CAS deficit now projected at $600K

Province cuts base funding to local agency for 2019-20 by $72,000

The Kawartha-Haliburton Children’s Aid Society now projects it will have a $600,000 deficit for the 2019-20 fiscal year.

That’s up from a deficit of $500,000 that had been expected in May.

The Peterborough-based child welfare agency learned last month that its base funding has been reduced by $72,000, even though Premier Doug Ford’s government has cancelled a planned $28-million cut to funding for the province’s children’s aid societies and is increasing last year’s overall funding of $1.5 billion by $23 million.

Kawartha-Haliburton is one of 17 of the province’s 50 agencies facing deficits that total $11 million, with 15 of them in rural areas.

“It’s a bit of a shell game,” said Jennifer Wilson, executive director of the Kawartha-Haliburton Children’s Aid Society, referring to the extra overall funding.

The provincial funding is now spread out to one more agency, due to the designation of a new Indigenous agency.

The province’s 11 Indigenous agencies receive a $37 million increase in funding this fiscal year overall.

Non-Indigenous societies, on the other hand, are getting an overall $27 million funding decrease, the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies calculates.

The agencies are required by law to balance their budgets, are not allowed to use past surpluses to reduce deficits and are also expected to come up with $15 million overall in administrative efficiencies.

In an interview, Wilson described as a “fundamental flaw” the fact that agencies only receive their funding six months into the fiscal year. That leaves those who receive less than expected scrambling.

The main driver of Kawartha’s deficit, Wilson said, is the lack of foster parents. That forces the agency to use foster homes run by private companies, which by law can have no more than four children.

“They are more expensive,” Wilson said of the for-profit, companyoperated foster homes.

Wilson, who said she’s “uncomfortable” with a system that uses children for profit, said she hopes to reduce her deficit with a community push for more foster parents. The agency is advertising to recruit more foster parents to come forward.

Kawartha and other agencies are also being financially challenged by the transfer of Indigenous children to newly formed Indigenous children’s aid societies.

Transfers are proceeding more slowly than expected, leaving agencies caring for children they don’t have funding for. Wilson noted the province has now tweaked the “transitional funding model” to better reflect the number of children being transferred.

Agencies also saw sudden deficits when the Ford government last fall reduced the amount it paid when foster parents committed to giving children a permanent home, either through adoption or caring for them until age 18. The government used to pay 75 per cent of that cost; it now pays 25 per cent.

The Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services launched a review in August to look at possibly reforming all aspects of child protection, including “how best to promote more prevention, early intervention and communitybased services.” It will also look at increasing shared services among agencies and at ways to increase the number of foster parents.