Ontario child welfare audits may not address impact of high-needs kids, government docs say

Audits of Ontario’s child welfare agencies may not address the crucial issue of kids in care with additional needs, an internal document admits, as the government continues to “review” its long-delayed financial probes.

Audits of the province’s children’s aid societies kicked off in the fall of 2024, after Premier Doug Ford appeared to suggest the idea during media questions at a news conference.

Standing at the podium in the summer of 2024, as stories of massive problems in Ontario’s child welfare system grew, Ford demanded “a complete audit of the entire system.”

He suggested he had heard countless examples of waste in the sector, promising to get to the bottom of the issue.

That call to action from the premier seemed to have been the catalyst for a series of reviews of every non-Indigenous Children’s Aid Society (CAS) in Ontario.

The audits were officially announced two months later, in October 2024. Officials said that while case loads were falling at children’s aid societies, costs were going up and an external line-by-line review was necessary.

The government promised to publish the reports in the spring. They missed that deadline, pledging they were “weeks away” in October, another target that appears to have passed.

But while the province worked to sell its message and kicked off the reviews, concerns were raised behind the scenes.

Documents obtained by Global News show that, internally, questions were asked about whether or not the audits would actually get to the bottom of the thorny issue of child welfare.

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“There is a high risk that the review will not address the interconnected sectoral issues related to children with special needs and community services,” part of a communications plan, put together before the announcement, warned.

The document, obtained using freedom of information laws, included a suggested strategy to combat criticism that it was missing the mark: “While the review will not be scoped to include other sectors or services, the ministry will keep other sectors informed about work underway with the review and identify potential intersections.”

The risk emphasized the precise concern many parent advocates have expressed about child welfare and the government’s approach to the issue.

Those advocates have said that one of the largest reasons costs are still going up at children’s aid societies despite fewer children is because those who enter the sector are presenting with ever-more complex health or learning needs.

“Their argument is collapsing under their own logic,” Alina Cameron, president of the Ontario Autism Coalition, said, pointing to a lack of spaces in programs for high-needs children.

She said that without adequately funded programs for children with special education needs, parents would be forced to the brink, and the pressure would trickle down to children’s aid.

“This is about ensuring that supports the province says are there are actually there for families,” she added. “It’s one thing to say this program exists; it’s a whole other thing to know that this program is adequately funded to meet the needs of our communities.”

Cameron suggested that a lack of support for parents with high-needs kids was leading to more interactions with children’s aid. In turn, children’s aid cases then become more complicated, explaining the drop in cases but not costs.

“When you have a child with extremely high needs and you don’t have access to that care, which is very expensive, you will look for anything that can help your family, that can help your child manage. When nothing else is meeting your need, a lot of families are turning to CAS. Not to give them over to CAS but to ask for help,” she said.

The same internal government document raised concerns that the timeline for the delayed audits would hamper their findings.

“There is a low/medium risk that the short timeframe for the review may impact the depth of analysis and review outcomes,” part of the document said. “The ministry will apply the lean approach to the procurement process and provide information and data to the third party to streamline their information gathering.”

Cameron worried the overall approach to the audits could lead to blame-shifting instead of reform in the struggling sector.

“What they’re auditing CAS for is spending money that they were forced to spend to meet the legal obligations that they have under this province,” she said. “That’s not accountability, that’s scapegoating.”

The government did not address questions from Global News about the internal documents, delays to the audit or concerns about what it may skip over.

“As the Minister has said, we have received the report and are currently reviewing it,” a spokesperson said in a short statement. “Once complete, the findings will be made public.”

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