2017: Ontario won't say where high needs youth were moved after Thunder Bay, Ont. group homes shut down.
After conducting unannounced inspections, Ontario has closed three privately-run group homes in Thunder Bay, but it's not clear where the high risk youth who were staying there have been moved.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/04/30/shocking-conditions-at-now-shuttered-thunder-bay-foster-homes-detailed-in-child-advocates-final-report.html
The homes, run by Johnson Children's Services, Inc., were closed after "a report of concerns" prompted the inspections, according to a spokesperson for the Ministry of Children and Youth Services. The homes are contracted by Tikanagan Child and Family Services to house First Nations children in their care who have a mental health diagnosis.
Tammy Keeash, 17, of North Caribou Lake First Nation, was staying in one of the Johnson homes when she disappeared on May 6. Her body was found the next day in the floodway of the McIntyre River in Thunder Bay.
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First Nations teen found dead was living in group home in Thunder Bay, Ont., chief says
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/tammy-keeash-death-1.4107329
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Death, disappearance of First Nations teens reignite concern about police practices in Thunder Bay.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/death-missing-thunder-bay-1.4120577
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Ontario is "responsible for these foster homes that they provided a license to and if they have to close a home, then they have to ensure there are options so that the children in that home, where I've been told these children who require specialized care, can go," said Nishnawbe Aski Nation Deputy Grand Chief Anna Betty Achneepineskum.
"That's a lot of trauma for a child if there isn't a plan, a constructive plan in place when these things happen," she said.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/group-homes-closed-1.4162049#:~:text=Thunder%20Bay-,Ontario%20won't%20say%20where%20high%20needs%20youth%20were%20moved,lived%20there%20have%20been%20moved.
https://ihtoday.ca/ontario-increases-size-of-foster-homes-allow-inspections-over-telephone-due-to-pandemic-aptn-news/
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2019: Shocking conditions at now shuttered Thunder Bay foster homes detailed in child advocate’s final report.
Three Thunder Bay foster homes — closed by the province in 2017 after the death of a First Nations youth — had feces- and blood-stained floors, no working stove or food in the fridge, and were staffed by workers ill-equipped to handle the complex needs of youth in their care.
The shocking conditions are included in an investigative report by the office of Ontario’s Advocate for Children and Youth, which closed Tuesday as part of the Ford government’s “restoring trust, transparency and accountability” law. The office’s investigative role moves to the provincial ombudsman’s office May 1.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/04/30/shocking-conditions-at-now-shuttered-thunder-bay-foster-homes-detailed-in-child-advocates-final-report.html
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2020: Ontario increases size of foster homes, allow inspections over telephone due to pandemic.
The Ford government has been allowing Ontario foster homes to be inspected over the phone, increase in size and require less documentation, like health records, for more than a month.
The amendments to the Child, Youth and Family Services Act went into effect May 8 and will remain in place while the province is in a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But APTN News recently obtained documents related to amendments and had them reviewed by David Miller, a long-time child protection lawyer in Toronto.
“Every change involved in these amendments serves to make foster homes and group homes less safe for our most vulnerable children and youth,” said Miller, adding these homes will be “busier, more chaotic … and with reduced government oversight.”
That’s particularly the case with in-home inspections and/or annual reviews, which can be now done by video or the telephone. Annual reviews, which make sure a child’s care is being met, can also be delayed for three months.
There are now fewer requirements for foster parents and group home staff, as well.
They can hire staff and recruit foster parents with less stringent requirements, such as no health assessments.
There’s also concern over police background checks. On March 25 the province asked all service providers “to refrain from requesting new police record checks unless deemed essential to meet immediate need,” according to a government “fact sheet” on the amendments.
“The ministry is also recommending that all non-essential checks [e.g. new board members whose services are not immediately necessary, etc.] to be deferred at this time,” the province said in the fact sheet.
Board members oversee child welfare agencies, otherwise known as children’s aid societies or Indigenous wellbeing societies in Ontario.
https://www.aptnnews.ca/nation-to-nation/ontario-increases-size-of-foster-homes-allow-inspections-over-telephone-due-to-pandemic/
Eliminating the Ontario Child Advocate’s Office just a mistake? I think not...
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2017: Province shuts down three Thunder Bay foster homes.
The province has taken the unusual step of quickly inspecting and shutting down three Thunder Bay foster homes after the death last month of Indigenous teen Tammy Keeash, the Star has learned.
Keeash, 17, disappeared from her foster care residence on May 6. The teen, from the North Caribou Lake First Nation, was reported to be living in a Johnson Children’s Services residence when she failed to make her curfew, said Nishnawbe Aski Nation deputy grand chief Anna Betty Achneepineskum. Keeash was seeking mental health services in Thunder Bay because those services weren’t available in her community 500 kilometres away. Her body was found in the Neebing-McIntyre Floodway on May 7.
The Ministry of Children and Youth Services conducted the surprise inspections after Keeash’s death.
“Based on information collected from those inspections, the ministry imposed terms and conditions on the operator which required that all three homes in Thunder Bay be closed,” Trell Heuther, of the ministry said in a statement.
Read more:
Not ‘necessary’ for RCMP to review 3 Indigenous deaths, Thunder Bay police say
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/06/07/not-necessary-for-rcmp-to-review-3-indigenous-deaths-thunder-bay-police-say.html
Indigenous leaders call for RCMP to investigate deaths of young people in Thunder Bay
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/05/31/first-nations-leaders-call-for-rcmp-to-take-over-thunder-bay-teen-death-cases.html
No other details were released about why or when the homes were shut, and it’s not known where its residents were relocated and how many were affected.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/06/13/province-shuts-down-three-thunder-bay-foster-homes.html
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Ford's conservatives shut down 27 ongoing foster home investigations with the closure of the Child Advocate's Office.
2018 - Stalling Tactics: The Ontario government announced in its fall economic statement Thursday afternoon that it would be closing the child advocate office, moving its responsibilities to an expanded Ombudsman's office, one of several cuts announced by a government that has said Ontario faces a $14.5-billion deficit. Nov 16, 2018.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-advocate-office-closes-jobs-1.5029935
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2019: Ontario deficit sits at $7.4-billion, half of what Premier Doug Ford originally claimed.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-deficit-sits-at-74-billion-half-of-what-premier-doug-ford/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-deficit-update-1.5282527
https://financialpost.com/opinion/doug-fords-ontario-government-spent-billions-more-than-wynne-had-planned-in-2018-19
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2019-2020 OMBUDSMAN'S FIRST ANNUAL REPORT: DEATH AND SERIOUS BODILY HARM..
Children’s aid societies and licensed residential service providers are legally required to inform the Ombudsman’s Office within 48 hours of any death or serious bodily harm of any child who has sought or received services from a children’s aid society within the past 12 months. Because they must be filed within 2 days of the incident, these reports may involve preliminary information and not findings of investigations by the police, child protection authorities or the coroner.
From May 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020, we received 1,663 reports about 1,433 incidents (some reports were duplicates, from multiple agencies reporting the same incident). These reports related to 122 deaths and 1,473 cases of serious bodily harm (defined as any situation where a young person requires treatment beyond basic first aid, including for physical, sexual or emotional harm). The Ombudsman will report in more detail on our analysis of these statistics in future reports.
TOP CASE TOPICS
1,458 Children’s aid societies
240 Youth justice centres
139 Residential licensees
26 Secure treatment
https://www.ombudsman.on.ca/resources/reports-and-case-summaries/annual-reports/2019-2020-annual-report
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2019: Ontario coroner getting data for massive analysis of child and youth deaths.
TORONTO – An Ontario youth court judge has granted the coroner’s office access to justice records that will be reviewed as part of a pilot project looking into thousands of deaths of children and young adults in the province.
Chief Coroner Dirk Huyer told Justice Sheilagh O’Connell on Tuesday that more than 7,000 people aged 10 to 24 years old have died in Ontario between 2007 and 2018. He said the project was an effort to better understand the factors at play.
“It’s very important research, so I commend you for this,” O’Connell said as she granted the coroner’s office access to the records.
READ MORE: More needs to be done to protect kids in Ontario’s child welfare system, coroner says
Huyer said outside court that one area of focus for researchers will be the more than 3,000 children and young people who died due to suicide or gun violence.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW:
https://globalnews.ca/news/6249678/ontario-coroner-child-youth-deaths-data/
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2020: Canada’s death investigation system needs an overhaul.
In a medical examiner system, like in Alberta, all suspicious deaths are investigated by a medical examiner who is a trained forensic pathologist. Medical examiners review the deceased person’s medical information and the circumstances around the death, complete autopsies, and synthesize all of this information into their opinion on cause of death.
In the coroner’s system, a coroner is assigned to oversee death investigations and decides on the additional testing required before formulating an opinion as to an individual’s cause of death.
In Ontario, coroners are required to be physicians, usually general practitioners, and work closely with local forensics units to further delineate an individual’s cause of death.
In BC, coroners in charge of death investigation are not required to have formal medical training but they decide whether an autopsy by a pathologist is necessary. Ultimately, coroners make conclusions about cause of death based on the best information available to them. Given the lack of formal medical training, it is difficult to be confident that the accuracy of these conclusions will always be sound. And accurate information surrounding death has important implications for the living.
https://healthydebate.ca/opinions/death_investigation_feb2020
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2013: National review system needed to save lives: experts
Each province has a separate system for failing to collect or hide data on child deaths in care, which makes it impossible to track trends across the country and undermines attempts to learn from tragic deaths.JOHN LUCAS / EDMONTON JOURNAL
Leading advocates from across Canada say children’s lives could be saved if governments implement a national death review system that is independent, transparent and staffed with experts.
Currently, each province has a separate system for collecting data, which makes it impossible to track trends across the country and undermines attempts to learn from tragic deaths.
Gord Phaneuf, executive director of the Child Welfare League of Canada, said only comprehensive historical analysis can create the foundation for targeted, evidence-based system change that will actually prevent child deaths.
“Any province can lead on that,” Phaneuf said. “What has happened historically, in jurisdiction after jurisdiction, is they deal with the tragedy of the moment. On a personal level we can understand that, but on a governmental level that’s completely inadequate. We need to move past being reactive.”
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/national+review+system+needed+save+lives+experts/9216992/story.html
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2020: NDP call on ombudsman to launch ‘emergency’ investigation into child welfare deaths.
The Ontario NDP is calling on the ombudsman to launch emergency investigations into the 11 deaths of Indigenous children connected to child welfare since March.
“Not one more child should die due to provincial neglect,” said a joint statement from Monique Taylor, NDP critic for children and youth services and Sol Mamakwa, NDP critic for Indigenous relations and reconciliation.
The call comes a day after APTN News reported the deaths following months of pushing the Ford government for the data, which it refused to freely provide. Instead it told APTN to file a request through the Freedom of Information Act, which APTN did, yet continued to face roadblocks.
Then this week the office of the chief coroner provided APTN with the data.
“No child should die in Ontario for lack of care and support. These children should have been protected, and cared for,” the NDP statement said.
“We need answers from the Ford government on how it failed to protect these children.”
Since the novel coronavirus turned the world upside down on Mar. 11, child welfare agencies have reported 11 deaths of Indigenous children to the chief coroner as of July 16.
Of the 11, three deaths are classified as “in care”, meaning they were likely living in some sort of foster or group home, while the other eight had “society involvement” within the last 12 months before their death.
That typically means the child had an open file at an agency, known in Ontario as children’s aid societies or Indigenous wellbeing societies, both legally mandated by the Ontario government.
Having a file open can mean a variety of things, such as having lived in foster homes for years only to be suddenly sent home. APTN is aware of several deaths by suicide this way in recent years. It could also mean a parent wanted counselling services on-reserve but the only place to get help is the child welfare agency.
https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/ndp-call-on-ombudsman-to-launch-emergency-investigation-into-child-welfare-deaths/
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Ford's conservatives shut down 27 ongoing foster home investigations with the closure of the Child Advocate's Office.
2018 - Stalling Tactics: The Ontario government announced in its fall economic statement Thursday afternoon that it would be closing the child advocate office, moving its responsibilities to an expanded Ombudsman's office, one of several cuts announced by a government that has said Ontario faces a $14.5-billion deficit. Nov 16, 2018.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-advocate-office-closes-jobs-1.5029935
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2019: Ontario deficit sits at $7.4-billion, half of what Premier Doug Ford originally claimed.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-deficit-sits-at-74-billion-half-of-what-premier-doug-ford/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-deficit-update-1.5282527
https://financialpost.com/opinion/doug-fords-ontario-government-spent-billions-more-than-wynne-had-planned-in-2018-19
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2020: 11 Indigenous children died in last four months connected to Ontario’s child welfare system.
After several months of pushing the Ontario government, APTN News can now report how many Indigenous children have died connected to the province’s child welfare system since the novel coronavirus was called a pandemic on March 11.
Child welfare agencies reported 11 deaths of Indigenous children to the chief coroner of Ontario, as of July 16, which provided the data to APTN this week.
Of the 11, three deaths are classified as “in care”, meaning they were likely living in some sort of foster or group home, while the other eight had “society involvement” within the last 12 months before their death.
That typically means the child had an open file at an agency, known in Ontario as children’s aid societies or Indigenous wellbeing societies, both legally mandated by the Ontario government.
Having a file open can mean a variety of things, such as having lived in foster homes for years only to be suddenly sent home. APTN is aware of several deaths by suicide this way in recent years. It could also mean a parent wanted counselling services on-reserve but the only place to get help is the child welfare agency.
Families have repeatedly told APTN they fear having a file opened because it’s difficult to close.
It also includes children that have died in what’s known as informal customary care agreements, where the on-reserve agency determines where the child will reside, usually with family, but the child is not classified as in care.
The cause or manner of death in the 11 cases was not provided to APTN, as the coroner’s office said it was still too early to provide that information, as the files haven’t been closed, which could take months.
This detail is important because many group or foster homes are known to be difficult for a child on a regular day, so APTN has been trying to determine how the children are managing in the homes that were supposed to be under lock-down conditions for months to fight the virus.
Indigenous child make up half of the total number of deaths in care during the pandemic, as there were six in total.
The total number jumps to 36 deaths overall during that period when including society involvement. As mentioned, 11 of the deaths were Indigenous children, meaning they make up a third of the deaths.
The coroner’s office also provided the total number of deaths for 2018 and 2019, which have never been reported, until now.
Data shows 35 Indigenous children died in 2019 with society involvement. Just one was classified as “in care”. Overall the number was 121.
In 2018, the coroner says 18 Indigenous children died. Two deaths were in care. The total number of deaths 119.
Looking at the in care deaths of Indigenous children alone for those two years shows there are already as many deaths in care of Indigenous children during the pandemic with three deaths in four months.
https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/11-indigenous-children-died-in-last-four-months-connected-to-ontarios-child-welfare-system/
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2011: Disgraced pathologist Charles Smith stripped of medical licence.
Dr. Charles Randal Smith was long regarded as one of Canada's best in forensic child pathology. A public inquiry was called after an Ontario coroner's inquiry questioned Smith's conclusions in 20 of 45 child autopsies.
In 1992, the Ontario Coroner's Office created a pediatric forensic pathology unit at Hospital for Sick Children and Smith was appointed director. He had become almost solely responsible for investigating suspicious child deaths in Ontario including the deaths of all children in Ontario's care.
In 1999, a Fifth Estate documentary singled him out as one of four Canadians with this rare expertise.
For more than a decade, Mr. Smith enjoyed a stellar reputation as the country's leading pathologist when it came to infant deaths giving lectures to law enforcement, medical students and other coroners. Several complaints about his work had little effect.
https://youtu.be/f5-53FhGQ5A
In this period he conducted hundreds of autopsies and testified in court multiple times. He conducted training sessions for lawyers on how to examine and cross-examine expert witnesses, and training for law-enforcement and medical staff on detecting child abuse.[5]
The inquiry, led by Justice Stephen Goudge and concluding in October 2008, found that Smith "actively misled" his superiors, "made false and misleading statements" in court and exaggerated his expertise in trials.
Far from an expert in forensic child pathology, "Smith lacked basic knowledge about forensic pathology," wrote Goudge in the inquiry report.
While at Sick Children's Hospital, Smith lived on a farm in Newmarket. His marriage collapsed around the time that his pathology work at Sick Children's received heavy scrutiny.[4] Smith was briefly relocated to Saskatoon and since 2007, he has lived in Victoria, British Columbia, with partner Dr. Bonnie Leadbeater, director of the Centre for Youth and Society at the University of Victoria.
A 2008 inquiry on Smith’s work condemned his “flawed approach” and noted the he “lacked the requisite training and qualifications” to work as pediatric forensic pathologist.
Smith’s findings had helped convict more than a dozen people, some of whom spent years in prison and lost access to their children.
For 24 years, Smith worked at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. In the hospital's pediatric forensic pathology unit, he conducted more than 1,000 child autopsies and never found anything strange about hundreds of children in care or having some contact with the children's aid society dying every year in Ontario.
But Smith no longer practices pathology. An Ontario coroner's inquiry reviewed 45 child autopsies in which Smith had concluded the cause of death was either homicide or criminally suspicious.
The coroner's review found that Smith made questionable conclusions of foul play in 20 of the cases — 13 of which had resulted in criminal convictions. After the review's findings were made public in April 2007, Ontario's government ordered a public inquiry into the doctor's practices.
"Smith was adamant that his failings were never intentional," Goudge wrote. "I simply cannot accept such a sweeping attempt to escape moral responsibility."
"Dr. Smith expressed opinions ... that were either contrary to, or not supported by, the evidence," Ms. Silver told the hearing Tuesday, reading from an agreed statement of facts.
Smith had been in search of his own personal truths. He was born in a Toronto Salvation Army hospital where he was put up for adoption three months later. After years of looking for his biological mother, he called her on her 65th birthday. But she refused to take his call.
Smith's adoptive family moved often. His father's job in the Canadian Forces took them throughout Canada and to Germany. He attended high school in Ottawa, and graduated from medical school at the University of Saskatchewan in 1975.
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"Workers found human tissue in disgraced pathologist's office, inquiry told." Tom Blackwell, CanWest News Service Published: Monday, December 17, 2007.
TORONTO - A secretary who worked alongside Dr. Charles Smith for years says she found a bag of dried human tissue, a dish containing bones and a child's hospital bracelet during one of her frequent searches of the pathologist's ramshackle office.
Maxine Johnson, an administrative co-ordinator at Sick Children's Hospital, told a public inquiry on Monday she once had pictures taken of the chronically messy office to try to prod Smith to keep his quarters neater. It did not work, she said.
It was during a 2005 audit of tissue samples requested by the chief coroner's office that Johnson and a colleague made the unusual discoveries in the pathologist's room.
"We found some dried-out tissue in plastic bags ... skeletal bones in another little dish," she said.
As well, they discovered a bead bracelet of the kind given to young patients at hospital.
Court of Appeal Justice Stephen Goudge is leading the inquiry into how the use of faulty forensic pathology evidence by Ontario prosecutors may have led to as many as 13 people being wrongfully convicted of killing children.
Johnson also related her attempts to get him to issue reports on surgical cases and autopsies more quickly, as doctors, coroners, police and relatives called incessantly for results. In one case, doctors had waited more than a month for pathology results on a biopsy of a live patient, urgently needed to help determine whether the child should receive radiation treatment.
Smith complained to others that he did not have enough secretarial support, but that was not the case, Johnson testified.
"We were always available and if Dr. Smith would simply give us the work, we would get (the reports) out," she said. "He loved to type them himself ... He wouldn't give them to us."
The consequences of Smith's cluttered existence at the hospital came to the fore as lawyers sought to review what is known at the inquiry as the Valin case.
William Mullins-Johnston had been convicted of murdering his niece largely on Smith's evidence. His conviction was overturned last month.
Defence lawyers were looking for tissue samples from the case so their pathologist could examine them. They were traced to Smith, but he did not know where they were.
Johnson and others set about scouring his office for them, found one on the first day, then another 20 two days later, in the same spot in the office where she had looked earlier.
She said Monday she assumed they had been placed there by someone after her first search, something she found "kind of strange."
Despite it all, however, Johnson called Smith a "great guy" with whom all the secretaries liked to work.
National Post
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/porchlightcanada/dr-charles-smith-inquiry-t2479.html?t=2479
http:// (DEADLINK) www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=09ff97ef-b41b-4352-b535-636da8a5ee9a&k=16571
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/02/29/like-a-god-dr-charles-smith-left-poisoned-trail-behind-him_n_9350124.html
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/disgraced-pathologist-charles-smith-stripped-of-medical-licence/article578634/
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2019: SOMETHING STILL STINKS IN THE CORONER'S OFFICE...
Christie Blatchford: 'Bullying' Ontario chief forensic pathologist accused of interfering with cases.
Dr. Jane Turner, who worked almost two years at the Hamilton Regional Forensic Pathology Unit, made the allegations in a letter to the Solicitor General
Dr. Michael Pollanen, Chief Forensic Pathologist for Ontario. "No one is allowed to challenge his views." a former colleague says.Geoff Robins/Postmedia/File.
In a case that parallels a scathing judge’s decision about Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist two years ago, Dr. Michael Pollanen has been accused of interfering in the work of the province’s other forensic pathologists, pressing them to change their findings in suspicious deaths and undermining those who disagree with him.
Dr. Jane Turner, a forensic pathologist who worked for almost two years at the Hamilton Regional Forensic Pathology Unit and is now working as a consultant in St. Louis, Mo., made the allegations in an Aug. 12 letter to Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones.
“My complaint against Dr. Pollanen is not that I am always right and Dr. Pollanen is always wrong, but rather that his interference, bullying and insistence on compliance threaten the integrity of the system of death investigation,” Turner told Jones.
“No one is allowed to challenge his views.”
READ MORE HERE:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/christie-blatchford-bullying-ontario-chief-forensic-pathologist-accused-of-interfering-with-cases
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IS THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK??
Coroner’s panel calls for overhaul of Ontario child protection system.
By LAURIE MONSEBRAATEN Social Justice Reporter SANDRO CONTENTA Feature Writer Tues., Sept. 25, 2018
Vulnerable children are being warehoused and forgotten.
A scathing report from Ontario’s coroner presses the provincial government to reform a child protection system that “repeatedly failed” youths who died while in care for decades.
The report describes a fragmented system with no means of monitoring quality of care, where ministry oversight is inadequate, caregivers lack training, and children are poorly supervised.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/09/25/coroners-panel-calls-for-overhaul-of-ontario-child-protection-system.html
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2019: Ontario's chief coroner reviewing 132 cases where coroners investigated the deaths of former patients.
The potential conflicts of interest were not declared in 95 per cent of those cases despite established policy, according to a nearly 60-page section of the Ontario auditor general's annual report released last week.
"These cases are concerning because there is a risk that the truth about a death will not come to light if the physician's treatment decisions while the patient was alive could have contributed to the patient's death," according to the report.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-s-chief-coroner-reviewing-132-cases-where-coroners-investigated-deaths-of-former-patients-1.5391065
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2011: Death and Taxes: The Coroner's Inquest System Can't Change or Won't Change?.
It is shameful that the Coroner's Office is so poorly set up. There is a demand for it to change from an institution that has none of the hallmarks of public accountability to a body that responds to the needs of 21st-century Ontario.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/julian-falconer/coroners-inquests-ontario_b_913012.html
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Ontario portrayed as pedophile paradise in U.S. ruse to capture predators.
A controversial website set up by the Department of Homeland Security promoted the bogus firm Precious Treasure Holiday Co., which promised to arrange illegal encounters in Ontario for pedophiles.
A pamphlet that came with the website offered one night hotel accommodations in Canada and travel under the guise of “boyfriend and girlfriend going to gamble at casino.”
The pamphlet said transportation to Cleveland, meals and “condoms, lube, etc. . . ” were not included in the travel package.
But it was the use of Canada as a safe haven for sex tourism that raised questions about how the country was portrayed in the sting.
“Canada made for a more plausible scenario,” Brian Moskowitz, the special agent in charge of the investigation, told Postmedia News shortly after the indictments were announced.
https://nationalpost.com/news/ontario-portrayed-as-pedophile-paradise-in-u-s-ruse-to-capture-predators
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2020: TORONTO -- Ontario's child welfare system will be redesigned to focus on prevention and early intervention, the provincial government said Wednesday.
HAS IT EVER BEEN FOCUS ON ANYTHING ELSE?
“Reasonable grounds” refers to the information that an average person, using normal and honest judgment, would need in order to decide to report. This standard has been recognized by courts in Ontario as establishing a lower funding friendly corporate threshold for reasonable grounds to report.
http://www.oacas.org/childrens-aid-child-protection/duty-to-report/
"Child welfare should not be the system that is feared," Dunlop said in a news conference. "No one should be scared to lose their children for speaking to a children's aid society.
Associate Minister of Children and Women's Issues Jill Dunlop said the new strategy will also work to address the over-representation of Black and Indigenous families in the children's aid system.
She said children and youth in care experience worse outcomes than those in a family setting, including lower graduation rates, a higher risk of homelessness and more involvement with the justice system.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-plans-to-redesign-child-welfare-system-to-focus-on-prevention-1.5044299
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2015: Teen’s death raises questions about secrecy surrounding kids in care.
“It is stunning to me how these children... are rendered invisible while they are alive and invisible in their death,” said Irwin Elman, Ontario’s former and last advocate for children and youth. Between 90 and 120 children and youth connected to children’s aid die every year.
CHILDREN ARE DYING IN ONTARIO'S CARE AND THE FRONTLINE WORKERS ARE THE ONES BEING REGULATED TO DEATH?
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/12/10/teens-death-raises-questions-about-secrecy-surrounding-kids-in-care.html
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2016: The ministry doesn’t know how many children are being cared for in Ontario’s 389 licensed group homes. It’s working on a system that will eventually allow it to collect the information.
At the end of September 2017, the group homes had 2,914 beds, almost one-third of them operated by private, for-profit companies. The rest are run by non-profit agencies such as children’s aid societies.
Another 2,005 beds were in foster homes run by companies, where the limit is four kids to a home. A growing number of kids are also being placed in unlicensed homes with live-in staff.
“You know your system is based on the flimsiest of foundations when you have absolutely no standards on who can do this work,” adds Gharabaghi, director of Ryerson University’s school of child and youth care.
https://www.mykawartha.com/news-story/7974974-kids-are-going-through-trauma-staff-are-getting-assaulted-we-are-all-in-the-trenches-together-/
https://www.mcgill.ca/socialwork/channels/news/report-calls-better-oversight-residential-services-young-people-ontario-260997
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2017: Canada is a major target for human traffickers, with 90 percent of victims coming from with Canada, not abroad. Their average age is 17-years old and the problem has become so big, police departments across the country are devoting resources to fight human trafficking.
https://youtu.be/L-1rrIr6SKQ
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2009: Open child-death files: NDP.
Queen's Park is "stonewalling" the provincial child advocate in his bid to get more information about 90 children in Ontario's child welfare system who died in 2007, says New Democratic Party Leader Howard Hampton.
"We are talking about children under the control of children's aid societies. These are troubled children, vulnerable children who are dying," Hampton said in the wake of Irwin Elman's annual report to the Legislature yesterday, which highlighted the deaths.
"As he says in his report, the government is stonewalling him, making it difficult for him to do his job," Hampton said.
Elman, who became the province's first (and last) independent child advocate last summer, said the government's refusal to share detailed information about the deaths with his office limits his ability to act.
"I'm not talking about doing investigations," he said yesterday. "I'm talking about having the information about my children and youth so I know what's going on with them."
He said he will "vigorously pursue" the issue by proposing an amendment to the provincial Coroner's Act to give him full access to all reports concerning the death of children and youth involved in the child welfare system.
In his report, Elman notes that the 90 deaths represent less than a quarter of all children who died in the province in 2007 and are a fraction of the 26,260 open cases of children's aid societies. But the number of deaths is "too high by any standard."
A sombre Premier Dalton McGuinty said the deaths are "troubling."
https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2009/02/24/open_childdeath_files_ndp.html
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2009: Why did 90 children die?
TORONTO - Ontario's advocate for youth and children says it's unacceptable that 90 children known to child protection services died in 2007.
Irwin Elman, who was appointed to the post last July, says the 2008 Coroner's report suggests most of these deaths were preventable.
Sixteen deaths were accidental, nine were suicides, four were homicides, eight were from natural causes and 22 causes were undetermined.
Another 17 deaths are still to be classified and 14 were not considered appropriate by the Coroner for investigation.
Where the manner of death is known, 45 per cent of the children who died were under one year of age and 32 per cent were between 12 and 18.
In his annual report, Elman says it could be argued that 90 deaths in a small number compared with the 26,260 cases at Children's Aid Societies, but he rejects that, saying the figure is "too high by any standard."
Elman says in his report that "blaming some individuals is not helpful" and that society needs to say that it "cannot accept this."
https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2009/02/23/why_did_90_children_die.html
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ninety-kids-known-to-ont-child-services-died-in-2007-1.373012
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/90-kids-known-to-ontario-s-child-services-died-in-07-1.373008
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2013: A CHILD IN CARE IS A CHILD AT RISK.
Between 2008/2012 natural causes was listed as the least likely way for a child in Ontario's care to die at 7% (only 15 children) out 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 43% (92 children) of the total deaths reviewed over a four year period. The rest of the deaths were categorized as homicide, suicide and accidental.
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/english/DeathInvestigations/office_coroner/PublicationsandReports/PDRC/2013Report/PDRC_2013.html
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/sites/default/files/content/mcscs/images/195633-19.jpg
Undetermined means those 92 children had no pre-existing medical conditions and there was no rational reason for them to have died.
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2013: The inquest into Jeffrey Baldwin's death was supposed to shed light on the child welfare system and prevent more needless child deaths. Baldwin's inquest jury made 103 recommendations.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/inquest-into-boy-s-death-to-shed-light-on-child-welfare-system-1.1699846
Watch: Failing Jeffrey -Aired April 12 2006 on the fifth estate.
https://youtu.be/-jF2p_dAYFA
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2016: Nearly six months after the inquest into the death of Katelynn Sampson began, jurors delivered another 173 recommendations.
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/inquest-into-death-of-7-year-old-girl-emphasizes-duty-to-report-abuse/article29798749/?ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theglobeandmail.com
THAT'S 276 OFFICIAL REASONS FOR CONCERN ABOUT CHILDREN IN ONTARIO'S CARE.
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2019: “Every three days. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, a child connected to care dies…” Nationwide children in care die every day..
Death as Expected: Inside a child welfare system where 102 Indigenous kids died over 5 years.
Seventy-two Indigenous children connected to child welfare died in northern Ontario, where three Indigenous agencies covering most of the territory were underfunded approximately $400 million over a five-year period.
The number of deaths jumps to 102 Indigenous children when looking at the entire province between 2013 to 2017.
And almost half of the deaths, 48 involving Indigenous agencies, happened in the two years it took Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to respond to multiple orders made by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that first found Canada guilty of purposely underfunding on-reserve child welfare in its historic decision on Jan. 26, 2016.
“Nothing the government can do can make up for the wrongs it consciously perpetrated against kids. And I want to emphasize that it was conscious. It wasn’t an accident,” said Cindy Blackstock who led the fight against Canada, along with the Assembly of First Nations, to bring Canada to task over discriminating against First Nations children through the tribunal.
But while the federal government may be the bagman, funding at least 93 per cent of on-reserve child welfare, the Ontario government created the system where these children died and provides the law within which the child welfare agencies operate. It’s a system that has been found to be a complete failure over and over up until just last year when the chief coroner of Ontario released a special report into the deaths of 12 children who died in care, eight of whom were Indigenous.
As well, the 102 deaths marks the lowest number on record as APTN’s investigation reveals data was never collected properly over this five-year period.
Many believe it to be much higher.
In fact, while it’s improving, Ontario’s data collection still faces some serious questions, such as how many Indigenous kids are in care today in Ontario?
No one knows the total number.
https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/inside-a-child-welfare-system-where-102-indigenous-kids-died-over-5-years/
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The Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services told The Current in a statement that children's aid societies and residential licensees are still required to meet all legislative, regulatory and policy requirements to protect the safety and well-being of children. This includes safety assessments and physical inspections of homes to be conducted in person.
https://ccla.org/coronavirus-update-children-rights/
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2020: Ontario increases size of foster homes, allow inspections over telephone due to pandemic.
The Ford government has been allowing Ontario foster homes to be inspected over the phone, increase in size and require less documentation, like health records, for more than a month.
The amendments to the Child, Youth and Family Services Act went into effect May 8 and will remain in place while the province is in a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But APTN News recently obtained documents related to amendments and had them reviewed by David Miller, a long-time child protection lawyer in Toronto.
“Every change involved in these amendments serves to make foster homes and group homes less safe for our most vulnerable children and youth,” said Miller, adding these homes will be “busier, more chaotic … and with reduced government oversight.”
That’s particularly the case with in-home inspections and/or annual reviews, which can be now done by video or the telephone. Annual reviews, which make sure a child’s care is being met, can also be delayed for three months.
There are now fewer requirements for foster parents and group home staff, as well.
They can hire staff and recruit foster parents with less stringent requirements, such as no health assessments.
There’s also concern over police background checks. On March 25 the province asked all service providers “to refrain from requesting new police record checks unless deemed essential to meet immediate need,” according to a government “fact sheet” on the amendments.
“The ministry is also recommending that all non-essential checks [e.g. new board members whose services are not immediately necessary, etc.] to be deferred at this time,” the province said in the fact sheet.
Board members oversee child welfare agencies, otherwise known as children’s aid societies or Indigenous wellbeing societies in Ontario.
https://www.aptnnews.ca/nation-to-nation/ontario-increases-size-of-foster-homes-allow-inspections-over-telephone-due-to-pandemic/
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