Last year, the provincial government took control of a Children’s Aid Society in southeastern Ontario that it thought was struggling.
The Kawartha Haliburton Children’s Aid Society (KHCAS), according to the province, was spending too much and racking up deficits. Last October, the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS) appointed a supervisor to run the agency, and its entire board of directors quit in response.
The Trillium has obtained the government report following an operational review last year that partially prompted the province’s move. It shows the KHCAS was experiencing the same problems as other agencies across the province: children with complex mental health and developmental needs being placed in high-cost settings — including unlicensed ones such as hotel rooms — that the agency cannot afford.
Ford has warned that the KHCAS might just be the first: the government will take action if the leadership of other agencies is “failing,” and his government has launched a provicewide audit of children’s aid societies.
He’s publicly accused the child welfare sector of overspending and working in luxurious offices like “Taj Mahals,” but one of the cost-drivers identified at KHCAS was spending on kids: the ministry accused it of failing to manage its placements of children to avoid the high-cost options of last resort.
According to the ministry’s review, staff at the Children’s Aid Society felt some of those kids didn’t belong in the system at all.
KHCAS workers “see themselves as a ‘dumping ground’ and ‘last resort’ for children and families in their community” who weren’t getting the help they should be getting from a mental health and developmental services provider in the community.
But it’s not just the workers who felt that way.
The ministry report from June 2024 itself acknowledged “long-standing issues in the space between child welfare and (children and youth mental health providers) that are not unique to this community, that sometimes result in children's aid societies acting as a last resort for complex and high-needs children and youth.”
Placing these kids in hotel rooms and high-cost private options is not a choice, according to the union that represents workers at the KHCAS — it was “sheer desperation” due to underfunding and a lack of available beds for youth.
Ruby Taylor, the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union’s (OPSEU) Local 334, which represents dozens of workers at the society, said the “report contains blatant inaccuracies, and has a general tone of (disdain) for our agency.”
“The recommendations and conclusions of the report provide a narrative of inept leadership and function of our agency that was clearly predetermined before the review process even commenced,” Taylor wrote to Jeff Gill, the director of the ministry’s East Regional Office, in a letter last year.
She went on to say that KHCAS’s “spending is necessary and frugal, there is no extravagant spending on wasteful or luxury items,” and that staff use their own money to buy groceries, baby formula and other items for families.
“Workers bring in hand-me-downs from their own children to clothe children on their caseloads,” Taylor wrote.
Former board chair Sandra Robinson and former executive director Jennifer McLauchlan echoed the sentiments in a July 2, 2024 letter to Gill.
“We do not believe that the way information was recorded in the report provides an accurate reflection of the work staff and leadership undertake to ensure children and youth are safe in our communities,” they wrote, going on to reject several of the ministry’s claims.
‘High-cost placements’ a focus of review
The review, which officially started in Jan. 2024, covered 19 areas, including “high-cost placements for children/youth in care,” the use of Voluntary Youth Service Agreements (VYSA), the use of “outside paid resources” (OPRs) — for profit or non-profit businesses and organizations operating group or foster homes — and various programs provided by the agency.
“The Ministry recognizes the costs for children and youth requiring out-of-home-care are rising provincially, placing additional financial pressures on children's aid societies,” the report said. “However, this review includes findings that point to a lack of strategic planning and management with respect to KHCAS's out-of-home-care strategy. This has led to disorganized decision-making at all levels of the society with respect to the high cost of placements for children in society care.”
The report said most kids whose files were reviewed were placed into an “Outside Paid Resource instead of into an internal foster home,” and there was little documentation on whether KHCAS explored internal foster homes.
Internal foster homes sign up through a CAS, receive training from a society and have visits and their annual reviews done by the agency’s workers.
“Staff indicated this to be in line with their current approach (i.e., when a child is brought into society care, staff indicated that they will automatically look to place the child into an OPR as this is typically their first-line intervention),” the report said.
The ministry also said the society lacked “consistently clear” documentation of services it was paying outside agencies to provide.
“As a result, the society may be paying for services that are not being provided and/or the society may not be getting the services that are needed to support the child,” it said, also alleging a lack of documentation on dialogue to bring youth back to internal foster or family care.
But in their letter, Robinson and McLauchlan called some of this “inaccurate,” saying KHCAS’s policy requires staff to consider kinship as the first placement option, then internal foster care, then an outside paid resource.
“When the needs of the children/youth being placed are more complex and of higher risk an OPR is, at times, the appropriate placement,” they stated.
The Trillium has previously reported on Ontario parents increasingly surrendering custody of kids with complex needs to the child welfare system because they cannot find the services and support they need to keep them safe at home. Premier Doug Ford announced an audit of the system in August in response to a question from The Trillium about this.
While the government redacted its specific recommendations to KHCAS in the review’s final report provided through the freedom of information process, The Trillium obtained a copy of the report with the recommendations.
When it came to placements, the ministry recommended KHCAS launch a six-month review of children in “outside paid resources” to look at services and payments, immediately work on boosting its internal foster care program, including through possibly increasing compensation, develop a “robust marketing and recruitment program to support kinship service placements” and implement a “strategic out-of-home care (OHC) Placement Strategy to support appropriate OPR placements,” which would include prioritizing licensed placements above unlicensed ones.
The ministry said in a statement to The Trillium that CASs are responsible for determining how much to pay internal foster parents, choosing appropriate care for youth and purchasing services from outside paid resources.
Taylor, the union leader who wrote that kids are only placed in these settings “out of sheer desperation,” also said the ministry continues to approve fee increases at these private foster care agencies, while telling children’s aid societies not to use them “because they are too expensive.”
She added that increasing foster care capacity isn’t so simple given societal changes. The high cost of living means most households have two income earners and are unable to have someone stay home to look after a foster child, she said.
Another cost driver is placing children in hotels with staff when no other options are available. A “decision note” prepared by ministry staff on Jan. 4, 2024, said the “society continues to experience significant challenges in placing high-risk youth in licensed out-of-home care settings and as a result continue to utilize unlicensed placements such as hotels. These placements result in increased risk to both youth and the society while further exacerbating their high boarding rate expenditures."
Asked about this, Taylor told The Trillium that compared to other societies, the KHCAS has been fortunate: its use of hotels has been “minimal,” and office stays — where a child sleeps at the agency’s office — are “occasional.”
“That is where our money is going. We don't do that by choice, because when we have a youth that comes in, we have to find a placement, we need a place for them to stay,” she said.
Lynne Buehler, who was previously vice-chair of KHCAS’s board, said decreased funding over time and the ministry raising the rates for outside paid resources, but not raising funding to the society to coincide with these increases, contributed to the agency “not having enough funding to do the work we needed to do.”
While the ministry said it provided KHCAS with an additional $4.6 million beyond its regular funding since 2020, Peterborough Currents reported last fall that base provincial funding for the agency had “trended downward” over the last several years.
Buehler said other challenges included a lack of treatment or external beds for youth, meaning societies were competing for them, and increasingly complex and expensive care needs for many youth in care.
“If you don't have the money to pay for the service, or if there aren't enough services available, and you're legislated to provide the care, you're not left with many options, right?” said Buehler. “That's why youth are in unlicensed settings.”
Ministry calls for more community partnerships
The review also focused on community partnerships, particularly where there was an overlap of services, such as those related to child and youth mental health.
The report said a breakdown in relationships and services for youth and families led to increased costs for KHCAS. The ministry said the society should take on a leadership role and collaborate with partner agencies, such as Kinark, which provides mental health and autism services.
Following focus groups with staff, community partners and others as part of the review, the ministry highlighted in its report “impoverished relationships and long wait lists” with stakeholders such as Kinark, hospitals and local police.
That is what’s led KHCAS staff to "see themselves as a ‘dumping ground’ and ‘last resort’ for children and families in their community,” the report said.
“They indicated specifically that they are serving non child welfare related cases/clients that are not appropriately being picked up by CYMH (Kinark), and that they often no longer refer or communicate with Kinark due to a complete breakdown in the relationship.”
The ministry recommended KHCAS “lead the development of a community strategy to develop clear processes for collaboration with key community partners” and “develop and implement a community case planning protocol for children and youth with high and/or complex needs.”
Robinson and McLauchlan argued that the recommendations “are solely focused on the Society regarding enhancing service coordination, which we will undertake to do; however, we question if this recommendation should also be directed to our service partners and if the Ministry will be holding each of them equally accountable for ensuring services are delivered and funded by the right service provider.”
The Trillium reached out to Kinark Child and Family Services for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
‘A signal to the sector’
The Jan. 4, 2024 decision note from civil servants states that "the ministry needs to ensure that the approach used with KHCAS can be used as a signal to the sector that they are required to balance (i.e., make changes to their organization or consolidate to balance) and that the ministry will not provide funding to every society that is experiencing financial challenges and has not demonstrated proactive steps to address the deficit.”
Taylor said the union did believe KHCAS was being used “as an example” to other agencies, since several were also projecting deficits. But she stressed that this is “not just a Kawartha problem, this is a child protection problem where there is insufficient funds to do an adequate job in this province.”
For its part, the government said it has increased funding for child protection services, including by an additional $14 million this year, and that funding to societies has increased by 8.8 per cent over the last decade despite a decrease in the number of youth in care — though societies say the costs for care have increased, as have the needs of many of the youth entering the child welfare system.
Buehler argued that there are really only two places in child welfare to save money — staff or care for children.
“We can't control some of those things — if a child needs care and needs expensive care, and we provide the care, and it's outside of our budget, we made a decision as a board that … we had to do that,” Buehler said. “What (the province is) saying, in my view, is we're less interested in the care that is provided (to) children and more interested in managing the dollars.”
She said that ultimately, while KHCAS was “committed to doing what was in that operational review” and had submitted a deficit management plan to the ministry, a supervisor was still installed.
“I believe that the Kawartha Haliburton Children's Aid Society is well run, fiscally responsible, provides excellent care to youth,” said Buehler, adding she has a “tremendous amount of respect” for the work KHCAS does.
“(A) very, very professional organization, great leadership, great frontline staff. I trusted the … decisions they were making about youth,” said Buehler, who worked as a police officer for more than three decades.
In response to questions about the review and the concerns raised, the ministry said the process “identified further significant risks” related to the agency’s operations and financial management and that it lost confidence in KHCAS’s ability to address its deficit. The ministry said it appointed a supervisor “after considering its response to the concerns raised.”
“We stand by the final report produced in June 2024 following the operational review. The appointment of a supervisor at KHCAS was a result of the ongoing issues identified through various reviews, including the operational review,” the ministry said.
Meanwhile, the ministry said it “approved emergency funding of $7.5 million” in November for KHCAS, which is being paid out in monthly installments until March.
Taylor said it was an “interesting position where our board was told they had to come up with how they were going to repay the debt,” but now that the supervisor has been installed, the “government has found ($7.5 million) to address our deficit.”
—With files from Jessica Smith Cross
