
"Animal protection laws are the only laws still enforced by private agencies, and the court ruled that private enforcement without transparency and accountability is unacceptable," said lawyer Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, in a press release statement.
WHAT ABOUT ONTARIO'S SELF REGULATED FULLY GOVERNMENT FUNDED NON PROFIT MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR PRIVATE CORPORATION?
THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY...
While Breder says she agrees that in most cases, private organizations shouldn’t possess government-like powers to enter a person’s property and seize their belongings, finding the OSPCA’s powers completely unconstitutional could lead to a slippery slope for other SPCAs nationwide.
The sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in question are sections 7 and 8 (concerning individual autonomy and unreasonable search and seizure, respectively). While the decision states there is no direct charter violation of the distribution of legislative powers and “specific warrantless search and/or seizure powers” in the OSPCA Act, Justice Timothy Minnema wrote in his decision that assigning “police and other investigative powers to the OSPCA” violates s. 7.
(FUNNY HOW SECTION 7 AND 8 APPLIES TO PETS AND NOT CHILDREN)
Animal Shelters:
Like group and foster homes for apprehended children in Ontario not all animal shelters are the same. Fortunate homeless and unwanted animals end up in the hundreds of open-admission animal shelters that are staffed by professional, caring people.
At these facilities, frightened animals are reassured, sick and injured animals receive treatment or a peaceful end to their suffering, and the animals’ living quarters are kept clean and dry. Workers at these facilities never turn away needy animals and give careful consideration to each animal’s special emotional and physical needs unlike most group and foster homes who prefer to use prescription cocktails, police intervention and physical restraints on children at the first sign of a child in need.
Many less fortunate lost or abandoned animals end up in pitiful shelters that are nothing more than shacks without walls or other protection from the elements, where animals are often left to die from exposure, disease, or fights with other animals like apprehended children in Ontario's child welfare system.
https://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/animal-shelters/
https://www.ctvnews.ca/mummified-cat-found-in-t-o-humane-society-ceiling-1.458967
https://www.cp24.com/official-calls-animal-shelter-house-of-horrors-reports-finding-mummified-cat-1.458960
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/11/28/humane_society_it_seems_like_house_of_horrors.html
https://thepetshopsite.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/animal-shelter-turned-into-a-%E2%80%98house-of-horrors%E2%80%99/
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2019: Court rules Ontario animal protection law enforcement regime unconstitutional.
The current animal protection law enforcement regime in Ontario has been ruled to be unconstitutional by the Superior Court of Justice.
The court struck down the province’s current regime Jan. 2 in a Kingston court in Bogaerts v. Attorney General of Ontario, declaring that it is unconstitutional for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a private charity not subject to reasonable oversight measures, to enforce public animal protection laws.
Unlike the majority of SPCAs across Canada, the OSPCA is both government funded and also privately funded by donations. The OSPCA, a charity, holds law enforcement powers, without the same transparency and accountability a public or government agency has.
“There's a bit of a divide within the animal protection movement,” says Rebeka Breder, a Vancouver-based animal law lawyer at Breder Law. “I think the concern here is that if you're going to have someone's property being searched and someone's property, like animals, being taken away, then those powers should be [given to] the government and not a private organization that's not subject to freedom of information requests. There's very little transparency and arguably, perhaps even accountability, because it's a private non-profit organization.”
The sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in question are sections 7 and 8 (concerning individual autonomy and unreasonable search and seizure, respectively). While the decision states there is no direct charter violation of the distribution of legislative powers and “specific warrantless search and/or seizure powers” in the OSPCA Act, Justice Timothy Minnema wrote in his decision that assigning “police and other investigative powers to the OSPCA” violates s. 7.
(FUNNY HOW SECTION 7 AND 8 APPLIES TO PETS AND NOT CHILDREN)
As a result, the court suspended the declaration of invalidity for 12 months to provide Ontario time for restructuring its animal protection regime to ensure the desired accountability needed to operate with having such a public function. Minnema wrote that it would be “an untenable result” to “compromise animal welfare for even a transitional period” of time as the province “considers its next step.”
The Canadian animal law organization, Animal Justice, intervened after the case’s hearing last May and argued that in order for animals to maximally benefit from legal protections, the enforcement agency needs to be transparent.
"Animal protection laws are the only laws still enforced by private agencies, and the court ruled that private enforcement without transparency and accountability is unacceptable," said lawyer Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, in a press release statement.
While Breder says she agrees that in most cases, private organizations shouldn’t possess government-like powers to enter a person’s property and seize their belongings, finding the OSPCA’s powers completely unconstitutional could lead to a slippery slope for other SPCAs nation-wide.
“The SPCAs across the country should remain having the powers that they do to investigate animal welfare and cruelty concerns because [due to] a lack of financial and human resources it means they're in the best position to look into these issues and to deal with them,” she says. “If we just left it up to the government, I think we would be seeing significantly less animal welfare issues being investigated.”
Suzana Gartner, mediator and founder of Toronto-based Gartner & Associates Animal Law, says she agrees with Breder’s sentiment.
“This [decision] is like a win-win for everybody in my view because if they're given an opportunity to restructure their enforcement regime and to be accountable and transparent, I think that's going to help the province. It can help them mandate their policing powers,” Gartner says.
Legal Feeds contacted Daniel Huffaker, a lawyer representing the Attorney General of Ontario, in Bogaerts v. Attorney General of Ontario. A ministry media representative, Philip Klassen, declined comment, stating via email: “We are currently reviewing this decision. As this matter is in the appeal period, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
On Jan. 4, OSPCA general counsel Brian Shiller sent an email statement to media outlets clarifying the role of the OSPCA in this case. “There was no allegation that the Ontario SPCA was at fault for anything regarding the subject matter of the application and the court did not criticize any conduct on the part of the Ontario SPCA in its administration of the Ontario SPCA Act,” he said. “Rather, the court created a new legal principle and used it to rule that it was unconstitutional for the Province of Ontario to enact legislation that permits a private charity to have policing powers in the absence of government oversight.”
https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/general/court-rules-ontario-animal-protection-law-enforcement-regime-unconstitutional/275753
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Standards of Care for the Administration of Psychotropic Medications to Children and Youth Living in Licensed Residential Settings.
Summary of Recommendations of the Ontario Expert Panel February 2009.
http://www.children.gov.on.ca/htdocs/English/documents/specialneeds/residential/summary_report.pdf
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Could Ontario's Pharmacies And Pharmacists Do Anything To Protect Children In Care Of The CAS?
A Rexall medication review provides the opportunity for you to sit down one on one with your Rexall Pharmacist to review your prescription and non-prescription medications. Unless your a child in Ontario's care this process will identify medication-related issues.
Why Rexall Medication Review?
The Rexall Medication Review was created specifically for people who are regularly taking multiple medications at a time.
You can rely on your pharmacist or healthcare provider to let you know if medications you take have any unsafe interactions unless your a child in Ontario's care. Not only do certain prescription medications interact dangerously with one another, but they can also interact with over-the-counter medications, vitamin and mineral supplements, or even certain foods.
In the US if the pharmacist doesn’t feel comfortable filling the prescription they can refuse to fill it.
There are many reasons, including ethical and religious beliefs, for why a pharmacist may not feel comfortable filling a prescription. We saw this recently when a pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for misoprostol, a medication used to end a pregnancy.
A pharmacist is technically allowed to decline filling your prescription based on their moral beliefs. If that happens, try seeing if there’s another pharmacist working at the pharmacy and speak with them. You can also try transferring your prescription to another pharmacy to be filled, although this can add some inconvenience.
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2009: Ninety children known to Ontario's child welfare system died in 2007, according to the latest report from the chief coroner's office – a number the province's new child advocate says is shocking and should trouble us all.
https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2009/02/23/why_did_90_children_die.html
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2010: Psychologist got degree from U.S. 'diploma mill'
A psychologist with the Durham Children’s Aid Society has pleaded guilty to professional misconduct for misrepresenting himself and for making multiple unqualified diagnoses of mental illness.
Gregory Carter, 63, appeared before the College of Psychologists of Ontario’s disciplinary committee on Tuesday. He and the college agreed on the terms of the penalty, which includes a three-month suspension, a recorded reprimand and one year of supervised practice under an approved practitioner.
In his practice with the Children’s Aid Society, Mr. Carter’s expertise was used to determine child custody cases.
https://nationalpost.com/posted-toronto/psychologist-got-degree-from-u-s-diploma-mill
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2011: Child Welfare and Children's Mental Health in Ontario.
In 2009–2010, spending on child welfare in Ontario represented approximately $1.4 billion. In many ways, the organization of child welfare in Ontario mirrors the organization of healthcare. Child welfare is delivered through 53 independently governed agencies who receive funding through transfer payments from the provincial government. In parallel to healthcare, where the largest proportion of spending is represented by the relatively small portion of patients who receive in-patient care, the largest proportion of spending in child welfare relates to services to children who are "in care" – foster care or group care. In Ontario child welfare, approximately 27,000 children and youth receive in-care services each year, accounting for approximately 40% of total expenditures. A much larger number of children and youth who have been maltreated or are at risk for maltreatment are supported in their homes with their families. The Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies estimates that for every one child in care, another nine children are being supported by CASs at home with their families.
The 2009–2010 spending on core children's mental health services in Ontario was $384 million (excluding funding for complex special needs). Transfer-payment recipients include stand-alone agencies that provide child and youth mental health services, 17 hospital-based outpatient programs and First Nation and non-profit Aboriginal organizations and service agencies, including 27 friendship centres. The provincial government also funds the Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, and the Ontario Child and Youth Telepsychiatry Program. Beyond the formal mental health system, many children and youth receive mental health services through schools, private providers, CASs and other sources. As with child welfare services, the vast majority of children's mental health services are community-based, and children requiring intensive out-of-home treatment are the minority.
https://www.longwoods.com/content/22360//improving-mental-health-outcomes-for-children-and-youth-exposed-to-abuse-and-neglect
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2012: ADHD drugs suspected of hurting Canadian kids.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/09/26/adhd_drugs_suspected_of_hurting_canadian_kids.html
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Between 2008/2012 natural causes was listed as the least likely way for a child in care to die at 7% of the total deaths reviewed while "undetermined cause" was listed as the leading cause of death of children in Ontario's child protection system at only 43% of the total deaths reviewed.
92 children equals 43% of the deaths reviewed by the PDRC. 92 mystery deaths and like every other year no further action was taken to determine the cause...
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/sites/default/files/content/mcscs/images/195633-19.jpg
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/english/DeathInvestigations/office_coroner/PublicationsandReports/PDRC/2013Report/PDRC_2013.html (REDACTED)
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2017: Ontario children and youth with ADHD often prescribed antipsychotics, study finds
Almost 12% of people aged 24 or younger with ADHD have been prescribed antipsychotics.
One in 20 Ontario children and youth have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and many are prescribed antipsychotic drugs, despite having no other mental health diagnoses, researchers have found.
A study by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences found almost 12 per cent of kids and youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, were prescribed antipsychotics like Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroquel.
"When we looked at the information on the children and youth with ADHD who were prescribed antipsychotics, a very, very small number of them had a condition where you would expect the use of an antipsychotic — conditions such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia," said senior author Dr. Paul Kurdyak, head of the mental health and addictions program at ICES.
Prescription of antipsychotics to kids with ADHD 'surprising'
They found about five per cent — or 536 — of the children and youth had a diagnosis of ADHD. Eight per cent of them were male and almost three per cent were female.
About 70 per cent of the young people with ADHD were being treated with drugs like Ritalin and Adderall, which are considered standard, first-line therapy for the common condition. About 20 per cent had also been prescribed antidepressants, "which isn't terribly surprising because depression and anxiety commonly co-occur with ADHD," Kurdyak said.
"But the surprising finding to us was the 12 per cent of kids with ADHD who were prescribed an antipsychotic," he said, explaining that the medications have a sedating effect, which could help reduce disruptive behaviour.
However, these drugs can have adverse effects, such as causing significant weight gain. One study found kids gained almost 19 pounds on average after 10 weeks on the drugs — and the risk of developing pre-diabetes or diabetes.
'Not a lot of evidence that they work for ADHD'
"We don't know why these children and youth with ADHD are on antipsychotics, but there is a risk associated with early antipsychotic exposure, so we need to know more about why they are being used, so that the benefits can be weighed against the risks."
Mark Henick, national director of strategic initiatives at the Canadian Mental Health Association, said it's known that some doctors prescribe antipsychotic medications for ADHD, and he's concerned about the high level of use in young people with the disorder.
"They're not indicated for ADHD and there's not a lot of evidence that they work for ADHD," he said Wednesday. "In fact, there's good evidence that they could be harmful."
The ICES study shows that people who go to a psychiatrist for treatment are more likely to be prescribed an antipsychotic, noted Henick, who was not involved in the research. "But it's often not appropriate in these kinds of cases, where we know psychotherapy is quite effective for ADHD."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-children-and-youth-with-adhd-often-prescribed-antipsychotics-study-finds-1.3942049
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2017: Nearly a third of tests and treatments are unnecessary: CIHI.
The study also showed that doctors are increasingly and inappropriately prescribing antipsychotics to children and youth. Between 2005 and 2012, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia saw a 300% increase in dispensing of quetiapine to young people aged five to 24, even though the drug is not recommended for use in children and youth.
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/189/16/E620
In our recent study published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, we report that nearly 40 per cent of adults with developmental disabilities in Ontario were prescribed antipsychotics over a six-year period. Sixty per cent of the individuals prescribed these medications did not have the psychiatric diagnoses for which these drugs are generally studied and approved.
This kind of prescribing has costs — for all of us.
Antipsychotic medications are expensive and their use in this population cost the Ontario government over $117 million during the six-year study period. Scale this amount across the country and the price tag becomes even more significant. If any of that prescribing is potentially inappropriate, as our study suggests, that's a lot of public health dollars that could be better spent elsewhere to support these individuals.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/no-one-is-talking-about-this-overmedicated-group-of-canadians_ca_5cd5147ce4b07bc729749505
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2017: New study suggests link between foster care system and youth homelessness.
OTTAWA -- A first-of-its-kind study in Canada has painted a national picture of homeless youth and drawn a link to the foster care system that researchers say could be playing a more active role in keeping young people off the streets.
The study found nearly three out of every five homeless youth were part of the child welfare system at some point in their lives, a rate almost 200 times greater than that of the general population.
Of those with a history in the child welfare system, almost two of every five respondents eventually "aged out" of provincial or territorial care, losing access to the sort of support that could have kept them from becoming homeless, the study found.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/new-study-suggests-link-between-foster-care-system-and-youth-homelessness-1.3538232
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2017: Stop dumping kids in care onto the street: Editorial.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2017/08/09/stop-dumping-kids-in-care-onto-the-street-editorial.html
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2017: Study urges federal, provincial governments to revamp foster care system to help address youth homelessness.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/08/09/groundbreaking-study-suggests-link-between-canadian-foster-care-system-and-youth-homelessness.html
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2019: A new study, published in Psychiatry Research, has concluded that psychiatric diagnoses are scientifically worthless as tools to identify discrete mental health disorders. ... Psychiatric diagnoses all use different decision-making rules. There is a huge amount of overlap in symptoms between diagnoses.
The main findings of the research were:
Psychiatric diagnoses all use different decision-making rules
There is a huge amount of overlap in symptoms between diagnoses
Almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events
Diagnoses tell us little about the individual patient and what treatment they need
The authors conclude that diagnostic labelling represents 'a disingenuous categorical system'.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190708131152.htm
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2019: Expert who gave more than 100 assessments in Ontario child protection cases lied about credentials for years, judge finds.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/07/31/expert-who-gave-more-than-100-assessments-in-ontario-child-protection-cases-lied-about-credentials-for-years-judge-finds.html
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2019: Province orders children’s aid societies to review credentials of experts used in child welfare cases
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/08/23/province-orders-childrens-aid-societies-to-review-credentials-of-experts-used-in-child-welfare-cases.html
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2019: More Canadian teens using over-the-counter drugs to overdose, data show. ERIN ANDERSSEN
The number of intentional overdoses involving common over-the-counter and prescription drugs has increased steeply among young people in the last decade, according to new data provided to The Globe and Mail by the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
The number of cases roughly doubled for children and teenagers in Alberta and Ontario, the two provinces for which data were available, in two categories of drugs that include over-the-counter painkiller medications and prescriptions for drugs such as antidepressants and sedatives, according to the CIHI data, which tracked emergency-department visits.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadian-teens-overdoses-painkillers-antidepressants-data/
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2019: Ontario passes bill to join B.C.-led class action lawsuit against opioid manufacturers.
globalnews.ca/news/6288335/ontario-opioid-class-action-lawsuit-bc-led/
(Related: Ontario is using a new law to retroactively dismiss lawsuits it lost: lawyer 2019 - https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.5389171/ontario-is-using-a-new-law-to-retroactively-dismiss-lawsuits-it-lost-lawyer-1.5389627)
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2019: Alberta to join B.C. in class action lawsuit against opioid manufacturers.
The lawsuit alleges that Purdue Pharma Inc., the makers of OxyContin, and more than 40 other companies knowingly marketed quantities of the drugs that went well beyond legitimate needs.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/alberta-to-join-b-c-in-class-action-lawsuit-against-opioid-manufacturers
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2018: B.C. Government files class action lawsuit against opioid industry.
More than 40 manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors are listed as defendants. The province will argue the defendants "placed profits over the health and safety of the public."
https://vancouversun.com/health/local-health/b-c-to-announce-lawsuit-against-opioid-manufacturer-for-overdose-crisis-costs
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Mike Smyth: Eby swings the wrecking ball at Big Pharma in opioid crisis.
https://theprovince.com/news/bc-politics/mike-smyth-eby-swings-the-wrecking-ball-at-big-pharma-in-opioid-crisis
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