Children-in-care deserve support more than ever

“This pandemic is a real test of our mental toughness and resilience” said the young girl living in foster care who was participating in a virtual town hall about child protection and COVID-19.

It was a poignant comment coming from a child who has already had to live a life requiring a mental toughness that hopefully few of us will ever have to call upon.

Thursday is Youth in Care Day in Ontario. It is a day created by legislation through the hard advocacy work of youth in and from care over many years.

We know that children-in-care come into care through no fault of their own. We know when this happens the government of Ontario is responsible for the well being of these children on behalf of all Ontarians.

We know that children-in-care move from home to home, and from worker to worker. We know they feel voiceless and invisible. We know that those who eventually find a source of caring, stability and love in the system feel they have found this through good fortune rather than good planning. We know this because children-incare have told us so.

This pandemic and our public health response to it has meant a host of challenges for all of us. Try to imagine how the pandemic has exacerbated the “test of mental toughness” we expect children in and from care to pass.

Can you imagine the isolation you would feel in a home with strangers, far from your community, with no family, no visitors and little to no access to the internet because those are the house rules?

Can you imagine the peril of former youth-in-care who were dumped from the system, with no supports at all? Just them and their history.

This year on Youth in Care Day, in the midst of the pandemic, we must truly see, acknowledge and support young people in and from care.

With the leadership the government is providing to the task of protecting and now opening the economy, our government must do the same in protecting and nurturing our children — particularly the children in its care.

On Youth in Care Day, I call upon our legislature to establish a Standing Committee on Children and

Youth. The committee must meaningfully involve and partner with youth in and from care. The committee must work with the government to make recommendations in real time to change the experiences of children and youth in care as a top priority.

It must hear from the minister and from youth monthly about how lives of children have changed. The committee must hear each month about the number and manner of death of children connected to a Children’s Aid Society, as well as other, what bureaucracy calls, “serious occurrences.”

It would be a bold move. We are in a time of bold moves.

Deeds not words. We can do this. Irwin Elman was the Ontario child advocate from 2007 to 2019.