Ministry scrutinizes Windsor CAS

July 3, 2004 permalink

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CAS scrutinized

Minister wants concerns addressed

Windsor Star, July 3, 2004, By Dave Battagello, Star Staff Reporter

The Windsor-Essex Children's Aid Society must address 18 recommendations made in a provincial review of its files or it can expect further scrutiny, says a spokesman for Minister of Children and Youth Services Marie Bountrogianni.

The review prepared for the minister showed the local children's aid society conducted more investigations, resulting in ongoing service at more than double the rate of the rest of the province.

"The next step is to monitor the recommendations made in the report", Andrew Weir, spokesman for Bountrogianni, said Friday. "The minister will monitor the society closely to see if they look to address the issues.

"If the recommendations are implemented, we will just continue to monitor them, the same as we do with all the children's aid societies".

The local CAS will continue to welcome any type of government review, executive director Bill Bevan said earlier this week.

"Absolutely", he said. "If you have a number of complaints and concerns by parents and ministry concerns, by all means, the government has every right to review files, talk to staff and see what we are doing.

MPPs initiated review

"We don't mind talking about this. We are doing a pretty darn good job, but we aren't perfect".

The ministry report was initiated after MPPs Sandra Pupatello (L -- Windsor West) and Dwight Duncan (L -- Windsor Tecumseh) raised concerns about the increase in calls they were receiving about the CAS's practice of taking children into its care.

The complaints often revolved around how quickly children were being apprehended and alternatives available to CAS that were not being considered.

After seeing the report's data, Pupatello said a more in-depth review of the children's aid operations may be warranted.

Weir said the ministry's regional office has been asked to work with the local children's society as it addresses the issues in the report.

"The ministry has identified ways for them to improve", Weir said. "The ministry sets high standards and for the most part children's aid societies in the province meet those expectations. We expect (Windsor's children's aid) to bring their performance up to that level. They certainly have been a willing participant in the process.

"In some areas it is clear the agency is performing well, but in other areas there are real ways they can improve. We expect them to take the necessary steps to make those improvements".

Pupatello cited a number of the findings of the report, prepared for Children and Youth Services Minister Marie Bountrogianni, as troubling.

• 80 percent of referrals to CAS resulted in an investigation, more than 1.5 times higher than the provincial average of 53 per cent.
• More than 24 per cent of referrals resulted in a transfer to ongoing service, 2.2 times higher than the provincial average of 11 per cent.
• Only 5.3 per cent of the society's foster care days were listed as "regular" compared to the provincial average of 47.6 per cent, while the local CAS instead listed 68.4 per cent of its foster care days as "specialized", well above the provincial average of 35 per cent, resulting in an increased level of funding given to the local CAS of $337,018.
• Of 111 service complaints filed since April 2003, only four reached the executive director under a CAS review process and zero went before the board.

"I've talked with others from around the province and there is something unusual going on in Windsor", Pupatello said. "There are not the same numbers going on across the province. Clearly they are higher in a number of areas in Windsor than the numbers across the province. I want to know why.

"Clearly it's been identified we've got issues here, that it's not just the regulations. The next step is more important than this report. This was not an operational review. The minister has told me she will look at the next step".

The ministry report was initiated after Pupatello and fellow MPP Dwight Duncan (L -- Windsor Tecumseh) raised concerns about the increase in complaints they were receiving from parents about the CAS's practice of taking children into care. The report also listed issues with the CAS's new building, noting it was $724,709 over the ministry approved budget, with a $834,368 shortfall in fundraising efforts for the project.

The report's recommendation calls for the CAS to somehow make up the project difference of $1,559,077. That is likely to occur through the organization selling off some of its properties.

Bevan and CAS board president Norm King, at a Wednesday news conference, focused on the report's lease condemning aspects -- among them that 95 per cent of CAS paperwork as being in compliance on the 163 files reviewed in the report.

"I think we learned what we expected from the reports", Bevan said. "That we are a pretty well run organization, but no organization is perfect. We do need to spend more time on how we write about situations going into them and how we write about the situations we are in. We know there are issues in training staff, how we are writing reports. We do have a younger staff".

Bevan said the local CAS would welcome further provincial scrutiny.

Note by Dufferin VOCA. Here are the reports referred to in the article. Both are in pdf format:

Full report
Bevan's version