County News
New direction
Highland Shores’ and now Prince Edward County CAS Executive Director Mark Kartusch
Putting the pieces back together again
Mark Kartusch has a tough job. And it just got a whole lot tougher. Kartusch was handpicked to bring together the operations of the newly amalgamated Children’s Aid Societies of Hastings and Northumberland. With the merged agency, Highland Shores, not yet a year old, and the kinks still being worked out, Kartusch is faced with a new and more daunting challenge: bringing the operations of the Children’s Aid Society of Prince Edward County into the fold—and with it, lingering questions about how the County agency failed in its fundamental duty to protect children in its care from sexual abuse at the hands of their foster parents.
QUESTIONS EMERGE
The County CAS had been part of the original amalgamation discussions last year with Hastings and Northumberland, but walked away from the Ministry of Child Services-guided process last December—despite warnings of reduced funding and support.
In the end it likely wasn’t money that brought down the local CAS, thrusting it into the arms of Highland Shores. Rather, it is more plausible that a series of scandals involving children in its care who had been sexually abused by foster parents, in homes selected and overseen by the local agency, brought about the end of its independence.
SHATTERED LIVES
It all began to unravel last November when a Bloomfield couple, Joe and Janet Holm, were sentenced to prison terms for charges ranging from sexual assault to sexual exploitation. According to a report in the Intelligencer, the couple had fostered 25 teenagers over a period of nine years—providing a home with little to no restrictions and with rampant sexual behaviour.
Then last spring another Bloomfield man was convicted of sexually assaulting two children in his care over a period of years. He was sentenced to nine years in prison but is currently appealing his conviction.
Three more foster parents were charged this month for sexual abuse against children in their care.
The sheer volume of charges, and the protracted nature of the abuse carried out under the watch of the local CAS over the course of years, have raised serious— and yet unanswered— questions about the nature of the failure of this agency to protect children in its care.
Mounting pressure on the organization likely forced the board of directors to reconsider its decision to reject amalgamating with Hastings and Northumberland. Earlier this month the local agency conceded that its future lay within Highland Shores. All but two of its members resigned. Last week the long-time director of the local CAS, Bill Sweet, departed.
RESTORATION BEGINS
Now the path is clear for Highland Shores to complete the takeover of the local agency. That gives Kartusch the challenging job of integrating the methods, habits and practices of three long-established government agencies into one cohesive organization. He must also break down the regional and operational biases that can hobble efficiency.
By far his biggest task is rebuilding the trust in this community in an agency whose credibility lies in tatters.
To do this Kartusch will need to understand what happened in this community, demonstrate that remedial action has been taken and that every effort is being made to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
He’s not there yet. He is reluctant to speak about the past—partly because of the confidential nature of cases they manage—and he is only now learning the details about how they were managed. He is cautious too, simply because transparency takes second place to the privacy of the families and children that they are tasked with assisting.
“Our work is very complicated and there are few simple answers,” explained Kartusch to the Times. “I have no question that staff in child welfare want to do their best. But bad things happen.”
Balancing transparency with expectations of confidentiality is something every child welfare agency struggles with.
“I know some think we use this as a shield,” said Kartusch. “But something bigger is at stake. The problems that happen in families are not supposed to be broadcast for public consumption. There is also due process that has to occur. There are very good reasons that child welfare cases tends to be more confidential. We need to make people feel okay to come to the society. To get help before it becomes a problem. If I there is a risk these concerns will become a public matter then children suffer.”
But Kartusch knows too that these aren’t ordinary circumstances in Prince Edward County. He knows the community demands answers about what went wrong in the protection of children in this community. As much as he would like to focus on the future, Kartusch understands he can’t ignore the troubled past of the local CAS.
“It will take time,” acknowledged Kartusch. “I need to spend some time in the community. Learn about what has transpired. Learn about the community more. Learn from community service providers. I will be working to remind people about the good processes that serve the community well.”
He knows too that repairing damaged credibility is his first job.
“Loss of confidence is very serious. We rely on people having confidence in the child welfare agency because it is about protecting our kids.”
Kartusch knows this will be his toughest challenge yet.
Is the average Canadian citizen that ignorant as to what happens in foster care?! Do they still think every child ‘apprehended’ should have been removed from their homes? Really? Research before you opionate…please, our children count on you, Canadian citizens! WOW! Oh Canada!!?? Wtf??!!
The reality is that a new executive director will never repair the problems with the CAS on his own as Highland Shores CAS is just as venerable to the issues that have plagued the Prince Edward County CAS and are often caught neglecting children as well.
The only difference is that the HSCAS has simply been better at covering up the issues than the PECCAS.
This does not mean that I have not seen quite a few cases where the CAS has changed the lives of children for the better but these cases are unfortunately very few and far between and that has to change.
The reason why this happens is not because of a breakdown of the directors of a certain Society but rather because of the simple fact that every Children’s Aid Society in the province of Ontario is in fact a Private Corporation that receives their funding based on nothing more than the number of children in their care and the number of files they have open on families. This is also done with absolutely no oversight or accountability whatsoever and because of this reason contrary to logic apprehension of children can and does happen for as little as the fact that children are home schooled and or only have evidence based on one simple anonymous phone call and then once the children are in their “Care”, they often go against the rights and freedoms of the children and when abuse happens, they will try to solve it themselves and or cover it up for the purpose of making themselves look good in the eyes of the public with complete disregard for the well being of the children.
One of the many reasons they get away with this is because over 90% of the CAS workers in the province of Ontario are unlicensed and unregistered social workers and therefore cannot be held accountable to the Ontario College of Social Workers. Why this is allowed to continue is beyond logic as this is also completely against the law according to the Social Work And Social Service Work Act but they get away with this all the time as well.
It is also a proven fact that over 100 innocent children die in the care of Children’s Aid Societies in the province of Ontario every year and not one CAS worker has ever been held accountable for any of these deaths!
The only thing that will help the Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario is for them to have oversight and accountability for when they do something wrong and right now they currently do not so until that happens, the Children’s Aid Society will always be more abusive than the parents they claim to save the children from in the first place!