County News
About face
Troubled CAS relents to pressure after a bad year
Update: The board of the Children’s Aid Society of Prince Edward confirmed on Friday it will merge operations with Highland Shores Children’s Aid–the agency it spurned just under a year ago.
The local Children’s Aid Society says it will no longer go it alone. The board of the Children’s Aid Society of Prince Edward released a statement last week saying it had decided to seek a partnership with another agency.
The release suggests that a declining population of children in the County, along with changes in the way the agency is funded, contributed to the decision.
Few details were offered either in the release or by Board Chair Elaine Philips.
The board has not identified the agency with whom it is considering a partnership but it was nearly a year ago the County CAS rejected a merger plan that would have combined the local children’s aid services with those of Hastings and Northumberland. The Ministry of Children’s and Youth Services had been nudging the three agencies together as a means to improve efficiency but the County CAS resisted, worried services would be reduced in the County and the Picton office possibly closed.
The troubles that were about to swamp the agency were just beginning to percolate to the surface.
STRIKE ONE
A month before it rejected the amalgamation deal, the local CAS had become the focus of scrutiny and questions after Bloomfield foster parents Joe and Janet Holm were given prison sentences for sexual abuse of foster children in their care. Justice Geoff Griffin said in his sentencing of the Holms that the community should demand an inquiry into what had happened at the foster home. That inquiry never happened.
STRIKE TWO
A year earlier, charges had been laid against a 71-year-old Bloomfield man for a list of sexual abuse offences over a period of years against children, as young as nine and 10 years of age, placed in his care by the County’s CAS. The man was convicted earlier this year and sentenced to nine years in prison. He is currently appealing his conviction and is free on bail.
County CAS has never explained how and why children in its care were repeatedly put at risk.
Sweet said his agency shared the “community’s outrage” about the crimes committed against children subjected to sexual abuse while in his agency’s care. He assure his agency was improving its processes but never answered how those processes had failed the children in its care in the first place.
DISAPPEARING ACT
Now the agency seems set to be swallowed by the agencies it rebuffed a year ago. Once it is gone, families and County residents may never know what happened. Why weren’t these children more closely monitored? Why weren’t foster families better scrutinized and supervised?
Neither Sweet nor Philip agreed to be interviewed for this story but asked that the Times submit its questions in writing. The Times submitted 16 questions. None was addressed directly.
Philip wrote to say her agency is “committed to operating in a culture of openness and transparency” but was “not in a position to provide much detail.” She offered no explanation about why this detail was being withheld.
She wrote that “we thought it was very important, and indeed were obliged, to inform our staff, the community, and all of our stakeholders, that we are exploring partnerships with other agencies in the region.”
Residents can only speculate about the future of this troubled local agency and how long it will remain local.
The CAS system is courrupt for more that those reasons. My step daughter had an abusive mom, while me and her father called multiple time, no one responded to thoes call causing her more pain and suffering. People need to take action and stop lying around. #wewontstayquiet
What hyperbole to say, as you do Ann, that CAS is the biggest abuser in the province. While I agree that incompetence might reign, to suggest that the people at CAS purposely hurt children is beyond the pale. How about putting some responsibility on the abusers?
Prior to Prince Edward County taking even a single step towards amalgamation, the OPP should be in that office investigating these crimes! The OPP needs to ensure that not a single record gets shredded or otherwise goes missing. All files need to be confiscated now!
The CAS system in Ontario is nothing short of organized crime, funded and blessed by the government!! Children are abused, neglected, tortured and murdered, all under the “care” of the CAS, yet the government does absolutely NOTHING! The CAS in its present form must be shut down completely. It is rife with corruption and incompetence. Vulnerable children in this province deserve protection from all abusers, the biggest one being the CAS!
They are selling those children .Wake up all! Itis not the foster parents that should be looked at but why they are put into homes they can easily take the child out from at any time.The market is there . Selling people is legal. Where do they get the kids from. Ask yourself that. How much money are a couple thousand children on the market right now. Figure it out. It is bigger that some bad pick of foster homes.!!!!
I do have a feeling that with this new amalgamation, all of the horrors that the Prince Edward County CAS are directly responsible for may very well be covered up and lost forever and this is unacceptable!
So far, the Prince Edward County
CAS has had 5 foster parents charged and three are already convicted with sexual offences against children in just the past two years and the Prince Edward County CAS still has absolutely no legitimate response as to why this has happened. What allot of people don’t understand is that the Prince Edward County CAS only looks after a population of 25,258 residents.
A pro-rata allocation of Ontario’s foster children to Prince Edward County’s 25,258 residents would give them 33. At four kids per home, 80% of Prince Edward’s foster kids could have been in the care of sexual abusers.
This is absolutely insane and the Prince Edward County CAS needs to be held accountable for their absolute failure and complete disregard to the protection of children.
People in this organization do not only need to admit their mistakes but they need JAIL TIME for at best their failures and neglect but in my opinion their complacency in the sex crimes against innocent children!
At least in one case and possibly others, the CAS purposely ignored multiple complaints from the victims for years simply because they did not want to look bad!
And then after this foster abuser was charged the CAS made sure to get a publication ban on him not to protect the children but rather to protect themselves and the abuser!
This is not just a simple breakdown of protocol and mistakes, the Prince Edward County CAS is just as responsible and at fault as the abusers themselves and the only word that I can use to explain it is that they are evil and all need jail time or much worse for all of the severe damage and trauma that they have caused to innocent children and families!
The new budgetary constraint issues from Children and Youth Ministry probably insisted that executive “duties” within a catchment area were not to be duplicated.
It was part of the discussions on fiscal responsibility and the action of eliminating duplication in executive “salaries” where multiple similar agencies are paid by public $.
The action should go even further to ensure the same Exec .Director over amalgamations does not ” double dip” on the basis of separate buildings , locations or names. The executive performance role is not dependent upon location and the failure of executives in this ? industry to permit public access or gain public sympathy is not getting them any support.
The public reaction to any curtailing of CAS power is going to be greatly welcomed by a large percentage of Canadians ( where 1 out of every187 Canadian children have experienced CAS intervention in their lives ) . Is that statistic OK with you? It means any one of us could experience the CAS wrath which is akin to ” military intervention” with riot tactics. If you have not experienced it… do not underestimate the impact on what it means to have such tactics occur in our Canada ? glorious and free?
This statistic also means the parents of each child affected is numerous…what do we need now? …….[.and then a “hero” comes along.]……..that is what these CAS parent and child victims need.
Just another glaring example as to why the government MUST give the Ontario Ombudsman oversight of these reckless CAS agencies! It is horrifying that the government continues to hand the province’s most vulnerable of it’s citizenry over to these renegade agencies to be tortured and even murdered, in tandem to pouring huge tax dollars into what is known to be a corrupt system. All done without so much as asking for a single shred of accountability in return, yet this government continues to decry austerity and cutbacks, while rampantly throwing taxpayer dollars into a black hole called CAS!! The CAS system has proven time and time again that it’s prime interest rests solely with self-preservation and job protection for its staff. It cares nothing for the well being or best interests of children, yet the government turns a blind eye. Nero fiddled while Rome burned! Ontarians need to get off their backsides… rise up in droves demanding that the government give the Ombudsman full oversight of the CAS system, so that children are truly protected and money is spent properly!!