CFSA REVIEW - SECTION 68 / OACAS

[John Dunn]

Bill 210 contains proposed amendments to reduce accountability in child welfare by eliminating two vital steps in the CAS complaint procedure. You will no longer be able to have your complaint heard by a CAS board of directors, nor will you be able to have your compliant reviewed by a Ministry appointed Director.

This leaves you with just your worker, their supervisor and the Executive Director of a CAS to deal with your compliants. No external accountability is going to be available if Bill 210 passes without any challenge from the public. From YOU!

I will paste the relevant section in Bill 210 at first reading and at second reading:

First Reading:
26. Section 68 of the Act is repealed and the following substituted:

Complaints re: services by society

Society review procedure

68. (1) Every society shall establish a review procedure that satisfies the prescribed requirements for hearing and dealing with a complaint by a person concerning services sought or received by the person from the society, and shall make information concerning the review procedure available to any person on request.

Complaint

(2) A person may make a complaint about a service sought or received by the person from a society and shall do so in accordance with the review procedure established by the society.

No review if matter within purview of court

(3) A society shall not deal with a complaint under this section if the subject of the complaint is an issue that has been decided by the court or is before the court.

Transitional

(4) This section as it read immediately before the day this subsection came into force continues to apply in respect of complaints made to a society before that day.




Below is a letter I wrote to the OACAS legal council regarding the initiation of the proposed changes to Section 68 of the CFSA.

Read the letter and their response then feel free to comment.


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Marv Bernstein
Director of Policy
Development & Legal Support
Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies

Monday, July 11, 2005

Re: Recommendation to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services – Section 68 CFSA

Hello Marv Bernstein,

My name is John Dunn, Executive Director of the Foster Care Council of Canada. In the middle of June 2005, I contacted the OACAS's Gail Vandermeulen regarding the OACAS's recent recommendation to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services five year review of the Child and Family Services Act to ask how the OACAS came up with a recommendation to remove two vital stages in the complaints procedure, which give the complainant the ability to escalate their complaint to a CAS Board of Directors and if not satisfied with their resolution or lack thereof, to escalate the complaint to the Ministry for a review, which has the secondary benefit to complainants of having their decisions subject to review by the Ombudsman of Ontario.

Gail Vandermeulen then referred me to your office stating that you were involved in formulating that part of the recommendation. I left a voice message with you asking if you could call me with information on this matter, and have not yet heard from you.

I thought I would remind you of my call, and ask if you could contact me regarding the decision making process which resulted in the recommendation to change section 68 of the Act which will remove all levels of external accountability within the Children's Aid Societies and the Ministry of Children and Youth Services with regard to complaints filed by CAS clients and their advocates.

I can be contacted at 613-228-2178 or by email at [e-mail]

Sincerely

John Dunn
The Foster Care Council of Canada
web.ncf.ca/fe281/

[John Dunn]

This is his reply:

Good morning John:

In response to your recent inquiry, I wish to advise that the OACAS position with respect to section 68 of the Child and Family Services Act was developed by our OACAS CFSA Committee after surveying our member agencies and receiving verbal feedback at both an OACAS Consultation and written feedback thereafter. The Position Paper was then approved by both the Local Directors' Section of the OACAS as well as the OACAS Board.


Some of the reasoning that went into the formulation of our position is as follows:

External accountability will continue to exist for CASs through Ministry audits and other statutory review mechanisms, as well as through Ministry approval of CAS multi-year results based plans and by means of independent agency accreditations

Under section 68 of the CFSA, the Ministry Director's Review recommendations cannot currently be enforced against a local CAS and there is no obligation on the part of the local CAS to implement the Ministry Director's review recommendations, where the CAS disagrees with
those review recommendations

CAS Boards of Directors are uncomfortable with the role of adjudicating complaints against their own agencies - they have a governance role and it does not seem appropriate for CAS Boards to be reviewing operational, clinical and service-related decisions of the Executive Director and other CAS management staff

The hierarchical and static complaints resolution steps, which include access to the CAS Board of Directors and a Ministry Director,were developed in the early 1980's when little was known about effective alternative dispute resolution processes


It is more useful to use whatever dispute resolution processes exist within a CAS to resolve the problem since that is where the problem resides; however, where it is deemed necessary to involve a neutral third party, it should be in the context of third party mediation, rather than third party review or adjudication, which will generally only serve to further polarize the parties to the dispute

I trust that this memo addresses the issues raised in your attached correspondence.

Regards, Marv

Marvin M. Bernstein, B.A., LL.B., LL.M.
Director of Policy Development and Legal Support
Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies
75 Front St. East, 2nd Floor
Toronto, ON M5E 1V9
Telephone: [phone] Ext. 241
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]