Provinces Welfare System Falters

In 2007, ninety children in Ontario's child welfare system died, which is according to the latest report from the cheif coroner's office. Irwin Elman, in his first annual report to the Legislature, has made it clear to the government that their refusal to share detailed information on these deaths is completely unacceptable. Irwin has worked with several youth in Toronto for more than 20 years, and was completely surprised when the open cases of the CAS had died within a year of files being closed. The tracking of these deaths did start in the late 1990s as ordered from the coroner's office. Elman had been urged on my medical officers and colleagues in child welfare to speak out. Elman has said that the 90 deaths are a fraction of the 26, 260 cases in children aid societies. His goals of the year are to gain more access to information about these child welfare cases and the youth criminal justice systems, and also expand his office's rights to access the coroner's files. They need these files in order to resolve these issues and respond accordingly by correct investigation. The 90 Deaths were reported by the annual Pediatric Death Review Committee released last June. Those children were including in the children's aid society and in foster care, and also added that most of these deaths were preventable. Sixteen were accidental; nine were listed as suicides; four were homicides; eight died from natural causes and could probably not have been prevented; 22 were considered undetermined, which means there was no evidence for any specific classification or they fit within more than one classification; 17 are yet to be assigned a classification; and 14 were not considered appropriate by the Coroner for investigation because their deaths were expected due to fragile health.Of the 76 classified deaths, 34 were babies younger than one year old and 24 were youths between the ages of 12 and 18.



Opinion: In my opinion, I am in total agreement with Irwin Elman. 1 Death is unacceptable if it is preventable, let alone 90. If these children aid services and foster care services are sponsored by the government, than these deaths should have been prevented. But these children death's cannot go in vain, by not being reported, because if there are no reports, than we cannot learn from our escapes. Therefore I support Irwin Elman's movement towards urging these governments to sharpen their regulations, and make thorough, detailed reports on these unfortunate deaths.