New report reveals the reality of anti-Black racism in Ontario Child Welfare Services

BY PAUL JUNOR

The One Vision One Voice (OVOV) program released a revealing report on Friday, June 17^th, 2022. It was in 2015 that the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services funded the African Canadian Community with the involvement of the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies to give rise to the One Vision One Voice report.

This report titled, “Changing the Ontario Child Welfare System to Better Serve African Canadians,” released in 2016 calls for radical reforms to combat systemic racism and to decrease the overrepresentation of African Canadian children in care. With the release of this new report six years later by the OVOV program, in partnership with the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work (FIFSW) it has drawn attention to the pervasiveness of anti-Black racism in Ontario Child Welfare Service Delivery.

The report titled, “Understanding the Over-Representation of Black Children in Ontario’s Child Welfare Services,” revealed some disturbing findings. This ground-breaking report utilizes race-based data to make sense of the overrepresentation of Black families involved with child welfare in Ontario. The data was obtained from the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 2018 (OIS-2018).

Nicole Bonnie, CEO of Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OCAS) states in the press release, “Our research quantifiably shows what Black communities have been telling us for years; that race is a significant factor in child welfare referrals and investigations in our province. The good news is that the child welfare sector is engaged in anti-Black racism work through OVOV and other local equity initiatives.

I have hope that outcomes will improve as we encourage the sector to use the OVOV tools to challenge systemic anti-Black racism, build community partnerships, and engage in meaningful organizational change. But, as our report illustrates, this problem can’t be solved by the child welfare sector alone.”

Nicole Bonnie and Keishia Facey, program manager of OVOV co-authored the report and worked with a team of researchers at FIFSW under the helm of Dr.Barbara Fallon. The main focus of this report was to get to the bottom of why there is an overrepresentation of this demographic in child welfare in Ontario. Some of the important findings of the report include the following:

• Compared to White children, Black children/families are: 2.2 times as likely to be investigated, 2.5 times as likely to have their case substantial,1.7 times as likely to have their case referred to receive on-going/longer-term services and supports, and 2.5 times as likely to be placed in out-of-home care during the investigation
• Schools and police were more likely to refer Black children than White children in child maltreatment-related investigations (43 % vs. 28 % and 27 % vs 23 % respectively)

Facey notes, “We are delighted to have the opportunity to partner with One Voice One Vision to unravel the important data contained within the 2018 Ontario Incidence Study. Our findings underscore the importance of working together to continue to identify Anti-Black Racism and to ameliorate its devastating impact.”

The full report can be seen at the website: https://www.oacas.org