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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

First-ever number on nation's children in foster care

By: Adam Miller

Posted: 09/20/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

TORONTO -- There were 29,590 foster children aged 14 and under living in private Canadian households in 2011, the latest census shows -- a long-awaited new benchmark child-welfare advocates hope is the first step on a long road toward improving the plight of marginalized kids.

The number is as significant for its mere existence -- children in foster care have never before been counted in the national census -- as for what it may be able to tell social workers about the foster-child landscape in Canada, experts say.

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Of those households that reported having foster children, 45.1 per cent were home to a single foster child, 28.8 per cent had two foster children and 26.2 per cent reported having three or more, Statistics Canada said.

Until now, data on the number of foster children in Canada were limited to provincial and territorial estimates, each based on different levels of funding and record-keeping. Indeed, the census data likely only represent a fraction of the true number of foster kids in the country, experts warn.

"We really don't know, without going from province to province and getting an estimate from each province at any given time, how many children are in the foster-care system," said Fred Phelps, executive director of the Canadian Association of Social Workers.

"There have been organizations that have advocated for some kind of national indication of children across Canada that are in foster care and I think this is a step in the right direction -- but I think it's just a step."

The lack of data has long been a source of frustration for child-welfare advocates, said Dr. Nicolas Trocme, the director of the Centre for Research on Children and Families and professor of social work at McGill University.

"The fact that there essentially is no data in Canada on the number of children in foster care and their characteristics in and of itself is surprising," he said.

"If you were to phone anyone in the federal government and ask them how many children are in foster care today, the fact that no one can answer that question is pretty shocking, because we're taking responsibility for these children."

Canadian social workers have for years looked jealously to the model in the United States, where funding for federal programs is conditional on states providing data and ensuring services are provided within specific child-care guidelines.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 20, 2012 A3

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