When I had to end my debate this morning, I was sharing some of the pressures that are facing the Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex, and I had talked about the fact that fully half of the families that the children’s aid society is working with are those who are struggling with lack of access to mental health and addiction services in the community.

One third of the families are struggling with mental health or addiction challenges for caregivers and an additional 17% of families are struggling with a child’s behaviour or conflict in the home that could be endangering other children. These families are struggling because they can’t access the community-based services that these caregivers or their children need, and the consequence, particularly for those young people with the most critical needs, is that sometimes those families feel that they don’t have anywhere to turn; they don’t know what to do next. What we are seeing in London, and we are seeing across the province, are young people, children, being surrendered to children’s aid in the desperate hope that this might be a way to get their children the treatment they require.

The children’s aid society—their data system to keep track of the children in the system, they’ve actually created a new category called “youth in need of treatment” or “not otherwise in need of protection,” because the children who are being surrendered are not being surrendered because of child protection reasons. They’re being surrendered because they need mental health treatment and they don’t have access to that.

The reason for this is that community-based agencies in the province that support children and youth mental health services are not mandatory services. They are funded to a certain level, and that is the amount of support that they provide. When they run out of resources, young people are put on a waiting list, and that’s what we hear more and more from families in the province.

But the mandate of the CAS is that children who are surrendered to that agency are taken into protection. The CAS does not have the ability to turn these families away. In London, we heard that nine youth have been voluntarily surrendered to CAS, and that is a more significant increase than we had seen in the community previously. It’s frustrating for the staff at CAS, who know that these young people who are being surrendered aren’t going to get the treatment that they need after being surrendered to the children’s aid society. The problem is the lack of services in the community.

When the government launched this bill, that was one of the responses of the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies. They said that the bill addresses the back end of child welfare. We have to address the back end of child welfare. We have to ensure that when kids are housed in group homes or foster families, they are safe, but we also need to act proactively to keep kids out of care in the first place.

The Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies said that the issue is that the government is not dealing with causation. They’re not dealing with those factors that lead to children going into care in the first place. And so, I would encourage this government to look at the community-based treatment options that are available to young people in this province and provide the funding that those services need so that young people can get the support, the treatment that they require in order to move forward.

Another issue that I would encourage the government to address and that has been brought to my attention in London is the issue of kin families. In the London CAS, there are 135 foster homes, but there are 72 kin homes. Kin placements are really—where they are available, that is a preferred option for CASs when they have to take kids into protection. It is much better for the child to be with kin family, rather than to be in a foster family or a group home. And yet, we do not provide the same support for kin arrangements as we do for foster families.

This again makes it frustrating for those child protection workers at the CAS when they have a kin family, a willing family who wants to take that child in, but can’t afford to do so because the amounts that kin families are reimbursed are so far less than the amounts that foster families or adoptive families receive. Kin families receive $280 a month for a child, whereas families that adopt or take legal custody receive over $1,000 per month per child until the child turns 21. I have heard from kin families or potential kin families who would like to support that child, who would like to take that child in, and simply can’t afford to do so. That should never be the case, because that is in the best interests of the child.

So, Speaker, this bill that we have before us today, Bill 188, as I said at the outset, it’s actually a pleasure to be able to participate in a debate on legislation that all sides of the House seem to agree on. But it’s also an opportunity to highlight some of the other issues that need to be addressed to fully support young people in this province to enable them to reach their full potential and to prevent young people having to go into care in the first place.